As everyone who has participated in a THATCamp knows, successful unconferences depend upon the interest, collaboration, and generosity of numerous individuals and institutions. We feel especially fortunate to have received a lot of support from local and regional sources in both the public and private spheres:
THATCamp Digital Pedagogy ATX 2016 is hosted by the University of Texas Libraries. The free registration, food & drink, and commemorative schwag are all funded by generous contributions from UT’s College of Liberal Arts, Department of Classics, Harry Ransom Center, Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services, LILLAS Benson Digital Scholarship, & Program in Comparative Literature, and FromThePage, Southwestern University Smith Library Center Department of Research and Digital Scholarship, and St. Edward’s Office of Information Technology.
The planning committee is an inter-institutional group composed of UT’s Jessica Aberle, Hannah Alpert-Abrams, Cindy Fisher, Jennifer Hecker, Elon Lang, Adam Rabinowitz, Fatma Tarlaci & Ece Turnator, and Rebecca Frost Davis, Kim Garza & Brittney Johnson (St. Edward’s University), Charlotte Nunes (Southwestern University), and Ben Brumfield (FromThePage).
Finally, we would like to thank all of our participants for traveling from around the country and around the region to join us in making THATCamp Digital Pedagogy ATX 2016 such a productive and compelling time. We hope you all have enjoyed Austin in the new year and will keep in touch!
A very special, Texas-sized thank you is in order for Jennifer Hecker! We on the organizing committee are so grateful for your leadership. Thanks for helming our THATCamp ship!
Indeed! This wouldn’t have happened without you, Jennifer!
From Roger Whitson: I’d like to use THATCamp Pedagogy to propose a new prcejot that will – hopefully – involve THATCamps from around the globe. THATCamp Documentary is an idea I’ve had for a little while, but I’ve never fully figured out how to implement it. The idea is to crowdsource a film in about a year, where people can take footage of various THATCamps, include interviews with organizers and participants, criticize and celebrate the ideas behind THATCamp, etc. Here are a few issues I’d like to use the session to brainstorm: -Do we need funding? Would we want to use a model like the kickstarter prcejot? -How would we get people do film? Would we supply cheap cameras or rely upon filmers to supply their own? -What kind of script should we create? What should the writing process look like? -How should we edit the film? Should a small group of dedicated people do the editing from a larger pool of participants? -How do we manage the prcejot? Should there be a monthly meeting with dedicated participants via Skype or a Google Hangout?My model for THATCamp Documentary is Star Wars Uncut, a prcejot that asked fans to individually recreate 15 second segments from Star Wars. The segments were voted on by an online community, then an editing team recreated the film using those segments that were most popular. The film looks great if you look at specific segments, but tends to fall apart if you view the film as a whole. So, I feel our greatest challenge will be how we can crowdsource a documentary yet still maintain a sense of film cohesion with a narrative arc, pseudo-consistent filming styles, etc. While the session idea has, admittedly, little direct connection to the theme of our unconference, I would also like to see how a prcejot like this can involve faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students in a large-scale collaborative work.
This is an interesting idea & I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of it! Unfortunately, THATcamp Digital Pedagogy is over. Perhaps another THATcamp would be interested your proposal, though? A list of upcoming THATcamps is on the main THATcamp site: thatcamp.org/. Good luck!