Today we kick off THATCamp 2011 at CHNM. The first post I wrote about THATCamp was way back in 2008 (a whole generation in Internet years). That first iteration brought 70 participants to the Center. This year we have 100…a limit imposed only by the fire department capacity of the large meeting room in our building.
Friday’s schedule is mapped out, because we are running the first day as a technology boot camp. Following the unconference model, tomorrow’s and Sunday’s schedule will be decided on by the participants tomorrow morning. Once the schedule is set, it will be very interesting to see how the topics chosen in 2011 and those chosen in 2008 compare. If I had to guess right now, I would guess that we’ll see a mix of more complex and less.
On the one hand, the pool of digital humanists is much larger than it was three years ago and so we would expect to see a more sophisticated list of topics. But for the same reason, we would expect to see more beginners who want less sophisticated topics. The boot camp on Friday may address that need for first principles, or it may not. No matter what, the schedules for all the various THATCamps that have happened since that first one in 2008 can give us a nice way to chart the interests of digital humanists.
A special event today will be a live cast of Digital Campus, our first live cast to include video. Who knows how that will go…