Tag Archives: ThatCamp

Inaugural FLDH Conference, March 2019

I am very excited to announce that the Florida Digital Humanities Consortium (FLDH) will be hosting its inaugural statewide conference at the University of North Florida (UNF) on March 29-30, 2019.

Friday, March 29, will be a formal research symposium, and Saturday, March 30, will follow a more spontaneous THATCamp format. The deadline for submissions to the Friday, March 29 portion of the conference is December 15, 2018. For more information and to submit a proposal, see https://www.unf.edu/dhi/Inaugural_FDLH_Conference.

 

THATCamp-News, University of Florida, April 17, 2018

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Over the past several years, UF has collaborated with others in Gainesville to host a THATCamp-Gainesville event. “THATCamp” is The Humanities And Technology Camp, and it is an unconference: an open, inexpensive meeting where humanists, technologists, educators, archivists, and folks from many different backgrounds and fields come together to learn together, and to make connections for future collaborations. We have changed the format for THATCamp-Gainesville over the years in terms of duration, location, and structure. THATCamp-Gainesville also began as a different event, Digital Humanities Day.
THATCamp is an opportunity for anyone  in the UF and Gainesville communities with an interest in culture and digital technologies to come together, share their work, and learn new skills for building and analyzing digital projects across the humanities.  It is also a chance to build connections between digital humanities projects across North Florida.  And, if you don’t know what the ‘digital humanities’ are, then come find out. Please visit the conference website to register, suggest a session proposal, comment on the session proposals made by others, and generally learn more about this event.
This year the format of THATCamp has evolved. Organizers hope that THATCamp will become a thematic event connected to and cross-promoting another conference. THATCamp-News will be 9:30am-12pm on 17 April (Tuesday), the morning before the IFLA International News Media Conference, a separate event which THATCamp-News participants are encouraged to also engage with.
Schedule:

  • 9:15-9:30am: Registration, Welcome and opening remarks
  • 9:30-10:30am: Lightning talks (6-7 minutes each)
    • #NoLaIBCita
    • #NoNazisAtUF organizers
    • Patrick Daglaris: Digital preservation through oral history.
    • April Hines on methods/uses of UF’s digital newspaper databases by students, challenges, barriers, usability, etc.
    • Melissa Jerome: Digitization of the Alligator
    • Patrick Reakes on the implications of copyright on news digitization
  • 10:30-11am: Breakout discussion
  • 11am-11:15am: Break
  • 11:15am-12pm: TEI Workshop, with Dr. Megan Daly
  • 12pm: Event ends. Time is open for lunch in groups, find friends and meetup!

All presenters will share on topics related to news and preservation. We expect several presentations to be on digital/digitization of newspaper projects, including on research using digitized news.

  • To register, visit: http://news2018.thatcamp.org/
  • Questions about THATCamp in general for the formats and varieties? See the main THATCamp.org site and post questions on the THATCamp forums and someone from the community will reply within a couple of days.
  • This event is free and open to members of the public who work in cultural heritage institutions or the technology sector.
  • THATCamp Gainesville is organized by a planning committee of the UF Digital Humanities Working Group (DHWG), a group of academic and library faculty, staff, and graduate students who meet monthly to discuss current topics at the intersection of digital technologies and the humanities and support each other in project development. For more information on the Digital Humanities at UF and to join the DHWG, visit https://digitalhumanities.group.ufl.edu/

ThatCamp Philly: when is the next one?

I had a great time at ThatCamp Philly. This was my first ThatCamp ever, and I learned so much. Everyone was really nice and helpful. The amenities were pretty nice, too. In the morning, “Angels” helped us set up the software for the workshops we were attending. The organizers provided tea, coffee, sodas, water, and snacks all day long (people do need their caffeine). And for lunch, participants could sign up to go to a specific restaurant with 5-6 people. It was a great way for attendees to get to meet and talk to new people outside of the camp. Other conference organizers should take note!
As I already said on Twitter: thank you so much for such a great weekend.
Day 1
Friday was devoted to workshops. The three morning sessions included: 1. Mapping Your World: Exploring Free Web-Based Tools to Map and Visualize Your Data and Tell Your Story to the World (Scott Rutzmoser, Lehigh University), 2. WordPress Essentials (Michael Tedeschi, Interactive Mechanics), 3. Video Editing on the Cheap (Nicole Scalessa, Library Company). I attended the one on mapping, since my digital humanities project involves mapping the social networks and relationships of French decadent writers and their publishers (this will be for another blog post). For the moment, my map is hosted on cartoDB, but thanks to this workshop I discovered ArcGIS, which seems like a better fit for what I want to do with my map. I am now considering transferring my data to ArcGis, and I have to thank this workshop for the discovery.
The second set of morning workshops were as follows: 1. WordPress Beyond the Basics (Michael Tedeschi, Interactive Mechanics), 2. Wikipedia 101 (Mary Mark Ockerbloom), 3. Intro to Programming with the Processing Language (Katherine Lynch, Temple University).
I attended the one on programming and learned how to create circles, rectangles, and shapes that were changing colors.
In the afternoon, the workshops included: 1. Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon (Mary Mark Ockerbloom), 2. The Anatomy of a Project: project design for Digital Humanities (Delphine Khanna and Matt Shoemaker, Temple University), 3. Hands-on Programming Demonstration with the Processing Language (Katherine Lynch, Temple University). I decided to take another shot at programming, thinking that a hands-on demonstration might help me understand things better.
Day 2
As I wrote in my previous post, ThatCamps don’t have a formal schedule for Day 2. Participants are asked to suggest sessions ahead of time and then get to vote for the ones they would be interested in seeing organized and attending. That’s why, when I arrived on Saturday morning, I was given stickers. There were posters with the names of the discussion sessions that had been suggested on the ThatCamp Philly website. We were then asked to affix stickers to posters for the sessions we were interested in. To help us choose, there were 30 seconds presentations about the prospective sessions by the people who proposed them. At 9:15, the voting was over and it was time for the organizers to decide on the schedule. To make sure people would benefit from all of the discussions, it was decided that there would be one note-taker per session. The notes would then be shared on Google documents. That way, I was able to know what had been discussed in the sessions I could not attend. The topics ranged from DH in the classroom and visual ethics to how to curate digital exhibits.
I really enjoyed the fact that this “unconference” favored discussion so heavily. People came in with their questions, their issues, their solutions, their projects, or asked for advice and opinions. There was no judging; just healthy discussions. I had such a great time, learned so much, and met such great people. I can’t wait to go back or help organize another ThatCamp one day!

ThatCamp Philly

I am leaving today for Philadelphia to attend my first ThatCamp ever (and I am sure, not the last).
So what is ThatCamp?
It is an open, very often free or inexpensive meeting where humanists and technologists meet, discuss, learn, build together workshops and sessions proposed on the spot.
At ThatCamp Philly, Friday will be workshops day. In the morning, you can either learn more about mapping (so excited about that), learn how to video edit, understand more about WordPress or Wikipedia, and discover what Programming means with the Processing language. And that’s just for the morning!
In the afternoon, you can participate in a Wikipedia Edit-A-thon, learn how to write a project proposal for a digital humanities project, and attend a hands-on demonstration using the Processing language.
On Saturday morning, between 8.30 and 9.15am, attendees will vote on the sessions that have been proposed on the website beforehand. The most popular topics or most commonly shared problems and questions will be scheduled for the day. This process really leaves the attendees the power to decide what they want the conference to be like. The sessions are informal discussions and working group meetings, which is very different from any conference I have attended before and I can’t wait to see what it looks like.