Bootcamps

AS OF RIGHT NOW, BOTH THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO AND RYERSON’S BOOTCAMPS ARE FULL. THERE ARE A FEW SPACES LEFT IN UOIT’S BOOTCAMP, SO SIGN UP TODAY!

Ryerson University Bootcamp

How to Build a Born-Digital Project from the Ground Up

Presenters:
Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, Co-PI of The Yellow Nineties Online, in collaboration with the Yellow Nineties Online research team

Date: Friday October 21st, 9:00AM – 5:00 PM

Location: The Centre for Digital Humanities, 111 Gerrard St., Toronto, 2nd floor

Enrollment limit: 25

Do you have an idea for a born-digital project but aren’t sure what’s involved or how to begin? This introductory BootCamp will provide step-by-step details about how to develop and sustain a digital project even if you don’t have lots of funding, advanced technological expertise, or the latest equipment. Drawing on our experience developing The Yellow Nineties Online, we have designed an interactive and collaborative presentation targeting the following key areas:
1) Establishing the Ground;
2) Building a Team and Expertise;
3) Working Collaboratively; and
4) Building an Infrastructure.
Registrants will be asked to complete a brief questionnaire in advance identifying their digital project idea and the problem or stumbling block they’re facing.

University of Ontario Institute of Technology Bootcamp

New Methodologies in Digital Data Analysis

Date: Friday October 21st, 9:00AM – 5:00 PM

Location: UA Building, 2000 Simcoe St. N, Oshawa

Enrollment limit: 35

Morning: Text Analysis with Visualization Tools

Presenter: Christopher Collins, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Science, UOIT & SHARCNet Research Chair in Information Visualization

Franco Moretti, in his visionary (but controversial) book Graphs, Maps, and Trees advocates for a process of “distant reading” to bring statistical and chart-based analysis to humanities research. In this BootCamp, we will introduce web-based tools for creating interactive visualizations of text – tools which use linguistic analysis, visualization, and interactivity to support the process of ‘distant reading’ or high-level text analysis. As the amount of text data available online grows – from digitized historical books to blog posts, tools to support large-scale text analysis are becoming more and more valuable. Visualizations of text can reveal emotional content, topic changes over time, common phrases, and more.

In this BootCamp we will discuss the types of questions which can be answered by interactive text visualizations, we will walk through the process of uploading one’s own data and using a variety of available tools, and we will introduce some of the available prototyping tools which can be used to create new visualizations.
This BootCamp will equip participants with:

    • An understanding of the importance and applicability of information visualization techniques to humanities research;
    • Knowledge of the basic principles of information visualization theory;
    • The ability to identify appropriate visualization software and techniques that are available for immediate use and for prototyping;
    • A working knowledge of research to date in the area of text visualization.

Afternoon: Uncovering the Hidden Storylines in Digital Data Analysis

Presenters:
Dr. Tess Pierce, Digital Life Research Group, UOIT
John Fentum, Resolution Research – reLogic

The afternoon session will demonstrate reLogic, a cloud-based methodology that targets and identifies information that is often hidden in digital dialogues (the kind of stuff traditional searches alone can’t find). We will show you how to analyze digital data to discover the hidden storylines, themes, and patterns of behavior within real-time social media interactions in a time-efficient way unavailable to researchers until now; to not only answer those who, what, when, and where, questions but also to understand “why” these queries are significant and relevant.

reLogic is suitable for all types of research projects focused on data hidden in, for example, social media (such as Facebook, and Twitter), marketing analysis, research and development notes, “voice of customer” data (call-center records, service requests, blogs, field reports, customer satisfaction surveys, etc.), internet content (customer product reviews, competitor information, social networking, eCommerce footprints, etc.), legal documents, and government and corporate filings.

This cloud-based data processing and analytical tool enables you to harness the power of human intelligence, experience and expertise to produce powerful knowledge and scholarship. Our applications expose the relationships between all your data points, structured & unstructured alike, to a level of analysis not possible with conventional data mining.

University of Toronto Bootcamp

Building a Dynamic Website with Drupal

Presenters:
Andrew McAlorum, Digital Projects Librarian, Information Technology Services (ITS), University of Toronto Libraries
Ken Yang, Digital Humanities Application Programmer Analyst, ITS, University of Toronto Libraries

Date: Friday October 21st, 9:00AM – 4:00 PM

Location: Map and Data Library Computer Lab, 5031 Robarts Library (across from public elevator on 5th floor), 130 St. George St., Toronto

Enrollment limit: 20

Prerequisite: A keen desire to learn Drupal. Experience with web development is helpful but not required.

This bootcamp will cover everything a beginner needs to know to build a dynamic website for your Digital Humanities project using Drupal. You’ll learn how to get started with Drupal by building a simple website step-by-step that takes advantage of most aspects of the core Drupal framework and a selection of must-have modules.

What you will learn:

    – Basic setup and configuration
    – Creating, editing, and moderating content
    – Adding users, creating roles, and setting permissions
    – Installing and enabling modules to extend functionality
    – Create custom Content Types
    – Taxonomies to manage tagging and categorization of content
    – Add menus, edit existing menus, and reorganize menu links
    – The powerful query builder Views to fetch and display content
    – Blocks to configure what content appears in your site’s sidebars and other areas.
    – Set up a user friendly environment with a WYSIWYG text editor
    – Basic theming
    – Introduction to module development
    – Understanding the Drupal API
    – Drupal’s hook system

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