Press Kit for History Camp Boston
Saturday, March 8, 2014
IBM Thomas J Watson Research Center, One Rogers Street, Cambridge, MA
Contents:
Social Media
The hashtag #HistoryCamp will be used before, during, and after the conference to facilitate conversation, and provide a running commentary for those who cannot attend.
Follow participants on Twitter:
Press Contact
Lee Wright and Jen Deaderick will be handling all press requests and concerns for the event.
Contact them at: press@historycamp.org
Quick Facts
- History Camp is a platform for bringing together people throughout the area interested in history and seeing what results. Our hope is that we create a stronger community of people interested in history, and that through these efforts, we reach and engage more people with history.
- Registration opened at the end of January and today more than 80 people are signed up. It's free and open to anyone, so money won't keep people from attending. There's also an individual underwriter option for people who want to help with the costs. It's an all-volutneer effort, and our goal is simply to break even.
- We have a really interesting mix of authors, grad students, people involved in their local historical societies, executive directors at historic sites in the area, designers and illustrators, and many more registered so far.
- Geographically, most are from New England. We also have one person attending from NYC and two students from distant lands, Saudi Arabia and Australia.
- And to be clear, no camping required. IBM in Cambridge has generously opened up their new space for the day.
Questions, Answered
Lee Wright, founder of The History List, and one of the people behind this new event, answers some questions:
What can people expect?
We'll get together in the morning, finalize the schedule--people can submit topics that morning--and then we'll head to the rooms for the presentations. Several sessions will be going in parallel. Each will last around 40 minutes, including discussion. Most are individual presentations, though there are couple of joint presentations and a few panels.
The topics fall generally into these categories: Historical accounts, research methods, grad programs, publishing, careers, and managing historic sites and history organizations.
A few examples:
- "The Boston Bankruptcy That Led to the American Revolution"
- "John Singleton Copley in America: What is Real and What Imagined in the Iconic Portraits of Patriots and Tories?"
- "How the Patriots Almost Lost the Battle of Saratoga: Yankee-Yorker Jealousy in the Commissary Department"
- "Becoming a Historian: How to Apply to and What to Expect in Graduate School"
- “Bring History to the Classroom: Marketing your Historical Society or Museum to Teachers"
- “The Temperance Movement: A Doorway to Suffrage"
- "Becoming a published author: Panel discussion with authors and publishers on different mediums and models"
- "NodeXL Workshop: Using Social Network Analysis in History"
- "Crowdsourcing Possibilities Relating to a Collection of Revolutionary-era Newspapers"
We'll wrap up around 5 or 6 pm, and then some of us are headed to the Old State House for the annual reenactment of the Boston Massacre, which is taking place that evening.
Is any of this going to be available after the event?
We'll tweet out updates using #HistoryCamp and will ask presenters to post their slides to Slideshare with that same hashtag. We'll also link to them from the list of presentations on the event wiki (www.HistoryCamp.org).
Why the unconference (or "barcamp") format?
It's a self-organizing conference or a user-generated conference. The format came from the tech world. The first one was held in 2005 in Palo Alto, and since that time, barcamps have been held in more than 350 cities around the world. A few are specific, such as focusing on health; most are open to any topic.
I attended Boston Barcamp at MIT a couple of years ago and found the format really compelling, with topics from the arcane and highly-technical to the creative and intriguing. "An Open Source Approach to Redistricting" was one memorable session title. Some people were talking on a topic for the first time, others were world-renown experts. I walked into one session and here was Stephen Wolfram giving a talk, just like anyone else that day.
It struck me as very democratic. Anyone could propose a topic. If people were interested, they attended. If they walked in and it wasn't what they expected, they quietly stepped out and found another session.
Because it was free--people could donate if they wished--and on held on a weekend, anyone could attend.
It also allowed us to move quickly. We discussed the idea in November, put up the event wiki in December, in January got confirmation from IBM of them donating the space, registration opened in late January, and the event is March 8.
And we chose the name "History Camp" because we thought that "History Barcamp" might be too much of a head-scratcher for people who weren't familiar with the barcamp approach.
What got this going?
Todd Andrlik, author of "Reporting the Revolutionary War" and editor of the "Journal of the American Revolution" (www.AllThingsLiberty.com) held an informal gathering of Revolutionary War era history buffs--a "RevWar Schmoozer"--in November that brought together an interesting cross-section of people. It was a lot of fun, and on the way to the T that night, I asked John Bell, author of Boston 1775 (http://boston1775.blogspot.com/) what he thought about doing an all-day event dedicated to history, which was an idea I'd been kicking around for some time.
A few weeks later at a reception following a talk by Nathaniel Philbrick, John and I talked about it more and Sam Forman, author of "Dr. Joseph Warren" joined in. Shortly after that, Liz Covert, author of the UncommonPlaceBook.com blog said she'd participate.
That gave us a core group of presenters, most importantly, and they also happened to have followers who we thought would also be interested.
Is this going to be an annual event?
No idea at this point. It depends on what people want to do. It's all volunteers. I do hope that others elsewhere consider this format and hold a similar gathering in their community.
Where do people go to register or sign up to speak?
To register: http://historycamp.eventbrite.com.
And to sign up to speak, add your name and topic to the event wiki: www.HistoryCamp.org.
If there are other questions, people can contact us: Press@HistoryCamp.org.
Downloads
Flyer--new logo--2-15-14.pdf
