Here’s what I wrote in my application:

I’d like to talk about the hegemony of Microsoft Word® and what we in the digital humanities might do about it – nay, why we might want to do something about it. I can’t remember ever meeting a professor who doesn’t mainly use Microsoft Word® to write academic prose (though I know they exsit), or a student who doesn’t exclusively use Microsoft Word® to write their research papers (though I’m sure they probably exist as well). When I tell people I generally don’t use Microsoft Word®, I often get confused looks, as if they’re thinking, “Well, how does he write then?” Indeed, Microsoft Word® is the de facto word processing program in most of contemporary academe and Microsoft Word® documents are often the de jure file format when it comes to things like journal submissions. What this means, of course, is that even people such as myself who don’t and don’t want to use Microsoft Word®, find themselves forced to deal with .doc/.docx documents all the time, hence the hegemony of Microsoft Word®. Why is this the case? (e.g., Microsoft Word® is subsidized by universities.) Why might it not be the most ideal state of affairs? (e.g., The tools we use to write inform the way we write.) What might be some of the alternatives? (e.g., Plain text, Markdown, HTML, LaTeX, Google Docs, programs like Srivener, Zotero instead of EndNote, etc.) How might we resist Microsoft Word® in our teaching practices? (e.g., What if we required students to submit research papers in plain text? Or what would happen if we required students to use a non-WYSIWYG word processing program?) These are some of the issues I hope to explore with a group of digital humanists interested in thinking critically about the technologies we use every day in our research and teaching.

I’m sure others have thoughts on some of these things as well – some of them likely more developed than mine – and I would be very interested in hearing them. In fact, this being my first THATCamp, I’m more interested in hearing what other people think and in participating in multiple conversations than I am in holding worth on Microsoft Word®, though I’m happy to do that too.

That said, I finally booked my plane ticket to THATCamp and am now looking for a someone to share a room with on Friday and Saturday nights. Anyone?

I think one of the primary goals of academics is to encourage students (and each other) to innovate. Frequently, that innovation takes the form of modifying, re-purposing, and reusing existing existing tech and software for learning, and I have argued that educators should be at the forefront of this innovation.

However, much of the technological innovation driving the production of new devices has come in the form of locked-down tools such as the iPhone and iPad (with notable exceptions like Android). I am interested in discussing the legal and ethical gray areas created when educators hack commercial products. Is this hacking educationally justifiable? If not, should educators abandon the locked-down space created by these devices and roll our own open source software / tech (I’m looking at you, arduino).?

And if anyone wants to get together and hack an iPad, I’d be up for that, too 🙂

NCSU Libraries recently launched WolfWalk (m.lib.ncsu.edu/wolfwalk), a web-based self-guided tour of the NCSU Campus for advanced mobile devices such as Apple’s iPhone/iPod touch/iPad or devices running Google’s Android OS. The project makes use of a device’s location-awareness to display historic information and images of sites of interest in the user’s vicinity, thus creating an in situ learning experience. I would be interested in talking with others who are working on or thinking about similar projects, either related to exposing library/museum collections in new ways or using the capabilities of the mobile devices for studying and teaching the humanities (e.g., history). Also, how could concepts such as augmented reality be applied in this context?

Site note: We published WolfWalk as a mobile web site, but also plan on launching a “premium” iPhone application sometime this summer.  This application will be available free of charge, but will include some features that we could not implement in the mobile web version for technical reasons. I’d be interested in hearing what people think about the two approaches, i.e., the open, browser-based mobile web vs. the platform-focused and tightly controlled “There’s an app for that” approach.

Below is what I proposed for this year’s THATCamp.  (I hope I’m not misremembering or misrepresenting Tom–or more likely making too much of an offhanded comment.  If I’m doing any of those things, my apologies, Tom.)  Rereading what I wrote a few months ago, the questions I pose at the end strike me as perhaps too abstract for a session.  And perhaps I’m wrong and there are exemplary digital scholarship projects that use the medium to make arguments–arguments that have had an impact among humanists, digital and non-digital alike.  Maybe if anyone else is interested in these kinds of questions about digital humanities, new media, and argumentation and has examples of the best and most exciting digital scholarship being developed those projects could be listed in comments on this post.  A session might be organized around discussing the most promising directions and techniques for presenting arguments and engaging humanities questions using new media.

During the session at last year’s THATCamp on whether all history before too long would be digital history, Tom Scheinfeldt said something to the effect that digital history was more often than not synonymous with public history.  I disagreed with him then, but I can’t dispute that he’s right that most of the notable digital history projects that have been developed to date have tended to have a public history orientation.  While there have been some projects that have been developed to present arguments, they are few, and for the most part I sense that they haven’t had a substantial impact among academics, at least in the field of history.

At this year’s THATCamp I’d like to ask why that is.  While of course still a small minority, more humanists are now employing computational techniques in their research–whether that be using GIS or text mining or social network analysis or a number of other techniques and tools.  But with a few exceptions these techniques are used to produce conventional scholarship, to inform and shape linear, textual essays and monographs.  There isn’t much digital scholarship that uses new media.  (There are a few exceptions–Vectors comes to mind.)  Why is that?  Is new media ill suited for presenting arguments, markedly inferior to linear prose?  Does the relative absence of argumentative digital scholarship just reflect the newness of new media?  Have we just not figured out how to use the medium to make arguments yet, or maybe time is needed for the larger scholarly community to be both willing and able to read and thoughtfully engage with digital scholarship?  While digital history and new media has enriched the field of public history, as a medium of expression (as opposed to a set of methodological tools) can and will it have a similarly significant impact upon more narrowly academic scholarship?

I do have an unrelated idea for another session.  I know a number of THATCampers have offered undergraduate digital humanities or digital history courses.  I’d really welcome the opportunity to have a discussion about how to organize and teach such a course.  I’ve long thought about developing such a course, but I’ve struggled the logistics of asking students to “do” digital humanities without devoting too much class time to teaching them some modest technical skills.

I’m hoping to spend some time talking about mechanisms for transforming peer review practices and understandings via open social publishing systems. In October 2009, I published a draft of my book, Planned Obsolescence, online for open review. The process has been extremely productive, and I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback, but it’s left me with three key questions about how to transform something like CommentPress into a viable mode of open peer review:

(1) How do we create the drive within communities of practice to participate in these reviews? I’m still amazed how many people contributed to mine, but it took a good bit of strategic planning (which is to say, begging and pleading) at the outset.

(2) How can we ensure that the reviews we’re getting through a system like CommentPress don’t lose the real strengths of conventional peer reviews — the ability of a reviewer to think synthetically about the text as a whole? There’s at least the potential in a fine-grained commenting system of losing the forest in the trees.

(3) What kinds of technological or social additions can we imagine to such a system that might help persuade review committees, publishers, provosts, etc., of the value of open review?

No doubt there are more issues as well. I’ll look forward to talking with you all there.

Over the last year or so a few various people have asked me about how I got into hacking on and writing code. I’d love to get a bunch of people together at various levels of experience and interest in writing code — from never having written a single line on up — to talk about the hows and whys. Could be a workshop, could be a general discussion, could be anything. Maybe even a live-coding session (which I think would be super-fun)

I think that something around getting started writing code could be really interesting, especially in terms of teasing out ideas of what, with apologies to @digitalhumanist, a “Digital Humanist” is. Does a digital humanist need to write code? Work closely with someone who writes code? Is the coder also a digital humanist? Know enough not to panic when they see code?

That’d be an approach more toward discussion. Something more workshoppy  could look at code basics, or could have a series of etudes in developing code that solves particular problems. Sort of a hacking basic training.

Thanks…can’t wait to hear about all the ideas from you all!

We’ve been discussing what to call our THATCamp that will distinguish it just enough but not too much from the THATCamps that are springing up around the world, but we haven’t been able to settle on just the right name. On t-shirts and on our website, we’re sticking with plain THATCamp, but we could use your help in choosing a unique name for the times when it’s necessary. You can pick as many as you like below or you can write in another option — thanks for the help, hive mind.

As announced earlier today, the Center for History and New Media has just received a very generous grant from the Mellon foundation to support the ever-increasing number of regional THATCamps. I’m more than pleased to join CHNM as the Regional THATCamp Coordinator — “thrilled” is closer to the mark.

I wanted to take this opportunity to point out that we’ve put up a very sketchy first draft of guidelines on how to host your own THATCamp. In the coming weeks I’ll be gathering much more information on that head and greatly expanding and revising that and other support documents, but for now I’d more than appreciate it if you’d add your comments to this post with suggestions for holding a successful THATCamp. I’ve already gotten a few ideas from the loyal band of Twitterers who almost make every day a THATCamp; for instance, Bethany Nowviskie of the University of Virginia Scholars’ Lab mentioned that Great Lakes THATCamp “set aside Rooms of Requirement for random/needful impromptu convo w/whomever showed.” (Bethany earns extra points for the Harry Potter reference.) Kudos to Ethan Watrall and the other Great Lakers (?) for that and, I’m sure, many other terrific innovations. I’ll do my best to gather and document all the great ideas; some kind of wiki may well be forthcoming (you’ve been warned).

I also wanted to draw special attention to the fact that Mellon’s kind assistance means that graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and pre-tenure scholars will now be eligible for micro-fellowships of $500 that will enable them to pay travel costs for attending what we’re calling “BootCamp,” a day of digital methods training that will take place in conjunction with the regional THATCamps (though not “THATCamp Prime” in Fairfax). THATCamps are very inexpensive to organize and to attend compared to most conferences, but travel expenses can be a serious burden for junior scholars and graduate students. These micro-fellowships will help introduce new and emerging scholars to digital methods, not to mention to the lively digital humanities community, which is something I for one am all in favor of.

Finally, let me urge you to write me at if you’re even slightly interested in hosting or attending a THATCamp in your area. THATCamps keep sprouting up like mushrooms after a rain, and in addition to the seven regional THATCamps that have already been held or planned, THATCamps are or might be taking shape in the following places:

• Canberra, Australia
• Florence, Italy
• Toronto, Canada
• New England
• Florida
• New York
• New Jersey
• Georgia

We’re just getting started, but it’s looking like it’s going to be a great couple of years.

And one more thing: you may indeed call me THATgirl. 🙂

Following successful home events in 2008 and 2009, and regional events around the world, the Center for History and New Media is pleased to announce the return of THATCamp for 2010! We’ll have the third annual THATCamp May 22-23, 2010, at the home of CHNM, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.

THATCamp is, as the about page explains, “The Humanities and Technology Camp,” a user-generated “unconference” on digital humanities. The conference program is more-or-less made the day of the conference, and organized based on attendee interest. An unconference is not a spectator event. Participants at THATCamp  are expected to present their work, share their knowledge, and actively collaborate with fellow participants rather than simply attend or passively observe.

THATCamp is of course open to anyone with energy and an interest in digital humanities: scholars, students, teachers, librarians, archivists, museum professionals, educational technologists, designers, developers, hackers, public historians, artists, writers, humanities administrators, grant makers, and more.

As to what you should present about, that’s up to you! Sessions at THATCamp will range from software demos to training sessions to discussions of research findings to half-baked rants (but please no full-blown papers; we’re not here to read or be read to.) You should come to THATCamp with something in mind, and on the first day we’ll find a time, a place, and people for you to share it with. Once you’re at THATCamp, you may also find people with similar topics and interests to team up with for a joint session.

Unfortunately, we only have space for about 100 participants, so we’ll have to do some vetting. To apply for a spot, simply fill out the THATCamp registration form telling us a little about yourself, what you’re thinking about presenting, and what you think you will get out of the experience. Please don’t send full proposals. We’re talking about an informal note of maybe 200 or 300 words, max. To apply, please fill out the application form, which includes fields for a brief biography and the topic you’d like to present or discuss. Deadline for applications is March 15. There are no application or registration fees for THATCamp, but donations for snacks and soda are very much appreciated.

So what are you waiting for? Go apply!