We’re both pleased and grateful to announce that Microsoft Research has given $10,000 in support of THATCamp. An early sponsor of THATCamp Pacific Northwest, Microsoft Research has now made funds of up to $500 available for sixteen separate THATCamps. These funds will be administered and distributed by THATCamp Central at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. If you are organizing a THATCamp in the U.S. and are interested in receiving these funds, please write info@thatcamp.org for details.

MS Research has supported the work of Internet ethnographer and privacy scholar danah boyd, has produced such useful open source tools for the humanities as ChronoZoom, and has organized an annual Faculty Summit for the express purpose of bringing academic researchers and educators together with Microsoft’s computer scientists and engineers. We’re proud to be associated with them. Special thanks are due to Donald Brinkman, program manager for the Digital Humanities at MS Research, whose vision made this happen.

We’re very pleased to announce that we’ve hired Rebecca Onion as the new Assistant THATCamp Coordinator. As her website will tell you, Rebecca is “a Ph.D candidate in the Department of American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, with research interests including the history of childhood and youth, cultures of science and technology, environmental studies, and visual and material culture.” She’s on Twitter at @rebeccaonion.

Starting in May, Rebecca will be revising our THATCamp help documents, producing new help documents, and adding help documents in new formats (PDFs! epubs! video!). This project to make sure we have useful and complete information for THATCamp organizers, participants, sponsors, and friends will be particularly important as we embark on a major redesign of thatcamp.org this summer (forums! groups! user profiles! cross-THATCamp searching and browsing! cross-THATCamp activity streams!). Later on, Rebecca will help us support ongoing THATCamps and may help us find, preserve, and make accessible older THATCamp content circa 2008-2011.

Welcome, Rebecca!

We’re now hiring an Assistant THATCamp Coordinator. The duties of this position will be to

• create, revise, and maintain support documentation for THATCamp organizers and participants, and
• assist with ongoing THATCamp support tasks such as creating THATCamp websites, reminding THATCamp organizers of pre- and post-THATCamp tasks, and answering questions by e-mail and Twitter about THATCamp.

This is a part-time, temporary position at no more than 10 hours per week for two years (April 2012 – March 2014) at a starting salary of $16 per hour. Work can be done remotely. The position is especially suited to a graduate student in a humanities discipline who is a THATCamp enthusiast. We’ll hire someone who can do the following:

• Write clearly and concisely, especially when explaining technology to a general audience
• Build websites, preferably with WordPress (HTML, CSS, some PHP)
• Explain THATCamp and unconferences to scholars and others based on personal experience
• Work independently, completing tasks with minimal supervision
• Keep track of what’s going on at various events (THATCamps happen often!)

Please send a résumé or a curriculum vitae and a couple of paragraphs about why you’re right for this position to Amanda French, THATCamp Coordinator, at info@thatcamp.org. We’ll begin reviewing applications April 1 and will let all applicants know the outcome by May 1.

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (CHNM) is the leading producer of open source tools for humanists and historical content on the Web (e.g., Zotero, Omeka, the Teaching History website, and the Gulag History website). Each year CHNM’s award-winning project web sites receive over 16 million visitors and over a million people rely on its digital tools to teach, learn and conduct research.

Thought I’d post a bit of history: the IRC (Internet Relay Channel) log from the first THATCamp in 2008, presciently saved by Bess Sadler. We do still have a room called thatcamp on the IRC channel at irc.freenode.net, but Twitter has taken over much of the function that IRC then served. Do feel free to use the thatcamp IRC channel whenever you like!

I’ve edited the log so that it can be more easily read, taking out all the lines about so-and-so leaving or joining the IRC. Enjoy.

— Log opened Sat May 31 10:19:27 2008
10:19 < epistemographer> just imagine if we were all piling on one collaborative spreadsheet
10:19 < asolove> so can whoever controls thatcampbot consider the room-specific IRC channels?
10:19 < thatcampbot> ok
10:20 < jgsmith> a wiki page for the schedule?
10:21 < thatcampbot> give me a sec to figure this out
10:21 < dancohen> is it possible to simultaneously irc chat, twitter, blog, and podcast? I’m going to try.
— Log opened Sat May 31 10:26:08 2008
10:29 < asolove> thatcamp450 for rdf discussion
10:30 < willynills> about to start the text mining session
10:31 < DruidSmith> RDF… am curious if anyone is working with AJAX or JavaScript browsing and navigation of OWL ontologies
10:34 < willynills> text analysis software: www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/ARTFL/philologic/
10:35 < willynills> philomine: philologic.uchicago.edu/philomine/
10:37 < dancohen> in the text mining session in the lab (rm 462)
10:39 < dancohen> sean takats is explaining CHNM’s upcoming NEH-funded text-mining project
10:40 < epistemographer> Sean’s not a “better” historian, he’s a “different” kind of historian
10:40 < dchud> dancohen: hooray for funding
10:41 < bess_> the techies are having an impromptu “keeping the wheels on” meeting — sustainability from a technical point of view
10:42 < dancohen> good thing we’re inside–just got a tornado watch alert from the fairfax messaging system, active until 10:30 tonight
10:42 < epistemographer> yowza
10:42 < doug_knox> RDF group talking about bibliographic data, citations, Zotero, data about museum/library objects
10:43 < willynills> according sean: three aspects of text mining: locating or finding documents, automatically extracting data from documents (instead of manually reading), analysis of corpus
10:45 < willynills> according to laura mandell: text mining can be used to identify terms of analysis not within your discipline
10:45 < matthewgaventa> wow. really doesn’t LOOK like tornado weather (at least through my small window)
10:46 < jackflaps> it feels like it, though
10:48 < davelester> it’s great to see everyone on IRC!
10:51 < elli> RDF: used to define relationships in restricted domains, perhaps more interesting. But movement in developing it is to make it applicable to broader and broader domains.
10:52 < bess_> davelester: I set up thatcampbot to record the channel. I’ll give you the logs afterwards.
10:52 < davelester> thanks bess_
10:56 < asolove> can someone add thatcampbot to thatcamp450
10:56 < davelester> asolove++ great idea. can you do that bess_?
10:57 < willynills> dan cohen: text mining tools need to useful for historians and may not be
10:58 < willynills> text mining tasks: summarization, classification, extractions
10:59 < bess_> asolove and davelester : I’ll give it a shot
10:59 < bess_> asolove and davelester : I’ll get to it on the break, I’m in the middle of a good conversation
10:59 < davelester> np
11:03 < asolove> ok thanks
11:06 < karindalziel> I will be posting the URL’s we are talking about on del.icio.us with tag thatcamp
11:07 < jackflaps> I’m going to start doing that for the RDF session as well
11:10 < willynills> text mining does more than speed up historical thought; it should give us a new level of comprehension
11:11 < clioweb> FYI – I updated the schedule, so that should be current based on the last change we tried to implement downstairs
11:11 < clioweb> thanks to everyone for patience and input
11:11 < clioweb> schedule at thatcamp.org/schedule/
11:12 < dancohen> clioweb: thanks–you did a great job with the schedule; hard to optimize something that complicated
11:12 < clioweb> I think it worked out well
11:13 < davelester> clioweb++
11:14 < clioweb> people should feel free to use other rooms and spaces for ad hoc meetings
11:20 < BenBrumfield> Karin, is there any chance you could let us use your wiki?
11:25 < karindalziel> ben – sure, pass is karin
11:25 < karindalziel> I’ll clean up later
11:29 < dancohen> www.dancohen.org/2006/08/08/mapping-what-americans-did-on-september-11/
11:30 < dancohen> my best effort on text mining + geolocation
11:32 < BenBrumfield> Karin, can you paste the URL?
11:35 < BenBrumfield> Got it
11:35 < davelester> could people post their session notes on the blog? that’d be great
11:35 < dancohen> so far, been able to blog, tweet, and irc chat all at once; adding in the podcasting might be hard…
11:36 < DruidSmith> There was a GREAT discussion of technology and sustainability at EPA’s Science Forum last week – William McDonough, author of The Cradle to Cradle Revolution – www.amazon.com/Cradle-Remaking-Way-Make-Things/dp/0865475873/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212248155&sr=8-1
11:37 < davelester> dancohen: I’d love to see a live digital campus
11:37 < epistemographer> me too – do it, Dan
11:37 < karindalziel> actually, just set up a new wiki www.nirak.net/thatcamp/pmwiki.php?n=Main.HomePage
11:37 < dancohen> davelester: tom and I were thinking of doing it
11:37 < BenBrumfield> Oh. Sweet!
11:38 < dancohen> anyone mind if I look like I’m manning a McDonald’s drive-thru?
11:38 < BenBrumfield> Well, I need a place to put the DorkShorts material now, so I’ll get started with Karin’s
11:38 < davelester> there’s already a whiteboard in the main room for dork shorts with a list of names
11:38 < karindalziel> feel free to do whatever you want there
11:43 < willynills> Bill: text mining, given abundant texts, can ask questions about simultaneity and co-incidence.
11:43 < sgillies> epiphany!
11:44 < DruidSmith> add geotagging to the mix and you also have geo-enabled text mining
11:45 < DruidSmith> and temporal coincidence / simultaneity?
11:50 < asolove> what is the method for getting slides in to Dork Shorts?
11:51 < BenBrumfield> Karin, can you enable uploads on the wiki? www.nirak.net/thatcamp/pmwiki.php?n=PmWiki.Uploads
11:52 < foundhistory> asolove … thumbdrive?
11:53 < asolove> hmm
11:53 < asolove> I can just download from email
11:53 < foundhistory> if that works. what kind of slides? ppt? keynote?
11:53 < BenBrumfield> Will we be able to hook up the projector to our own laptops?
11:53 < asolove> it’s actually just xul
11:54 < foundhistory> oh
11:54 < foundhistory> np
11:54 < foundhistory> ben… that’s going to be tough
11:54 < foundhistory> we’re going to be pretty pressed for time
11:54 < BenBrumfield> Okay — wiki it is
11:54 < foundhistory> but we could add another dork shorts session maybe
11:55 < sgillies> session 1 made me think of “glass house”
11:56 < foundhistory> Lunch is served!!!
11:56 < foundhistory> and Dork Shorts is starting!
12:00 < sgillies> great adhoc session in 402. thanks, everybody
12:13 < karindalziel> lunch is teh awesome. Great spreat, guys!!
12:22 < sgillies> syndication architecture ++
12:29 < asolove> lunch was excellent
12:33 < epistemographer> omeka in action: exhibitions.nypl.org/eminent/
12:37 < dancohen> enjoying the dork shorts
12:39 < bess__> oooh, pretty! typographia
12:41 < bess__> can anyone read the url?
12:42 < jackflaps> www4.ncsu.edu/~dmrieder/typographia
12:42 < jeanne_kramer-sm> www4.ncsu.edu/~dmrieder/typographia
12:47 -!- Netsplit calvino.freenode.net <-> irc.freenode.net quits: asolove, karindalziel, bess__, bess_, matthewgaventa, epistemographer, jgsmith, dancohen, sgillies
12:53 -!- Netsplit over, joins: dancohen
12:53 -!- Netsplit over, joins: sgillies
12:54 -!- Netsplit over, joins: epistemographer
12:55 -!- Netsplit over, joins: bess_
12:58 < travis> Collaborative annotation: ecomma.cwrl.utexas.edu/0.2.0/
13:02 < tjowens> #thatcamp401
13:02 < tjowens> doh
13:06 < dancohen> In session on search, listening to Karin Dalziel show some interesting, wide-ranging examples.
13:07 < sgillies> i’d never seen etsy
13:07 < sgillies> nice
13:08 < bess_> etsy++
13:10 < bess_> All of the stuff Karin’s talking about is also available at www.nirak.net/2008/05/29/alternative-search-analyzing-document/
13:13 < tjowens> learning about iggy pop’s beat down
13:14 < sgillies> etsy beer can hat: www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=10966874
13:14 < jackflaps> cleveland rocks
13:16 < davelester> tinyurl.com/3cmfdy
13:17 < dancohen> davelester: thanks, dave.
13:17 < tjowens> that better not be atsly
13:17 < bess_> Josh G. says “It’s all about leveraging solipsism.” Love it!
13:17 < asolove> that’s cruel
13:33 < jeanne_kramer-sm> www.gilderlehrman.org/collection/battlelines/chapter3/chapter3_1a.html
13:36 < erazlogo> crowdsource transcribing first, then present like this: dohistory.org/diary/exercises/lens/index.html
13:41 < davelester> twitter is down again? boo
13:44 < asolove> the rain must have gotten it
13:46 < bess_> omg the rain!
13:46 < jackflaps> twitter’s a little slow
13:46 < jackflaps> if you poke at it with sticks a little it eventually loads
14:06 < epistemographer> we got crazy geeky in the Search session
14:12 < jeanne_kramer-sm> hoping that folks might post what was discussed in the Search session on the wiki…
14:14 < nowviskie> lisa spiro takes kick-ass notes and will be sharing a summary of the “research methods” session on the blog.
15:00 < epistemographer> quick call out: what’s being talked about in the sessions people are in?
15:01 < epistemographer> in “Museums” we’re talking about the difference between how museums, libraries and archives approach digita vs. physical issues
15:03 < jackflaps> in Games we’re talking about how to evaluate history-based video games based on their value as teaching tools
15:50 < dancohen> www.zotero.org/download/dev/zotero-1.5a.sync1.xpi
15:51 < shekhar> is patrick in here?
16:08 < dancohen> sustainability has been moved to rm 450
16:11 < BenBrumfield> Dorkshorts is nearly empty. We’ll probably wrap up early.
16:12 < davelester> aw
16:28 < elli> open street maps project offers lots of potential for dh projects to create maps for their own purposes (historical, not street based, available)
16:37 < bess___> elli: would you please post any notes you have on historical applications for open street maps? I was sorry to miss that session.
16:38 < shekhar> bess___: we’re not talking about historical maps in OSM… yet…
16:39 < shekhar> openstreetmap.org
16:39 < elli> bess_: I”ll do my best,
16:43 < elli> Now we are discussing how you might use the technology to walk places and map traces of roads, settlements, battlegrounds, and use the OSM software to incorporate this information
16:45 < dancohen> discussing sustainability models for zotero
16:46 < dancohen> anyone who is not in rm 450 who has ideas, drop them into IRC or Twitter
16:46 < elli> Mapping: freemap.in site with links to open source mapping software
16:49 < elli> Mapping: Shekhar is showing a free map of Mumbai with historical layers overlaid from the freemap site.
17:00 < bess___> I’ve heard a bit about processing, but I had no idea how awesome it was. What a great session!
17:05 * shekhar just showed mumbai.freemap.in and the testing version of a zotero openstreetmap plugin web.mit.edu/shekhar/zotero-maps.xpi
19:30 < davelester> howdy all
19:34 < kerri> Hi Dave. Wish I was there.
19:35 < davelester> aw, maybe next year?
19:36 < kerri> Sounds like it has been great!
19:36 < kerri> Elli will surely debrief me when she returns.
19:37 < davelester> definitely
19:51 < cg_> #thatcamp port 7000 at GMU.
19:51 < cg_> #thatcamp port 7000 at GMU
21:45 < bess_> hello?
21:53 < karindalziel> hiya. I am just hanging out in here while working on a blog post.
22:03 < karindalziel> soooo….is everyone else exhausted, or is it just me?
22:21 < bess_> karindalziel: also exhausted
22:21 < bess_> karindalziel: it’s so great to meet you! We have a lot of the same research interests.
22:22 < karindalziel> I am somehow wired too. Brain is racing. Which is good!
22:22 < karindalziel> bess: Great to meet you too!
22:23 < karindalziel> I feel like I have SO much to learn.
22:23 < bess_> karindalziel: You might enjoy this paper: www.ualberta.ca/~sruecker/links/07_Ruecker_Pill_Identification.pdf
22:24 < bess_> It’s an interface I worked on while at U of Alberta.
22:24 < bess_> Stan Ruecker was the primary investigator, and if you don’t know his work you might also enjoy it… www.ualberta.ca/~sruecker/
22:24 < karindalziel> cool- thanks! Something to read ont he plane ride home.
22:26 < karindalziel> Are you leading any discussions tomorrow?
22:26 < bess_> no, I don’t think so
22:26 < bess_> I plan to be an “active participant” in the omeka one, though!
22:27 < karindalziel> I can’t decide betwen that and interface design. So many tough choices.
22:27 < bess_> oh damn, did they schedule those across from each other?
22:28 * bess_ runs off to check the schedule
22:29 < bess_> Dammit, I want to attend every single one of the first sessions
22:30 < bess_> I mean the second session
22:30 < karindalziel> I know. :/
22:30 < bess_> I’m sure all the first sessions will be great, too, but mashup is the only one for me.
22:30 < karindalziel> Hopefully people will blog their sessions/
22:30 < bess_> but GIS, interface design, omeka, and bibliographic standards… I’m working on every one of those right now.
22:31 < karindalziel> I will go to management since it pertains most to my job. Unless I change my mind tomorrow morning.
22:31 < bess_> management? really? what kind of management?
22:32 < karindalziel> Project management.. lemme go find link
22:32 < karindalziel> thatcamp.org/2008/05/2-ideas/
22:35 < karindalziel> geez, linking blog posts takes forever
22:36 < karindalziel> hi ben
22:41 < karindalziel> Done with THAT Camp day 1 recap
22:41 < karindalziel> www.nirak.net/2008/05/31/that-camp-day-1/
22:41 < karindalziel> and with that, off to read for a bit before bed. *yawn*
22:41 < sgillies> anybody else got a 5:11 flight from dulles and want to share a cab? lemme know
22:43 < karindalziel> hope I didn’t get anyone’s name wrong.
22:43 < sgillies> good recap
22:43 < karindalziel> wow, you’re quick!
22:43 < karindalziel> ok, really going now.
22:44 < jeanne_ks> where is the recap?
22:45 < sgillies> www.nirak.net/2008/05/31/that-camp-day-1/
22:46 < jeanne_ks> thanks!
22:46 < sgillies> see you all in the morning
22:53 < davelester> anyone in #thatcamp coming to the ‘hacking omeka’ session tomorrow? I’m still deciding what I want to show
22:55 < bess_> davelester: I’ll be there
22:55 < davelester> nice, I saw your tweet
22:56 < davelester> I’ll definitely show off the OAI-PMH ingestion plugin
22:56 < bess_> davelester: NYPL and UVA are both very interested in how we can bring digital repository objects into omeka exhibits.
22:56 < bess_> davelester: I’d also like some advice on how to get started writing omeka themes and plugins
22:57 < bess_> davelester: I think the more eyecandy themes we can provide for omeka the more people will oooh and ahhh.
22:57 < davelester> agreed!
22:58 < bess_> davelester: I’m really looking forward to it, but now I have to go to sleep so I can wake up on time. See you tomorrow!
23:15 < jeanne_ks> Having trouble deciding ‘Hacking Omeka’ vs ‘GIS/Maps’ vs ‘Interface Design’!
— Day changed Sun Jun 01 2008
07:11 < dchud> mornin’
07:11 < dchud> how do i see what everybody has twittered to @thatcamp all at once?
07:44 < sgillies> morning
09:14 < sgillies> asolove breaking free of xml!
10:09 < asolove> text session has been interesting
10:10 < bess__> mashup session is fascinating.
10:10 < asolove> what was covered?
10:10 < elli> what was covered in text?
10:10 < asolove> just using Yahoo/Google/Simile tools, or something additional?
10:11 < elli> mashups talked more about APIs, permanence and guidelines for APIs, and not so much about tools and implementations.
10:11 < asolove> uh huh
10:11 < asolove> we discussed some uses and issues with TEI, alternate storage formats
10:11 < elli> (importance of spending the time to develop APIs and make available)
10:12 < asolove> and cool graphical interfaces for creating digital texts without knowing XML
10:12 < elli> what alternate storage formats
10:12 < asolove> very interesting
10:13 < bess__> asolove: we’re talking about everything from google maps, to library of congress web services, to the importance of permanent urls and the implications for scholarship
10:14 < bess__> excellent conversation, I’m generating way more ideas than I’ll possibly be able to implement
10:14 < asolove> sounds very interesting, sorry I had to present this round
10:15 < bess__> asolove: I get the feeling there will be lots of blog posts and writeups about this one
10:15 < elli> Raymond closed with programmableweb,com
10:36 < jkramer_ks> fyi.. I posted a summary of the Text Mining session from yesterday: www.spellboundblog.com/2008/06/01/thatcamp-2008-text-mining-and-the-persian-carpet-effect/
10:41 < asolove> INTERFACE DESIGN IN 401
10:41 < asolove> whoops
10:43 < epistemographer> asolove: what’s the discussion about in 401?
10:43 < asolove> funny
10:43 < asolove> I think we’re looking at the JGAAP interface
10:46 < nowviskie> can’t believe I didn’t realize you can put a URL to a KML file like this in the search blank for Google Maps!
10:46 < nowviskie> pleiades.stoa.org/places/archaic.kml
10:47 < bess_> nowviskie: wow! I didn’t know you could do that either!
10:49 < nowviskie> yeah, bess — guess what’s going to be on Joe’s to-do list when we get home!
10:49 < elli> Bibliograph session
10:50 < elli> I mean Bibliography
10:50 < elli> Zotero is a good tool for moving bibliographic information from one place to another
10:51 < elli> Bruce D’Arcus style language for bib (CSL)
10:51 < dchud> bibliograph(y or ic)
10:52 < nowviskie> re: mashing up georeferenced data — this also works in Google Maps: pleiades.stoa.org/places/archaic.atom
10:52 < dancohen> if the biblio group would like me to come over to 450, let me know
10:52 < elli> we have Trevor here!
10:53 < dancohen> ok, just checking
10:53 < erazlogo> for future thatcamp – find software for all urls opened in all sessions to be automatically saved into one big links file (coins-enabled?) so people could later follow links from sessions they missed
10:55 < elli> zotero/content/tools/csleit.xul
10:59 < bess_> nowviskie: maybe we could give David G. access to the google sat imagery that way… allow people to export a kml file of the layer he wants and open it in google maps / google earth
11:00 < dchud> tjowens: note the second author at rfc.net/rfc1165.html
11:05 < dancohen> in the interface design session (rm 401) we’re debating how much to ask users what a good UI is for a tool or collection
11:07 < jgsmith> re ui: unix tends to optimize for the most common use case, which is the experienced user — explains why man pages tend to be cryptic for those unfamiliar with a particular command
11:08 < dancohen> jgsmith: right. good point.
11:10 < bess_> in the omeka hacking talk we’re making unreasonable demands of the omeka dev team
11:10 < davelester___>
11:11 < dchud> jgsmith: does unix optimize for the most common use case, or the simplest, decomposed, filterable use case?
11:11 < asolove> it optimizes for the case of people who have write access to the man page in a project
11:11 < bess_> asolove++ # so true!
11:12 < jgsmith> well, most people using unix are experienced in unix — the inexperience period is short compared to the rest of a person’s career
11:12 < matthewgaventa> nice parallel: in bibliography, we’re bordering on making unreasonable demands on the zotero team
11:12 < bess_> matthewgaventa: I’m going to make my unreasonable demands during the lunchtime zotero session
11:13 < jgsmith> doesn’t mean an interface should be poorly designed — but designed for the person familiar with the process or the concepts involved
11:13 < asolove> the design might encourage users to learn the underlying system
11:14 < jgsmith> asolove: -nod- — easier to do in a GUI than a CLI
11:15 < dancohen> note to people making unreasonable demands of CHNMers: don’t make us release the hounds on you.
11:18 < epistemographer> unreasonable demands++
11:19 < dancohen> fluidproject.org/ and Yahoo UI provide open source nice-looking widgets for websites
11:19 < dancohen> that are tested across many browsers
11:20 < epistemographer> for reference: URL I demo-ed is labs.nypl.org/projects/maps/transparent.html
11:40 < bess_> OAI/PMH plugin for omeka is fantastic. I’ve never cared deeply about OAI before, but I think I just started.
11:42 < elli> bibliographicontology.com/
11:50 < erazlogo> use for upcoming mapping plugin in zotero–map your research trips by where archives are located–could be done if there is an archival collection item type with a “place” field
11:58 < dchud> simile.mit.edu/wiki/Zotz
12:21 < davelester_> Lightning talks: first up, Mark Tebeau presenting the Euclid Corridor
12:28 < matthewgaventa> next up in dork shorts: jeffrey talking about CSS file structure and organization
12:37 < asolove> dancohen is about to start the zotero demo
12:39 < matthewgaventa> dave lester is talking about scholarpress
12:41 < asolove> zotero demo starting
12:49 < elli> Goodbye and thank you to everyone at ThatCamp, enjoy the rest of the day. It’s been great camping with you all.
12:49 < asolove> leaving early?
12:50 < sgillies> cheers, elli. great to meet you
12:50 < elli> yes. have to take a train. It’s been great to meet you, too.
12:53 < asolove> Twitter seems to be down
12:53 < asolove> just thing
12:53 < asolove> Jobs at WWDC, Cohen announcing Zotero server
13:20 < karindalziel> The librarians on twitter are asking me lots of questions about Zotero server. Much excitement.
13:32 < dancohen__> good visualizations anyone? post them to IRC
13:33 < jgsmith> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte – Tufte’s done a lot of work on data visualization in general
13:34 < asolove_> Interesting discussion of event microformat standard
13:35 < asolove_> and now the event discussion is moving into visualization issues and we ought to be talking to the people in 402
13:36 < dancohen__> hey people talking about time in rm 462: why not join us in rm 402?
13:37 < asolove_> winds changed and now we’re into interdisciplinary discussion
13:39 < dchud> if only we could fold time and space. and then visualize that.
13:41 < dancohen__> come on down!
13:42 < dchud> somehow i read that as “interplanetary”
13:44 < asolove> whoops, misunderstood visualization
13:48 < karindalziel> asolove: What did you think visualization meant?
13:49 < asolove> I thought we were talking about GIS type issues and graphing not quick display of information
13:50 < karindalziel> asolove:ah, OK
14:02 < bess__> we solved all our problems in the international issues session, so we’ve dispersed to other sessions
21:27 < shekhar> any thatcampers want to grab a drink in DC?
21:28 * shekhar opens a beer for thatcampbot
22:02 < davelester> hey shekhar, where in DC are you at? I’m in Arlington right now
22:14 < shekhar> davelester: i’m in columbia heights
22:14 < shekhar> a bit far, i imagine
22:14 * shekhar passes the pipe to omeka-bot
— Day changed Mon Jun 02 2008
14:03 < davelester> sgillies and jgsmith: great to meet you both this weekend!
14:03 < davelester> hope you enjoyed #thatcamp
14:04 < sgillies> davelester: it rocked
14:04 < sgillies> i have a feeling that good things will ripple out of it
— Day changed Tue Jun 03 2008

Since yesterday, the digital humanities blogotwittersphere has been discussing a post by digital marketer Mitch Joel somewhat misleadingly titled “The Death of the Unconference.” (Reminds me a bit of famed literary critic Harold Bloom, who apparently also likes to pronounce things dead.) Joel writes, “I was a massive proponent of the unconference movement (I still am!), but that word has been used so poorly by so many groups that it seems to have all but disappeared.”

I’ve had a most instructive Google Alert on “unconference” for awhile now, which has taught me that there’s an unconference on Christianity, an unconference on real estate, and an unconference on coworking. I like to tweet these unconferences from the THATCamp account when I find them, just to show support from one unconference to another, and to remind myself that it’s not just coders and librarians and digital humanists engaging in “mob rule learning,” as the title of the recent book has it. But that Google alert has also taught me that Mitch Joel may have a point: the term “unconference” is sometimes used in cases where it’s hard to see what’s so “un” about the conference. I specifically remember deciding not to tweet the otherwise intriguing-sounding “Indigenous Innovation Unconference” when I saw how much they were emphasizing their six eminent speakers and how little they were emphasizing any kind of participant-driven program. Similarly, plenty of events that call themselves unconferences seem to have whole slews of presentations, which strikes me as odd.

Early on in my position as THATCamp Coordinator I was surprised to realize that I would occasionally have to enforce — not just explain — the unconference “rules,” and that’s been even more the case as THATCamp and digital humanities general have grown. Some have wanted to limit THATCamp attendance to members of their own community, some have wanted to charge registration fees, some have wanted to name a facilitator and/or a note-taker for every session, some have wanted to have presentations and keynote speakers, some have wanted to vote on sessions online beforehand rather than in the first session on the first morning, and so on and so forth. Some of these ideas made me uncomfortable — they seemed rather unTHATCampy — but then the idea of saying yes or no to such ideas and determining what is or is not THATCampy also made me uncomfortable. Suffice it to say that when I first began, I would have entirely agreed with Timothy Burke’s impassioned declaration that “‘Do as thou wilt’ and ‘Ur doing it wrong’ don’t add up,” but these days I’m more willing to take the latter position.

That being said, I hope that the rules we (and in some cases I) have set up for THATCamp, the rules I’m willing to be Madame Enforcer about, are rules that allow the kind of fluidity Timothy wants: “Improvisation has signal, it has pattern, it has structure, it has plans, but it also has the freedom to say or play what it seems right to say or play at that moment. Whatever works is what I want to be free to do … ” You bet. And of course improvisation has rules. Always say yes. Give the other guy a turn to solo and don’t step all over him. Put all the leftovers into the pasta except the pudding. The rules of THATCamp, ideally, are like that, or like the rules of copyleft. They are rules that require you to be free. In fact, one of the seminal texts of THATCamp is Tom Scheinfeldt’s “THATCamp Ground Rules”, in which Tom violently demands that THATCamp participants 1) have fun, 2) get some work done, and 3) be nice to each other. (Fascist.)

We also developed some rules for THATCamp organizers, which, similarly, are pretty much rules that require you to be free:

I agree that our THATCamp will be

• FREE or CHEAP to attend (registration fees of up to $30 USD are fine)
• OPEN to anyone who wishes to apply or register (no institutional, professional, or rank restrictions)
• INFORMAL and participatory (no presentations, papers, or demos longer than 5 minutes)
• PUBLIC on the open web (sessions can be blogged, twittered, photographed, recorded, and posted)
• SELF-ORGANIZING (no program committee: all participants are given a chance to help set the agenda, either before or during the unconference)

As long as you adhere to those rules (and keep our logo in Whitney), you can pretty much do whatever you want at your THATCamp. I’m full of advice on planning a THATCamp and a little advice on going to a THATCamp, but you’re also free to ignore that. Mitch Joel gives a whole stern list on the topic of “Your conference is not an unconference if…” I’m glad to say that even according to his strict definition, THATCamp is an unconference. Long may it live.

Photo by cogdogblog

THATCamp is looking to create a short piece that documents the history of THATCamp, interviews from participants, short footage from various THATCamps from around the world, and the issues surrounding developing and creating unconferences. In the spirit of THATCamp, we’d like to crowdsource part of the film, and get a good sense of different locations where THATCamps occur, different opinions about THATCamp as a phenomenon, different methods used to organize different Camps, etc.

Here are some ways you can contribute to THATCamp Documentary:

Interview yourself:

• Preferred length: 5 minutes
• Preferred device: Macintosh webcam.
• Submission via Vimeo (www.vimeo.com/thatcamp) or youtube (www.youtube.com/thatcamp). Tag your videos with “thatcamp” and “documentary”

Some Questions (pick two or three to focus on)

• Do you consider yourself a THATCamp junkie?
• What is the funniest thing that ever happened to you at THATCamp?
• How has THATCamp changed your life?
• Bitch about THATCamp.
• Where were you when you first heard about THATCamp?
• At your first THATCamp, what was the biggest surprise?
• Who’s the weirdest person you met at THATCamp?
• Does THATCamp rely too much on Twitter?
• Describe the typical THATCamper.
• Think of your own question and answer it.

Interview another person.

• Same parameters and questions as above, but you interview someone else.

Get a short amount of footage from a real THATCamp that you attend.

• Length: 5 minutes
• Preferred device: iPhone
• Submission via vimeo or youtube as above.

Content:

• Intriguing or bizzare sessions.
• 1 minute interviews with campers answering the question: “What does THATCamp mean to me?”
• Hacking sessions.
• Move from one session to another simultaneous one and record your experience.
• Montage/remix/hack/experiment: What does it mean to represent a THATCamp unconference on film?

**Please note that not every piece of footage submitted will make it into THATCamp Documentary. However, we will archive all footage sent to us on a website or in an outtakes video created alongside THATCamp Documentary.

I’ve been shamefully lax about blogging on thatcamp.org — I can’t think why. In any case, I’ve set myself some firm deadlines (and startlines), so you can expect to see more here from now on. I’m also going to post copies of THATCamp News here as well as e-mails that I’ve sent to the THATCamp organizers e-mail list (which is populated by those who have registered a THATCamp). Here’s one such e-mail below about changes in the THATCamp fellowship program, deprecation of the term “BootCamp,” and a couple of other issues.

***

Hi THATCamp organizers,

I wanted to alert you to a couple of changes in the fellowship program.

First of all, I’m deprecating the “BootCamp” terminology, because it winds up causing confusion about whether “BootCamp” is a separate event from “THATCamp.” I’m recommending the more generic term “workshops” now, and have changed the text on the main thatcamp.org site to reflect that. This is of course a recommendation only, so if you’ve been calling it “BootCamp” on your site, you can continue doing that if you like.

Second, we’re offering both more and fewer fellowships now, depending on how you look at it. We have awarded (or rather are shortly about to award) all remaning available Kress fellowships to museum professionals and students, so the only fellowship funder is now the Mellon foundation. However, due largely to an excellent suggestion by THATCamp New England organizer Lincoln Mullen, we are offering four additional $250 fellowships per THATCamp in addition to the current number of four $500 fellowships. The idea is that so many people are relatively local to THATCamp, some don’t need as much as $500 for travel money, so we’re going to see whether making smaller amounts available is useful for people. These can all be called “Mellon THATCamp Fellowships” now, should you need a name for them. I’ve updated the page at thatcamp.org/fellowships with current information.

In general, I do want to figure out various ways to attract more fellowship applicants, as well, so let me know if you have ideas on that score. I am going to start automatically adding a page to new THATCamp sites with a description of the fellowship program and prominent link to the fellowship application, for instance, and will start providing sample e-mail templates for organizers that should help you publicize both your THATCamp and the fellowship program, but let me know whatever else you think might work.

We’re also going to start mailing (yes, by snail! well, not literally) a publicity kit with things like posters and stickers (and possibly bookmarks, thanks to an excellent idea by THATCamp Bay Area organizer Scott McGinnis) to new THATCamp organizers, so unless your THATCamp is happening in September or early October, keep an eye out for that.

Let me know if you have questions. Thanks, as always, for all the hard work you do, for no other reason than that it’s a bloody good idea to get people together to learn from one another once in awhile.

Cheers,

Amanda

Phew, what a year for THATCamp. In 2010, there’ve been seventeen, yes seventeen, THATCamps, and there are eighteen more THATCamps planned so far for 2011, including THATCamp Southern California, which is just around the corner. Much farther out are the ones most recently registered: THATCamp New York (yes! finally!), THATCamp Montréal, THATCamp NCPH at the National Council on Public History meeting in Pensacola, FL, THATCamp University of Western Ontario, THATCamp Switzerland, and THATCamp Saigon — which last will be our first THATCamp in Asia. If you’re interested in helping out with any of those, e-mail info@thatcamp.org or contact the organizer directly at the e-mail address listed in the registry.

There are a few things about this spate of THATCamps in 2010 that I find particularly awesome. First, it’s international. Working with THATCamp has put me in touch with an international community that I was simply closed off from before. This year, I helped to translate THATCamp Paris’s Digital Humanities Manifesto, I installed a translation plugin on thatcamp.org, and I am planning to teach a WordPress workshop at THATCamp Florence in the spring. And, of course, I spoke (virtually) at THATCamp Canberra:

Second, scholarly associations are taking notice; there’s an electricity about a THATCamp that’s simply missing from most annual meetings, and I’ve had plenty of correspondence this year with people on program committees who want to know how to bring some unconference energy to their conference. Whether or not that’s possible is another question — in some ways I think that a conference and an unconference might be as mutually exclusive as they sound — but what I do think is entirely possible and indeed necessary is for scholars to open up, in more ways than one. To speak with people in other disciplines and other professions, to publish hastily and informally on the free web, to be smart while wearing shorts and flip-flops, to admit ignorance and ask for help, to crack jokes, to make friends and make things. THATCamp is helping with all of that.

Speaking of admitting ignorance, another terrific thing we’ve seen with THATCamps in 2010 has been the addition of the “BootCamp” workshops, which are helping in a small way to teach humanists and their ilk new digital skills. What’s pretty amazing about that is that all of those workshops have been free to attend, and almost all of them have been organized and taught by people who were paid little or nothing for doing so, for the simple purpose of sharing knowledge.

And that’s the fourth, last, and by far most awesome thing about all these THATCamps: the passionate volunteers who did all the work of putting them together (and it’s no small amount of work, let’s be clear about that). Ave, THATCamp organizers. Hail to you, blithe spirits. We salute you. Here is a LOLpuppy for you.

UPDATE: All THATCamp themes now come with a template that’ll automatically generate a Campers page. Just make a page called “Campers” or “Participants” or the like, then go into Edit or Quick Edit and set its template to “Campers.”

For those of you who are administering hosted THATCamp sites on thatcamp.org, I’ve just installed a plugin called “WordPress Users” that’ll let you create biography pages for people who have registered for your THATCamp and a “Campers” page that lists them all. It’s called “WordPress Users,” and it will work with any theme. When you activate it, the plugin will add a “WordPress Settings” choice to the “Settings” menu in your administration panel:

When you click on “WordPress Users,” you’ll be given a number of options that will let you configure how the profile pages and the “Campers” page look:

You’ll need to create a page called “Campers” or “Participants” or “Registrants” or something similar and enter its ID number on the screen pictured above to automatically generate a list of people who are registered for your THATCamp. To find the page’s ID number, click on “Pages” in the admin panel and hover over the title of the page you want to use as your Campers page. The URL will contain the ID number, listed as e.g. “post=56″.

With the settings shown above, you’ll generate a “Campers” page that looks something like this (using the THATCamp Furvious theme — again, the plugin works with all themes):

You can play with the options till you’re happy with how it looks, and you can probably also change the look and feel a bit by using the already-installed “Edit CSS” plugin.

Happy camping! (It had to be said sometime.)

I’ve recently come to this sobering realization: Twitter has made me a bit lazy. I’m so used to reaching an immediate audience that way (and it’s not a negligible one; the THATCamp Twitter account has nearly 700 followers, and I have somewhere north of 3000 (don’t be too impressed; I’m sure many of them are bots and spammers). Announcements I tweet often get retweeted, and then they make it into Digital Humanities Now, and then I’m left with the comforting feeling that what I’ve said has been heard. I’ve also been known to blog and to post announcements to HASTAC and HUMANIST and H-NET, but at that point I tend to shut my computer and call it a day.

But there’s a pressing need, I’ve realized, to reach an audience who does not frequent those digital halls. The BootCamp fellowship program is specifically designed for the benefit of “analog” humanists as well as digital humanists; the program is meant to introduce people who don’t necessarily have a great deal of digital expertise to people who do, to the possibilities of what computers can do to further and enrich the humanities, and, most importantly, to their own capacity to learn digital skills. Making things more difficult is the fact that THATCamp is not only interdisciplinary but interprofessional: we can’t just post an announcement in the Publications of the Modern Language Association and forget about it. We want to reach philosophers, historians, archaeologists, classicists, art historians, cultural critics, religious historians and theorists, and everyone like that there, but we also want to reach librarians, archivists, art museum staff, K-12 educators, and, well, just about anyone we can get our hands on.

To that end, I’m planning a mass physical mailing sometime in the next couple of months of a brochure describing THATCamp and the BootCamp fellowship program. But until that goes out, perhaps those of you who are reading this would consider e-mailing your departments, your co-workers, and your Aunt Nancy who works in the Analogville County Library to let them know that they’ve got as good a chance at anyone at a $500 fellowship that will help defray their travel costs to a THATCamp near them, or even not so near them. I’ve provided some sample text below. Please, as they say, disseminate widely.

***

The Humanities And Technology Camp (THATCamp): Fellowships available

THATCamp, The Humanities And Technology Camp, is a free, open, interdisciplinary “unconference” where humanists and technologists meet to work together for the common good. Through the generosity of the Mellon Foundation, the Council on Library and Information Resources, and the Kress Foundation, $500 (USD) fellowships are available to academics in the humanities, librarians and archivists, and art museum professionals of all ranks and fields to help defray the cost of traveling to a THATCamp for the purpose of attending both THATCamp and an accompanying “BootCamp” workshop series. BootCamp workshops are free, introductory workshops held at THATCamp that will enable humanists to begin acquiring digital skills that can help further humanities study: examples might include text encoding, data visualization and mapping, and website development.

Applications for BootCamp fellowships to THATCamps across the United States, Europe, and Australia are continually accepted; graduate students are particularly encouraged to apply. No advanced computing skills are necessary. Learn more about BootCamp workshops and apply for a BootCamp fellowship at thatcamp.org/fellowships. Note that while not everyone is eligible for a fellowship, everyone is eligible to come to THATCamp: find an upcoming THATCamp near you by visiting thatcamp.org and learn more about THATCamp at thatcamp.org/about. E-mail info@thatcamp.org with any questions.

***