Would anyone be interested in a discussion of practical, everyday things that can be done to make websites, syllabi, Word documents, Power Point presentations, and PDFs accessible? I myself am learning how to do this, and it’s astounding how simple it can be and how few people realize it. If we can train ourselves to make very small changes in the ways we create these items, it would make an immense difference to those using screenreaders or other assistive items to access your documents. We could also experiment with the free, open source screenreader NVDA (www.nvda-project.org/).
Archive for December 17th, 2010
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Installfest: XAMPP, WordPress, Omeka
At THATCamp New England several weeks ago, I ran two non-BootCamp but BootCamp-like sessions on (essentially) turning your laptop into a basic local web development environment using XAMPP, and installing & configuring WordPress and Omeka within this environment. I have a long post in the works about this—the whys & wherefores, the process, the outcomes—but to keep this brief in this session-proposal context, I’ll simply say this…
I’m a big fan of doing my part to empower people to take control of their own applications (e.g. going with WordPress (installed) vs WordPress.com (hosted), Omeka (installed) vs Omeka.net (hosted)). Sure, it pushes some people way out of their comfort zones, but more often than not what happens is that people realize technology is not scary and not nearly as difficult to control as they might have thought. Now, I’m not saying everyone should always run their own servers and eschew hosted solutions—there’s a time and a place for all situations—but I’m also a big fan of ensuring people have a working knowledge of the things about which they’re making decisions (I also don’t like self-described “non-technical” people being pushed around by “technical” people; I like to level playing fields whenever possible).
Since this “session” was as much about explaining how web applications are put together (conceptually) and just how it is that your web browser magically displays content to you on demand, I took the time to explain a little bit about how the web works. Over the years, I’ve found that people take this process for granted; however, the only way you can really control a technology or a medium is to understand how it actually works (and then exploit that knowledge). Since DHers and related colleagues are supposedly in the business of (in part) understanding how technology intervenes in humanitistic inquiry, and how said inquiry continually shapes and reshapes technology, it stands to reason that we should all at least be able to explain the basics of web content delivery. So we started there, then talked about XAMPP (and *AMP in general), the connections between database, application platform, and content, and then put all the pieces together with installations.
In the end, 15 or 20 people walked away with shiny new development environments on their machines, but more importantly a better understanding of how the web works, especially within an application framework. So, if any of you would be interested in such a session, I’d be happy to lead it. The nature of the explanations and processes makes it less THATCamp-y and more BootCamp-y, but it’s a rollicking good time….
No prior knowledge is required—I promise.
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General track followups
Anyone interested in a hands-on Ruby or (or other) coding session, if we promise to get it installed before tomorrow?
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GIS BootCamp Follow Up Session
After a morning of exhilarating workshops on GIS and GoogleEarth by the Scholar’s Lab team, and with an afternoon of more fun to go, I am left with a head full of ideas for projects that I need to be hashed out with others. So, I am proposing a session for the weekend for others to re-hash what we’ve learned, and talk out the possibilities for new projects and applications for our respective areas of research and disciplines. Since the topics of each bootcamp track are pretty different, I think that this session should be restricted to the GIS Track’s topics. Another session could cover the other BootCamp.
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From Nebulous Idea to Actionable First Steps
Basically, it’s in the title: a session for relative newbies, or people who’ve been active participants in larger scale projects but are looking to set out on their own small-scale project, to brainstorm how you get from the most nebulous of ideas—”here’s a text I think I’d like to work on/present using DH tools but I don’t know if that will be worthwhile,” “I know I want to do something with maps, but I don’t know how to get started,” “text analysis seems neat, but would it actually do anything for my project”—to the actual first steps of making such a project happen.
So, in many ways, tagging along here with cedwards’s post about DIY in the digital humanities… but also wondering how to get from merely being interested to actually doing things. Vague, yes, but perhaps it would be an opportunity for some of us to hash out possibilities floating around in our heads and finding a way forward.
And I’m into the ngrams, too, and would find the Omeka/Wordpress theme sessions incredibly useful.
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Documentation as Pedagogy and Community
Wow. That is a really buzz-wordy title. I had better explain myself.
As a tool builder and user I have become really interested in finding ways to improve technical documentation, particularly for the tools we as digital humanists build to do our work. Good documentation helps a project at every stage of its development. But we all hate to write (or sketch) documentation. Instead of thinking of documentation as a final chore, one more thing to do after the program works, maybe we could integrate it into the process of the developing the software. Highly commented code and up-to-date diagrams would dramatically decrease the amount of time it takes to put together a useful README file once the coding stops.
I see documentation as a chance to explain our work as digital humanists. Writing good documentation requires getting into the mindset of your users (often non-technically trained humanities scholars) and explaining what you’ve done from their point of view. As educators, this is a familiar exercise. We can teach our colleagues and students through how we explain our projects.
If we are building open source tools we will also encourage a community of users by providing them with a helpful place to find answers. There is a generosity and even warmth that comes from thoughtful, helpful documentation, just as inadequate documentation can make someone feel stupid, slighted, or unwanted as a user/developer.
I’ve created a schema visualization tool (DAVILA) to help me create better documentation for my own relational databases. If anyone else has suggestions I would love to hear them.
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Open Open Open
THATCamp Open Street Map session anyone? OSM is a wiki-style map of the world that anyone can edit and it’s one of the few sources of free GIS data for many parts of our world.
This week there’s big news from the Open Street Map community as MapQuest launches their United States OSM collaboration at Open.Mapquest.com. This seems certain to attract a new crop of OSM contributors and editors to the 300,000 plus already working to crowdsource data that can be reused without restrictive copyright limitations.
Topic ideas for a THATCamp Virginia OSM discussion:
- How can I contribute to OSM? What’s the workflow? Do I need to be a GIS expert or Cartographic Guru?
- Take the new open.mapquest.com site for a spin and learn to edit some data in your neck of the woods.
- Compare this new site to other OSM editor tools
- What mobile tools exist for accessing and editing OSM data – iPhone, Android…
- OSM Mapping Parties – ever organize one or participate?
- Walking Papers – what’s that and why?
- GPS – tips and tricks for collecting and adding your own data
- Hands-on walk-around to improve the OSM data for the UNESCO World Heritage Site outside the front door of Alderman Library
- CloudMade OSM downloads and their wonderfulness when asked for GIS data for (fill in Euro city name).
- ESRI’s ArcMap Version 10 OSM editor
- OSM blankets – yes warm and snuggly OSM blankets – ideas for other OSM merch?
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the embodied materiality of digital cultures
“Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it is caught in the fabric of the world” –Merleau-Ponty
My body is “visible, and mobile;” it also hears, tastes, touches, interacts, and can be sedentary and blind at times. It is “a thing among things,” one object among many, “caught in fabric of the world.” To be caught is to be contained; the world is always already in motion, ready to enfold, envelope, enframe; always already producing, doing, learning, reconfiguring, erasing, removing, unbecoming; filled with potentiality and change.
The ‘fabric of the world’ invites texture and color, rhythm and weaving, resistance and movement; the haptic senses are fully incorporated in the body’s interactions within space and time.
How then can this texture, this materiality, this haptic fabric of space and our very physical bodies be rendered in a digital space? How do raced and gendered and sexualized inequities get carried over wholesale to digital spaces? What are the possibilities for an inclusive digitally embodied materiality that allows and embraces self-expression at the margins while also allowing information about bodies to be useful at meta-levels? How can this be defined at a systems level in order to create an inclusive practice for digital culture creation?
I’m interested in a discursive digitally embodied materiality- how can we think about information differently when designing databases? What current best practices might be tweaked to enable meaning at the level of personal meaning for the user, while still providing meaningful data at other levels of granularity? What standards do we take for granted, and what would the center look like if we designed for the margins?
keywords: systems, categories, classifications, standards, best practices, database design, discursive materiality, queerness, marginality
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