The Archives And Technology Unconference (TAATU) 2011

Room 728, iSchool,

140 St. George Street

University of Toronto

Toronto, Ontario

 

Many thanks to Dr. Seamus Ross, Dean of the iSchool, for his support!

 

A Barcamp for Archivists. A BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. They are designed to be fast-paced, intensive, fun events with discussions, demos and interaction from participants.

TAATU will be a free, laid-back event designed for archivists interested in IT and digital culture to hang out, exchange ideas and have some geeky fun. There is no minimum IT experience requirement, alpha-geeks and wannabe-geeks are equally welcome. The only requirement is that you are expected to participate in some manner, whether that is doing a brief presentation, blogging about the event, facilitating a brainstorming group, participating in the discussion, etc. 

The day's activities includes the annual meeting of the Special Interest Section on Electronic Records. SISER members in particular are urged to come out for the whole day, and not just the SISER meeting - TAATU will be a brainstorm smorgasbord of electronic records issues and discussions on how archives can use digital media to manage collections and connect with clients.

When/Where

This is a one-day event, likely before the Association of Canadian Archivists' conference in Toronto, Ontario.

Date:  1 June 2011

Location:  Room 728, iSchool, 140 St. George Street, Toronto (http://www.ischool.utoronto.ca/about-the-ischool)

ACA website: http://archivists.ca/content/annual-conference.

ACA facebook site: 

 

Registration

Simple. Add your name under the list of Participants below. Then you're registered. Due to room size, registration is limited to 40 participants.

You have to create an account to log in.  Then go to the TAATU 2011 - Toronto page, select the EDIT tab (top left), type in your name under Participants, type your name in again under Participation Sign-up, then SAVE (bottom left) and log out. 

To keep this a free event, t-shirts are optional and will be available (cost:  TBD). Of course, one of the main TAATU attractions is the ability to show off your geek cred to your archives colleagues with an ironic slacker t-shirt. If you want a TAATU2011 t-shirt please add your name and t-shirt size to the T-shirt list below. The $[cost] will be collected at the start of TAATU.

Participants

1. Jim Suderman,City of Toronto, Records & Information Management
2. Raegan Swanson, Student, UofT iSchool
3. Courtney C. Mumma, Digital Archivist, City of Vancouver Archives and IP3 researcher 
4. Misty De Meo, Digital Collections Technician, Canadian Museum for Human Rights :'(
5. Leanne Templeton, Student, UofDundee, Centre for Archive and Information Studies
6. Paul Sharkey, City of Toronto Archives, Exhibit and Outreach 
7. Ericka Brosseau, Records & Information Analyst 
8. Jonathan Lofft, Archivist, Royal St. George's College
9. Donald Johnson, University of Regina Archives & Special Collections, Digital Collections Administrator
10. Irina Melikhova, Records & Information Analyst, Regional Municipality of York
11. Jonathan Jacobsen, Senior Consultant, Andornot Consulting
12. Jeremy Heil, Queen's University Archives
13. Bruce Smith, Medical Council of Canada http://ca.linkedin.com/in/brucenormansmith
14. Sara Janes, City of Thunder Bay Archives
15. Cindy McLellan, City of Vancouver Archives 
16. John Daniel, Future student (Fall 2011), UofT iSchool 
17. Brianna MacKinnon, Future student (Fall 2011), Masters of Archival Studies, University of British Columbia 

 

T-Shirts ($cost TBD)

• See below for suggested t-shirt designs.  So far they're all submitted by Jim!  
• FYI: for whoever organizes t-shirts next year, we used this site (easy to design on-line, good price, good customer service): http://www.customink.com/
•  

 

1. Jim Suderman (L)
2. Jonathan Lofft (M)
3. Peter Van Garderen (L)
4. Jonathan Dorey (S)
5. John Roberts (L)
6. Jeremy Heil (M)

 

fQuestions?

Please post any further questions about this event or issues with this wiki page to the ACA listserv (arcan-l@mailman.srv.ualberta.ca) with the word TAATU somewhere in the subject line.

See also wiki pages from previous two years (when it was called 'ArchivesGeekFest'):

 

Thanks!

A big thanks to the Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA) for including TAATU in the program and promoting it as part of ACA 2011.

 

---

 

Agenda 

1. ArchivesGeekfest is dead. Long live TAATU!
2. Introductions
3. Finalize agenda/schedule
4. ...
5. ...
6. Archives and IT Haiku workshop - Tim H.
7. SISER  meeting agenda (??? in the chair)

          7.a) 

 

Participation Sign-up (please add your name to at least one item in the list below) 

 

Promotion (2) (post notices to arcan-l & Facebook group about how awesome TAATU is and to remind people to register)

1. Jonathan Dorey
2. ...

Local Arrangements: Room, wireless, projector, caffeine (1)

1. ...
2. ...

Event facilitator (1)

1. Jim Suderman (or maybe someone else - too soon to say for sure.)
2.  

Design TAATU T-Shirt (1)

1. Jim Suderman suggests:
2. (or maybe someone else, or maybe design by remote vote - too soon to say for sure.)

 

 

 

               

Archives & IT Lightning Talks (possible topics: "Look, my IT rules!", "Help!, my IT sucks!", digitization projects, Archives 2.0, TDRs, putting databases online, web exhibits, archives information system upgrades, electronic records preservation, e-records systems RFPs, blogging, what I learned at conference/course xyz, etc.)

1. Communicating with IT (Bruce)
2. Implementing PREMIS in Archivematica (Evelyn McLellan)
3. "Sorry, we can't afford your EDRMS" (Sara) 
4. Open source discovery interfaces (Jonathan Jacobsen)
5. ...

Group Brainstorming

 

1. National Digital Infrastructure Programme - what would it look like in an ideal world (this was scheduled for last year, but we ran out of time!)
2. ...

 

Post a TAATU summary to this wiki, ARCAN-L, Canadian Archivists Blog, and the ACA Bulletin (3)

1. Sara Janes -- will happily write something for Bulletin
2. ...

 

Post TAATU photos to this wiki and/or Flikr

  1. ...

 

Facilitate Archives & IT Haiku group writing

1.     Tim Hutchinson
   

 

Prepare Powerpoint Karaoke presentation

1. Jim Suderman
2. Cindy McLellan 
3.  

    

 

Compete in Powerpoint Karaoke (Battledecks)

1. ...
2.  .

 

PowerPoint Karaoke: The Outcome (Youtube)

1. ...
2.  
3.  
   

 

Buy silly prize for winners of Powerpoint Karaoke & IT Balderdash

1. ...

 

 

Collect pictures for "add a funny caption to archival photos" game

1. Kelly Stewart (but it's more fun if someone else helps me out!)
2. Jeremy Heil (I'll help you out, Kelly!)

 

 

???? (please add your own suggestions)

 

 

Suggested Activities

Guess the Avatar

1. Create and upload your avatar to the wiki, but keep them anonymous! (see http://simpsonizeme.com/ or http://www.doppelme.com/create/)
1.  
2.              
3.  
4.  
2.  
3. Review/revise agenda
4. Game(s)
1. Battledecks/PowerPoint Karaoke: what is Battledecks/Powerpoint Karaoke? Someone prepares a PowerPoint deck of random or related slides. No more than 10. Usually from some obscure, pre-existing presentation. Another person who has never seen the presentation before, pretends its theirs and 'sells it' to the audience. The hilarity ensues as the presenter tries to keep some coherent message to the whole thing without knowing what slide will pop-up next. Two presentations/presenters. Audience votes for winner. Winner gets lame prize (e.g. stuffed toy unicorn).
2. Archives & IT Haiku: In 2008 we did an Archives & IT quiz, which was awesome (at least from my perspective - I won a toothbrush! - jer.).  In 2009, we tried to define a list of awkward tech words and acronyms, with points awarded for a) accuracy, or b) originality (or best laugh). For 2010, we propose a group effort to create Archives & IT Haiku. You may be familiar with Haiku error messages, e.g. see http://www.netlingo.com/word/haiku-poetry-error-messages.php (note: the idea that they actually use these in Japan has been debunked,, just in case there was any confusion). For our game, we suggest breaking into groups of 3-4, with each group to write one or two Haikus and read back to the whole crowd, with the requirement that it somehow involves Archives & IT.
3. Add a funny caption to archival photos: title says it all, the only question is which unsuspecting photo collections will we troll for fodder?
5. Archives & IT Lightning Talks
1. short 10-15 min presentations
2. PowerPoint, demos and/or just a steady stream of chatter
3. audience feedback/questions during presentation
4. possible topics: "Look, my IT rules!", "Help!, my IT sucks!", digitization projects, Archives 2.0, TDRs, putting databases online, web exhibits, archives information system upgrades, electronic records preservation, e-records systems RFPs, blogging, what I learned at conference/course xyz, etc.
5. I (Jim) could talk about one of two things of current interest to me (no slides) if there's enough interest:  1) enterprise architecture - who's doing it? what's it good for?  etc.; 2) ways of getting our hands dirty - "I don't have a system but want to find out more details about..."  Re #1: Toronto's in the throes of developing EDRMS requirements and there's now an architecture checkpoint.  Curiously, architecture people are telling me what things are records and what are not.   Re #2:  I've made formal and informal proposals for digital sandboxes.  Responses are usually good from IT people until it comes down to putting up the fence.  Curiously, responses are usually bad from policy people.
1. (Bruce) Enterprise Architecture would be a great topic.  It definitely has a connection to the world of IM.  At Environment Canada the IM group had a seat at the Information Architecture table.
6. Hackfest/Group Brainstorm Projects - break up into groups, report back at end of afternoon
1. eg, fun: functional requirements for the world's worst Archives IT system/website (hint: good way to figure out what the ideal system is by flipping it around)
2. eg, geekie: add a GoogleMap mashup to your online archival descriptions
3. eg, serious: let's solve this pesky little appraisal of electronic records problem, once and for all.
4. please propose more (nothing formal expected, feel free to use something from work, a good way to get feedback and actual work done on existing, in-progress projects)