Dave Lester’s Finding America

With so much going on, this blog definitely deserves an update. Here’s a quick run-down of all that is new:

AwesomeCamp
I’ll go ahead and declare that THATCamp 2009 was a success! Judge for yourself though, and poke around Flickr, over 3,000 tweets, the wiki, or schedule. Several campers blogged their thoughts on the event. Over the course of the upcoming year, we’ll experiment with smaller regional THATCamp unconferences, and I’m excited to see where this all goes moving forward.  I hope to see many of you back at GMU for THATCamp 2010!

As a result of the feedback we received from interested campers, Jeremy and I are planning to write an article about unconferences as a new model for academic conferences.  We’d encourage you to join our Unconferences and Academia Zotero group and crowdsource some materials that may be useful.

A Blogging Resolution
One reoccurring thought that I had during THATCamp was “I have an idea related to that” or, “I started to write a blog post on that.. but never published it.” I hope to be more transparent with my thought process, and start writing again to share ideas for feedback.  I’m not sure if it’s Twitter or my schedule that have cut into my blogging time, but I’m setting aside times to update this more often.  If you don’t already subscribe to my blog, you may want to.

Digital Humanities Caucus
Susan Garfinkel from the Library of Congress and I have started a Digital Humanities Caucus within the American Studies Association. If you’re an ASA member and interested, I encourage you to visit our caucus page and join. We’ll be sharing more details about our plans soon, but we’ll plan on a meetup or meeting during the annual ASA meeting (which will be in DC this year) in November. If you’d like to help organize, let me know..

Getting physical (computing)
I recently bought an Arduino, and although I’m not building my own robot *yet*, I have some plans to explore the use of physical computing in representing and sharing historical information.  My summer tinkering is related to the Humanist Makers reading group, which is inspired by the work of William Turkel. If anyone reading this uses arduino, let me know! I’d love to pitch around some ideas for its use.

Getting my GeoFunk on
I haven’t blogged about this yet.. in fact, Cameron blogged and mentioned my own project before I did. So here’s the short version: for the last 18 months I’ve been in love. Yes, love. With maps.  The walls of my apartment have slowly become covered with maps, and I’ve realized that this interest is going to stick.  Not only do I think there’s a lot of room for geospatial innovation for historians, but in terms of how everyday people understand and experience the past. Landscapes and place have become a serious research trajectory that I’ve been exploring (and, for whatever reason, not blogged about). Once I begin to explain where I’m coming from, it may make more sense. I promise to write a ton about this in the coming months.

Related to mapping, there are two local developments: HistoryPlot, and Mapping DC. I threw up some slides about HistoryPlot in a separate post, but I’m in the process of drafting several new posts that explain the project in greater detail. There’s also a Mapping DC meetup at 7pm this upcoming Thursday night, July 23rd 2009 at HacDC that you should come to if you’re in the area.

Summer
Did I mention that it’s summer? I’ve already taken a trip out to San Francisco for MakerFaire and Wordcamp, and I’m planning an August road trip to the Midwest to see my cute nephew.