Hi all,
I sent out an update on the exciting times we had in Cuba, but it looks like it didn't work properly. I was at the end of my internet hour in the hotel, so it may be that it didn't make it out before I was cut off.
Several members of this group were in Cuba at a meeting organised by INKE in Havana (Neil Fraistat, Alex Gil, Ray Siemens, and me... I hope I'm not forgetting anybody). On the "unconference" day, the group (including many others from North America, Europe, Cuba, and Latin America more generally) ended up devoting the lion's share of the meeting to discussing the Global Outlook initiative, issues in collaboration among researchers in High, Mid, and Low income countries, and similar topics. We also had meetings with people from the Ministry of Culture, the Casa de los Americas, and the National library about various initiatives.
The time was extremely exciting and very productive. Among the outcomes are a nascent proposal for a THaT camp in Cuba next November focussing on Latin America and the Caribbean, discussions about establishing a national DH organisation in Cuba that might initially join ADHO in an observer function, participation in the Havana book fair this coming February and an additional event in March, and some ideas about ways in which specific researchers in Cuba might collaborate with various projects elsewhere in the Caribbean and farther afield. About 30 new people have also asked to join the list, about 1/2 from Cuba and the rest largely from North America. Emails inviting them to confirm their membership have just been sent out.
We also developed what looks like it might be a very exciting idea for the money the University of Lethbridge is donating to the initiative: establishing small research grants and bursaries for students and/or early career researchers to propose and carry out research projects looking at digital humanities capacity, infrastructure, and (for want of a better term) "bibliography" in different regions and countries around the world. I have a meeting scheduled with our VPR for early in January to discuss the idea and make sure that it fits within the parameters of the donation. This programme might produce a very useful body of knowledge, I think.
Administratively, we are waiting for final ADHO approval of our proposal (the latest version can be found here: http://ubuntuone.com/187LiVZpJKwFNaRV0lZJeD). This should be finished by Monday. Once this is approved, we probably should move on to establishing officers and working
We have also bought the domain name globaloutlookdh.org for use for the project and set up a twitter account @globaloutlookdh. We are waiting for the DNS to propagate and then we will have a rudimentary webpage set up early in the new year.
Finally, with regard to the conferences we were looking at:
*African DH*: I've received confirmation that the Canadian Society for Digital Humanities is holding a slot for us for a session on Africa and DH for the meeting in Victoria this June. Ray, Neil, and I were discussing how we might integrate this with the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) which follows immediately afterwards, though I don't think we've reached any conclusions yet.
*DH in China*: We'll know more about this after the DH 2013 sessions are finalised and we've been approved by ADHO's Steering Committee. We should be still planning on it, however, I believe.
As you can see, busy and fun times.
-dan