Bottoms up! Maine’s first THATCamp 7-10 October

Using a 3-D printer. Custom-styling a WordPress blog. Growing your own medicine. Conducting a social media campaign with YouTube and Twitter.

Is there a skill you wanted to learn but haven’t found the teacher or time to learn it? Create your own class in exactly what you want to learn at this year’s Digital Humanities Week at the University of Maine, which takes place Monday through Thursday 7-10 October. Sponsored by the New Media Department Correll Fund, Humanities Initiative, and CA/DLS, this year’s Digital Humanities Week will be Maine’s first THATCamp.

A THATCamp is a conference that’s organized upside down. The participants who show up, rather than the organizers, decide what to discuss and what to learn.

In the first hour of a typical THATCamp, the participants write a topic that interests them on a piece of paper and post it on the wall. Then everyone adds a sticker to the topics that most interest her or him. Participants then form working groups around the most popular topics, be they activism, programming, or starting a new business.

In our version of this “unconference,” we’ll try to streamline the process of selecting a topic by inviting participants to register their ideas in advance. You can register for free at the conference Web site.

In addition to the participant-centered THATCamp portion of the conference, the 2013 Digital Humanities Week also gathers distinguished experts from a variety of fields, including digital historians, technology experts, and museum experts. Taking place in the brand-new Innovative Media Research and Commercialization building, the conference will also take advantage of IMRC‘s cutting edge tools, Including laser engravers, CNC routers, and 3-D printers.

The conference is coordinated by U-Me’s post-doctoral Fellow in the Digital Humanities Christopher Ohge with help from Still Water and the Digital Curation program. Events are free and open to all visitors.