In brief

Everyone who goes to a THATCamp proposes a session. Do not prepare a paper or presentation. Plan instead to have a conversation, to get some work done, or to have fun.

How do I propose a session?

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.

Remember that you will be expected to facilitate the sessions you propose, so that if you propose a hacking session, you should have the germ of a project to work on; if you propose a workshop, you should be prepared to teach it or find a teacher; if you propose a discussion of the Digital Public Library of America, you should be prepared to summarize what that is, begin the discussion, keep the discussion going, and end the discussion.

When do I propose a session?

You can propose a session as early as you like, but most people publish their session proposals to the THATCamp site during the week before the THATCamp begins. It’s a good idea to check the THATCamp site frequently in the week beforehand (perhaps by subscribing to its RSS feed with an RSS reader such as Google Reader) to see and comment on everyone’s session proposals. You can also come up with a last-minute idea and propose it to the THATCamp participants during the scheduling session, which is the first session of the THATCamp.

Why are sessions proposed this way?

Proposing sessions just before a THATCamp and building a schedule during the first session of a THATCamp ensures that sessions are honest and informal, that session topics are current, and that unconference participants will collaborate on a shared task. An unconference, in Tom Scheinfeldt’s words, is fun, productive, and collegial, and at THATCamp, therefore, “[W]e’re not here to listen and be listened to. We’re here to work, to participate actively.[…] We’re here to get stuff done.” Listen further:

Everyone should feel equally free to participate and everyone should let everyone else feel equally free to participate. You are not students and professors, management and staff here at THATCamp. At most conferences, the game we play is one in which I, the speaker, try desperately to prove to you how smart I am, and you, the audience member, tries desperately in the question and answer period to show how stupid I am by comparison. Not here. At THATCamp we’re here to be supportive of one another as we all struggle with the challenges and opportunities of incorporating technology in our work, departments, disciplines, and humanist missions.

See the About page for more information on the philosophy of unconferences.

What do I propose?

There are roughly four things people do in THATCamp sessions: Talk, Make, Teach, and Play. Sometimes one session contains elements of all these, but it’s also a fair taxonomy for THATCamp sessions.

• In a Talk session proposal, you offer to lead a group discussion on a topic or question of interest to you.
• In a Make session proposal, you offer to lead a small group in a hands-on collaborative working session with the aim of producing a draft document or piece of software.
• In a Teach session, you offer to teach a skill, either a “hard” skill or a “soft” skill.
• In a Play session, anything goes — you suggest literally playing a game, or you suggest some quality group playtime with one or more technologies, or what you will.

Also, you should feel free to pick up and continue themes or discussions that have been proposed at other THATCamps. There are ongoing discussions about the role of libraries in digital humanities, Less yacking/more hacking, Project Management, and more.

Talk session examples

• Jeffrey McClurken, Archiving Social Media Conversations of Significant Events, THATCamp Prime 2009
• Sherman Dorn, The Ill-formed Question, THATCamp Prime 2009
• Eli Pousson, How do we share our knowledge of historic places?, THATCamp Columbus 2010
• Frédéric Clavert and Véronique Ginouvès, Les archives orales et le web (Oral testimonies and the web), THATCamp Paris 2010
• Zach Whalen, ARGS, Archives, and Digital Scholarship, THATCamp 2010
• Aditi Shrikumar, Text Mining and the Digital Humanities, Great Lakes THATCamp 2010
• Jon Voss, Toward Linked Data in the Humanities, Great Lakes THATCamp 2010
• Kathleen Fitzpatrick, “how to transform something like CommentPress into a viable mode of open peer review,” THATCamp Southern California 2010

Make session examples

• David Uspal, Hackfest: HTML5, THATCamp Philly 2011
• Wayne Graham, Mostly Hack Zotero hacking session, THATCamp Prime 2010
• Stéfan Sinclair, One Day, One Toolet, Great Lakes THATCamp 2010
• Ben Brumfield, Hackfest, THATCamp Austin 2009
• Julie Meloni, Project develop self-paced open access digital humanities curriculum…, THATCamp Prime 2010
• Dan Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt, One Week, One Book: Hacking the Academy, THATCamp Prime 2010

Teach session examples

• Kirrily Roberts, FreeBase workshop, THATCamp Bay Area 2010
• Bethany Nowviskie and Bill Turkel, Hacking Wearables and E-Textiles Workshop, Great Lakes THATCamp 2010
• Aditi Muralidharan, Visualization workshop, THATCamp Bay Area 2010
• Amanda French, Advanced Omeka, THATCamp Kansas 2012
• Note that some (even most) THATCamp organizers prefer to arrange workshop sessions ahead of time (see THATCamp New England’s workshop series,THATCamp Virginia’s workshops series, and THATCamp Southeast’s workshop series), but you can still volunteer to teach something at the last minute, or even put in a plea for someone else to teach something you’ve always wanted to learn (though if no teacher volunteers, it’s best to nix the session). That’s what’s great about THATCamp.
• Anne Flannery, Omeka and Scripto Workshop, THATCamp MLA 2013 (plea to learn about Scripto rather than offer to teach it; see also comments)

Play session examples

• David Staley, An installation, THATCamp Prime 2009
• Mark Sample, Zen Scavenger Hunt, THATCamp Prime 2010
• Zen Scavenger Hunt Results, THATCamp Virginia 2012
• Marta Rivera Monclova, Digital Tools for Research, THATCamp Caribbean 2012
• Donelle McKinley, Share Your Favourite Tools, THATCamp Wellington 2012
• Anastasia Salter, THATCamp Games Invasion, THATCamp Games 2012

Registration for THATCamp ACRL 2013 is now open! Click here, fill out the webform, and you should receive an email when your registration is approved.

A quick note about the purpose of registration – typically most THATCamp’s put a cap on registrations, so that the conversation and event space do not get overwhelmed. Since we are hosting THATCamp as part of the ACRL conference, we have an alternate goal in asking attendees to “register” here. As our THATCamp will be open to any and all conference participants, the purpose of registration is to get a sense of how many of you are committing (to some degree) that you really, really are planning to show up and participate. Also, registering will give you access to this WordPress site, where you will propose sessions, and interact with other Campers before and after the event.

So, come one, come all! But, if you want to get fully into the THATCampery, please take the time to register, fill out a profile, and propose a session. We want to make this a valuable experience for you, by you!

Image from THATCamp Penn, by Weigle Information Commons on Flickr.

We are quickly nearing conference time, and are very excited to have THATCamp be a part of ACRL this year. In case you haven’t checked the schedule yet, THATCamp ACRL will be held on Friday, April 12 from 8am-5pm.

Since we’ll be unconferencing at the same time as much conferencing is going on, we’ll be using a modified schedule: typically, THATCamp’s begin with a planning session to organize the day’s breakout sessions. As we expect many folks will be coming and going throughout the day, we plan to have two mini-camps. We’ll meet in the morning, plan and schedule morning sessions, then reconvene after lunch and do the same.

Here’s the basic idea:

• Show up on day of the event. Volunteers will coordinate check-ins at the door, hopefully there will be t-shirts, name tags, goodie bags, info sheets, whatever the coordinating committee can put together.
• 8:30-9:30 – Planning the Morning Sessions
  • Organizer hooks up laptop to the screen so all can see and then sessions are grouped, combined, separated, scheduled and organized in about an hour by all attendees using a shared Google spreadsheet updated live on screen. (Often there will be “tracks” that come out of the planning, grouping sessions around areas like technical, discussions, projects).
• 9:30-10:30 – Morning Session # 1
  • People break out into groups based on which session they want to attend. In this case, since we’ll only have one large room, we’ll grab chairs and tables and floor space, spread out and go. Whomever proposed the session is the unofficial leader. So, if John Jackson proposes a discussion on text mining in Religious Studies, he will introduce the topic, manage discussion themes/questions, start to discuss, take notes or request a note taker (in a shared Google doc), etc. etc., and generally follow through on whatever the session produces.
• 10:30-11:00 – Break
• 11:00-12:00 Morning Session # 2
  • (Same format as session # 1) People break out into groups based on which session they want to attend. Whomever proposed the session is the unofficial leader. So, if John proposed a Omeka hack session, he will introduce the topic, show the tool(s), start to hack, take notes or request a note taker (in a shared Google doc), etc. etc., and generally follow through on whatever the session produces.
• 12:00-1:30 Lunch
• 1:30-2:30 Planning the Afternoon Sessions
  • Organizer hooks up laptop to the screen so all can see and then sessions are grouped, combined, separated, scheduled and organized in about an hour by all attendees using a shared Google spreadsheet updated live onscreen.
• 2:30-3:30 Afternoon Session # 1
  • Same as above. Break-out groups. Session proposer leads. Talk, discuss, hack, share, do, make.
• 3:30 – 4:00 Break
• 4:00 – 5:00 Afternoon Session # 2 
  • Here we have some leeway. We could do another break-out session, or we could come back together as one whole group, and have each “Session facilitator” describe their session, what came out of it, etc. in 5 minutes or less. Sort of like mix of wrap-up, Plenary, Dork-shorts, etc. A good way to wind down and see what THATCamp ACRL is/was.

That’s the plan for the time being. But, since we’re trying to put the “Un-” in the unconference, who know’s what could happen!

Registrations will open in late February. Start to think up your proposals for sessions now! 

We’re happy to announce that there will be a THATCamp unconference as part of the programming at ACRL2013! The details will be published here as we work them out. Meanwhile, read more about the THATCamp movement and browse other THATCamps at thatcamp.org.

We especially encourage you to click through Miriam Posner’s comprehensive reading list of articles relating to Digital Humanities and Libraries. Hopefully some of the topics she highlights there will inspire the conversations we’ll have at ACRL2013.

Also, we are very thankful to Microsoft Research for providing support and funding for our THATCamp.

– Brought to you by The ACRL Innovations Committee