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Context: What if we stopped using the terms “diversity” and “accessibility” and started using the term “inclusion” instead? Or what if we started using “inclusion” in addition to the other terms? One reason would be strategic, creating alliance among groups that might otherwise remain disparate. Another reason would be to move our conversations from discussions of abstract qualities (Is your field diverse? Are your resources accessible?) to discussions of concrete actions (What are you doing to include people? And what are you doing to exclude people?)

Environment Scan: I’m not the only one thinking about the importance of inclusion:

• In January of this year, THATCamp SoCal featured a session titled “Towards an Open Digital Humanities” (Some notes from that session are online as a Google Doc)
• The theme for the 2011 Digital Humanities conference is “Big Tent Digital Humanities“
• And for THATCamp CHNM 2011 this weekend, a number of Campers are interested in addressing topics that I would argue are about the issue of inclusion:
  • James Neal would like us to have “an honest and open discussion regarding diversity in the digital humanities“
  • Chad Black is concerned with “ethics, power, advocacy, technique“
  • Cory Bohon suggests a talk about and a workshop addressing accessibility for people with disabilities
  • Sheila Brennan asks us to consider how documentation–or the lack thereof–affects the core audiences for our projects
  • Christina Jenkins turns our attention to the primary and secondary school environment
  • Undergraduate research and the digital humanities is the concern of both Tonya Howe and Sarah Werner
  • There are probably more session proposals that I’ve overlooked. (Please feel free to suggest more connections in the comments below.)

Clearly, it seems to me, there’s something in the water. . .

Proposal: I propose that we approach these issues in two ways.

• First, let’s yack about what the barriers to inclusion are so that we understand more fully what’s at issue. Several of the sessions already proposed are exactly the kind of yacking I’m thinking about.
• Second, let’s hack away at those barriers. And I use the term “hack” to mean “a good workaround” or “a good-enough solution.” Sometimes a “hack” will involve the use of technology, but sometimes it will not. A given hack could be put together during THATCampCHNM 2011 or it could be planned as an ongoing task/project with a life beyond this unconference.

[Creative Commons-licensed flickr photo by Ewan Munro]

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CONTEXT: Many (most?) of you will remember the “One Week | One Tool” event hosted in 2010 by CHNM (and funded by the NEH) that resulted in Anthologize. The event was described on their site as “a unique summer institute, one that aim[ed] to teach participants how to build an open source digital tool for humanities scholarship by actually building a tool, from inception to launch, in a week.” The resulting tool, Anthologize–on which development continues–is designed to “[u]se the power of WordPress to transform online content into an electronic book.”

For more information about Anthologize, check out Julie Meloni’s ProfHacker post on the experience as well Tom Scheinfeldt’s “Lessons from One Week | One Tool”:

• “Part I, Project Management”
• “Part 2, Use”
• “Part 3, Serendipity”

PROPOSAL: Inspired, in part, by the locally-hosted “Random Hacks of Kindness” 2011 events taking place on the same weekend as THATCampCHNM and THATCampLAC, I am proposing “One Session | One Solution.” Can we learn from the much blogged experience of those who created Anthologize to attempt something similar on a smaller scale: a high-speed hackathon taking place during an unconference? Building a tool from scratch is probably beyond the scope of one THATCamp session (or one THATCamp, for that matter). However, a smaller solution to a well-defined problem has a good chance of being found if a group of talented, motivated campers combine forces and hack something together. Even if the result is a technical plan, rather than a finished product, the days (or weeks, or months) after the face-to-face unconference could be spent collaborating on making that plan a reality.

Interested? Please leave a suggestion as to what problem (related to higher ed or the digital humanities–both broadly defined) might be productively addressed by such a session. You don’t have to have a solution already in mind, though if you do you should feel free to sketch it out here. Since the start of THATCamp is more than a week away, we have a pretty good amount of time to brainstorm possibilities and reach some consensus before we all meet face-to-face.

Thanks!

[Creative Commons-licensed flickr photo by dullhunk]

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I read with interest James Neal’s post entitled “An honest and open discussion regarding diversity in the digital humanities?” I believe that discussion would be a welcome addition to the unconference schedule. Along these lines, I’d like to help organize a session about disability and accessibility, either as part of James’ session or in addition to it. Having talked about this topic with many people in the DH community over the last couple of years, I’m confident that we can start making some easy-to-use tools that will improve accessibility for endusers and simplify for creators the task(s) of making accessible resources.

Furthermore, my collaborators and I are currently gathering information about issues of disability, accessibility, and digital humanities resources. As part of that effort, we invite you to complete this survey. (It should take less than 5 minutes.) We will use the information we gather to inform our future project plans, and I can also share the results at the upcoming THATCamp. As a survey participant you may remain anonymous, or you may share your name, affiliation, and contact information at the bottom of the form.