Hi all! Looking forward to a great day. A couple of notes: do please pick up your THATCamp / Culture Hack badge on the Embassy level. Culture Hack will be in International North (one flight up), and THATCamp sessions will be on the Embassy level in the Manila and Singapore rooms. See the schedule for specific sessions.

I would love to hear about how THATCampMCN campers facilitate online conversations among students, museum patrons, and others about specific images and texts.  I am particularly interested in learning about and trying out the features of Omeka, Commentpress and other WordPress plugins, and sites like Digress.it that allow users to publicly comment on specific aspects of texts or images.  Perhaps we could schedule a time to have a conversation/group exploration of some of the best ways to curate online conversations.  Maybe Jason could show us how Zotero allows for group explorations of sources and such.  I am open to ideas…and help!

As someone who teaches writing and rhetoric, I am interested in talking about how we can create partnerships between museums and literature and composition classrooms in higher-ed. I’ve had some wonderful success teaching the museum or museum exhibits as texts in first-year composition. As rhetorical constructs with a purpose, intended audience, historical and social context, etc., that often integrate multiple modes (written, oral, visual, electronic) and media (video, interactive digital displays, podcasts, sculpture) museum exhibits offer particularly exciting opportunities for defamiliarizing and examining rhetorical concepts and the communication affordances of  different modes and media. As public spaces in which learning takes place outside of the classroom, museums potentially offer extraordinary service-learning opportunities that might engage students in the production and curation of culture and knowledge.

Now, I’m not talking about getting undergraduates involved in mounting an exhibit at the High. Instead, I’m thinking about how curators from the High might work with a class, or two, or three at someplace like Georgia Tech to mount an exhibit in a public space on campus that relates the subject matter of the course and provides students with an opportunity to hone communication strategies while engaging in public discourse. At Georgia Tech, one of my colleagues, Doris Bremm is currently working with the Ferst Center gallery on an exhibition of student work. Are there other similar projects out there? Are there any potential sources of funding to help encourage and finance this sort of collaboration? Is this even something museum professionals might find interesting? Finally, how is this sort of work related to the work or work-ethic of the Digital Humanities? If anyone else would like to talk about and maybe even answer some of these questions, we could organize a session around them.

Photo by cogdogblog

Cross-posted on thatcamp.org

THATCamp is looking to create a short piece that documents the history of THATCamp, interviews from participants, short footage from various THATCamps from around the world, and the issues surrounding developing and creating unconferences. In the spirit of THATCamp, we’d like to crowdsource part of the film, and get a good sense of different locations where THATCamps occur, different opinions about THATCamp as a phenomenon, different methods used to organize different Camps, etc.

Here are some ways you can contribute to THATCamp Documentary:

Interview yourself:

• Preferred length: 5 minutes
• Preferred device: Macintosh webcam.
• Submission via Vimeo (www.vimeo.com/thatcamp) or youtube (www.youtube.com/thatcamp). Tag your videos with “thatcamp” and “documentary”

Some Questions (pick two or three to focus on)

• Do you consider yourself a THATCamp junkie?
• What is the funniest thing that ever happened to you at THATCamp?
• How has THATCamp changed your life?
• Bitch about THATCamp.
• Where were you when you first heard about THATCamp?
• At your first THATCamp, what was the biggest surprise?
• Who’s the weirdest person you met at THATCamp?
• Does THATCamp rely too much on Twitter?
• Describe the typical THATCamper.
• Think of your own question and answer it.

Interview another person.

• Same parameters and questions as above, but you interview someone else.

Get a short amount of footage from a real THATCamp that you attend.

• Length: 5 minutes
• Preferred device: iPhone
• Submission via vimeo or youtube as above.

Content:

• Intriguing or bizzare sessions.
• 1 minute interviews with campers answering the question: “What does THATCamp mean to me?”
• Hacking sessions.
• Move from one session to another simultaneous one and record your experience.
• Montage/remix/hack/experiment: What does it mean to represent a THATCamp unconference on film?

**Please note that not every piece of footage submitted will make it into THATCamp Documentary. However, we will archive all footage sent to us on a website or in an outtakes video created alongside THATCamp Documentary.

I notice that there are MCN sessions on things that overlap our interests here (sometimes also on Saturday). So, what do people think of THATCamp sessions that look back at what we’ve learned in the THATCamp spirit of discussion and putting together something actionable? For example, if you got an introduction to Linked Open Data and need to talk through what the heck it’s all about and what to do with it, a THATCamp non-sage-on-the-stage session to do that might help. (And yes, if you go to the LOD talks and that’s your first intro to it, you WILL need to talk through it!)

I’d be happy to convene sessions about Drupal and/or Linked Data, but I want to float the idea as it might apply to anything you might want to yack and hack on more from MCN.

Augmented reality is beyond the hype phase. Today, it is used by mechanics to repair cars, families to decide which toys to buy and stores to share the joy of Christmas. But enough about mechanics and retailers … we’re at a museum conference after all!

At THATCamp, I’m proposing a discussion around one question:

HOW CAN WE USE AUGMENTED REALITY TO ENHANCE A MUSEUM’S COLLECTION?

In this general brainstorming discussion, I invite everyone — curators, researchers, technologists, museum goers —  to discuss this question in an open and casual environment. If you have other questions in mind such as:

• What is augmented reality?
• How is augmented reality being used today by other people?
• Have other museums introduced AR to their collections?

We have been collaborating for three years on two NEH-funded projects and we are currently team-teaching a transdisciplinary course focused on gaming in the humanities. The course bridges two Colleges, bringing together undergraduate and graduate students in computer science, undergraduate students in film and media studies, and graduate students in English and creative writing. The course will culminate in five prototypes of “games,” some of which we expect to continue to develop in Fall 2012. Although we feel we are succeeding in our collaboration, we have discovered the need for an adaptive approach in order to get humanists to understand the technical aspects of software design and techies to appreciate the nature of scholarship in the humanities. We suspect others might also have stories of success (and some lessons learned from failure) that would be of value for discussion. Thus, we propose a session on bridging the divide between the humanities and computer science.

Heidi Rae Cooley (Film and Media Studies)
Duncan Buell (computer science)
University of South Carolina

Hi, everyone — I’m Amanda’s and Mary’s TCMCN co-organizer. As a librarian rather than a museum professional, I’m not sure to what extent I can put on a session that’s useful or interesting to this crowd. I published a book about Zotero this year, and I’m wondering whether there’d be any interest in a discussion session about Zotero — I’m prepared to discuss its implications as an open source research tool, what I see as best practices for using it as a teaching tool, and so on.

Amanda French here, overall THATCamp Coordinator and (which is rare) chief organizer of The Humanities and Technology Camp, Museum Computer Network edition. We’re now just ten days away from THATCamp MCN and Culture Hack Dat on 11/19, and I wanted to give you more info about what we’ve got planned.

Badges and scheduling

We’ll be issuing badges starting at 8:30am, and those badges will enable you to attend THATCamp MCN and Culture Hack sessions as well as entitling you to attend the MCN meeting plenary at 4pm (but not any other MCN sessions). Note that the time slots on our schedule don’t overlap exactly with MCN sessions; if you are registered for MCN as well, please plan accordingly.

Your profile and login

If you’re receiving this e-mail, you’re definitely accepted and registered for THATCamp MCN and/or Culture Hack Day: some login information and acceptance notifications have apparently been sent to spam folders. Visit mcn2011.thatcamp.org/wp-login.php and click the “Lost password” link on the login page if you don’t know your password. Then log in and update your profile so that everyone can see what you’re about by browsing our Participants page.

Workshops

We’ve currently got four workshops planned: Intro to Omeka, Advanced Omeka, HistoryPin, and Augmented Reality. See mcn2011.thatcamp.org/workshops for full descriptions and workshop preparations and prerequisites.

-- 
Amanda L. French, Ph.D.
THATCamp Coordinator
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
George Mason University
http://chnm.gmu.edu
http://thatcamp.org
http://twitter.com/thatcamp

Get THATCamp news by e-mail at http://j.mp/thatcamp-news

After the THATCamp on Saturday there will be a happy hour at Max Lager’s from 6-8pm. Everyone is welcome to attend and socialize over microbrews, wines and food. The venue is only one block north of the Hyatt Regency at 320 Peachtree Street.

Check out their website for menus and directions at maxlagers.com/.

Many modern and contemporary art museums are including into their permanent collections works of art that are born digital. This solvathon seeks to address strategies for the proper physical ingest, descriptive practices, and necessary metadata structures to fully contextualize and realize the proper acquisition, preservation, and dissemination of born digital works of art.

This session will continue the discussion subsequent to the 39th Annual Museum Computer Network Conference panel, “Philosophical Leadership Needed for the Future: Digital Humanities Scholars in Museums.” This crowdsourced panel will present 1-5 minute video responses from an open call to the community of professionals in archives, libraries, museums and universities as they reflect on the barriers and benefits of implementing digital humanities methodologies in museums. THATCamp MCN participants are encouraged to contribute a video to the panel via YouTube prior to the Museum Computer Network and THATCamp conferences. This general discussion seeks to further explore how the progress made by digital humanities scholars can guide museum workers as they serve constituents in a new media culture.

Follow the link above to the panel page on the Museum Computer Network Conference site for more information about how to participate. Contact me by e-mail at neal.stimler@gmail.com or on Twitter @nealstimler if you have any questions about the Museum Computer panel or the THATCamp general discussion.

We’ve decided to add four workshops to the schedule for THATCamp MCN. I’ll be teaching Introduction to Omeka, and Patrick Murray-John will be teaching Advanced Omeka. See the workshops page for more information. I’m also looking for two more instructors who’d be willing to share their knowledge of particular technology skills — write me at mcn@thatcamp.org if you’d like to teach something, or if there’s something particular you’d like to learn.

Also, if you or anyone you know (impoverished graduate students?) needs travel funds, be aware that you can apply for a $500 Kress Fellowship until August 1. As August progresses, I’ll be soliciting session proposals from all participants. Cheers!

Registrations for THATCamp Museum Computer Network are now open! See our registration page for more information about registration and a link to the registration form. Additional information about location, transportation, and lodging will be added to this site in the coming weeks.

THATCamps are dynamic experiences. As soon as you register, you can propose a session idea on this blog, and we’ll post a loose session schedule by September 1st. These sessions will be fluid, and the schedule may change on the day of the unconference as new conversations begin in other sessions. There are no presentations at an unconference: sessions will instead be collaborative discussions or working sessions that will address issues, problems, joys, and/or opportunities related to technology, museums, collaboration, and/or innovation. See our page on proposing a session for more information about unconference sessions.

THATCamp MCN invites anyone interested in how computers, media, new technology and mobile platforms continue to change the way museums emerge, evolve and operate. ThatCamp MCN will be in Atlanta on Saturday, November 19, 2011.

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