Alex Juhasz has offered to host a session on FemTechNet and the feminist Distributed Online Collaborative Course. You can read more about the effort here as well.

I work with high school and early college students at an after-school non-profit, and one of the interesting aspects of my job is watching as students construct ad deconstruct themselves, particularly in terms of gender identity, online through sites like Tumblr and Facebook. I’d love to have a conversation about different trends others have noticed and to learn if anyone has put together, or knows of any, good resources to help guide these activities so that students don’t have a permanent digital record that negatively impacts their futures.

I also love the Intro to DH and the video game and gamefication sessions that have been proposed.

From a recent comment by Anne Harley: “Is gameification a dirty word in DH? Is the narrowing of experience and choice in games inherently a bad fit for the humanities? How have others (if they exist) implemented gameification in DH?

In some classes, I’ve encouraged students to use a wiki to facilitate project organisation, or to use a forum for pre-class discussion themes. This is particularly helpful, since some students who don’t speak up in class are comfortable writing and contribute to class that way. I’m interested in finding out if there are other ways I’m not aware of to improve class discussion, and to make learning addictive

I’d be very interested in the DH intro as well.”

From Amanda’s recent registration: “My particular specialties are in video game studies and the digital humanities, and would be happy to host sessions on either of those topics.”

This is my first THATCamp and I would definitely be interested in a workshop that serves as an introduction to DH. Thanks! -Genevieve Carpio (originally via comment).

Borrowing the idea from the many “community cycling centers” around the U.S., I’d like to develop a plan to establish either a virtual, traveling, or brick and mortar center that would offer free/low cost help with programming, database management, web development etc.

While there is something to be said for a “DIY” ethos in DH, I think this notion really limits the participation of a large portion of the possible community – especially those who don’t come to the table with technical expertise and/or local expert resources.

For those who are new to the THATCamp genre, it’s important to distinguish between ‘workshops’ and ‘sessions.’ The former are lead on a specific topic or skill and generally have a single facilitator/educator. The latter are the sets of meetings that we will collaboratively decide to have during our first group gathering. These might be conversations about feminist interventions in interface, or a session devoted to writing up a list of goals for a year of feminist networking, or the development of a pedagogical module to be used in a GWS-DH course.

In the workshop genre we’ll have:

Mia Ridge’s “Data visualisations as gateway to programming,” in which participants will be thinking about how to structure data for use in software, learning basic programming concepts, and moving towards tinkering with scripts. This is a great workshop for humanists who want a friendly intro to the world of programming.

Miriam Posner’s “Building Online Exhibits with Omeka,” in which participants will learn how to use Omeka to develop exhibits for classroom, research, and project use.

And, if there is enough interest, I will host an “Intro to DH” session where we’ll cover a quick background, some basic terms of art, and a few example projects. If you’d like to be a part of this workshop – drop in a comment below so that I have a sense of the need.

In terms of sessions – this is your job!

It’s up to you – the campers – to propose our sessions. Here’s the basics on how to propose a session, as borrowed from thatcamp.org:

Once you register for your THATCamp and are approved, you will receive a user account on the THATCamp website. You should receive your login information by email. Before the THATCamp, you should log in to the THATCamp site, click on Posts –> Add New, then write and publish your session proposal. Your session proposal will appear on the front page of this site, and we’ll all be able to read and comment on it beforehand. (If you haven’t worked with WordPress before, see codex.wordpress.org/Writing_Posts for help.) The morning of the event, all THATCamp participants will vote on those proposals (and probably come up with several new ones), and then all together will work out how best to put those sessions into a schedule.

You can also check out the session types (talk, teach, make, and play) and you might want to read over the “More Hack Guide” that was produced at a recent THATCamp for tips on how to get the most out of a session.

So let’s start the session proposing! Feel free to leave a comment or contact me at jwernimo at scrippscollege dot edu if you have any questions about the process.

We’re busy getting ready for our March 15th and 16th events here at THATCamp Feminisms West.

Currently in the hopper:

a virtual and in-person Wikipedia Edit-a-thon in celebration of Women’s History Month and dedicated to increasing the volume and quality of feminist content on Wikipedia.

a set of hosted workshops – have a workshop you’d like to offer? Have something particular you’d like to know more about? Let us know in the comment section below!

Sessions! As always – you can also post suggestions for sessions, which will be decided by our campers on Friday in a collaborative planning effort.