DHTech February Newsletter
It’s the first DHTech newsletter of 2024! We’re excited to share the latest and greatest news from our community with you, so read on.
New Steering Committee Member: Welcome Jose!
Jose Hernandez joined the DHTech Steering Committee in January. Jose is a Digital Humanities Technology Specialist at Florida State University. He is heavily involved with the DHTech working group on education and training and we are excited to have him on board.
DH2024 Mini-conference “DH Inside Out”
This year in August, DH2024 will be held at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, USA. DHTech will hold a mini-conference at DH2024 themed “DH Inside Out”. Typical DH conference presentations are focussed on the research with a slight nod to the technical details; we want to flip that format and dive more deeply into the technical aspects of the work, while still keeping it in context of the research and domain specifics. To that end, we invite submissions of interest to the people who work on the technical aspects of DH projects. The deadline for submitting contributions is coming up fast: March 15, 2024!
We are also looking for volunteers to review submissions. Please see the full call on our website for instructions on how to submit presentation proposals and on how to sign up as a reviewer.
Tell us About Your Career Path
Those of you who attended DH2023 may remember we organized a panel on DH RSE careers. Since there is still no established career path for this work, it’s important to share the varied paths people have taken to the DH technical work we do now, in whatever capacity. We want to hear more of those stories and share them on the DHTech website. Contact us in Slack or via dhtech.community@gmail.com if you’re willing to share what you do and how you got there.
DHTech April Meetup on LLMs
Our next DHTech meetup will be on April 18 at 9am ET/3pm CET. We will be talking about how large language models (LLM) affect the different aspects of research software engineering. What does their existence mean for teaching software engineering especially in the DH context? How does the way we develop code for research change? How do LLMs change the role of the research software engineer or does it not impact it at all? If you want to give a lightning talk about your perspective please get in touch with us via Slack or by email (dhtech.community@gmail.com). We would like to hear from you and your experiences! You can register for the call on Zoom here.
Code Review Call
The DHTech Code Review Working Group has been working hard on improving their process. A description of the current and improved process can be found on their website. They also have switched to quarterly submission deadlines for projects who would like to have their code reviewed. The next submission deadline is coming up on March 31. Check out the website for instructions on how to submit your code. If you have any questions about what can and cannot be reviewed, please get in touch with the working group in Slack in the #code-review-wg channel or send an email to dhtech.community@gmail.com. If you are interested in becoming a reviewer, please fill out this form.
Working Group Updates
DHTech now has two working groups: the Code Review Working Group and the newly-formed Education & Training Working Group. The Education & Training Working Group focuses on creating a collection of educational materials in topics such as version control, documentation practices, and packaging while highlighting DH use cases. The group meets on the second Thursday of every month 9am to 10am ET (3pm to 4pm CET). Please join the #education-wg channel on Slack or get in touch with Jose Hernandez (jah22q@fsu.edu) if you are interested in joining.
We have also added some general guidelines for forming and maintaining working groups. Please check out our working group page for more information.
Latest Blog Posts
- “How can you trust your code?” by Rebecca Sutton Koeser, Jose Angel Hernandez, and Mareike Bassenge.
- “New Steering Committee Member” by Jose Angel Hernandez.
DHTech Email Address
Email dhtech.community@gmail.com if you want to reach the DHTech Steering Committee.
Upcoming Newsletters
This is a bi-monthly newsletter. Do you have something to share with the DHTech community that you want included in the next newsletter? Please get in touch with us (dhtech.community@gmail.com or via Slack).
Yours truly,
The DHTech Steering Committee