Bootcamp Ideas and Offerings

There have been a lot of questions about Bootcamp sessions, so I thought I’d weigh in.  Rather than pre-define these, we’re going to try treating them just like other sessions (the main difference is that they are introductory workshops in digital skills), and they’ll be proposed on Saturday morning, unless folks have the chance to post them here first (please do!).  There will be a chance to combine them with others or break them apart based on interest, skill level, etc., just like sessions.

As a sneak preview though, here are some that have been offered in applications:

• How to use Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Fusion Tables
• Basics of Drupal
• Text analysis
• Creating taxonomies
• Linked Data: Creating RDF
• Linked Data: Using Freebase and ACRE Apps
• Digital music tools
• Using Flickr for collections

This is just a sampling.  There were just too many excellent ideas for general sessions and bootcamps to list, but I hope this gives a little better idea of what kinds of things will be on offer this weekend.

Can we have one too?

Julie Meloni will teach a Bootcamp workshop on programming for Humanists at the NE meeting. Can we have one of those as well? I’m not even sure what it is that I need to learn but I know that I need to learn it.

Archives tour this weekend?

My archives is located at 2 Folsom which is on the waterfront near Automattic Lounge (Google Maps says 1 Muni stop, .7 miles, 12 minute walk).

Since it’s a corporate archives that is not open to the general public. But I would be willing to do a tour for THATCampers this weekend if anyone is  interested in popping over.  I can just do a general overview tour or focus on some specific aspect of our archival/records program – whatever people are most intested in.

Not sure what time would work best…maybe Sunday after lunch? Or some other time that works for the most people?

Let me know.

Pedagogy & Digital

Finally, this is the reason that I’m going to THATCamp — to learn how to incorporate more digital into my undergraduate classes.  Most of my courses have this kind of component, but I’m wondering if we can also discuss how to create a project-centered course that focuses students on producing something.  In literary studies, we don’t do this very often. Do you have a model? How about those in libraries or industry? How does project-centered work begin, where does it fail, where does it succeed? I think we can take advantage of the Silicon Valley imperative for working together and translate that skill to the classroom.

Mark-Up Languages – Standards?

There has been lots of talk over Humanist-L and in backchannels about the standardized mark-up language.  TEI is the one I’ve seen most used, and I can read most TEI.  It’s also becoming automated with some recently distributed program materials (or pseudo-automated).  However, my university library doesn’t use TEI. For this session, perhaps we can discuss mark-up languages for big digital projects (scholarly editions are my area) and how to facilitate working with the university library to create, maintain and sustain using these mark-up languages.  What other platforms are out there?  Is there something else out-of-the-box?

Bootcamp Session: Omeka?

I have an interest in creating exhibits or collections with Omeka both for my project and in the classroom, so possibly this bootcamp session might have a dual focus or perhaps there’s another way to insert pedagogy into another bootcamp session?

• Using Omeka to build digital scholarly editions.
• Using Omeka in the undergraduate classroom — how to integrate into the curriculum with learning goals, assignments, etc.
• Introducing Omeka to the library staff — how to best explain this in terms that the library will value.

mobile augmented reality for poets & other non-programmers

Here’s my proposal for a hands-on bootcamp workshop: I’d like to teach interested folks how to create their own mobile augmented reality experiences quickly, easily and with no programming skills required.

Mobile augmented reality (AR) turns your mobile phone into a magic lens that reveals hidden stories about the world. In this workshop you will learn the basics of building mobile AR experiences for the iPhone & Android phones, using easy web-based tools that do not require any programming experience. The specific tools I’ll teach are the Layar mobile AR platform and the companion Hoppala authoring tool. The two requirements you’ll need are a laptop with web access, and an iPhone 3Gs (or later) or a 3G Android phone with internal GPS and compass (most of them).

Sound like fun? Here’s an example screenshot from a layer we did for the 01SJ Biennial last month:

Under-served and overwhelmed or underwhelmed and over-served?

Title in need of work but for session suggestions I have two areas of interest:

I want to learn more about the possibilities of reaching under-served audiences and making new platforms more accessible for older users.  Feeling in need of conversation and brainstorming about – what, how, why, when, who for? etc. Very interested in the language museums and galleries use to communicate with their publics and their own perceptions and measurements for their level of success. Are the available evaluation tools any use? What is really being communicated? What do audiences really need?

Also, during the course of research for my thesis on multi-lingual interpretation I learnt that in 2008 only 9% of museum audiences in the US were from minorities and yet by 2034, the US will be a majority of minorities. According to a report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in 2010, African Americans and English-speaking Latinos use cell phones at a much higher rate to access the web than whites (wow I hate all these classifications). Is any of this useful information and if it is why is it? Or, are these statistics irrelevant and detrimental?

History Beyond the Facts

I’m looking for people to collaborate with to build linked datasets for history. Historical knowledge can be vague and uncertain. The form in which historical knowledge is communicated is as much a part of its content as the “facts,” yet typical approaches to open and linked data focus solely on facts and very little on form. What can the open and linked data community learn from the challenges of grappling with history? What new forms of public history might emerge if historians open up their research notes and intermingle them with those of genealogists, archivists, curators, hobbyists and tourists? What forms of “historical logic” are amenable to formalization, if any? How might “distant reading” techniques be applied to historical scholarship to find, for example, patterns of emplotment?

For more of my thoughts on some of these topics, see my recent article in the Bulletin of ASIS&T.

A grab-bag of session ideas

There are numerous topics that I’m interested in discussing at THATCampSF.  Here are a few:

• Rapid digital tool-building experiments.  I can share insights from my work on CHNM’s One Week | One Tool team.

• Using WordPress’ CMS features for building an online CV/portfolio.  Recently I used WP3.0 as a platform for Chapman University’s Faculty Promotion & Tenure ePortfolios, and can share my work on that project as well as suggest possibilities for future plugin/widget development that would streamline this process.

• Strategies for building local DH communities, via sites like DHSoCal, and also through creating & hosting a California-based DH summer institute that’s loosely-modeled on the work done by University of Victoria’s DHSI.

• The impact of social media on the terrain of humanities scholarship.  I can contribute my experience based on promoting and podcasting Yale’s “Past’s Digital Presence” conference.

• Also, I would very much like to attend BootCamp sessions on: writing WordPress plugins and open-source tools for mapping projects.