DHTech December Newsletter

by DHTech · calendar Dec 31, 2024  · newsletter
Photo of steaming mug by Julia Damerow
Photo of steaming mug by Julia Damerow

We are pleased to present you with the last DHTech newsletter of 2024! We hope that you have an enjoyable December filled with whatever you love the most. But while 2024 comes to a close, DHTech pushes full steam ahead. And if you are in need of some good new year’s resolutions, how about “I will contribute to DHTech in 2025!”. This is a resolution we highly support ;)

DHTech February Meetup

Our next DHTech meetup will be on February 20, 2025 at 9am ET/3pm CET. We will discuss a potential submission to RSECon25, which will be hosted at the University of Warwick in Coventry, UK from 9-11 September 2025. At US-RSE’24, we organized a Birds of a Feather session to talk about how different domains pose different challenges to RSEs and require different skill sets. The idea has been floated to propose a similar session for RSECon25. Does that sound interesting? Come and join us! Please register for the meetup.

DHTech RSE Survey

In 2019, DHTech ran a survey to better understand the DHTech and DH RSE communities. Five years later, DHTech is re-running the survey to better understand the experiences and needs of anyone doing technical work in the digital humanities! Do you write code or do coding-related work for digital humanities projects? Do you manage software engineering projects in the digital humanities? Do you develop computational methods for digital humanities research? If so and if you are over 18, please consider completing the Digital Humanities Research Software Engineering survey! It should only take about 10 to 15 minutes of your time. We hope to present the survey results as a poster at DH2025.

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. Please share with your networks!

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!

Upcoming Deadline

  • 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.

Get Involved!

  • Tell us About Your Career Path: We believe that it is important to share the varied paths people have taken to the DH technical work we do now, in whatever capacity. We want to hear your story 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.
  • 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? Become a code review facilitator! 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 sign up using our facilitator application form.

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.

We wish you a peaceful end of year and a happy new year! The DHTech Steering Committee