The next THATCamp Council meeting will take place on Tuesday, 2/2/16 at 4pm Eastern time. Suggest items for the agenda here: thatcamp.org/forums/topic/january-2016-thatcamp-council-meeting-agenda/

* Report on site theme issues
* Kickstart a fund to pay Boone Gorges & Tammie Lister & maybe Jeremy Boggs to troubleshoot?
* Reports from other THATCamps
* Other business?

Present: Amanda French, Jeff McClurken (former Council member), Patrick Murray-John, Tim Sherratt, Kathryn Tomasek, Micah Vandegrift
Absent: Frédéric Clavert, Tom Scheinfeldt (former Council member)

Patrick and Amanda gave a general introduction to the Council, including its mission, responsibilities, and logistics. Last year the major accomplishments of the Council were writing and adopting an anti-harassment policy and moving the THATCamp website to Reclaim Hosting.

Amanda was elected the new Chair of the Council. Patrick will remain the RRCHNM representative.

Amanda reported on a piece of old business, namely the Proceedings of THATCamp. We need to incorporate it more into THATCamp subsites and write documentation about how it works to encourage use of the Favorite button that feeds the Proceedings and to increase awareness of the site: Amanda will undertake (again) to do that. Micah will follow up with the person who’s interested in co-editing a manually curated issue of the Proceedings and report back at the next meeting.

Tim reported on last November’s THATCamp Canberra: had 60-80 people and was generally successful. Digital humanities is much more organized and formal than it used to be, which has changed the nature of THATCamps to some extent. Amanda reported on THATCamp Virginia and THATCamp CAA. Patrick reported on plans for THATCamp Prime (RRCHNM), which will be focused on attracting intermediate advanced practitioners of digital humanities. This might raise issues of exclusivity and elitism, but the Council has no strong objection at this time, especially if participants self-identify their level of expertise.

The next meeting of the Council will be Monday, August 10th, at 8am Eastern US time, 10pm Canberra time, and 1pm Paris time.

THATCamp Council Minutes Feb 17th, 2015 Meeting held via audio Skype, not recorded
Minutes taken by Micah Vandegrift & edited and posted by Amanda French

Present: Patrick, Amanda, Jeff, Anastasia, Micah
Absent: Frédéric, Tom

* thatcamp.org server move to Reclaim Hosting

RRCHNM has agreed to pay $40/month to move to Reclaim Hosting. See reclaimhosting.com. Patrick has been conferring with them and RRCHNM sysadmin Roberto. Reclaim Hosting can probably mitigate THATCamp downtime and bad server performance, especially since they have a lot of experience with mammoth WordPress sites like THATCamp.org.

Amanda has suggested that the problems may be due to a code issue, but she hasn’t been able to isolate it after lots of testing. Boone Gorges can be pulled in to look at things: he might give an hour or two of time for free. Moving to a new host should help the issues, but if it doesn’t, we might run a crowdfunding campaign to pay for Boone Gorges to give the codebase an overhaul.

N.B.: Although Reclaim Hosting is owned by Jim Groom and Tim Owens, who work or did work for UMW, Reclaim Hosting itself is an independent company that has no official ties to or conflict with UMW. Jeff McClurken, Council member from UMW, does not have any connection to Reclaim Hosting and therefore no conflict of interest. The idea to move to Reclaim came from Patrick.

Moving should happen in the next week or two, by the end of February, before large numbers of THATCamps happen in March.

* Trademark questions

The “THATCamp” trademark has been moved from George Mason to the Corporation for Digital Scholarship, which operates Omeka and Zotero — see digitalscholar.org. Should we try to trademark the “THAT____” prefix for Hum/Tech Ed events? Generally, we agreed that would be going too far.

Amanda will edit the THATCamp Charter to reflect the change of trademark ownership, and will write Tom Scheinfeldt to ask about nonprofit status of CDS so that the Council can give out accurate information about it. Will also ask about updating the CDS About page to reflect THATCamp.

Micah suggests that it might also be useful to know who/what org holds the copyrights for THATCamp-ery affiliated objects, images, logos, etc. — in general, GMU owns the copyright to THATCamp stuff, but code and logos and so on are all licensed CC-BY.

* Forums revitalizing ‹ surprisingly low traffic there. How to spark more questions and conversation?

Amanda admits she might have spoiled everyone by replying to emails sent to info@thatcamp.org for four years. Also, the website’s poor performance could be contributing to low forum use.

Micah and others suggest an information architecture point: the “Forums” menu item could be moved out to its own tab, rather than under “Help.” Generally agreed that this would be a good idea. Amanda will do it.

Some Forum items hidden from public view. For example, the Council’s Feb15 agenda not viewable unless logged in to site. Also, the home page is not updating with the most current data for THATCamps unless you are logged in. These issues are likely due to aggressive caching. Patrick and Amanda will look into it.

* THATCamp Prime

* Patrick reports that he is aiming to organize a THATCamp Prime for late summer 2015 so as not to conflict with THATCamp Virginia and THATCamp DC. It might be themed around providing guidance to the “THATCamp Nation.” Chances are it will be at GMU’s Arlington campus. Will it be a bigger deal, different type of camp? Some suggestions are made about different kinds of formats or themes for THATCamp Prime. Patrick will discuss it with Stephen Robertson, director of RRCHNM.

* THATCamp Council elections coming up!

Dude, none of us can believe it! Has it been a year already? We need to call for nominees ASAP! Tom, Jeff and Amanda were elected or appointed for one-year terms (just for this term, just so that Council member two-year terms will in future be staggered): they can run again if they like. Micah, Anastasia, Frédéric were elected for two-year terms and so will stay on for another year. Patrick is the RRCHNM appointee, so he can stay on or get RRCHNM to appoint someone else. Patrick’s term as Chair will also expire. We do want to make sure that the hosting move doesn’t affect the election process. Google Docs may be employed.

* THATCamp Proceedings

Micah reached out to ACRL DH Interest Group hoping to generate some interest in curating a Special issue of the Proceedings of THATCamp on DH+Libraries. See proceedings.thatcamp.org.

That’s it till next time! We forgot to schedule the next meeting, though …

Wed. Sept 17 11AM via Skype.

Any additional topics or clarification, please leave a comment

Anti-Harassment Policy
* language
* when to add to ask THATCamps to follow it
* vote!

Proceedings
* Issue 2 released
* Documentation?

that.camp domain
* redirecting, but oddly

thatcamp.org server work

Reports from THATCamps

In my last act as THATCamp Council Chair, I’m posting a draft agenda here for the next THATCamp Council meeting, which is scheduled for 3pm EST on Monday, June 16th.

* Who should respond to journalistic queries about THATCamp? Do we have a communications strategy?
* Update on new help document on funding begun at last meeting
* Update on Code of Conduct

Other business?

Many heartfelt thanks to Micah Vandegrift for taking these notes at the THATCamp Council meeting on 4/22. The next meeting is scheduled for June 16th (Bloomsday!) at 3pm Eastern.

THATCamp Council Meeting 4/22/2014, 1pm

Attendees: Amanda French (Chair), Patrick Murray-John (Incoming Chair), Jeff McClurken, Anastasia Salter, Frédéric Clavert, Micah Vandegrift

General introduction by Amanda
– Congrats and thank yous.
– two things council goals: 1) moderate forums/social media, 2) everything else (Revising Charter, Proceedings, Documentation, misc projects), 3) community support email address.

Going over the logistics of the Council
Amanda – get us all access to email/twitter, privileges to moderate the Forums.
*Council will monitor the Twitter/hashtag, respond as we can.

Picking a Chair (to assume chairship after this meeting)
– Patrick Murray-John nominated and voted in.

Allocating responsibilities (forum moderation, Twitter account, etc.)
info@thatcamp.org – email address will forward to Patrick as well as to CHNM sysadmin
Amanda will make sure logistics work out
Micah: Do we try to attend THATCamps in our regional area?
Generally we are encouraged to attempt to attend when we can. — see the Council Charter thatcamp.org/council under “Responsibilities of the Council”

Agreeing on how often to meet
Quarterly
Probably try to meet more regularly in busy seasons (mid-Fall semester, mid-Spring semester)

Making revisions to the Charter
adding a method to remove a Chair
“Any THATCamp Council member can convene a meeting to propose the removal of an unresponsive or neglectful Chair. The current Chair must be invited to that meeting in a timely manner. The convening Council member will serve as Acting Chair of that meeting and must post the meeting agenda with a rationale for proposing the removal of the Chair publicly at least one week beforehand. Five Council member votes in favor are required at the convened meeting in order to remove a Chair.”
language proposed and voted in by the Council. Will announce to the community. If there are comments/issue with this language, it will be added to the next agenda.

removing the section on first election procedures
Jeff will serve 1 year term; allowed to run again.
Patrick, Tom and Amanda will rotate off after one year.
clarifying “openness” of meetings, clarifying policies on recording meetings and posting recordings
Chair has the responsibility to “Ensure that community members who request to join a public meeting have appropriate access to the meeting”
do we record meetings? how? how to share?
default will be that we do not record meetings, but Council can vote at any time to record a meeting. Voted and passed.

Discussing whether to delete the THATCamp Google Map and the THATCamp Google Calendar
– We decided to keep them for archival purposes, but they will not be updated as the functionality has been integrated into the THATCamp site.

(new item) Fundraising
– Background – most of it was used to provide travel support thru fellowships/scholarships
– What is the role of the Council on fundraising?
– Logistically complicated when involving $$. CHNM as organization to funnel? Explored in the past, and not possible.
– Add a help page to the site encouraging home organizational support from the outset
– Amanda will work out text for a Help page and send it around

Adopting a Code of Conduct (anti-harassment policy)
We explored how and why this is an important step to take.
CHNM forked Code4Lib’s on github
Amanda will take that text and move to GDoc
We’ll coordinate and work over the text, announce to the community and work to ratify.

Agenda Item for next meeting?
– Strategic communication plan? who is responsible for responding to journalists?

Scheduling next meeting
3pm EST April 16th

VOTES:

1st votes were for changing charter 1) remove 1st election language and 2) add language removing chair

2nd votes on new language for resp. of chair to make sure meeting is open, i.e. has access

3rd a) remove responsibility of the Chair to record meeting, b) add option for any council member to propose recording and Council will vote.

The first THATCamp Council meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, 4/22 at 1pm Eastern time. In my experience, Skype is the most reliable Internet tool for holding such meetings, so I chose that over Google Hangouts or another tool. I then realized, however, that Skype calls aren’t “open” in the sense that people can listen in. If you’re interested in listening in, let me know, and I’ll figure out another means of meeting. We will definitely post notes afterward, at least.

Please do also post here anything you’d like the Council to discuss, and (as Chair pro tem) I’ll add your issue to the agenda. Here’s a draft of said agenda:

• General introduction by Amanda
• Going over the logistics of the Council
• Picking a Chair (to assume chairship after this meeting)
• Allocating responsibilities (forum moderation, Twitter account, etc.)
• Agreeing on how often to meet
• Making revisions to the Charter (adding a method to remove a Chair, removing the section on first election procedures, clarifying “openness” of meetings, clarifying policies on recording meetings and posting recordings)
• Discussing whether to delete the THATCamp Google Map and the THATCamp Google Calendar
• Adopting an anti-harassment policy
• Scheduling next meeting