By Tawnya Ravy
Hello GW English Grads! You may remember a few months ago a
small contingent of GW Eng-Grads attending a weekend conference called ThatCamp
(you can read about our adventures here)
following our department’s first Digital Humanities graduate class (taught by
Dr. Alex Huang). Well our Digital Humanities education continues with Rails Girls, a group that aims to give tools
and a community to women who are interested in technology. We actually learned
about the noble goals of Rails Girls (closing the coding gender gap) at ThatCamp in June. One of our questions at
ThatCamp was “how can we learn how to code?” In addition to other resources
(like Code Academy), Rails Girls was
championed as an excellent opportunity to stretch our newbie skills with
digital tools. We all applied for the Rails Girls event hosted at George Mason
University on September 6-7. A few weeks after submitting our applications
(basically consisting of information on our level of knowledge of coding), we
received notice of acceptance to the event with instructions for setting up our
computers in preparation for the event. The first night was simply a set-up
party designed to help folks who wanted help setting up their laptops with the
software, and to meet the organizers and other participants. The following day we began
to code. Upon arriving in the research hall we were sorted to different tables
named for different characters in Alice in Wonderland (in honor of the DH
theme) where we met the others in our group and our table coaches. Right away
we got a short tutorial on various simple commands and their meaning – we even
learned our first coding joke: rm-fr (a command which strikes fear into the
hearts of programmers). Then we were instructed to follow a set of exercises
designed to teach us some basics called 100 Minutes of Ruby. For the next hour
we had our coach chair-hopping to help us, soothe our initial frustration, and
fill in the instructional gaps. Let me stress that many of us were complete
newbies at all of this – I didn’t even know how to open a command line to
start. By the end of the hour I understood some of the basic rules of this
little universe, and only felt slightly overwhelmed. Then we switched to the
Ruby guide for creating an app. This guide gave us line-by-line instructions on
how to build an app that allowed us to open a twitter line, plot an address on
a map, and much more (much of which I did not even get to by the end of the
day). This is the part for me with the steepest learning curve. It was,
however, very satisfying when it all worked the way it was supposed to. I was
even able to fix a problem by myself after an hour of calling over my coach
every few minutes. Finally we took a break for lunch which consisted of two
amazing tacos from a food truck that was pulled up right to our building just
for us. We all sat on the building steps, ate tacos, and talked about our
Digital Humanities projects. After lunch we had a quick presentation on how web
apps fit together in a Bentobox like model. The rest of the afternoon we had an
option of either continuing with our apps and exploring the extra features or
joining groups to discuss different digital tools for DH projects. For example,
I joined the mapping tool table, but there were also tables for data-mining and
collections. We discussed already established mapping tools like GoogleMaps,
DIS, and Neatline, and then we engaged in a thought-exercise in how we would go
about designing and building a map app of our own (for finding tacos appropriately
enough). Soon enough it was time for the Rails Girls Reception at the campus
inn bar. We all had “drink me” tickets for a free glass of wine or beer, and
many of us stuck around to discuss our DH projects and coding ambitions. I met
so many amazing women, had a wonderful learning experience, and came away with a great
appreciation for programming. I fully intend on participating in another Rails
Girls event and checking out Code Academy when I get a chance. Rails Girls also organizes Meet Up events and online forums to turn to for support and advice. Even if I never
build an app from scratch, I can see how useful this instruction can be for me
in developing and expanding my DH project. Do you have a favorite DH tool you
wish you could manipulate? Wordpress? Omeka? Find out the kind of code they use
and take advantage of these incredible opportunities to learn code and become a
member of this vibrant community of techies.
Interested in exploring the digital humanities in your own
scholarly work? Join us next at our inaugural GW Eng-Grad Digital Humanities
Working Group on Wednesday September 18th 11:00am at The Corner Bakery. Hope to
see you then!
