Day of DH2013


Day of DH2013 starts in about 4 hours here in Washington, D.C. Like last year’s post, I wanted to start the day of DH offering some context to my day tomorrow. Things at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities are busy. We are gearing up for our final major event of this academic year, the Shared Horizons: Data, Biomedicine, and the Digital Humanities Symposium. It features humanists, digital humanists, bioinformatists, biomedicinists, and library science scholars who are interested in the research methodologies of sequence alignment and network analysis. It will be a great event, I’m sure. But as with all MITH events, I get nervous that things should be as close to perfect as they can be. In part, I think conference, workshop, and these types of events are made by the little things (strong wifi, good snacks, even comfortable chairs) as much as the quality of the presentations. So I’ll be relieved on Friday at 830 pm when the last of the attendees have finished the closing dinner and I’ve returned to my massive to-do list.

Like most staff working in a digital humanities center, I do more than just my regular job. I’m currently working 32 hours per week on MITH-related tasks, 8+ hours per week on my own research, and another 4-6 hours per week teaching a class for the Digital Cultures and Creativity program. On top of all of that, I can’t seem to say no to cool opportunities. So, without further ado, here is this week’s to do list. I won’t get it all done tomorrow (or even likely this week) but it gives you a sense of what I’ve got on tap right now.

In no particular order:

1) Complete the digital history syllabus for the graduate/undergraduate split class I am teaching next academic year

2) Read the book I agreed to review for the Journal of Popular Culture and get the review written.

3) Run down the grad student that I’m interested in hiring part time starting next month to help out with my book project.

4) Draft out the 2 chapters for my collaborator on a new book proposal for his comment.

5) Write the slide decks for the two talks I’m giving about a month from now so that I can run them past the university that invited me to make sure they fit what they want.

6) Prepare the slide deck with my collaborator Simon Appleford for the NITLE seminar we are leading in a few short weeks.

7) Complete travel arrangements for the summer travel I’ve agreed to…plane tickets only get more expensive the closer to summer we get.

8) Complete the syllabus for the course I’m co-teaching this summer with Lynne Siemens at the European Summer School on DH in Leipzig.

9) Register for DH2013 in Lincoln!

10) Draft the final report for my NEH funded Topic Modeling project with Travis Brown.

11) Draft the white paper for my NEH funded Topic Modeling project with Travis Brown.

12) Draft a job ad to share with my collaborators on another funded project to hire a student for the summer to work with us producing digital content.

13) Write the intro and closing slide decks for Shared Horizons.

14) Submit the materials for one of the Executive Committees I’m on so that we can move forward on an initiative I’m super passionate about.

15) Write up talking points for our VPR for the Shared Horizons event.

16) Complete special project readings.

and most importantly on my to-do list:

17) Review the proposed contract for my first book from the publisher. (Yea!!!)

So, tomorrow is pretty busy with meetings. I’ll try to blog meeting by meeting so that you get a glimpse of what I do every day as a digital humanists….but to be frank, once the day gets started it is often hard to pause to note down what is going on. Oh well, it should be a fun day of DH!

(originally posted at Day of DH 2013)


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