Aggregating the conversations of the Digital Humanities

In conjunction with University College London’s Centre for Digital Humanities, Decoding Digital Humanities is an informal monthly get together in the pub to discuss all things digital in the humanities.  This is an opportunity to meet others working on digital projects and is open to staff, students, and faculty.

The second meeting of this semester will be held at the Prince Alfred Hotel, 191 Grattan Street, Carlton.

Date: Thursday  26 August 2010, 5.30PM – 7-30PM

Topic: The Free Software movement

This months topic has been suggested by John Levin of UCL. If you wish to expand on this topic; by all means suggest additional projects ideas and papers.

Richard Stallman’s The GNU Project and The General Public License

To read more about John’s selection please visit his blog.

DDH #1 (previous meeting)

To kick off this semester, it is suggested that we engage with the same material as our colleagues at UCL. Melissa Terras from UCL gave the closing plenary at the recent Digital Humanities conference in London which is online as text and video and would be a good point to start the informal discussions. This is from UCL’s Centre for Digital Humanities web site.

The annual Digital Humanities 2010 conference held this year at King’s College London was brought to a close on 10 July with a plenary speech by Dr Melissa Terras (UCL). Due to the topical and timely nature of issues raised in the speech, we felt it would make an excellent focus for discussion. The assigned reading for our meetup on the 27th will be:

“Present, Not Voting: Digital Humanities in the Panopticon”. Text available here. Video available here.

Have a look at the video and text and come along and discuss at the pub. If you have any suggestions for articles, software, funding opportunities any ‘digital humanities’ ideas drop us a line and we will put it on the agenda.  The meeting is organised by Craig Bellamy and Conal Tuohy of VeRSI. craig.bellamy@versi.edu.au, conal.tuohy@versi.edu.au

Decoding Digital Humanities Dates 2nd Semester:

  • July 29 (Thursday)
  • August 26 (Thursday)
  • September 23 (Thursday)
  • October 21 (Thursday)
  • November 18 (Thursday)

Decoding Digital Humanities (DDH)

Setting up a Decoding Digital Humanities chapter (thanks to Claire Ross and Kathryn E Piquette for permission to reprint)

Decoding Digital Humanities (DDH) was set up by Claire Ross and Kathryn E. Piquette as an informal event under the auspices of the new UCL Centre for Digital Humanities (UCL CDH). We held out first meetup in March 2010. Participation and interest was high and we have continued to hold DDH meetups monthly ever since, with 12-18 attendees. Participants represent several subject areas, from anthropology, archaeology, art, classics, to computer science, information studies, modern languages, and musicology, etc., and several institutions besides UCL, including King’s College, Goldsmiths, Southampton, Plymouth, Swansea and more!  To cope with our growth, Simon Mahony joined the DDH team in July.

We are thrilled you are interested in setting up a chapter of DDH at your own institution. To help you out we have created this short list of tips and suggestions based on our experiences. It’s really important that running DDH is easy. It shouldn’t be a huge time burden for anyone involved and the more it can fit into the rhythms of what you and other people already do at your institution, the better.

  • Meet monthly on a fixed day and decide dates in advance so people can plan ahead
  • Most everyone likes to chat over drink and food, so we felt that there was no better place to gather than the pub! The coffee house also good. Avoid venues with piped-in music.
  • Always maintain an informal, welcoming and fun environment :) Try to avoid disciplinary divisions when sending out invites. Make it clear that no previous digital experience is required. People can drop in or leave whenever they like and there is no obligation to contribute to discussions. Be a fly on the wall or dive into the deep end – either mode is fine!
  • Assign a reading on a topic that is general enough to provide a good springboard for discussion. You are welcome to follow our readings or develop your own list. Our list is developed in conjunction with participants who are invited to make suggestions (and even to format
  • Set up a an e-list with automated subscribe/unsubscribe, e.g. http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/index.html
  • Set up a webpage. We would appreciate it if you include the UCL DH logo and link it to our DDH page. We will reciprocate with a link to your page in our list of DDH chapters. Also we recommend creating an online space for discussions, such as a comments section on your DDH web page
  • On the day, we’ve found that a two hour session works well: after brief intros by all present, 45 min is dedicated to discussing the assigned reading. Then break to get more drink/food, etc. and then continue for another 45 minutes (often assigned reading has been exhausted and people are keen to pursue other points raised)
  • Discussion may be gently steered by organisers to make sure that the assigned reading gets due consideration before moving to different topics
  • Blog and tweet (hash tag #ddh) your DDH events and discussions
  • If there is anything that is particularly topical and you feel it might be valuable for all DDH chapters to focus on something together, do get in touch.
  • Suggestions for developing and improving what DDH is/does are always welcome!

We hope you find it useful and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch! Good luck and all the best – your fellow DDH-ers Claire, Kathryn and Simon

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dh/decoding_digital_humanities

Also there is now a DDH Chapter in  Bloomington, Indiana…