THATCamp SHOT is nearly upon us, so here are some final instructions for you all. At present we are about 30 registered participants, which we believe will be a nice group.

The THATCamp will take place in the Village Pavillion in Greenfield Village. For directions, start by downloading this map: www.thehenryford.org/pdf/TheHenryFordCampus.pdf

You should follow the written directions in the second column: “Enter via Eagle Lane Entrance on Village Road and continue to parking lot. Follow dotted lines indicated on map.” It is important to note that you should use these directions — if you try and Google Map yourself to the Pavilion, you will merely arrive at the front gates of the village—which is closed. Eagle Lane is the only way to access the Pavilion.

We should also point out at this time that the Village is closed for regular visitors, so wandering away from the Pavilion area is not an option. The Security staff will *not* be happy.

Like with all things Dearborn, walking is not recommended. Feel free to use the comment field on the directions web page to organize shared taxis from the conference hotels in the morning. If you bring your own car, it is possible to park at the Pavillion, but after the end of the THATCamp you will need to move your car over to the Anderson Theater where the opening conference plenary will take place. Since there’s a 2-hour gap between the end of the THATCamp and the plenary, we recommend that you take the opportunity to head back to the hotel at this time. The museum itself closes at 5pm, so there’s not much of an opportunity to visit right then.

We will begin at 9am with a brief opening plenary followed by a session where we set the schedule for the day – please make sure to arrive in time, as the beginning of an unconference is quite critical to its success. We have a few proposed sessions already, and we welcome last-second proposals on the website. Even if you don’t write something here, do try to think of some themes you’d like to discuss, teach, or learn more about during the THATCamp.

Since The Henry Ford generously sponsors the THATCamp with our venue, coffee, tea, and lunch, we will only ask that participants contribute $5 upon arrival to pay for materials and other small expenses. Any surplus will be set aside for future THATCamp SHOT events.

Finally, bring your own computer, iPad, or similar – there will be wifi at the Pavillion, and we hope to have people tweeting, blogging, taking notes, and working throughout the entire THATCamp. As for Twitter, please use #SHOT2014 as the hashtag – I don’t think we need to have a separate hashtag for this event other than the main conference one.

This is a proposal for a Make session to give SHOT’s online presence a small but helpful boost. Over the session, we would improve SHOT’s Wikipedia page (which used to be very sad but has recently been updated to be a little bit better), SHOT’s Facebook presence (the conference-centric page is quite useful, but the automatically generated organization page is terrible – just look at that picture!), and so on. I have thought about starting a slightly larger project on collecting and making available programs from *all* the SHOT conferences, back to the very beginning – perhaps combined with a map interface (an early draft can be found here).

I can add that SHOT is evaluating how it can use social media more actively, and that I’m chairing an ad hoc committee that will present a report on SHOT and social media to the Executive Council at this meeting. One of the proposals there is for SHOT to recruit a social media editor, and the outcome of this session might be helpful for that person (and thus also for the organization as a whole).

I’d be happy to offer to lead a session on how to teach history of technology (or other topics) using WordPress as a learning platform. I have gotten increasingly frustrated with my university’s LMS Cambro (based on Sakai), and decided to build my own WordPress setup for both teaching online classes and – most importantly – for providing an arena for students to write and discuss. I know many other people do the same, and I would love to both share what I have learnt and also to learn from others. I could start the session by simply demonstrating my current WordPress course setup and providing some information about how others could build something similar. The goal is to not be overly technical, but to instead focus on the pedagogical possibilities and limitations.

It’s now less than a month left before THATCamp SHOT starts, so it’s about time to start proposing sessions. As you may now (and as you can read more about in the THATCamp guide to proposals) we set the schedule for the THATCamp together, at the opening of the event, but we do this based on session proposals that the participants come up with. This website is a good place to do that, and it allows for discussion, comments, and feedback. The key thing is that we do not propose individual talks in these sessions – instead, the session is an opportunity for people to get together to discuss or work on a topic they share an interest in. Each session has a session leader (which is often the person who proposes the session).

There are roughly four things people do in THATCamp sessions: Talk, Make, Teach and Play. Sometimes one session contains elements of all these, but it’s also a fair taxonomy for THATCamp sessions. In a Talk session proposal, you offer to lead a group discussion on a topic or question of interest to you. In a Make session proposal, you offer to lead a small group of hands-on collaborative working session with the aim of producing a draft document or piece of software. In a Teach session, you offer to teach a skill, either a “hard” skill or a “soft” skill. In a Play session, anything goes – you suggest literally playing a game, or you suggest some quality group playtime with one or more technologies.

The THATCamp proposal guide has several examples of such sessions. If you look at these proposals, you can also see how other participants actively comment and signal their interest in such sessions. Please do the same with the THATCamp SHOT proposals – this will ensure that we can have an efficient and productive unconference! The only set thing at the THATCamp is opening, lunch, and ending – the rest is up to us!

THATCamp SHOT 2014 is just over two months away and we are now ready for registration.

THATCamp, The Humanities And Technology Camp, is a free, open, interdisciplinary “unconference” where humanists and technologists meet to work together for the common good. As historians of technology, we study the making and transformation over time, but the SHOT conferences have rarely functioned as an arena for discussing how we can make better use of technology in our own teaching and research. In this first THATCamp SHOT, we aim to change this by bringing together historians of technology, museum professionals, students, teachers, librarians, technologists, and others to explore new approaches to history of technology in an open, welcoming, and non-hierarchical manner.

If this sounds interesting, but you don’t know exactly what a THATCamp is and how it works, do not despair! You can find a full guide here and here.  We welcome all people regardless of technology skills, as long as you are interested in sharing, creating, and learning together.

This THATCamp is held in conjunction with the Society for the History of Technology annual meeting, but is not limited to conference participants. The THATCamp will take place at the Greenfield Village Pavillion, from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM on Thursday November 6. Note that several of the conference excursions are on the same day.

We have room for 60 participants, so make sure you sign up early to get a spot – we expect to fill all of them! We’ll charge a low participation fee of $10 (collected at the door) to cover some of the expenses of arranging the THATCamp.  To register, go to this page and fill in an application.

The Henry Ford is generously sponsoring the THATCamp with our venue, AV equipment, coffee/tea, and a free lunch.

For more information, follow @THATCampSHOT on Twitter.

While we hope that many SHOT conference participants will come to the THATCamp, many more will not. In order to share some of what we will do at the THATCamp, Finn Arne Jørgensen proposed an untraditional session for this year’s conference, titled “This is not a roundtable: THATCamp SHOT and the place of technology in history of technology.” To our great pleasure, this “un-roundtable” was accepted and will take place in the first time slot, 8:30-10:00 AM on Friday 7 November. The intention is for this session to be made in the same manner as a THATCamp – on the fly, based on who’s interested in participating and what they would like to share. This could be good! Or, it could be a total failure – rather exciting, isn’t it?

Here is the full proposal:
Immediately before the start of the 2014 SHOT meeting in Dearborn, The Henry Ford will host the first SHOT THATCamp. THATCamp is a so-called unconference, and stands for “The Humanities and Technology Camp.” As such, it is an open and inexpensive meeting where humanists and technologists of all skill levels learn and build together in sessions proposed on the spot. As the official THATCamp website states, “an unconference is to a conference what a seminar is to a lecture, what a party at your house is to a church wedding, what a pick-up game of Ultimate Frisbee is to an NBA game, what a jam band is to a symphony orchestra: it’s more informal and more participatory.” The THATCamp has become a well-established format since the first event at George Mason University in 2008, with close to 200 camps arranged worldwide. We are excited about this opportunity to create a new meeting place for SHOT where historians of technology, museum professionals, students, teachers, librarians, technologists, and others can explore new approaches to history of technology in an open, welcoming, and non-hierarchical manner.

In the spirit of the unconference format, I am here proposing what can best be described as an un-roundtable to follow up the THATCamp experience at the SHOT meeting, with the intent of debriefing and sharing what we learnt with the rest of the conference participants. This clearly falls under the “unconventional session” format – I will not submit a list of participants, nor spell out exactly what we plan to talk about. This doesn’t mean that the session will take place in a complete vacuum. As the main THATCamp organizer, my aim is to integrate these two events. A concluding discussion session at the THATCamp will function as a bridge to the un-roundtable, where I will invite 3-5 THATCamp participants to contribute to the session. I aim to have a have a good gender balance in this group, as well as include both junior and senior scholars. I will serve as the moderator for the session, where we’ll aim for the same spontaneously generative setup as the THATCamp itself.

While I can’t spell out exactly what issues the session will deal with, I still expect us to address the following questions in one way or another:
-Have we as historians of technology succeeded in employing new technologies in our teaching and research? What are some good examples that we can learn from?
-How can we create open and welcoming arenas where we as historians of technology can learn from each other, disregarding traditional ideas of mentoring and seniority?

THATCamp SHOT is happening! We will meet at The Henry Ford on November 6, 2014, immediately before the start of the annual SHOT conference. A roundtable will connect the THATCamp to the regular conference. Watch this space for more information!

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