Tasha Personal Log: Week 1 – Rolling the Snowball

Well, that’s week 1 done! I’ll admit, it was harder than I thought it would be. I feel like when I proposed this project, I felt like I had quite a bit figured out, that it would be simple and straightforward. Research, figure out the back-end based on the results, figure out the front-end based on the back-end table. Show the WBENA our progress along the way, and put one foot in front of the other. Of course, once the project was green-lit, I realized that it wouldn’t be nearly so objective. There was quite a bit that I hadn’t fully figured out yet, including but not limited to:

  • What’s the scope of the website beyond this semester?
  • How can we ensure the themes of this project are properly represented?
  • Are we sure about the name?
  • Are we sure about the software?
  • What plan do you have for disagreements other than “negotiate”?

As such, calling the first meeting was tricky for me. Since it was the first meeting, and we had more introspective matters to discuss, I wasn’t always sure where to start. I went through our (very helpful!) feedback and at times struggled to come up with actionable items (or concise conversation) for some of the more reflective items. I definitely felt the weight of everything to come and, frankly, feared that I was falling behind, which is not great when you’re the project lead.

Which, of course, leads me to my first Lesson of the Week (TM) – You’re on a team for a reason! It’s easy to get lost in what lies ahead and feel like you should have done more, but being a project lead does not mean that you’re a monolith who needs to have absolutely everything figured out. I reminded myself that we had all done so much this week, coming together, setting up our communication methods, getting organized, finding people to add to our networks, starting our official correspondence with Teryn and the WBENA, submitting edits, formulating agreements, the list goes on. Bandurapedia (keep an eye out for the new name) was only theoretical last week – now it has a release date and has begun pre-production!  I’m grateful for everyone on my team for their skills, energy, and perspectives. We’ve still got a lot ahead of us, but we’ve made great first steps. And I remind myself that part of being on a team is trusting your teammates to talk to you rather than fretting over start of project anxieties.

And hey, now that we’ve started, I feel better about calling future meetings. Newton’s first law, right? A team in motion will stay in motion, even if we hit logistical bumps along the way.

I’m also very excited as tomorrow night right after class we are having our first official project discussion with the WBENA board! It’s all becoming so real.

And so it begins. . .

 

 

Personal Blog I

I would describe last week’s class as, the evolution of an idea turning into reality. Last semester, I went into an Intro to Digital Humanities class without a topic and a very rudimentary foundation for making a project of this scale. Now, I have a solid team, an interesting topic (Gender Dispartity in Professional Wrestling, aka GDPW ), and a much better understanding of what DH is and how to use the tools, or at least know they exist. Though these two sentences describe the start and present of my experience, it doesn’t capture all the work, changes, and struggles that evolved a simple idea over time, week after week, reading after reading into what it is today and what it will look like at the end of this semester. Working among peers who are as dedicated as I am to making the GDPW project a reality means a lot to me. Their contribution to our project will allow us to share this experience as we advance.

The GDPW began as such a large-scale idea that needed to be trimmed to accommodate the short time frame. It was huge, focusing on various global promotions, other topics of disparity in the world of professional wrestling, and the inclusion of LGBTQ+ wrestlers. At one point, the title was rustic, called Using Data to Analyze the Matches Differences between Male and Females in Professional Wrestling, aka UDAMDMFPW. That’s a mouthful. Now, it has a shorter title, a catchier name, and a catchy acronym, GDPW. Deciding what to keep in the project and what to cut from it proved as difficult as coming up with a new title. So much was left out, but still enough to create something from nothing.

This journey has been a long one, and it is still not over. After my project was selected, I felt both relief and sadness. I am relieved because I am part of a project I know plenty about, and all the roles being adequately allocated by classmates I know are more than qualified for their positions on this project. I am sad because now I have to consider another capstone idea. Regardless of that initial sadness, I have begun dwelling on possible new topics in professional wrestling with a DH twist. Still, for the moment, I am dedicating my full time to managing and leading my team for the big showcase event.

Currently, we are using Signal to communicate and share Google Drive to upload notes, research, data, and account information. Everyone has been pitching new ideas, and we hope we have enough time to submit our revised Research Proposal with all these new changes and additional research.

Lesson from Week 1 – Personal Blog Post

Meeting with the team was super helpful this week, it was really nice to touch base, finish up some items from class, and to get to know the team a bit better.

We were able to work out the details of our group and discussed future times to meet. Kelly got us organized and using tools like google drive to set up notes, project proposal, and other files all in one place. With her agenda for the meeting with hit many of the points in Rockwell’s quick guide to working in teams.

Without looking into this week’s readings, our team hit some of the advice given. Getting to know each other, team building, and laying the groundwork on how we will make tough decisions. The readings tied nicely into our first personal blog posts. It was cool to read the process of One Week One Tool and their day to day. It was a reminder that the importance of the class is the process of creating a tool, the team building, and the skills we will learn along the way, not necessarily the product that comes out of this class.

I am looking forward to getting to know my team better, to dive into the work of the project, and to continue to learn from our professor, my other classmates, and the digital fellows throughout the semester.

Personal Journal Entry – 2/10/2025

This week we voted on which projects we would make this semester. I’m interested in archiving and digital exhibits, so I was initially drawn to Tasha’s proposal “Bandurapedia” and thrilled when a group started to coalesce around the project. I am taking on a researcher/outreach co-role with Lini. I’m looking forward to learning some development and UX skills from shadowing Alex and Tasha.

In our first zoom meeting at the end of last week we tossed around new names for the project, discussed how to revise the proposal, and the collaborators agreement. I volunteered to start looking for a professor or doctoral student who could advise us. There is a professor in the CUNY Grad Center’s Ethnomusicology department who I thought could be a good fit, but her area of expertise is South Eastern Europe, which does not include Ukraine. Lini reached out to a friend who recommended we connect with a Bard professor – Dr. Sonevytsky, who specializes in post-Soviet Ukraine and music. This is a great recommendation and based on her bio I think it’d be a really exciting opportunity for us if we get to talk to her. I am anxious to reach out to her – I am sure she’s very busy with her own projects, course load, etc. and since she is outside of our institution I feel like even more of an imposition. I have drafted an email to her that I want to go over with my teammates. I thought that my outreach skills were fairly strong, but I am finding this email intimidating and feeling frustrated by my lack of confidence. Too vulnerable?

Right now we’re keeping a shared google drive and communicating via signal. From this weeks reading/resources I hope we can add a project management tool like Trello or Asana to our arsenal. I feel a sense of anxious anticipation as we begin this project. Ultimately, I’m really excited to be working with Alex, Lini, and Tasha and I can’t wait to grow and learn alongside them this semester.

Personal Blog #1 – The Beginning

The process of finalizing three projects from six strong pitches was not easy, but there was a helpful air of generosity and a sense of community in the room. There was no time to dwell on the outcome as we immediately settled into our groups and in project Bandurapedia we had a quick yet fruitful discussion on roles and responsibilities. I took on the role of one of the two researchers and I will also help create content for outreach as well as shadow the Frontend/Backend programmers to satiate my interest in coding. The team agreed to share weekly reporting responsibilities by making individual entries to a shared document so the project manager had the information available for compilation. Given that each member will be taking on multiple roles, it is crucial to find ways to share the load as evenly as possible so we can meet the timelines we set ourselves.

In the past week, we set up communication channels (Signal/ google drive folders), had our first meeting over zoom and set up action items to address the proposal feedback, revision process, platform selection and collaborative agreement. We discussed options for an alternate project name since Bandurapedia indicated a larger scope than the project’s current focus on the Women’s Bandura Ensemble of North America. This also brought us to one of the major dependencies of the project that requires WBENA approval for all the content, a known risk that is acceptable considering the project’s determination to feature the community’s voice and build trust in the spirit of the slow archives approach. To mitigate the risk to the extent possible, we decided to work on an agreement with WBENA to assure transparency through the cycle, settle on conflict resolution strategies and seek early approval of prepared wireframes of the webpages. We have also set up our introductory meeting with WBENA.

The stage is now set for revising the proposal, finalizing roles and getting the show on the road. We have a long way to go, but we are coming together as a team. The team members are enthusiastic, positive, generous and there is a heartening spirit of collaboration and cooperation. The start is reassuring.

Recommended reading: One of the readings from the Politics and DH course proposes an ethical visualization workflow that could be useful to all three projects. The advice to follow an ethical approach towards data collection, curation and visualization is explained through the comparison of two projects. The approach advocating for transparency to convey the veracity of the data sources and due care to avoid biases could be particularly beneficial to the GDPW project and data normalization suggestions could be useful to consider for the carousel project if they decide to go ahead with recommending geographical areas for new carousels.

Tasha Hutnick – Skillset

Developer / Programmer – Strong – I have quite a bit of programming experience under my belt, including: Jekyll, Wax, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React/Node.js/PostgreSQL, Python, Ren’Py, WordPress, dash of Ruby on Rails, and deployment to GitHub Pages / Heroku. I’m a little rusty on some of the above languages (see React/Node/Postgres and Ruby on Rails), but always eager to learn.

Project Management – Strong – I have worked in email marketing for almost four years now and in that time have worked on quite a few tests / specialty campaigns where I needed to keep track of several moving parts and make sure the campaign got from Team A to Team B to Team Z to Team A to deployment.I’m familiar with keeping a project organized, checking in, and adapting to changes in circumstance.

Editing – Very Good – If you hand me a paper to proofread I will return it riddled with suggestions / revisions.

Research – Pretty Good – happy to hunt through libraries, dig through bibliographies, and game search terms until I can get another piece of the mystery (I blame growing up on Nancy Drew games).

Art / Graphics – Okay, would like to learn more – I’ve created assets for personal projects / done front-end development work before, but I wouldn’t say I’m particularly polished. Would love to learn more!

Data Analysis – Eh. –  I don’t have a lot experience in this area, but happy to learn!

Social Media – … Please don’t – I don’t call myself a social media hermit (for the most part) for nothing.

Carla’s Skill Set

I am a consultant for the Administration of Child Services, my daily job duties focus on recruitment from child welfare partnering agencies. I am also a hairstylist at a beauty salon and bridal agency and use social media to promote my work and grow my clientele.

  • Project & Stakeholder Coordination: Experienced in managing large-scale training programs, collaborating with internal and external stakeholders to ensure smooth implementation and adoption. This skill would be transferable for any project, to foster partnerships and manage any platform.
  • Data Analysis & Reporting: Skilled in monitoring participation trends, tracking user engagement, and leveraging data insights to improve platform performance and user experience.
  • Community Building & Advocacy: Strong relationship management skills, having worked with various agencies to foster engagement and trust.
  • Technical Proficiency: Experienced in Microsoft Office Suite, Stata, and R, taken workshops in html coding, QGIS, and python.
  • Communication & Outreach: Adept at creating strategic communication plans, liaising between different organizations, and addressing user concerns to improve satisfaction and participation.
  • Digital Marketing & Project Growth: Experienced hairstylist who utilizes Instagram to showcase work, engage with followers, and attract new clientele, demonstrating expertise in social media marketing and audience building.

In all, I have extensive experience in project coordination, data-driven decision-making, user engagement, and marketing—key skills for building and managing an online platform.

Elijah’s Skills Set!

Yo Yo, It’s Elijah! I am on my 4th semester in the DH program and work as a data analyst for 2 CUNY undergrad internship programs.

Project management: As part of my job, I lead smaller groups and need to maintain a sense of order by making data-driven choices. This is not something I would particularly like to grow but it is something I do not mind doing. I have proficient use of project tracking tools, like Asana to keep track of all the things I do at work. 

Developer: I would like to practice and expand my skills in this area, I have taken a few software labs including JavaScript, JS.D3, and Tableau. I also taught myself Python and SQL for data analysis which may come in handy when dealing with complex data. 

Design/UX: I am at a 3/5 proficiency with UX/Design, I do make a lot of data-based presentations for my team and always have an approach to usability and understandability when designing.

Outreach/Social media: I am on a break of social media, but my writing skills are not the greatest, as I am a person of not so many words. 

Documentation: Not my favorite but I can do it, I have to do this for work to ensure the work is replicable and we all understand what each system does.

Research & writing: I think I like more of a researcher than a writer, gathering information is fun to me (I am a gemini), but it is an area I can improve in so I am happy to do it if needed.  

Skillsets: A. Millatmal

Hey and salaams y’all. I am in my third semester of the Digital Humanities MA program and work full-time as a software developer working on publishing and content management systems, primarily using React and ProseMirror. I have some previous academic and professional experience in: humanities research, data and statistical analysis, writing and editing, interviewing, and project management.

For various roles we may take on this semester, in order of my experience:

Developer: Proficient. I work full-time as a developer and have experience working both with back-end (Ruby, Python, Node.js) and front-end (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) technologies. My least favorite thing to do in this arena is to figure out project builds and deployment. If I were to work on a project other than my own, I would be willing to support development work but hesitant to take on too, too much on since it is my 9-to-5.

Research/Documentation:  Advanced.  I have experience in research from undergrad, the past two semesters of grad school, as well as professional work in journalism. I also have experience with documentation from my work in software and education. I would feel really comfortable taking on a role in this realm.

Project Manager:  Advanced.  I have a lot of experience with this work from my professional roles and also managing my own creative writing projects I could really enjoy taking on this role for a team, particularly if it is well-structured and defined.

Public Speaking: Advanced. I love public speaking and presenting, and have had stints doing speaking engagements at professional conferences. I would happy to support the team in this.

Outreach/Social Media:  Upper Intermediate.  I used to run social media outreach in for different news orgs; I am very comfortable with drafting outreach with different tones for different audiences. That said: 1) I’m taking a pause from social media and a little ideologically-opposed to having too much of a presence on most platforms these days and 2) I’m doing a lot of this for some personal projects right now, which could possibly make it overwhelming to take on for coursework as well.

Design/UX:  Elementary. Meh. I have some basic design skills and a decent eye, but I don’t really know how to embody design thinking. I can execute the front-end code to implement designs but don’t always love the little fine details of UX problem-solving.