Some of the first old media to be transformed by digital technology does not occupy much discussion at THATCamps. (Neither film nor video have earned their own categories for our THATCamp posts.) The first THATCamp New Orleans features an intriguing number of distinguished filmmakers, documentary producers, and media scholars. One filmmaker was awarded a Guggenheim. Another serves as editor of Television and New Media. One worked as a producer for PBS’s Frontline. I hope we might have one session with such people and the archivists charged with the extremely difficult task of preserving film and video collections and making them available for present and future audiences. The WWII Museum is involved in a fascinating project funded by the IMLS using Annotator’s Workbench to encode their video oral histories. Another IMLS grant funded a planning project for the Louisiana State Archives and Louisiana Public Broadcasting to preserve and catalogue the state’s film and video resources. I know one person at UNO has been struggling with similar issues regarding digitized video storage. Anyone want to talk about some of these topics?

In case you haven’t seen Michael’s e-mail, it’s time to start thinking up amazing things for us to talk about when we descend upon the CBD next week. There are some ideas and suggestions over on the Sessions page, but these are more guides than rules. As the Rebirth Brass Band would say, “Do Whatcha Wanna.” We’ve got a few up already, so take a look at them for inspiration, and comment on the posts to get the conversation going!

We’ve also got a Twitter account up and running at @tcampnola2013. Follow it if Twitter’s your thing, and if it’s not, now’s a good excuse to give it a try!

It’s also as good a time as any to think about after-THATCamp plans. There’s always a ton going on around town, and next weekend is no exception. Feel free to post any events you hear about that you might want to share with fellow THATCampers in the comments, and I’ll compile them later. Bayou Boogaloo begins Friday evening (with Rebirth Brass Band!) and runs through Sunday, but there’s also the new Star Trek movie, countless amazing restaurants, city tours, and more.

Excited yet? Start posting!

I have been fortunate to attend a few THATCamps connected to academic conferences for historians, and I have wanted to work with others to create a THATCamp (and, we hope, a series of unconferences) rooted in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region. UNO and USM folk from various backgrounds started to collaborate on digital projects several years ago via content development for the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank, whose project funding birthed the precursor to Omeka. Therefore, we sought to begin the process of making connections and building a community that transcends the typical borders separating people engaged in digital projects.

One of the best features of THATCamps is their ability to facilitate interdisciplinary exchanges. The conversations that take place when librarians, archivists, museum curators, graduate students, K-12 faculty, public historians, humanities faculty, and others gather together are invaluable. I hope our first gathering will help us to develop a supportive community. I had the pleasure of teaching history and writing classes in a computer classroom starting in 1993 and presenting at Computers & Writing in 1997, so I know how much good comes from getting out of disciplinary ruts or sinkholes.

Maybe we will come up with some solutions to a few of the common problems facing most who work on noncommercial digital projects in the Deep South:

*lack of funding and/or the constant threat of losing meager funding sources;

*lack of administrative support, including attention to key issues such as time & labor & technical support; and

*lack of interest and/or respect for non-commercial digital work, regardless of whether it’s presented as “digital humanities” and if DH’s time as the latest academic fad may seem to have come (and gone).

The arrival of Gena Chattin and Jennifer Jackson on UNO’s campus in concert with the long-term interest shown by Jeanne Pavy and others at UNO as well as Jeanne Gillespie and Diane Ross on USM’s campus have served as the catalyzing energies that have allowed us to move forward. More recently, UNO’s History Department has partnered with Vicki Mayer in Tulane’s Communication Department for a mobile history (ios and Android or Google Play) project using omeka known as neworleanshistorical.org.

Let’s begin to collaborate to build a more effective DH community.