On October 26-28, I attended the Bucknell Digital Scholarship Conference with my colleagues Janet Russell and Sarah Calhoun. It was my first time attending that event, and I was struck by how well it was organized and how the size seemed just right to balance presentations and chances for informal conversations. As always, I was happy to see a mix of presenters, from undergraduates to tenured faculty to folks from libraries and technology areas.
Main takeaways:
1. I cannot overstate how thrilled I was that both keynote addresses were given by women of color. Tressie McMillan Cottom and Safiya Noble spoke compellingly about critical issues related to higher education, technology, and society that (in my opinion) are far more urgent than calls to “disrupt,” “break,” and “hack.”
2. I was reminded by Jim Egan and Patrick Rashleigh’s presentation about the power of collaborating in a common environment. Their story about how working together on data in Tableau, rather than jumping straight to d3 or something more hefty, showed the benefits of starting with small tech to build trust in the collaboration.
3. Thrilled to see that the poster session allowed for digital presentations of work. It’s great to be able to see the digital projects in their native environments, and the conference provided a booklet of abstracts for each presentation that helped provide context. I do wish there were signs or some other visual identification for each project/table, but I enjoyed wandering from end to end hearing and seeing snippets of conversation.
Taken altogether, it was an enjoyable experience and I look forward to next year’s conference!
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