Founders Quest

Mobile is a hot topic and I’m particularly interested in ways in which mobile tech can be used to engage audiences in community and cultural sites. It looks like we’ll have both content experts, informal educators, and mobile tech solutions represented (e.g. GPTrex, NextExitHistory, etc.), so this could be a great discussion.

It’s easy to connect digital content or “next steps” via QR codes, Google Earth, and such. How do we take the next step to use this great mobile tech to get folks to actually interact with the resource(s) in front of them? How do we extend this experience beyond the itty bitty smartphone screen? How do we attract and engage folks in learning? How do we give them more to explore?

I have seen a lot of success with using games to engage learners (e.g. UNC Chapel Hill’s Games4Learning program). I would love to hear how others approach this challenge.

With my participation in THATCamp, my hope is that we can find ways to link the digital aspect to public history initiatives. Within my time in the Public History program at UCF, I’ve discovered new and interesting ways to link the two, such as social media and Omeka. I’m hoping that we can explore ways of promotion/marketing and figure out ways to create a positive and useful relationship between the digital and the historical. Recently, this was utilized in a project regarding the Sanford Student Museum, in which myself and another graduate student used Omeka, Twitter, and Facebook in an effort to create more visibility and community building. A workshop focusing on the creative use of these digital tools to market and establish more emotional connections to historical buildings, museums, etc. could be quite helpful.

My path to participating in THATCamp Florida 2012 started in writing a business plan for investors that acquired a concept I developed of counting heartbeats while doing positive activities.

Over the last 3 years we have collected over 63 million heartbeats from people doing positive activities in over 42 Countries and 262 Cities including some of the following activities:

• Conducted several successful live town hall webcasts for important causes such as Childhood Obesity and Autism.
• Selected as 1 of 5 of the most innovative concepts to better our communities at the Gov 2.0 Expo 2010 Nonprofit Pavilion in Washington DC.
• Participated on World Heart Federation’s World Heart Day 2009 and 2010.
• Developed a Biofeedback Heartbeats counting application with coherence tracking heart sensor information to objectively measure human activities.
• Just wrote and self-published a Children’s Book Called Journey To Lushland about the subject.

Now, we are embarking on a most ambitious project to facilitate a widespread social movement counting heartbeats while chronicling one billion plus stories of happier and healthier lives.

My research led me to the Digital Humanities organization to explore ways of recording accurately these heartbeat stories that we hope will weave the positive mosaic of humanity to be studied and appreciated one hundred plus years from today.

I look forward to gaining more knowledge about the field of Digital Humanities at THATCamp Florida 2012 and apply that toward:

• Collecting heartbeats stories as a form of measuring Gross National Happiness that is a multi-billion dollar industry touching virtually all aspects of consumer, business, health, fitness, governments and local/national/global economics.
• Developing new market sponsorship opportunities for organizations for brands research and loyalty, ultimately attracting and retaining new customers and producing happier, healthier and productive professionals.
• Developing digital applications to assist in the pursuit of happiness for all humans to have total control over every aspect of their lives.
• Creating one of the best social enterprise models that will provide funding for proven directed Donor Advisor Funds to maximize long term community-based philanthropy.
• Including worldwide participation from anyone with a heartbeat including over 7 billion people and growing in over 225,000 communities and millions of organizations.
• Using next generation technology to display real-time heartbeat counters on digital signage marquee areas such as airports, malls, prime public foot traffic areas, hospitals and houses of worship.

I look forward to meeting with all of you and participating in your areas of interests.

I propose a session where we discuss the social/organizational aspects of digital humanities collaborations. The goals would be to share our own experiences of collaborating and to consolidate some advice for scholars seeking to build new research partnerships in the digital humanities. We could explore, for example:

1. When do you work collaboratively?
2. How do collaborations arise? How do you seek out and engage collaborators?
3. How do you articulate points of intersection between a humanities research question and the research interests/expertise of scholars in other disciplines (including computer scientists)?
4. What is needed to sustain a successful collaboration?
5. How can collaborative work be disseminated effectively?

I would like to initiate a session in which we tackle writing code for some new Zotero translators.  I am interested in creating a few web translators for sites that I use in my research and teaching that are currently not supported by existing Zotero translators, and would love to engage with others who might be interested in creating one/some for their own favorite sites that are not covered.