I’m now back in Charlottesville after an invigorating weekend at THATCamp. It was an experience to remember in more ways than one.
Other than meeting so many folks doing really cool things in history and the humanities, it’s also my first road trip since February where my check engine light came on again. I took it to the car dealer in the morning, hoping that whatever it is this time around it wouldn’t be anything to be concerned about. Well, I get a call at 4 pm from the dealer telling me the bad news that the catalytic converter had become contaminated and it would cost over $2K for parts and labor to replace … ouch !! Plus my car is out of commission for the next two days … so car rental $158 
… wondering whether there was anyway I could have avoided what is turning out to be a very expensive trip to THATCamp … *priceless* ?!
So … plans for that new Krups coffee grinder … dream on. Fall trip to Boston … probability fading fast. Nice meal at Palladio in Barboursville … I think I’ll still be waiting for that to happen in 2010 !
Well, back to THATCamp. Raymond Yee shared from his new book on Web 2.0 Mashups — a must-read for anyone interested to learn about mashups and how to make them. It’s now on the top of my reading list.
The group discussion on bibliography raised interesting developments such as the Bibliographic Ontology Specification and the user community efforts that have gone into the expanding the Zotero Style Repository using Citation Style Language or CSL.
Over lunch, Jason Rhody highlighted the various grant opportunities from NEH’s Office of Digital Humanities, followed by a preview of Zotero Server by Dan Cohen.
Finally, the session on “time” and the challenges in representing it in the work of humanities scholars yielded some really interesting discussions and possibilities, including a discussion of the work being done in microformats and examples of their application in describing people, places and events in history.
More on other cool projects and links from THATCamp in future blogposts …
