Tag Archives: Digital Humanities

Conference, Hack, Conference

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An Aussie Rules football match earlier this year in western Sydney. This is where I segue into a comment relating to the conferences but really, I don't think any of the international attendees at the conference at University of Sydney this week will be attending a footy match.

An Aussie Rules football match earlier this year in Western Sydney between Greater Western Sydney and Hawthorn. This is where I should segue into a comment relating to the conferences but really, I don’t think any of the international attendees at the conference at University of Sydney this week will be attending a footy match. I could also make a comment about attendees kicking goals and being ‘on the ball’ but that has been done before. I’ll be honest, I couldn’t find a photo that related to the subject matter.

Today I am embarking on a crazy eleven days. This week I am attending the International Digital Humanities Conference at the University of Western Sydney. When that ends on Friday, I then head to the State Library of NSW for the weekend of the GovHack competition. I’ll be there throughout the weekend extracting a variety datasets about World War I as part of a team which will produce something online which will help people gain greater insights into an aspect of the history of the War. Then on Monday 6th July the annual Australian Historical Association conference commences. I am delivering a paper at this conference.

Digital Humanities is an emerging discipline about the use of technology in humanities research. GovHack is an annual competition where Australian governments, and this year New Zealand, encourage people to use government datasets, merge them, filter them, visualise them and generally be creative with them in order to find new insights and help people to connect with this information. The WWIHack is part of the GovHack competition this year. Cultural institutions from around Australia and New Zealand are making available datasets about World War One available for the competition. All datasets are freely available for anyone to use, so even if you are not entering these competitions you can also have a look at them and see what you can make of them.

I am exhausted thinking about it, but in these two weeks I will learn so much that will be useful for my work. As well as an important learning opportunity these events will recharge my enthusiasm for my book and make me look at it in a new light.

I will be sharing my experience of these activities through blog posts and tweets. These are the hashtags I will be using on Twitter (@perkinsy) over the next couple of weeks:

I realised I had not explained what digital humanities and GovHack were when I wrote this late last night so I quickly added an explanatory paragraph this morning.

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Singapore Workflow

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Desk with three computer monitors on it (and a few other things).Gradually I am developing a work routine here in Singapore. After moving from Sydney I travelled to Canberra, Melbourne and Hobart visiting relations before flying to Singapore. For five weeks I had been living out of a suitcase and in temporary accommodation. It is so good to finally have a place called home.

I work from the study in our apartment. My desk was made by my father who made furniture as a hobby. It is made out of my father’s favourite wood, Black Bean. This tree grows in Queensland and northern New South Wales.

This desk is where I will be doing most of the research and analysis for my book. It is from here that I will search and analyse the diaries of World War I using Python programs that I have written, spreadsheets and other tools. It is from this desk that I will trawl the internet for other resources and references.

My book will be the result of a union of three skills – writing, research and technical. The three monitors on my desk are wonderful work tools. They enable me to work efficiently and think through research and technical issues. Continue reading →