Workshops, events, and “skill shares” being offered by GC Digital Initiatives this month. 

These workshops will introduce participants to using Twitter as an academic,  GitHub for version control and collaboration, and simple-to-use tools for project management and collaboration. At our informal Skill Share, we’ll discuss creative, humanities-driven approaches to data visualization. This month’s events include co-sponsored events spotlighting visiting scholars, as well as digital humanities projects from across CUNY.

 

Workshop: “Twitter for Academics” Monday, October 30th, 2017 – 6:30-8:30pm

Topics to be discussed and demonstrated include deciding who to follow and for what reasons, strategies for using tagging and hashtags, harnessing the power of media stats on blogs and articles, creating Twitter lists, live tweeting, frequency of tweets, social media aggregators and notifications to streamline workflow, and balancing personal and professional content.

Register HERE

 

Event: “Type, Paper, Glass, & Screws: Reading Surfaces & the Materialities of Communication.” Friday, November 3,2017, 4:00-6:00 PM, Room 4406 English Student Lounge

the surfaces we read are meant to disappear behind the content they bear. But what, and who, is available to readers who pay attention to the material dimensions of the devices we read? Whether an eighteenth-century newspaper or a twenty-first century iPhone, the surfaces from which we read are present to us, and they put our bodies in relation to others. In this talk, I read the print work of the eighteenth-century enslaved printer Primus Fowle (1700-1791) and the poetry of Foxconn laborer Xu Lizhi (1990-2014) and argue that they use non-alphabetic elements of texts like broken type or loose screws to orient readers to the many kinds of people and kinds of work that mediate texts across time, space, and archives. Co-sponsored with English. Contact information: http://www.gc.cuny.edu/english.

 

Event: Thomas Caswell “Introduction to Visualization in Python Using Matplotlib.” November 1, 2017, 3:00 – 4:00 PM, Room 9207 

Matplotlib is the most widely used visualization library in Python. There are two entry points into the library: the pyplot API which mimics MATLAB (widely used in engineering disciplines) and the object-oriented (OO) API. This talk will cover the high-level architecture of matplotlib, demystify the components of an image, explain what backends are and how they work, and offer pointers to more resources for learning Matplotlib. This event is cosponsored with Computer Science and does not require any registration. More information available at: https://gcdi.commons.gc.cuny.edu/event/introduction-to-visualization-in-python-using-matplotlib/.

 

Workshop: “Why Academics <3 GitHub” Wednesday, November 1st, 2017 – 6:30-8:30pm

While academic work can certainly be a solitary affair, much of our work is collaborative in nature. Sane solutions to collaborating on computers do exist. You might have already used Google Docs to collaborate on a paper or a presentation. In fact, collaboration tools can actually help us in our independent efforts too. If you ever have lost a night of sleep after deleting a section of a paper only to later realize you actually could have still used, then you know the hell that is controlling versions of a document (or code source). This workshop will introduce participants to GitHub: a set of tools that helps solve the problems of controlling versions of files and collaborating on projects where multiple individuals might be editing the same file at the same time. We will cover the basics of working with Git repositories, the issue tracking and project management tools available on GitHub, AND create a website on GitHub. All in under 2 hours. Satisfaction guaranteed. No refunds, only store credit.

Register HERE

 

Workshop: “Intro to Tools for Collaborative Research” Tuesday, November 7th, 2017 – 6:30-8:30pm

This workshop is designed as a gentle introduction to using widely available (and FREE!) digital tools for collaborative work. We will explore how a few simple-to-use tools can be effectively wielded to manage your project, from communication, to workflow management, document storage, and collaborative editing. In practicing with these tools, we will discuss techniques for streamlining your project protocols and reducing the effort it takes to keep your work organized. If you’ve ever said to yourself: ‘I can’t find the latest version of that document!’, ‘What is Google Drive?’, ‘Where is my Dropbox?’, or ‘There has to be an easier way to schedule these meetings!’, then this workshop is for you! This workshop is designed for all levels of comfort and experience using digital tools (if you use MS Word or Gmail, then you can do this!) – no previous experience required!

Register HERE

 

Skill Share: “Data Viz, Where Data Meets Design”  Thursday, November 9th, 2017 – 12:00 – 1:30pm

This Skill Share will be a review/summary/conversation about the workshop of the same name that was offered at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute in Victoria, Canada, in June 2017. We will have an opportunity to briefly look at some visualization tools of different types and hopefully spark your inspiration to do similar visualizations with your own research.

Skill Shares take place in Room 7414 of the Digital Scholarship Lab from 12:00 – 1:30 PM. They are free and open to everyone at the GC.

 

Event: “CUNY Digital Humanities Initiative Lightning Talks” Tuesday, November 14, 2017, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm, Rooms 9206/9207

Curious to see the depth and breadth of digital humanities projects across CUNY. Join students, faculty, and staff as they offer 3 minute introductions to their digital humanities projects-in-progress, accompanied by 3 slides. There will be ample time for questions and conversation following presentations. If you are interested in presenting your own project but have not had an opportunity to sign up, the deadline has been extended until November 10. Just fill out the form, and we’ll be in touch: https://goo.gl/forms/eLgUUJb6e2pOWoRr2. The event is FREE and open to all. For questions or comments, please contact Lisa Rhody at lrhody@gc.cuny.edu.

 

Event: Johanna Devaney “Automatic Music Performance Analysis and Comparison Toolkit” Thursday, November 16, 2017 — 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

Part of the GC Digital Initiatives Sound Series, Dr. Johanna Devaney will introduce and teach her open-source software, Automatic Music Performance Analysis and Comparison Toolkit. Join us to learn about developing music software and to try out this toolkit for examining intervals between notes, tempo and relative dynamic level between notes, frequency and vibrato, and other aspects of performed sound.

Johanna is Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Cognition at The Ohio State University and the specialty chief editor for the Digital Musicology section of Frontiers in Digital Humanities. This event is free and open to the public; however, RSVPs are encouraged.

 

 

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About the Workshops and the GC Digital Fellows Program:

Part of GC Digital Initiatives and based in the GC Digital Scholarship Lab, the GC Digital Fellows Program operates as an in-house think-and-do tank for digital projects, connecting Fellows to digital initiatives throughout The Graduate Center. Digital Fellows utilize a team-based approach as they explore creative solutions for projects that can be implemented in a collaborative fashion. In the process, the Program helps build out “The Digital GC” — a vision of the Graduate Center that incorporates technology into its core research and teaching missions.

For more information, contact us here.

 

Matthew K. Gold, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of English & Digital Humanities

Advisor to the Provost for Digital Initiatives, CUNY Graduate Center

Vice President/President-Elect, Association for Computers and the Humanities

http://cuny.is/mkgold | @mkgold

 

Lisa M. Rhody, Ph.D.

Deputy Director of Digital Initiatives

Director of Digital Fellowship Programs

lrhody@gc.cuny.edu | lisarhody.com | @lmrhody

 

https://gcdi.commons.gc.cuny.edu/