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In at least two fields that I know of, practitioners make conscious use of documented patterns. You can’t swing a chicken without hitting them in the software and web development worlds, from the Gang of Four book to Yahoo’s design pattern library, perhaps throwing Twitter Bootstrap into the mix. Architecture holds a place as the development of the first pattern language I know of, Christopher Alexander’s “A Pattern Language”, but maybe there are earlier antecedents.

What would it mean to create a bootstrapping set of patterns for DH projects? Miriam Posner wrote a moderately high-level version of one, as did Paige C. Morgan. How can we build on or further atomize these beginnings? Certainly, I’m not talking about prescribing all the steps of a project, but Alexander never claimed that houses should all be cookie-cutter either. I assert, though, that a set of patterns could help new entrants to DH make early projects, could help with prototyping more ambitious projects, and could raise the bar in general. I’m optimistic enough about our abilities that I think we can describe patterns at different scales than Morgan and Posner, but also optimistic about humanities scholarship that we will always be undertaking projects that are beyond simple patterns.

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I'd like to propose a show-and-tell session for people who are making maps or want to get started with them. Anyone who wants to participate can spend a few minutes showing a map they made—and preferably, actually rendering the map in front of everyone else. Hopefully we'll have a diversity of mapping methods which will give us a quick overview of the possibilities. Then for the remainder of the session, we'll talk about what was interesting in the maps we saw, and how to make them. Perhaps we'll break up into smaller groups so that mapping masters can give impromptu tutorials to beginners. By bringing together all the mapmakers into one place, I hope people will also be able to find someone who has already solved some of the problems they're facing.

If the scheduling crowd preferred, we could make this session more general, and turn it into a data analysis showcase. 

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In her contribution to <em>Debates in the Digital Humanities</em>, Lisa Spiro called for <a href=”dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/13“>”Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities.”</a> This session proposal stems from a question I recently asked on Twitter: Has anyone followed up on this idea? I received answers indicating that no explicit, wide-ranging response has been undertaken, though some (individual, small-group, institutional) value statements do exist. The discussion on Twitter also indicates that there is interest in pursuing the question further.

I propose to build a platform for promoting, collecting, and showcasing DH values statements, to be hosted by the UConn Scholars’ Collaborative and open to the entire DH community.

Here are some initial questions that I have to get us started:
<ul>
<li>What is the best type of platform for this project (e.g. wiki, collective blog)?</li>
<li>What are the values we might adopt as a group creating this platform–values that can serve as one contribution to the project?</li>
<li>How will we promote this project and gather contributions?</li>
</ul>
These are only a few questions, and I’m interested to see what others come up with as we discuss, plan, and get this project started at THATCamp.