Welcome Email

May 10 Welcome Email for your Reference

Dear all,

Our workshop on Mapping and Visualisation at the University of St Andrews is just under a month away. As our previous communications have suggested, our gathering will diverge somewhat from the presentation plus discussion format. Some elements of the workshop are fixed, but several components will be designed with considerable input from you, the participants.

In our last email you will have found overviews of the research areas of each of our workshop participants in the attached document.

 Here is an updated overview of the workshop as planned:

Sunday

Travel to St Andrews

Drinks at Russell Hotel, The Scores (corner of Murray Park)

_______

The venue will be the School of History, St Katharine’s Lodge, The Scores

Monday

Morning

9:30 Welcome and Registration

Opening Remarks

Introductions

Five Minute Lightning Talks: Research

Open Discussion on Research

Afternoon

[Custom Session ]

Skills,

 Methodology, and State of the Field

Depending on Time (and Weather, this is Scotland): (Leasurely) Beach-Talk-Walk

Dinner

Tuesday

Morning

[Maker Session ]

Five

 Minute Lightning Talks 2: Approaches

Afternoon

Discussion & Reflections: The Way Forward

We try to bring the workshop to a close by 3-4pm in case you have a flight from Edinburgh the same afternoon or evening.

_______

Lightning Talks

The concept of a lightning talk is very simple: you are given a short opportunity to present, with a brutally enforced time limit

 – in our case five minutes. If you wish (though by no means required), you may show a single slide or image to complement your presentation.

Research -

Our first lightning talk on Monday morning will give you a chance to go beyond what is offered in the abstracts you submitted to the workshop and tell us about your research. You may decide

 to focus on one of its findings, its challenges, or the importance of its broader framing. It is up to you. Use this as an opportunity to encourage fellow participants to engage with you in the open discussion that follows. The idea is really to bring something

 to give and share with the group.

Approaches – Our second lightning talk

 on Tuesday will give you a chance to talk more specifically about methods and approaches:

how do you use mapping, networks, or visualisations in your own research. Use this opportunity to

 expand on what was submitted before the workshop (see below), or suggest new ideas or approaches that have come to mind during the course of the workshop itself.

Custom Session & Maker Session

These two sessions are designed with input from

you. The former

Custom Session is very open. How would you most like to use this time? We encourage proposals for

 discussions or group activities rather than proposed formal presentations, but want your input. The

Maker Session will be an active and creative session where the object is to collaborate with immediate

 effect: either through collaborative writing, the practice and use of a particular tool, or the creation of a particular visualisation.

To make an event like this work, we need your help and your input is critical to its success. For this reason we ask that all

 of you SUBMIT BY JUNE 1:

1. Updated Abstract –  An updated abstract of your project or research of up to 1,000 words. This should

 include within it:

a. How does your current research tackle the transnational or global – and why space, maps and visualisations may (or may not) help enhancing your research and analysis.

b. How do you present the mapped or networked component of your research? In other words, how is your map or network visualised in the work you produce? What tools or software do you use to produce these visualisations or maps?

c. At what stage of progress are you at.

2. Further Material –  Further material on your current research: at the very least a clear outline of

 the project and its plan as it stands. Alternatively, you may share a copy of an excerpt of your work, a published article, an article draft, a visualisation or map, an online resource created, or some other outcome of the research.

3. Map or Visualisation – please share with us a map or visualisation (image file, link, or at the very

 least a reference) that you have come across either directly related to your research, or elsewhere, which you think communicates an idea or a research finding effectively.

4.Zotero Username -

If you already have an account on

Zotero.org, the open source citation management system, then please send us your username (Konrad:

kml8@st-andrews.ac.uk). If you do not have a free

 account there, we encourage you to create one. We will create a group reading list on Zotero and use it to share and exchange some reading in the area of mapping, networks, and visualisations.

5. Ideas for Custom Session and Maker Session

In the form of a paragraph or two tell us one or two ideas of how you would like to make use of the

Custom Session and the

Maker Session. In the former case, would you like a discussion set up on a  particular topic? Would

 you like to engage in an activity? In the latter case, what do you imagine to be the most productive way to have a short (1.5-2 hours) intense collaborative “maker” experience where the object is to create and experiment?

6. Skills

- Do you have any particular skills or familiarity with a particular software tool or approach that you use and would be willing to share in the afternoon skills session (as you will see

 in the abstracts, Stark and Kornewett have already offered a demonstration of VennMaker – at this time we are asking if there are others also willing to share). This can be a short 15 or 30 minute presentation to demonstrate its use, talk about ways to acquire

 the skills needed, or a tutorial.

On May 30, we will have up and running a WordPress software based website for everyone to access for use during the workshop

 (and preserved afterwards). This will be password protected. A username and password will be issued to everyone (likely the same as your zotero username) to access the backend. You can submit the above components by email (which we can then post on the internal

 wordpress installation), but for those of you comfortable with it, we ask you to submit the above directly within the WordPress interface itself (more details on May 30).

From 1 June to 8 June

After everyone has submitted this material we ask that everyone choose 2 or 3 of the other submitted abstracts (all which will be viewable within the password protected WordPress installation) and write a paragraph or two of comments, questions, and suggestions in response (through the comments feature). More details on this 30 May.

After 10 June

After 10 June, we will add a page to the St Andrews Institute of Transnational History that will have a public collection of outputs from the workshop. The exact nature and extent of this (a short blog post, a visualisation, the product of the maker session, a collaborative written piece, etc.) will be explored at the event itself.

We are aware that this is a slightly different and deliberately open format that takes some ideas from the “unconference” concept as practiced by THATCamps (see their webpage).

Please do not hesitate to get in touch with me should you have any questions on the format. Kelsey will remain the main contact for the more practical issues including travel and accommodation.

Once we have everything online by 1 June and have received your potential inputs we will be in touch with a an updated schedule and precise venue.

Best wishes, also on behalf of Konrad and Kelsey,

Bernhard