This is the conference report submitted to my colleagues about the Great Lakes THATCamp I attended April 20-22, 2012 in London, Ontario.
A little background: THATCamp (The Humanities and Technology Camp) is, in their own words, “an open, inexpensive meeting where humanists and technologists of all skill levels learn and build together in sessions proposed on the spot” (http://thatcamp.org/) You can find a nice overview of THATcamp and the concept of an unconference on this About page.
This was my first unconference and I’ll admit I went in with considerable curiosity. In the end, I was very impressed with how the event unfolded. Scheduled workshops ran on Friday, and Saturday was a full day of sessions which we scheduled on the spot in the morning based on the group’s ideas and expression of interest. The process by which this scheduling occurred was very effective, and I’d be happy to explain in more detail if anyone is interested.
Since the unconference is participant-driven, there is no passive attendance. In order to attend #glthatcamp, I submitted a topic proposal: “nature of community in online forums.” It turns out there was a substantial interest in this topic, so I loosely moderated a discussion in the afternoon. I was impressed by the mix of participants: there was substantial librarian representation, but also graduate students, faculty members, public librarians, and even a toy inventor.
Highlights & Take-aways:
At the Libraries as Hackerspaces workshop, there was a very engaging discussion around the role of public space, gender and technology, and the logistics of operating a hackerspace.
The Storyboards are Visual Writing workshop was run by James Caswell, a professional storyboard artist and instructor in the Sheridan animation program. I plan to apply his suggestions to future video/ screencast planning, and perhaps even get brave and attempt some animation. He insists what it really takes is practice, not talent.
In the What’s wrong with the Digital Humanities? session, there were interesting parallels to the discussion of e-learning and the fading ‘e’ (DH and the fading ‘D’?).
It was wonderful to share my fascination with the information behaviour happening in forums and hear other share their ideas, thoughts & experiences in the session on Nature of community in online forums.
The final session on digital literacy included mostly faculty talking about their challenges integrating digital literacy in the curriculum, and the need for digital competencies both for fellow faculty members and students. The role of the library and librarians was discussed, and the group was interested to hear about our faculty workshop offerings.
Read my full notes in this Google Doc (open for commenting).








