Category: overview

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2014: an overview

A properly incomplete list of what I got up to in 2014…

My edited volume, Crowdsourcing Our Cultural Heritage, was published, with a book launch at UCL.

From September – December 2014 I was a Visiting Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin / CENDARI project.

In December I presented on ‘Linking lived experiences of the First World War: a pilot with WWI collections‘ at the Trinity College Long Room Hub.

In November 2014 I presented on Citizen History and its discontents for the IHR Digital History seminar series, launched my book, Crowdsourcing our Cultural Heritage at UCL then keynoted at New Zealand’s National Digital Forum with ‘Collaborative collections through a participatory commons’ (talking about the Participatory Commons). I was also in London for the Museums Computer Group’s UKMW14: Museums Beyond the Web.

In October 2014 I gave a paper asking Where is the revolution in citizen history? The place of crowdsourcing in public history at the Public History in a Digital World: The Revolution Reconsidered conference in Amsterdam, ran a workshop on visualising collections at the Geffrye Museum and presented in an online seminar on ‘Crowdsourcing 101: Fundamentals and Case Studies’.

In August 2014 I taught ‘Crowdsourcing Cultural Heritage’ with Ben Brumfield at the HILT Summer School (Humanities Intensive Learning + Teaching) at MITH in Maryland.

In July I presented “Lightweight usability testing for digital humanities projects (AKA, ‘testing doesn’t have to be taxing’)” in the Introduction to Digital Humanities strand of the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School 2014 then I went to Lausanne to present ‘Play as Process and Product: On Making Serendip-o-matic’ at Digital Humanities 2014 with fellow alumni of 2013’s One Week One Tool.

In May I was in Bristol for the Museums Computer Group’s Museums Get Mobile and in Boston for THATCamp NE.

In April 2014 I was a keynote speaker at the 3rd international Sharing is Caring seminar. I spoke on ‘Enriching cultural heritage collections through a Participatory Commons’.

In Feburary I was invited to Melbourne to give a keynote on ‘GLAM making’ at VALA2014 (VALA – Libraries, Technology and the Future), and spoke on ‘Bringing maker culture to cultural organisations’.

In January I wrote a guest post for the Museums Association site: Digital myth: Museums need to explode the myth they are technologically backward.

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2013: an overview

A seriously incomplete retrospective of what I got up to in 2013… For PhD updates, check my PhD.

Highlights of the second half of 2013 included presenting at Speaking in Code at UVA’s Scholars’ Lab, organising the MCG’s Museums on the Web 2013 conference at Tate Modern with the Museums Computer Group, collaborating on 'Let’s Get Real’ with Culture24, the publication of two peer-reviewed articles – From Tagging to Theorizing: Deepening Engagement with Cultural Heritage through Crowdsourcing for Curator Journal and Creating Deep Maps and Spatial Narratives through Design with Don Lafreniere and Scott Nesbit for the International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing, based on our work at the Summer 2012 NEH Advanced Institute on Spatial Narrative and Deep Maps: Explorations in the Spatial Humanities – and last but absolutely not least, creating Serendip-o-matic with 12 other wonderful digital scholars at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media’s One Week | One Tool institute.)

In November 2013 I presented at Sustainable History: Ensuring today’s digital history survives and at the Herrenhausen Digital Humanities conference.

In July 2013 I chaired a session on Digital Transformations at the Open Culture 2013 conference in London on July 2, gave an invited lightning talk at the Digital Humanities Oxford Summer School 2013, ran a half-day workshop on Crowdsourcing at the Digital Humanities 2013 conference in Nebraska, and had an amazing time making what turned out to be Serendip-o-matic at One Week, One Tool in Virginia (my posts on the process).

In May 2013 I gave an online seminar on crowdsourcing (with a focus on how it might be used in teaching undergraduates wider skills) for the NITLE Shared Academics series. I gave a short paper on 'Digital participation and public engagement’ at the London Museums Group's 'Museums and Social Media’ at Tate Britain on May 24, and was in Belfast for the Museums Computer Group’s Spring meeting, 'Engaging Visitors Through Play' on May 30 and then Venice for a quick keynote (with Helen Weinstein) for the We Curate kick-off seminar at the start of June. I also gave another full-day workshop on Crowdsourcing at the British Library.

In April 2013 I gave a paper on my PhD research at Digital Impacts: Crowdsourcing in the Arts and Humanities, and a keynote on 'A Brief History of Open Cultural Data’ at GLAM-WIKI 2013 and did another workshop on 'Data Visualisation for Analysis in Scholarly Research' for the British Library’s Digital Scholarship Training Programme.

In March 2013 I was in the US for THATCamp Feminisms to do a workshop on Data visualisation as a gateway to programming and gave a paper on 'New Challenges in Digital History: Sharing Women’s History on Wikipedia' at 'Women’s History in the Digital World' at Bryn Mawr. My talk notes are posted on my blog as 'New challenges in digital history: sharing women’s history on Wikipedia – my draft talk notes’.

In February 2013 I gave a keynote on 'Crowd-sourcing as participation’ at iSay: Visitor-Generated Content in Heritage Institutions in Leicester and ran a workshop on 'Data visualisation for humanities researchers’ with Dr. Elton Barker for the CHASE 'Going Digital' doctoral training programme.

In January 2013 I taught all-day workshops on 'Data Visualisation for Analysis in Scholarly Research’ and 'Crowdsourcing in Libraries, Museums and Cultural Heritage Institutions’ for the British Library’s Digital Scholarship Training Programme.

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2012: an overview

An incomplete retrospective of what I got up to in 2012… For PhD updates, check my PhD.

In November 2012 I chaired a session on 'digital strategy’ at the Museums Association conference in Edinburgh and chaired the Museums Computer Group’s annual Museums on the Web conference at the Wellcome Collection on November 30.

In October I was in London for the Museum Ideas conference, Brighton for a Culture24 workshop on museums and web analytics then I headed off to Taiwan to give a keynote about open cultural data at the 'eCulture & Open Cultural Data Forum’ then lead a day and a half of seminars. I was also on a panel for Oxford ASPIRE on Living in the Digital World: Horizon Scanning for Museums and collaborated on a Guest post: Center for the Future of Museums blog.

In September I was in London for the AHRC Commodity Histories Project Networking Workshop 1, running a rather experimental session to come up with and verify the information architecture for the Commodity Histories site.

In July I was at Engaging digital audiences in museums, 11 July 2012, University of Manchester then in Hamburg for Digital Humanities 2012, where I ran a workshop on 'Learning to play like a programmer: web mash-ups and scripting for beginners', chaired the 'Methods’ session at another pre-conference workshop 'Here and There, Then and Now – Modelling Space and Time in the Humanities' and presented a short paper, 'On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a historian: exploring resistance to crowdsourced resources among historians' based on some early results from my PhD research. I was also interviewed for Museum ID magazine as part of a series of interviews with the 'alternative museum establishment’.

In June 2012 I spent a week as 'Scholar-in-residence’ at the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York, then two weeks as a Fellow at the NEH Summer Institute on Deep Mapping and Spatial Narratives in Indianapolis.

In April I gave a Keynote: 'From Strings to Things’ at the Victorian Cultural Network Capacity Building LOD-LAM workshop in Melbourne, and was invited to give talks in Wellington (Te Papa) and Auckland (Auckland Museum) on 'What’s the point of a museum website?’ and 'Inspiring connections with collections’.

In March 2012 I was in Australia. I spent a week as geek-in-residence at the Powerhouse Museum, and I was in Canberra in late March for Digital Humanities Australasia 2012: Building, Mapping, Connecting to give a paper based on my PhD, called 'Why look a gift horse in the mouth? Exploring resistance to crowdsourced resources among historians’. I’ve posted summaries of the conference at Quick and dirty Digital Humanities Australasia notes: day 1, Quick and dirty Digital Humanities Australasia notes: day 2, Slow and still dirty Digital Humanities Australasia notes: day 3.

In February I ran a 45 minute workshop on 'lightweight usability testing’ at dev8D.

Blog posts for Open Objects included:

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2011: an overview

An incomplete retrospective of what I got up to in 2011, apart from 'quitting my job at the Science Museum to start a full-time PhD in Digital Humanities'.

December: Interview: issues in museums and technology

I was in Atlanta in November 2011 for MCN2011 (my 'Hacking and mash-ups for beginners’ workshop is a highlight, woo!) and a panel discussion on 'What’s the Point of a Museum Website?'. I also debated the question “There are too many museums” in the 'Great Debate' for MCN’s closing plenary. Then it was back to London where I chaired a session at the MCG 'Museums on the Web’ UKMW11 conference and was elected as Chair of the Museums Computer Group.

October: I was one of two keynotes at Europeana Tech in Vienna, with a paper titled 'Open for engagement: GLAM audiences and digital participation’. The next day I was back in London for LODLAM-London October 6 (with the Open Knowledge Foundation). A few days later I was on a panel on the Digital Humanities at the Open University – my talk notes are at Notes on current issues in Digital Humanities. I was also interviewed for the Microtask crowdsourcing blog, 'Games at the museum: Mia Ridge interview'.

September: I went to Edinburgh to chair a session on 'Entrepreneurship and Social Media' for the Museums Galleries Scotland conference 'Collaborating to Compete'. I was asked to present on my work in my introduction, my notes are ‘Entrepreneurship and Social Media’ and ‘Collaborating to Compete’. I was also interviewed for BBC Outriders.

July: Katy Beale and I ran a workshop on 'hacking culture’ at the V&A Museum.

June: I gave a presentation for the International Training Programme run by the British Museum for museum professionals from around the world, on 'Changing contexts: museums, audiences and technology', and talked about 'The future of museums and learning to love change' at OpenCulture 2011 in Birmingham.

May 2011 – I was invited to Stockholm to give a talk on 'Museum Crowdsourcing Games: Improving Collections Through Play (and some thoughts on re-inventing museums)'. I gave a presentation called 'Everyone wins: crowdsourcing games and museums’ for MuseumNext in Edinburgh and a presentation on 'Museum Games and UGC: Improving Collections Through Play’ for 'UGC4GLAM – Joint Workshop on User-Generated Content for Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums', Vienna.

April: my chapter on 'Crowdsourcing games: playing with museums’ for 'Museums At Play: Games, Interaction and Learning' (edited by Katy Beale) was published and I presented at Museums and the Web 2011 in Philadelphia.

March: I taught a class on 'The possibilities of Web 2.0 for cultural heritage institutions’ for the course Arch6056: Multimedia Methods in Archaeology at the University of Southampton. I also submitted my MSc dissertation and started my PhD.

Blog posts written for Open Objects included: