For the past week or so, I have followed the tweets from two conferences: Digital Humanities 09 and That Camp (An “unconference” Here is a good explanation of what that means). Due to some monetary constraints, I was unable to attend but could follow what was happening in real time due to the massive amount of posts on Twitter by attendees via the hash tags #dh09 and #thatcamp. I was able to interact with them, comment on what was happening along side, and meet new friends and Twitter followers.

Twitter has really changed conferences. For years I have always kicked myself when I miss an interesting conference. Live blogging has made this less painful, but real time coverage on Twitter really changes how people not even at the conference can interact with presenters and attendees. I was definitely not the only non-attendee commenting and asking questions to people in attendance.

Soon, I will have a number of posts commenting on topics I read about on the #dh09 and #thatcamp tags. For now, the notes Digilib posted for various panels is a good place to start. After this week’s discourse, I am more proud of the Digital Humanities than I have ever been before; clearly this was the right direction for me to take and I hope to begin a career in it soon.