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Repository developers are invited to participate in a new "Repository Challenge" prize activity to produce demonstrations of novel repository capability during the OR08 conference. The Open Repositories conference annually attracts developers who working on a wide variety of repository-oriented platforms and projects from across the world. As well as providing a forum for discussion of the cutting edge of repository R&D, this year's conference will run a rapid cross-platform repository integration challenge. The aim is to get delegates working in small teams to try to quickly pull together established platforms and services to demonstrate a glimpse of some real-life, user-relevant scenarios and services. The "Repository Challenge" will be based around small teams of developers trying to achieve goals set by the repository manager and user community. This all takes place in a "scrapheap-code challenge [UK]" / "junkyard-code wars[US]" atmosphere over the two days of the conference. An awards ceremony at the conference dinner will celebrate the achievements of the teams with cash prizes given to the best demos (first team prize £2,500 / $5,000 / ?3.350). The Repository Challenge is intended to provide concrete examples of the ideas raised at a recent Repository Unconference, an event run by the JISC Common Repository Interface Group (CRIG) to identify key issues that repositories need to address to make a genuine impact in Higher Education. These include bringing the repository closer to the researcher's working environment, automatically generating metadata, running multiple interfaces and taking advantage of Web 2.0 and utility computing services. To participate in the repository challenge, register for OR08 at http://or08.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ and email the Repository Challenge Chair: David Flanders (d.fland...@bbk.ac.uk). Comments are invited on the outputs of the Unconference (photos of the flipcharts) which are available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/wocrig . Other CRIG discussion is available via blog planet: http://feeds.feedburner.com/jisc-crig . Background information on CRIG can be found at: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/CRIG . For more information on the challenge, contact the Repository Challenge Chair: David Flanders (d.fland...@bbk.ac.uk). -- Les Carr Open Repositories 2008 Conference Chair PS Although this is not an ostensibly "Open Access" technical challenge, the suggested improvements will improve OA provision by making document and metadata deposit easier. But such efforts will only be effective as part of balanced diet of OA policy and technical development!