There is room for ten 3-minute talks during the Dork Shorts portion. Please use a “New Post” to sign up below, using “Dork Short #1” (#2, #3 etc up to 10) as the title of your post, otherwise “Session proposal” in your title. First come first served for the Dork Shorts. Proposed sessions are subject to change and consolidation.
Session proposal:
Digital Humanities and Multilingual Publishing:Beginning with the material production of books and journals to its dissemination to scholars and general readers, one could argue that the publishing industry has been ahead in understanding and adapting to the digital revolution. And yet, it remains one of the least studied and under researched areas, partly because it spans across varied disciplines.From a postcolonial perspective, particularly, in the next decade, both Digital Humanities and publishing will see a massive expansion. Our challenge is unique in that both of these areas will require creative re-thinking to be adapted to a multilingual readership. I would like to discuss this in a session and crowdsource some ideas for a project.
I’m thinking of a Session to talk about crowd-sourced transcription and then take some of the time to actually do some transcription for the Smithsonian Digital Volunteers program — kind of like a knitting circle where we can talk and transcribe together at the same time. Visit transcription.si.edu/about and explore the various projects or check out the Zooniverse website to see a variety of crowd-sourcing projects in action. I like the Ancient Lives site but you do need to know some ancient Greek 🙂 www.zooniverse.org/projects#humanities
+1 would love to share or support & will either way attend, Diane!
Would love to know more, so very interested in this one!
Session Proposal:
“You have built it, They have Come: NOW WHAT (a.k.a. what are they doing??)”
You’ve created a project – perhaps a large-scale digital humanities tool, perhaps a forum for discussion, perhaps a bit of open source code – and you’ve been a success. Congratulations! It’s working… with unexpected consequences, so now what?
This session is an opportunity to discuss:
a) what happens when your participants/peers do what you expect: leaving you with more questions than answers about what to do with the result
b) what happens when your participants/peers do something a little different: you can see new uses and applications, but don’t want to pivot from your project goals completely
c) what happens when your participants/peers do something entirely surprising… and you want to grab hold of the bumper for the ride?
We might elaborate on these scenarios to explore questions, including:
How might we balance research goals with interesting research and exchange knowledge in a collaborative space? How can we open spaces for more but unexpected collaboration and what tools might help facilitate the process? What parts of the experience make the sum greater than the whole – and more importantly, what can sharing those parts of your success do to help wider communities of practice?
Let’s explore these questions–and more we discover along the way–together in this session.
“The Social Media University – Learning with the World”
This short discussion is based on an idea of an educational platform that allows people to study ( watch videos and read articles, books, take tests etc) based on social media hashtags.
By grouping people based on selected interests they can “enroll” and follow a social media syllabus that integrates their top three interests ( academia, art, science, sports etc) I have been experimenting with the concept so far on social media applications such as instagram and I would love to share the idea to get some feedback.
– Kwasi
Session proposal: “A digital show and tell: conversations sparked by the research tools we use everyday”
My idea for a session (the title needs work) is to have a group discussion about the sources we use for research on a regular basis. To keep things focused, each participant will introduce a source he or she uses regularly and then describe some of its advantages and disadvantages. The rest of us would then add our own thoughts. After a set time passes (based on how many people are participating and the length of the session), the next person would step up to share another source. We’ll go in a circle like this until the last fifteen minutes, when we’d jot down a few general conclusions and save them along with our notes in session entry in the THATCampDC site.
As an example, I’ve been using The Perseus Project for years to study Ancient Greek texts. For my turn, I’d introduce the site and talk about how I use it for translations and downloading texts. Then, I’d discuss what I think is positive and negative about it for my research and bring up issues that I think relate to everyone in the group. Several people sharing similar reflections about their favorite sources would, I believe, spark a great discussion.
I’d also like to encourage participation by campers who work for institutions that publish source material for the public. That would bring into the conversation the perspective of those behind the sources that we’ll be disscussing. Of course by the end of the session, I’d love to see both sets of campers, both those who are researchers and those who work with sources, connect with each other.
-Laszlo