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Parking

Please note that our Parking page had an error, which has been corrected. Parking fees only apply on the Friday of THATCamp ($8.00 for a daily permit). There is NO charge for parking on Saturday.  Please check our Parking page for full details on where to park and where to obtain a visitor parking permit for the day.

Weather & Dress

Weather forecasts indicate that it’s still going to be pretty hot here in Fullerton this Friday and Saturday (mid-90s). Our venue contact has assured us that air conditioning will be on at a good strength both days in all of our venue rooms and spaces. If you’re the type that gets cold when A/C is on, please bring a sweater or sweatshirt.

Despite the promise of good A/C, you might want to dress for hot weather. THATCamps are casual unconferences. Please feel free to wear shorts. And in Southern California, flipflops and sandals are always appropriate dress code!

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If there is interest, I would be happy to walk folks through an exciting new software tool, the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (abbreviated ‘LIWC’ and pronounced ‘Luke’)–whether as a workshop or a session. Its developer, James Pennebaker, has made some headlines with his fascinating recent book The Secret Life of Pronouns, which offers Humanities scholars lots of food for thought on how to use data from texts to understand mental health. If there is interest, I would probably plan on: 1 Introducing LIWC, 2 Describing its original purposes (for psychologists and clinicians) and 3 Describing its use for DHers.

The second part is pretty exciting since he’s found, for example, that people who use certain sorts of pronouns more frequently than others have a very significant probability of being clinically depressed. The third part would take up the most time and would mainly involve walking folks through my collaborative project to answer core questions in genre theory by compiling several million words in a database partitioned in three genres, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Mystery. In my opinion the most interesting thing about the DH use of LIWC is that it allows us to do much more than develop fun visualizations of word trees–it allows us to test hypotheses.

If there is interest for a workshop or session on this, it must not conflict with Scott K’s text mining workshop.

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If you are planning to book lodging for THATCamp SoCal 2012, our fabulous Logistics Coordinator Laura has pulled together a handful of hotels and motels close to campus that are willing to offer a CSUF (California State University, Fullerton) discount.  Please refer to our Lodging page for all of the details.

And please note that the closest hotel — The Marriott, located adjacent to campus — is holding a block of 10 THATCamp rooms at a discounted rate ONLY through August 30th.

We have noted, under each lodging option, the distance from our THATCamp venue, to help give you an idea if a particular hotel or motel is walking distance from the venue. Both days of THATCamp will finish up while it’s still daylight, so you will not have to walk in the dark. The two options that seem closest walking distance are the Marriott and the Holiday Inn.

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We had a session at THATCamp Prime called Public Scholars Unite! The discussion touched on a lot of interesting ideas and questions about how and why scholars should (or shouldn’t) connect with broad audiences via mass media, blogs and social media.

I’d like to facilitate a discussion more specifically about writing. A lot of the really amazing websites and programs THATCampers create benefit greatly from really good writing. I want to discuss how scholars might better communicate their ideas, especially those who work on contemporary issues, outside their fields.

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Update: The proposed workshop went ahead. Details can be found at socal2012.thatcamp.org/2012/09/05/text-mining-workshop/.

Would anyone be interested in a workshop on easy text mining/computational analysis? I would happy to run a workshop focusing on one or both of two approaches: Lexomics and Topic Modelling. Both can be used by literary and linguistic scholars, as well as for historical and cultural analysis based on texts or text corpora.

Lexomics is a technique (and a suite of tools) for comparing texts (or chunks of texts) for similarities based on word frequency analysis. The tools allow you to divide texts or groups of texts into chunks and then perform hierarchical clustering on the chunks to compare word frequencies. The output is a tree diagram (dendrogram) which displays similarities between chunks. Here is an example of a dendrogram comparing the Old English poems Daniel and Azarias. It reveals that chunks 4-6 of Daniel have a marked similarity to Azarias (the result, it turns out, of a common source).

Click here to enlarge.

Lexomics is easy to learn and easy to teach to students.

Topic modelling uses a more complex algorithm to arrange words found in texts into thematic “topics” so that the frequency of these themes can be compared in different texts or different parts of texts. A good account of the technique can be found on Ted Underwood’s blog (and see the links supplied there).

Below is a list of examples of topic modeling taken from Clay Templeton’s Topic Modeling in the Humanities: An Overview:

Synchronic approaches (Unit of analysis is not time bound)
Matthew Jockers’ work on the Day of DH blog posts (2010).
Elijah Meeks’ work on self-definitions of digital humanists (2011).
Jeff Druin’s work on Proust (2011).
Travis Brown’s work on Jane Austen’s Emma and and Byron’s Don Juan (2011).

Diachronic Approaches (Unit of analysis is a time slice)
Cameron Blevins’ work on Martha Ballard’s diary (2010).
Robert K. Nelson’s work on the Richmond Daily Dispatch corpus (2011).
Yang, Torget, and Mihalcea’s work on Texas newspapers (2011).

My own students’ work on the Middle English poem Havelok the Dane is another good example of the technique (especally in a pedagogical context).

The easiest way to do topic modelling is with the Machine Learning for Language Toolkit (MALLET). There is a convenient GUI version which allows you to run MALLET without having to install MALLET (though that also is not very difficult).

Very little prior knowledge is needed for the workshop, other than basic manipulation of text files and Microsoft Excel. Everything else can be picked up pretty quickly. Access to a laptop will allow participants to download and experiment with the topic modelling tools (the Lexomics tools are web-based).

I could probably cover both Lexomics and topic modelling quickly in an hour, but two would be preferable to address both theory and method, as well as to allow people to get some hands on practice with their own texts.

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Making a collage, THATCamp SoCal 2011

I’ll be attending THATCamp SoCal 2012 to organize another “craft cabin” activity, like we had at THATCamp SoCal 2011.  I wrote up the nitty-gritty of the activity’s set-up, here; Marta Rivera Monclova wrote more reflections on the craft table as a participant, here.  If participants want to bring any materials of their own to include in the mix, that would certainly be welcome!  I’m also wondering if there’s any interest in creating a group zine during the two days of THATCamp.  If so, I can set up a table specifically for that project, too.

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After just one week of open registration (including over a long holiday weekend), THATCamp SoCal 2012 is just shy of  70% full!  Technically, we’re 68% full (not counting me).

Still undecided? Or too busy to apply?

Don’t delay too long, we do expect this event to fill up fast due to our proximity to so many institutions of higher learning and heritage institutions.

Hop on over to the Registration page and apply for your Camper spot now.

Don’t miss your chance to network, learn, and just hang with a group of highly talented innovators who share your professional interests and challenges. And for FREE, while well-fed!

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After less than 48 hours of open registration, THATCamp SoCal 2012 is now 50% full!

Still undecided? Or too busy to apply?

Don’t delay too long, we do expect this event to fill up fast due to our proximity to so many institutions of higher learning and heritage institutions.

Hop on over to the Registration page and apply for your Camper spot now.

Don’t miss your chance to network, learn, and just hang with a group of highly talented innovators who share your professional interests and challenges. And for FREE, while well-fed!

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After just 24 hours of open registration, THATCamp SoCal 2012 is 25% full!

Still undecided? Or too busy to apply?

Don’t delay too long, we do expect this event to fill up fast due to our proximity to so many institutions of higher learning and heritage institutions.

Hop on over to the Registration page and apply for your Camper spot now.

Don’t miss your chance to network, learn, and just hang with a group of highly talented innovators who share your professional interests and challenges. And for FREE, while well-fed!

Continue reading »]]>

Photo courtesy of Flickr user finnarne.

We are pleased to announce that registration for THATCamp SoCal 2012 is now open!

This year’s THATCamp SoCal is hosted by California State University, Fullerton in beautiful sunny Orange County, California.

• Camp dates are Friday and Saturday, September 14 and 15, 2012.
• Hands-on workshops (preregistration required) will take place on Friday.
• Unconference sessions (open to all Campers)  will take place on Saturday, with topics crowdsourced first thing Saturday morning.

As we secure workshop topics, instructors, and times, we will open those workshops up for Camper preregistration.

Be sure to follow our blog, and/or our Twitter feed for ongoing updates.

Not familiar with THATCamp?…Check out our About page.

Got a particular workshop or session idea in mind? Submit a Proposal!