Digital Humanities Experiments #dhiha6 – the program explained

We start off on Thursday, 11th June 2015, at 6 p.m. with a traditional conference format: a keynote speech by Julianne Nyhan, assistant Professor in Digital Information Studies at UCL’s Department of Information Studies. Her talk will be on “New paths through the histories of Digital Humanities: uncovering hidden contributions to Busa’s Index Thomisticus”. This keynote will be discussed by Claudia Mueller-Birn, assistant professor for Web Science/Human-Centered Computing at the Institute of Computer Science at Free University of Berlin. A live stream of the keynote will be available.

Friday, 12th June 2015 will begin at 9 a.m. with a presentation of the game “winnobel” by David Chavalarias (ISC-PIF, Paris). Implemented as an online multi-player game, winnobel allows people to experiment different research policy settings on the collective dynamics of science. This presentation will be live streamed. We will play the game during the lunch break and in the afternoon with different teams.

ConverStations
During the next section, we will experiment with a highly dialogic form of event: Our idea of Conversation-Stations (short: ConverStations) is modelled after World Cafés: “Participants move between a series of tables where they continue the discussion in response to a set of questions, which are predetermined and focused on the specific goals of each World Café” [Wikipedia: World Café]. We will have eight tables with different topics, six are predefined and animated by invited participants: Claudine Moulin (IEA/University Trier), Milena Žic Fuchs (ESF), Sean Ryder (NUI Galway), Brian Sandberg (IEA), Suzanne Dumouchel (DHIP), Pierre Mounier (OpenEdition). Two tables can be proposed spontaneously by the audience on the spot. There will be three discussion-rounds, each lasting approximately 20 minutes. Every participant will choose in advance which of the three tables she or he wants to attend by drawing cards. Two observers – Anne Baillot (Humboldt University, Berlin) and Mareike König (DHIP) will go around and take note and document the experiment. After a coffee break, the ConverStations will report their results to the audience, and we will discuss results as well as observations concerning this form of event. This session summing up the results will be live streamed.

Lounges
During the lunch break, there will be time to visit three lounges we have installed in the beautiful “Hotel Duret de Chevry”, home of the DHI Paris. Participants are invited to walk around, maps of the building will be distributed, indicating the location of the lounges.

Open Peer Review Lounge
In the Open Peer Review Lounge, we will discuss new and transparent modes of evaluating scientific publication. The OPR Lounge will have several computers that give access to the  articles of the blog carnival “Digital Humanities Experiments” which will be launched prior to the conference. These articles can be commented. Of course, one could also do this via Internet from any place in the world: the idea is, however, to get digital processes back into an analog surrounding and to combine the two. The OPR Lounge is run by Anne Baillot, Mareike König, and Pierre Mounier.

Media Lounge
The Media Lounge will be run by Lisa Bolz (DHIP) and Charlotte Jahnz (Max Weber Foundation): They will interview participants and ask about their impressions. A twitter wall filtering our hashtag #dhiha6 will be installed in the Media lounge. There is the possibility of making yourself comfortable on the coach or one of the armchairs and talking to the twitter colleagues in real life. The Media lounge will also be the place to play winnobel.

Secret Lounge
The Secret Lounge is hidden in the labyrinthine corridors of our huge basement. There sure is no Wifi down there! So you might get lost… or find the place where Suzanne Dumouchel (DHIP) and Tobias Wulf (Max Weber Foundation) are waiting for you to practice diversion, as the best ideas in science often come when you least expect them…

The Lounges are open throughout the day and you can go and visit whenever you want. The Lounges will only be staffed between 1 p.m. and 2.30 p.m. For the rest of the time, feel free to experiment yourself!

Laboratories
After lunch and the visit of the Lounges we will do live experiments in four different Laboratories: “Aggregate, visualize and browse information about researchers and their activities”, “Open analytical ecosystems for digital humanities”, “Texts in a Laboratory” and “Machine translation”. The experiments will be parallel and each participant will have to choose according to own interests which Laboratory to attend.

The results of the experiments will be presented in the final session after the coffee break. A general discussion on results and the proceedings will close the conference at 6 p.m.

Free entrance, please register under event@dhi-paris.fr
DHI Paris, 8, rue du Parc-Royal, 75003 Paris http://www.dhi-paris.fr

See also: Digital Humanities Experiments #dhiha6 – the program