We all have to summarize research, promote ourselves, and win over indifferent audiences, but how do we do all of those things simultaneously when our listeners don’t understand our aims or vocabulary? Elevator pitches are about presenting a product or idea, using a distilled message to make a sale or win over a key player, but summarizing DH for people used to authority and concision can be a challenge.

I’d like to talk about good approaches to advocating effectively and quickly for DH, whether talking with the general public, administrators, or potential donors. I think doing DH in the open means, at least right now, not just putting files online, ensuring public access, going CC, etc.: I think we have to be able to communicate to the people who don’t come knocking at our door. I categorized this as a “Talk” session, but depending on who’s interested, we might want to play around with practice pitches + instant feedback, or role playing. Here are some conversation sparks:

Shock & Awe. What are some of our favorite phrases or facts for talking about the power or breadth of digital humanities approaches? How about sharing our favorite sites or apps to showcase on phone or tablet?

Business Cards. How do you represent yourself–DH first, middle, or last? Do you use any jargon? Do you give people formal business, cards, informal cards, share your Twitter handle?

If you’re at an institution without a huge DH presence, or you’re meeting with someone who’s not that interested in it, how do you demonstrate the value of DH? What are some good strategies to use when your Provost/Dean/Principal/Lead asks why you haven’t produced a monograph (or three) yet?

Finally, why do I care about this? I’m a librarian, and while I work with students and faculty “doing” DH, I also work with people who have varying levels of awareness of it, or who might be interested but have little time to find an entry point. Maybe most of all, I want to be able to speak more effectively with people who are interested in contributing time, money, or energy to DH efforts, but who need convincing.

There have been sessions at past THATCamps that have explored the use of 3D design to envision historical sites or perhaps to demonstrate relationships of words in a concordance or index. In those cases the examples in most cases were a transference of Atoms (papers, manuscripts, notes from conversations) to bits (program design, programming, data entry, user interfaces). For this session I would like to explore your ideas and mine about the impact of Making, Tinkering, Physical Innovation to create 3 Dimensional Objects in the Digital Humanities.

One quick example: 1) Analog — a historian discovers description, perhaps with an illustration of a piece of table ware or furniture. She notes that it has certain qualities that she’d like to explore more. This is where the project moves into 2) Digital space. The object is sketched, then rendered into a 3D representation. Then that file is may need to be translated into a format that can be used by a 3D printer. The object can be scaled down or up to fit the 3D printer that will be used to “print” the object. Once the object is “printed” it has returned to an 1) Analog object. Now the object can be closely observed to better understand those curious qualities. There are many variations on this theme. Let’s share some of them.

A true story. At the San Diego Super Computer Center at UC-San Diego there was a Laminated Object Modeling (LOM) lab. Their printer used thin paper layers pasted then cut with lasers. They created a small model of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains in the same scale. They were small, hand held objects. A ninth grade class on tour was shown the models and asked what did they learn from seeing these two objects. A young woman was the first to raise her hand. Her answer, “The Appalachians are older than the Rockies because they are worn down and smoother than the Rockies.” She was correct.

So, how could 3D tools and resources for Making or Tinkering be applied to ideas, questions, or the work in the Humanities you are doing?