I recently participated in the annual German Studies Association Conference. (On a side note, my last professor at ASU, Dr. Gerald Kleinfeld started the GSA.)
I was delighted to be on one of two DH panels at the GSA. Since I don’t have anything noteworthy finished or started with my dissertation, I spoke about how the humanities can and should learn from the Open Source community. Specifically, the humanities can learn three things from the Open Source community, more particularly from how the communities that existed to create the Internet and open source software. The three points I talked about in the paper were:
- Freedom of information, ability to share and collaborate on research in open and unrestricted ways
- Ability to find more sources
- Ability to allow a wide range of interested individuals to participate
Here is an HTML version of my presentation (unfortunately I used boring PowerPoint…):
[Presentation in OpenDocumentPresentation (LibreOffice)]
In the spirit of Open Source, I should have posted these much earlier before the conference and let interested individuals make comments, corrections and additions. But, as is all to common with me, I waited until the last minute and didn’t even finish until the day before. Nobody else does that, right? 🙂
The experience was great. I met some people, got some ideas, learned some things… Most importantly I got some ideas from Paul Jaskot about how to do the “digital aspect” of my dissertation. Details to follow in another post.