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.

The day’s schedule offered a mix of traditional presentations, as well as opportunities for participants to choose their own paths. I’m a big fan of the unconference model, and I think this helped customize the event for many people there. We began with a presentation given by Jane Wells of Automattic who gave an overview of where WordPress is moving in the future. Next, I gave a presentation on ScholarPress, and Zoe Sheehan-Saldana presented on how she is using WordPress with her art and photography students. During lunch we hopped from room-to-room to hear about how WordPress is being used at CUNY, and I think the highlight of the day was Jim Groom‘s keynote in the early afternoon. Michael Cripps blogged a great overview of the day focusing on Jim’s keynote, and I was able to record video of the keynote if you’d like to watch it.

The problems and questions around tools for teaching and learning were similar to many of the other universities I’ve interacted with, but the enthusiasm at CUNY is unparalleled. Mikhail noted that this event may be a turning point for WordPress at CUNY, while Cripps notes in his blog post that given the “abysmal performance of Blackboard 8 across CUNY in Spring 2009, an open source e-portfolio platform looks a lot more viable at CUNY than it did even 4 months ago.” Beyond those problems, there are some distinct highlights at CUNY. Blogs@Baruch is a terrific example of how WordPress Multi-User can be used as a platform to provide blogging to faculty and students. At Macaulay Honors College they’re using WordPress to build E-Portfolios for students, and the latest development is the CUNY Academic Commons. The academic commons is really interesting, because they’re using BuddyPress and WordPress Multi-User to create a social network that exists across all CUNY colleges. It has the potential to radically change how the university and colleges understand their own identities.

For me, the event demonstrated that there is a distinct need for ScholarPress, and also that the WordPress Education movement is growing. It’s hard to believe that this marked the fourth WordCampEd event since November. There are really exciting things happening at CUNY, and I hope that moving forward we can grow a collaborative relationship that makes open source a viable option for universities, faculty, and students.

What will the group do?
Each week we’ll have assigned readings to discuss.  We may decide to have someone leading the discussion, or to come up with a series of questions that we’ll respond to. These details are up for grabs, and the group will decide them once we get going.

Otherwise, it’s my hope that we’ll not only be reading, but also building at the same time. What will we build? Let’s find out! Do you have to build? Certainly not, but the whole idea is to create a lower barrier of entry for those who want to give it a try — we can help each other through the learning process.  Building and reading should provide to be synergetic, and many of the readings themselves have to how to build.

When does the group meet and for how long?
The group will officially start the third week of June, and last for 8 weeks.  At this point, everything is online. People have signed up across the country, but we may organize some physical meet up, especially for the builders among us.

What will the group’s outcome be?
That is yet to be seen. I’m viewing this as a summer experiment — thinking about new ways of organizing like-minded individuals by using the web to share information. I planned to read many of these texts over the summer on my own, so the ability to share ideas with others who are also reading should prove helpful.

How can I join?
There’s currently a Google Group that everyone has joined. We’ve started out by introducing ourselves, and we’ll soon begin discussing the reading list. If you want to follow-along but not participate, that’s OK. If you’re going on vacation and can only participate for a few weeks, that’s fine as well. I’m hoping that this can be a flexible and fun way to share ideas, so don’t hesitate to join in the fun.

Now that my data is out there (as if it never was in the first place), I’d like to see my colleagues and the greater blogging community join me and release their content under Creative Commons. I’m hardly the first person to go CC, but I was surprised to find out which of my favorite blogs are licensed. It’s easy to do: you specify the types of uses of your content on CC’s License Your Work page, and you’re provided the appropriate code to embed the CC badge on your website.

I challenge you to release your blog’s content under CC, or at least justify your reason for not doing so to add to a larger discussion about licensing academic blogging content. Feel free to leave comments here, or use the #ccchallenge hash-tag on Twitter. Here’s the start of a list of bloggers whose content I’d like to see under Creative Commons: Timothy Burke, Rob MacDougall, Jeremy Boggs, Dan Cohen, Matt Gold, Mark Rice, Sterling Fluharty, and Tom Scheinfeldt. This is just the beginning of the list, really..

Props to many individuals who are way ahead of me on Creative Commons, including Stuart Geiger, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Amanda French, Jim Groom, Citizen of Somewhere Else, Dave Parry, Richard Urban, and Matt Kirschenbaum.

I hope the rest of us can catch up, soon.

Earlier that day, our panel had focused on tools for digital scholarship, and with that fresh in my mind I couldn’t believe that I captured this video:

Hang Gliding over Sandia Peak from Dave Lester on Vimeo.

Floating.  Gliding.  Flying.  I was struck by how wonderful these hang gliders were, and how brave the individuals were who flew them.  My first instinct was to pull out my digital camera to record their flight, at which time I zoomed in and captured this video.  You can hear a nearby tourist whose camera memory card hit capacity mid-flight, and see the great altitude of their flight as I continually zoom out more and more.  The fact that I recorded a video of them flying was in itself insignificant.  But unlike those around me who were content capturing a short clip, I wanted something more.  I wanted to preserve that experience a greater way.  Perhaps I was still mulling over earlier thoughts of how digital tools can transform scholarship, or my ever-increasing interest in digital archives had the best of me, but I began to wonder: what sophisticated ways could I document the totality of this experience?  And much later I asked: what can I learn about myself and the culture I experience through a personal digital archive of such experiences?  I continue to wonder.

I saved any physical documents from Albuquerque that I could, including my ticket stub and receipt from dinner.  I also took panoramic video of several places.  But I ultimately realized that this nagging urge to archive an experience was one that I had over a year prior, while doing ethnography in virtual worlds.  While studying virtual “wild west towns,” I wondered what ways I could preserve their virtual histories and historical roleplaying.  It was daunting, ill-defined, and overly-ambitious.  But my impulse to archive the experience atop Sandia Peak drove me back to thinking about personal experiences and how we understand/recreate/re-experience them through digital archives.  I was looking for a body of data to provide the totality of an experience; an historical var_dump() from an array of experiences.

As I researched the personal archiving of experiences, I learned that I’m not alone in my interest.  In fact, some of the most most significant work in this regard was done several years prior to my original interest . . . (to be continued)

I’m excited to announce that the Edupunk session I’ve proposed for SXSW has been accepted! I’ll be moderating an all-star panel including Barbara Ganley, Gardner Campbell, Stephen Downes, and Jim Groom.

Following the inaugural WordCampEd that I organized in DC several months ago, I’ll be in Worcester, MA in February to speak at WordCampEd Northeast. There’s also one scheduled for Vancouver, Canada that I wish I could make it out to. The revolution has grown! If you’re interested in organizing one in your area, send me an email.

Last month Omeka received the Mellon Foundation’s award for Technology Collaboration from a prize committee including internet luminaries Vinton Cerf, often called the “father of the internet” and chief internet evangelist at Google, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, and others.  This is an enormous honor, and a testament to Omeka’s growth as a project.  As Dan Cohen recently noted, CHNM and Omeka have also been funded by the Kress Foundation for two grants that involve mobile technology and additional Omeka plugins.  Join us this upcoming Friday (1/16/09) for Q&A about hacking Omeka themes and plugins during our weekly developer chats on IRC.

1. University of Mary Washington (http://umwblogs.org/)
2. Georgetown University (https://digitalcommons.georgetown.edu/)
3. Harvard (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/)
4. Stockton College (http://titania.stockton.edu/)
5. University of Virginia (http://clove.edschool.virginia.edu/wordpressmu/)
6. Middlebury (http://blogs.middlebury.edu/middblogs/)
7. SUNY Purchase (http://blogs.purchase.edu/)
8. Cornell (http://blogs.cce.cornell.edu/)
9. Capella University (http://blogs.capella.edu/)
10. Rutgers (http://blogs.camden.rutgers.edu/wpmu/)
11. NYU (http://itp.nyu.edu/blogs/)
12. Wooster (http://blogs.wooster.edu/)
13. University of Texas at Arlington (http://blog.uta.edu/)
14. Wesleyan (http://blogs.wesleyan.edu/)
15. Spring Hill College (http://departments.shc.edu/)
16. Savannah College of Art and Design (http://blog.scad.edu/)
17. University of Florida (http://blogs.uflib.ufl.edu/)
18. New Jersey Institute of Technology (https://blogs.njit.edu/)
19. Berkeley (http://blogs.ischool.berkeley.edu/)
20. Elmhurst (http://blog2.elmhurst.edu/)
21. Albion (http://blogs.albion.edu/)
22. Valpo (http://blogs.valpo.edu/)
23. MIT (http://dune.mit.edu/wordpress/)
24. Baruch (http://blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu/)
25. Plymouth State University (http://blogs.plymouth.edu/)
26. (http://cesd.eng.uci.edu/)
27. Loyola University Chicago (http://blogs.luc.edu/)
28. Boston University (http://blogs.bu.edu/)
29. Texas A&M (http://blogs.tamu.edu/)
30. Bowling Green State University (https://blogs.bgsu.edu/)
31. Lake Superior College (http://blog.lsc.edu/)
32. Weber State University (http://weblog.weber.edu/)
33. CUNY Graduate School of Journalism ()
34. College of Charleston Blogs (http://blogs.cofc.edu/)
35. University of Wisconsin (http://blogs.cofc.edu/)
36. UCLA Library (http://blogs.library.ucla.edu/)
37. Concordia University, St. Paul (http://blogs.csp.edu/)
38. University of Maryland (http://blog.umd.edu/)
39. Lupton Library (http://blog.lib.utc.edu/)
40. Aquinas Institute (http://ai.edu/blogs/)
41. Ogden-Weber Applied Technology College (http://owatc.edu/blogs/)
42. Wayne State University Library (http://cgi.lib.wayne.edu/blog/)
43. Vanderbilt Medical Center (http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/blogs/)
44. University of Rio Grande (http://mu.rio.edu/)
45. UC San Diego (http://blog.ucsd.edu/)
46. University of Iowa Libraries (http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/)
47. Eastern Mennonite University (https://emu.edu/blog/)
48. Cape Fear Community College (http://cfcc.edu/blogs/)
49. Boston College (http://idesweb.bc.edu/wordpress/)
50. Illinois Institute of Technology (http://idesweb.bc.edu/wordpress/)
51. Concordia University, Portland (http://blog.cu-portland.edu/)
52. University of Akron Graduate School (http://blogs.uakron.edu/)
53. St. Lawrence University (http://blogs.stlawu.edu/)
54. Ivy Tech (http://wwwb.bloomington.ivytech.edu/blogs/)
55. Columbia Law School (http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/)
56. Valparaiso University (http://blogs.valpo.edu/)
57. Ohio State (http://people.ehe.ohio-state.edu/)
58. Wheaton (http://fred.wheatonma.edu/wordpressmu/)
59. Saint Louis University (http://www.slu.edu/blogs/)
60. Georgia Tech Savannah (http://blogs.gtsav.gatech.edu/)
61. Albion College (http://blogs.albion.edu/)
62. Surabaya Indonesia (http://blog.perbanas.edu/)
63. Purdue (http://webs.calumet.purdue.edu/)
64. Bryn Mawr (http://blogs.brynmawr.edu/)
65. UMass Amherst (http://blogs.umass.edu/)
66. University of Missouri-Columbia (http://comp.missouri.edu/blogs/)
67. Macaulay Honors College (http://macaulay.cuny.edu/)
68. Northwest College (http://commons.nwc.hccs.edu/)
69. Kutztown University (http://blog.kutztown.edu/)

Blogs are being used in a variety ways, varying from building faculty and staff bios like at Ohio State, to allowing students to blog their college experiences like Saint Louis University.  Many of these installations look as if they’re experiments as well — many underdeveloped.  It’ll be interesting to see where this all goes in the next year.  Please leave comments with additional colleges using MU to help build this resource.

WordCamp conferences are taking the blogging community by storm as one-day events to meet fellow WordPress users in regional communities. WordCamp Ed has been organized to specifically focus on WordPress and Education. The day-long event to take place November 22, 2008, and will bring together a wide-range of institutions of higher-ed, professors, high school teachers, and students.

The event has been scheduled as a morning of preplanned speakers that will cover a cross-section of educational uses of WordPress, and an afternoon unconference in the vein of THATCamp: The Humanities and Technology Camp. Food and t-shirts will be provided. If you’re using WordPress for teaching in your class, publishing scholarship, or you’re just interested — please consider registering for the event. Over that past year there has been emerging interest in WordPress MU as a blogging solution for institutions of higher ed, and we’ll have WordCampers in attendance who are responsible for the Georgetown University Digital Commons and University of Mary Washington Blogs at WordCamp Ed.

You’d like to attend, but can’t make it? I’m working closely with Randall Rode to make WordCamp Ed not just a one-time event, but a larger series of regional WordCamps for Educators. Randy is organizing a WordCamp Ed that will be hosted under the Nercomp SIG format, and I’m optimistic this could catch on. These events are done with minimal costs, and go a long way in building a professional community. Let me know if you’re interested in starting your own regional WordCamp Ed.

American Studies at the Digital Crossroads
(Participants: Randy Bass, Bruce Burgett, Sharon Daniels, Glenn Hendler, Deborah Kimmey, Tara McPherson, Curtis Marez, Timothy Powell; Date and time: Friday, October 17, 12:00-1:45)

American Studies and Anthropology: The Road Less Traveled
(Participants: Amber Clifford, Kathryn Marie Dudley, Robin Hanson, Carrie Lane, Aubrey Thamann; Date and time: Friday, October 17, 4:00-5:45)

I’ll be at ASA this year, presenting “Online Tools for Open and Collaborative Research” with Sharon Leon and Jeremy Boggs.  What are ways that DH tools like Zotero and Omeka can enhance teaching and learning in American Studies?  And how can I integrate web resources like Crossroads and the Encyclopedia of American Studies into my class?  We’ll tackle these questions among others.

Perhaps we should get on the blogwagon and start a discussion — what do you think?

Here’s a glimpse at the game’s title screen:

And Darwin finding a finch in Trevor’s game: