DHTech October Newsletter

by DHTech · calendarOct 31, 2024  · newsletter
Photo of a Halloween DHippo
Photo by Julia Damerow

You might have noticed that you didn’t find a lovely newsletter in your inbox in August of this year. We will try to make it up to you by putting some extra effort into this one. We planned on starting out with a programmer joke for Halloween, however, turns out they are all really bad. Here is one that came the closest to being funny:

Why did the scarecrow become a successful software developer?
Because he was outstanding in his field!
🙈

But let’s move on. We have a newsletter packed with (hopefully not too spooky) updates about your DHTech Community. Enjoy!

DHTech at DH2024 - Take the Survey!

At this year’s DH conference at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, USA, we held a mini-conference titled “DH Inside Out” about the technical aspects of DH projects. We had an amazing lineup of presenters (thank you all!) with many interesting talks and discussions. In fact, it went so well that we plan to do it again next year! Stay tuned for the call for participation and call for reviewers.

If you have 5 minutes, please fill out our post-mini-conference survey. Even if you didn’t attend, we are interested to know why you didn’t attend and what would be valuable to you in the future.

In addition to our mini-conference, we also had a lunch meetup with pizza (thank you ADHO for the funds!) and the DHippo Challenge! The best part is that we still have DHippos. Do you want one? Simply write a short blog post for our DHTech website and we’ll try to get one to you. Contact us in Slack or via email (dhtech.community@gmail.com).

To conclude, we really enjoyed seeing new and familiar faces, many interesting discussions, and are looking forward to DH2025!

US-RSE’24

The second annual US Research Software Engineering Conference (US-RSE’24) took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico from October 15 to 17. While vastly outnumbered, some DH research software engineers did attend and even organized a Birds of a Feather session on “RSEs in domain-specific ecosystems.” We talked about how working as a research software engineer differs depending on the domain, especially when comparing digital humanities to a STEM field (science, technology, engineering, and math). It was an engaging and interesting 90 minutes discussion. US-RSE’25 will be held in Philadelphia next year, so mark your calendars!

DHTech RSE Survey

In 2019, DHTech ran a survey to better understand the DHTech and DH RSE communities. Five years later, we are preparing another survey to see how the field has changed. Please join the #dhtech-survey-2024 Slack channel if you want to shape the survey questions or help with reviewing and analyzing the results. Otherwise, keep an eye out for the survey, which we will launch later in November!

DHReSCU is looking for Projects and Consultants

Thanks to a Chair’s grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Arizona State University in collaboration with colleagues from Princeton University and Harvard University is exploring the development of a Digital Humanities Research Software Consulting Unit (DHReSCU). This virtual unit will provide digital humanities researchers with the opportunity to consult experienced DH RSEs during the project planning and design phase to create a software development plan. To that end, DHReSCU is looking for projects and consultants. Consultants as well as projects will be compensated for their time with a small stipend.

More information can be found on the DHReSCU website.

Submit Code For Review

The next submission deadline for code review requests is coming up on December 31. A description of the process and what it takes to have your code reviewed can be found on the code review website. 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 the reviewer application form.

Become a Code Review Facilitator

Do you want to get involved with DHTech’s community code review process, but are not yet ready to become a reviewer? Don’t despair, we are looking for people interested in facilitating code reviews! No technical knowledge is required; all you need are some organizational skills. Facilitating a review involves scheduling kick-off and recap meetings and sending out a few emails. We have templates and checklists to help you along the way. It’s low effort but a really important job! You’ll be recognized as a facilitator on our website afterwards and will have everyone’s deep gratitude. You can also sign up using our facilitator application form.

DHTech Steering Committee Nominations

DHTech has been an ADHO Special Interest Group since 2021. For the upcoming two-year term (2025-2026), three seats on the Steering Committee need to be filled. Any member of DHTech is eligible to nominate themselves for one of the spots. To give people an idea of what it involves to be on the Steering Committee, we compiled a blog post that summarizes the key responsibilities and tasks of the Steering Committee. We hope that this will encourage some people to nominate themselves as candidates.

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.

Latest Blog Posts

DHTech Job Board

If you have a job posting you think might be of interest to the DHTech community, consider submitting it using this form. We have added a new section to our website that lists current jobs as soon as they are submitted. If you would be willing to help out with reviewing and adding job postings to the website, please get in touch on Slack or by emailing the steering committee at dhtech.community@gmail.com.

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 at dhtech.community@gmail.com or via Slack.

Yours truly,
The DHTech Steering Committee