A list of blog posts, trip reports or other mentions of THATCamp NE 2012:

• Abby Mullen on HASTAC

For anyone who took the Regular Expressions workshop, I’ve updated the workshop webpage with some new links and an edited and annotated transcript of everything I typed in that you saw up on the projector screen.  The transcript includes 215 lines of code that you can copy and paste into Python, along with 332 lines of annotation to explain what’s going on. There’s even a new section at the end that deals with printing out the word-frequency structure that we computed at the end of the workshop.

I also updated the example code, zombify.py and pitchfork_scraper.py, with extra annotations.

Thanks for such a great weekend of discussions and learning, and I hope some of you who were at my workshop get some use out of the updated materials.

Thanks to Julie Swierczek, we have a helpful list of transcription software (since much of our discussion focused on the value of transcription for undergrads):

• Davidson College transcription process
  • sites.davidson.edu/archives/community/transcription-projects
• Crowdsourcing transcription article – ProfHacker
  • chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/crowdsourcing-transcription-fromthepage-and-scripto/38028
• Crowdsourcing transcription – Rose Halley’s blog
  • rose-holley.blogspot.com/2012/03/crowdsourcing-transcription-of.html
• FromThePage – transcription software
  • beta.fromthepage.com/
• Juxta – does the overlap analysis of documents
  • www.juxtasoftware.org/ 

I’ve storified yesterday’s workshop. It’s here. storify.com/lubar/building-a-professional-persona-online

We’re hoping to see you all tomorrow morning, ready for a day of workshops that will culminate in a hackathon followed by a well deserved beer. Perhaps even a walk downtown after the beer to see an exhibit of multimedia installations. And then there’s Saturday!  Here in Providence, we’re getting ready and trying to make sure that all will go swimmingly. Here are some things that will help you prepare.

It’s all on the website – All information is on the site – parking, locations, session proposals, schedules. Look it over. If you need more information on something, make a comment, tweet a question. Please look over the Workshop page before Friday!

Checklist:

1. Have you updated your profile? Looked at the other profiles?
2. Have you made a session proposal? There’s still time – until Saturday at 9am. [See step by step instructions if you are having doubts!}
3. Have you thought about doing a Lightning Talk? No need to sign up now, you can get in line on Saturday morning. They’re short, sweet, and a great way to get your work or ideas out there. 2 minutes.
4. Workshops – any suggested preparations are linked from the Workshop description, take a look and download the necessaries for the workshop(s) you are interested in.
5. Bring a rain jacket. We’ll be walking around. Forecast for warm, but rainy. Check the forecast on Wunderground or the National Weather Service.
6. Parking: See “Around Brown” page also “Locations” page.
7. Are you on Twitter? That’s the best way to see what’s going on in other sessions/workshops, ask questions, see where everyone’s going for lunch… [Is Twitter new territory? Maybe that’s a session proposal right there!] Our Twitter hashtag is #thatcampne.

Click for weather forecast

1. Log in with your username and password. If this is your first THATCamp, you received them in an email. If you’ve attended before, use your existing login. If you have forgotten, in either case, use the email address you registered with and click the “Forgot Password” link.
2. You’ll see the WordPress dashboard. On the left, there is a column of things you can do. One entry is the “Posts”. Mouse over “Posts”, and click on “Add New”
3. Add a session proposal – Give it a title, add a description, and make sure to click “Session Proposal” in the list of categories on the right. (Scroll down, it’s alphabetical). This will make it appear in the Session Proposal page. Click more categories if they apply.
4. Click Publish. You can always go back and edit if you want to change anything. (To edit, mouse over “Posts”, click “All Posts”, find your post and click the “Edit” button.

If you’re interested in the Regular Expressions, Text Processing, and Web Scraping workshop on Friday, please make sure to bring a laptop and to have the following software on your computer:

• Python — if you have a Mac OS X or Linux machine, this is already installed.  If you run Windows, you may have to download it.
• A good text editor — on OS X, I like to use TextWrangler.  On Linux, nice options include kate, kedit, and gedit.  On Windows, Notepad++ is a popular favorite.
• Though not a core part of the workshop, we’ll also be talking about command-line tools like wget (which is installed by default on Linux, easy to build on Mac OS X, and even available for Windows).  If you’re running Windows, try downloading and installing the standalone Unix-like text-based environment Cygwin.  Regardless of your system, make sure you know how to bring up a command-line terminal.

Please also bring an idea for a web site or text corpus that you’d like to slice and dice.

The Friday afternoon database workshop has been moved from the lovely historic JNBC seminar room to the brand spanking new Digital Scholarship in the Rockefeller Library.

Tell us about your project, the great tools or apps that make your life worth living or anything that you think is relevant and worth telling about. You have two minutes, one topic, and you get to use one URL No Powerpoint, no time to load anything, no USB sticks.

We’ll have a round of lightning talks during the opening session. If you’d like to present, sign up by adding a comment below. Enter the URL you’d like to use in the comment as well, if you want to save time.  You can also decide to present on Saturday morning.

Give it a shot, Dork Shorts are fun.

Here is how THATCamp works. Other than the workshops, we don’t have anything planned—you’re the ones who do the planning. Over the next two weeks you should post your session ideas to the THATCamp NE website. Also over the next two weeks, you should read other people’s proposals and comment on them if you wish. On Saturday morning, everyone will get to vote for the sessions you want to participate in, which will then become our schedule for the rest of the day.

Obviously this works better if more people propose sessions that they’ve put some thought into. Here’s what makes for a good session proposal:

• It’s NOT a paper, or a talk, or a lecture, but an idea for a conversation.
• It proposes a topic related to technology and humanities that a group of people can discuss in an hour or so.
• And ideally, the session will produce something useful: a list of resources, or some hacked code, or a syllabus. Don’t forget THATCamp Proceedings.

There are more ideas and guidelines on the THATCamp website.

So please visit the list of session proposals, then add yours with your login to WordPress by  Just log in with your username and password, and add a blog post to the category “Session Proposals.”

Please check your email for information on how to log into the site and modify  your profile. Also, check the Campers page to see if you are on it!

Please click the registration link to register for THATCamp NE 2012. We are looking forward to seeing you here.

THATCamp NE registration has been pushed back to Sep. 9. But we are hoping to hear from  you then!