THATCamp Canberra logo

Better privacy

By jod999, August 13th, 2010 Comments Off

Jonathan O’Donnell – I’m interested in a general discussion about how to create a simple framework that will allow businesses to show, and customers to understand, what will happen to personal information entered onto a Web site.

Privacy is an issue that Web users consistently say that are very concerned about. However, most Web sites do not handle privacy well. Their privacy statements indicate that they do not understand what legislation applies, what their responsibilities are or what risks they are exposing themselves to. For most Web sites, privacy seems too complicated for the resources they have available.

Eight years ago, copyright was also seen as being too complicated and too hard for most businesses to cope with. In the last eight years, Creative Commons has simplified copyright enormously. By creating a simple framework for copyright, Creative Commons has made it possible to for organisations and individuals to understand and use copyright correctly.

I’d like to work through some of the basic ideas behind creating a simple framework for privacy. Ideally, I’d like it to allow Web developers to apply a range of simple privacy ‘buttons’ to their Web sites. Simple graphics that make it clear to users what will happen to the information that they enter into the site. They will be backed up by plain language statements that make it clear what each graphic means, and by legal code that sets out the rights and responsibilities of the organisation and of Web site users.

Would anyone else be interested in that?

A digital museum space for kids

By Cath, August 13th, 2010 § 6

The National Museum’s kSpace is almost 10 years old, and we have a new director who’s keen to take the Museum into the future. It’s surely only a matter of time before we are invited to reimagine this techno space for kids. THATCampers, I would love for us to devise a killer plan for a new kSpace.

I have emanated a few hazy ideas to that end…

Rather than proposing a space dedicated to any single activity, it makes good sense to design a platform that could host an evolving range of activities.

How about an alternate reality game that involves venturing out to the otherwise strange and somewhat isolated Garden of Australian Dreams, which is just outside the door to this space, and then draws people back in for the resolution?

Or a networked, sensate grid that could transform a group of, say, 121 people into a cellular automaton?

Some parameters we might like to bear in mind – to raise some issues, not to reduce the field of possibility:

  • works for groups of between 15 and 120 people
  • engages school-aged kids at every level
  • relates to Australian culture / history / environment
  • involves a challenge of some kind – not entirely shallow
  • is non-prescriptive – so the experience is engaging and variable for repeat visitors
  • can be enjoyed in as little as 12 minutes

Educators, designers of all kinds (interaction, experience, game, built environment, digital), historians, and anyone else – are you interested? Please use the comment box to express!

A Flickr/Bio Buildathon

By wragge, August 8th, 2010 Comments Off

Well, you see I have this data… and I thought you might help me do something with it…

A few months ago I created the Flickr Machine Tag Challenge. This was intended as a concrete example of how we might use machine tags (aka triple tags) to add rich semantic links between resources. In this case, the machine tags identify people in Flickr photos (or the photographers) using identifiers from the National Library of Australia’s People Australia database. There are more details on the site.

Amazingly, since I launched the site, over 1000 machine tags have been added to Flickr.

Foolishly though, when I set it up I promised that I’d build something using all this data, but I haven’t quite got around to it yet. So I thought I’d see if anyone at THATCamp was interested in a mini-buildathon, where we start to sketch out what sort of app we might create and do a bit of hacking to pull a rough demo together. Along the way you’ll learn a bit about Flickr APIs, People Australia, machine tags and the possibilities of linking biographical data.

Crowdsourcing the information rich catalogue

By Lise, August 4th, 2010 § 1

Lise Summers – I’d like to propose a General discussion session on creating information rich catalogues.  Essentially, I’d love to be able to add something like tags to our online catalogue, in a way that retains the authority structure and links of the ‘master’ catalogue, while at the same time allowing researchers to add information about file contents, even images of pages, to the catalogue. 

The National Archives UK have a wiki page, as does PROV, but neither of these links back well to the main catalogues.  Museums are using thumbnail images of their collection as a way of enticing this sort of user content, and there is the NLA newspaper project, also imaged based.  But what if you don’t have or can’t have images?  Put it all on Wordpress and post tags?

Social hacks in the academy

By S_Russell, July 28th, 2010 Comments Off

This session is intended to discuss subversive social hacks of bureaucratic processes, particularly ones which contest or convert oppressive structures into freer ones.

My interest in this as a proposal comes from being the HERDC (formerly DEST and DEET) publications reporting officer in a large school.

Hacking HERDC publications reporting

While academics have been noting their research outputs to University management since the 1960s, in the early 1990s the Federal government began using volume of output as a measure of academic research productivity averaged at the University level.  The gate-keepers of academic research output in Australia are often librarians.  However, academic editors and conference organisers in the Humanities at least often fail to adequately prepare their authors for navigating this process.

This section of the panel notes briefly the history of output volume reporting in Australia, observes the conflicting workplace pressures created by volume reporting, directs attention to simple ways to navigate basic reporting, and gestures towards known edge-cases which indicate some of the problems of the system, and then points out that jumping these hoops can be made much easier by action in the humanities at the journal editor / conference organiser level.  Finally it notes that volume reporting appears to have been successfully introduced as an accepted part of work culture over 20 years: quality has now begun. (In under five minutes even).

We are brilliant

By Cath, July 17th, 2010 Comments Off

Perusing the applications for THATCamp Canberra, I am a bit daunted – but mostly excited – by the experience, skills, interests, passions and quests of people keen to come. What an amazing gathering it will be. Soon, we’ll publish a profile for each participant, and start talking about what we’ll do at the Camp.

Until then, behold the wordle.

Wordle of applications to THATCamp Canberra, 28–29 August 2010

Once more, for the more horizontally-oriented Campers:

Wordle of applications for THATCamp Canberra, 28–29 August 2010

THATCamp groundrules

By wragge, June 28th, 2010 § 1

What is THATCamp all about? Here’s some basic groundrules from one of the founders, Tom Scheinfeldt, Managing Director at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University:

  1. THATCamp is FUN – That means no reading papers, no powerpoint presentations, no extended project demos, and especially no grandstanding.
  2. THATCamp is PRODUCTIVE – Following from the no papers rule, we’re not here to listen and be listened to. We’re here to work, to participate actively. It is our sincere hope that you use today to solve a problem, start a new project, reinvigorate an old one, write some code, write a blog post, cure your writer’s block, forge a new collaboration, or whatever else stands for real results by your definition. We here to get stuff done.
  3. Most of all, THATCamp is COLLEGIAL – Everyone should feel equally free to participate and everyone should let everyone else feel equally free to participate. You are not students and professors, management and staff here at THATCamp. At most conferences, the game we play is one in which I, the speaker, try desperately to prove to you how smart I am, and you, the audience member, tries desperately in the question and answer period to show how stupid I am by comparison. Not here. At THATCamp we’re here to be supportive of one another as we all struggle with the challenges and opportunities of incorporating technology in our work, departments, disciplines, and humanist missions. So no nitpicking, no tweckling, no petty BS.

Read Tom’s post on his Found History blog.

Applications now open

By wragge, June 9th, 2010 Comments Off

After much tinkering with the WordPress registration form, applications for THATCamp Canberra are now open, just fill in the application form.

Before submitting your details check out our latest information about the camp including the digital methods BootCamp and micro-fellowships.

THATCamp Canberra is coming!

By wragge, May 25th, 2010 Comments Off

THATCamp Canberra will be held on 28–29 August 2010 at the University of Canberra. Read  all about it!

Follow us on Twitter to keep up with the latest developments.

Newer Entries »