In late January, I began my Saturday morning with what has become a simple weekend ritual of sorts. Roll out of bed. Turn on the coffee maker. And log on to Twitter to read what my followers are discussing.
As it turned out, all my internet friends were busy working on a new project, called A Better CFP. The sequence of events leading up to this moment was simple. Matt Gold (@mkgold) of the CUNY Graduate Center tweeted the question: “How is it that the Penn CFP list still isn’t working? Does any other centralized CFP site exist?” Hours later, Dave Parry (@academicdave) of UT Dallas replied: “@mkgold re:CFP. Not that I know of, but we could just build one. Want to?” And shortly after, a wiki was setup to collaborate on this new project. To date, eighteen different people around the country (and world, for that matter) have contributed to the wiki by sharing ideas about the site, its design, and possible software implementations while considering a feature-set for both its initial launch, and our pie-in-the-sky ambitions.
I’m excited by this.
A highly-collaborative, interdisciplinary, and diverse group of academics all spent part of their weekend to work on an idea that began with only two short text-messages. No one waited to apply for an NEH ODH start-up grant. There were no committees. There was definitely a focused purpose, and more importantly a passion among the participants to contribute to the project. And there was a flat hierarchy that gave everyone an equal voice in the discussion. This is the changing face of digital humanities, and something I’d like to see become more mainstream in the academy.
There is a second development underway which is synergistic in terms of fostering interdisciplinary academic relationships: unconferences. They take many forms, but an unconference is simply a “participant-driven conference around a theme or purpose.” I’m a huge proponent of the unconference format, having organized the DC WordCamp for Educators last fall that brought together 70 educators, technologists (and a few students!) up the east coast and as far away as Michigan to discuss how they’re implementing blogging into the classroom. The day began with pre-planned speakers, and we spent an entire afternoon in breakout sessions led by participants on topics of interest. There have been two other WordCampEd events that have been spun-off in Worcester, MA and Vancouver, CA… so this is really taking off. And I’m proud to say that unconferences made the Digital Campus “top ten most significant stories, trends, and technologies of the year” at #8, as a vibrant alternative to traditional conferences of paper readings and panel discussions that lack the same interaction and participation.
You may have heard of the other unconference that I’ve helped organize with Jeremy Boggs at the Center for History and New Media. THATCamp, which is short for The Humanities And Technology Camp, is a digital humanities unconference that we ran last year. An archived version of our 2008 website is online, which documents participants and their bios, the schedule that we made entirely on Day 1, and a blog which was run by participants to share ideas before, during, and after the conference. We brought together a terrific team of participants stretching across the humanities for this “working weekend.” It was by far one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had at a conference in terms of the knowledge I learned and shared, and the people which I became close to and stay in touch with.
THATCamp is back in 2009, and it’s bigger and better. It will take place June 27-28th, following the Digital Humanities 2009 conference which is being held at nearby University of Maryland (and hosted by MITH). It’s also worth mentioning that the day between conference and unconference, there’s our June Omeka workshop that you can sign up for as well. We’ve secured additional space for THATCamp to support a larger crowd of 70-100 participants, and we’re currently accepting short applications from those would like to attend. Jeremy describes THATCamp as “a conference/workshop/tutorial/networking/tinkering/playing-around kind of gathering, perfect for folks interested in a variety of aspects in digital humanities who want to expand their skills and knowledge.” So I hope that you consider applying for this year’s THATCamp and join me in June! I’d love to see you there. Which brings me back to my motivation for pushing forward Twitter and Unconference. As Lisa Spiro said in her THATCamp Takaways blog post last year, “It’s the people, stupid.” The community at THATCamp and unconferences is tremendous, an a very positive thing for the growth of the digital humanities community.
It is no mistake that Twitter was used heavily among unconference participants at both @WordCampEd, and @THATCamp. Their functions go hand-in-hand. Not only has Twitter served as a back-channel for discussions at unconferences, but traditional conferences and meetings as well. In his recent participation at the Smithsonian 2.0 visit last month, Dan Cohen served as a great example for how this technology can open up discussions even behind closed doors. Following hash-tags, you can find people on Twitter who are even in the same room as you (as I found out at WordCampEd Northeast in Worcester last week). And as chaotic as that may sound, I’m encouraged to see it increasingly embraced by those in the academy as a way of sharing knowledge.
Closing with the original story of A Better CFP, the project appears to be put on hold as Penn works on revamping their current system. Despite that, I still point to it as an example of how individuals can easily participate in and plan projects harnessing Twitter and an active community. Unconferences bring that virtual community together in a physical space, however I think the interactions are largely the same in terms of how we share ideas openly and the doors are open to those who want to participate. Viva la unconference! And I’ll talk to you on Twitter.
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