Following up on this tweet, I like the idea of talking about CMS as dissertation, or maybe a part of academic discourse.

One of the things that fell out of the BootCamp General Track was the idea that any website has a built-in worldview in its content model or in its data structures. I don’t have the link handy, but I think Ian Davis described another aspect on this as “code should be opinionated”.

So, I’m thinking of the case that a dissertation is an argument for an approach to understanding a domain of knowledge. And, a content management system’s organization is also an implicit argument for an approach to understanding a domain of knowledge.

Is there a practical way to link those up?

Let’s discuss!

Anyone interested in a hands-on Ruby or (or other) coding session, if we promise to get it installed before tomorrow?

Here’s a link to Raf’s part of the Intro to CMSs BootCamp session

Here’s links and images from Patrick’s parts of the Intro to CMSs BootCamp session.

WP example sites

UMWBlogs
UMW History Department
UMW Geography Department

Serena Epstein (freelance web design)

Omeka example sites

Lincoln at 200
Civil War Hospitals (student site)
E Belle’s Omeka Sandbox

Following the effort to make these posts quick and happy to read, (and my tendency toward informality and throwing up ideas to see what sticks), here’s my rundown of things I’m happy talking about with interested folks at THATCampVA — in 500 words or fewer!

One fun recent event I was part of was One Week | One Tool, a big experiment in whether twelve digital humanists can get together and build a new DH tool in one week. Answer: Yes. But the alternative approach and process to creating a project might be an interesting thing to talk about and think about how it could offer ideas for getting other projects off the ground.

The tool we built is Anthologize, a WP plugin to publish site content in other formats, like PDF or ePub. Happy to share ideas about how it could be used for various DH sites and projects, too. Especially interested to talk about different output formats and themes, and if/how they might be useful.

More generally, I’m always up for talking about semantic web and linked data, and about coding for the humanities.

So, we’ll see if interest starts to coalesce around any of those!