These past two weeks, I have been at the DHSI (Digital Humanities Summer Institute) conference. It’s not the easiest experience to describe. There are classes, colloquiums, guest speakers, talks called “unconferences”, presentations, and hangouts. The participants by a vast majority are grad students and above. In each of my classes, I’ve had a nice mix of grad students, phd students,  full on professors, and a few others. I think it’s safe to say it’s a mostly academic-minded conference, though there is definitely value for non-academics with an interest in digital humanities as well. Something that I found absolutely fantastic is that there was a significant lack of barriers or separation by academic group (ie. if I wished, as an undergrad, I could go to dinner with a professor, a phd student, and a masters student with no weird separation or awkwardness in discussion that one tends to experience otherwise). All in all, a fantastic experience – I learned quite a lot, and gained a ton of inspiration for the future.

The first class I took was 3D modeling, which was essentially intro to SketchUp. We made a nice replica of a building in downtown Victoria:

Here’s the front:

I worked mostly on the back:

I think it all turned out pretty well, for a small group of people who had never used SketchUp before.

The people in this course, by the way, were awesome – Among getting encouraged to become a medievalist, I was able to get a lot of advice and interest about my project, and my impostor syndrome melted away the more I spoke with people.

This second course, Games for Digital Humanists, I decided to take because it’s super relevant to my project, and also, vidja gams are cool. The first day of the course inspired me with many ideas for awesome blog posts, which of course I will obviously  write as soon as I have time and my brain isn’t melting (which, by the way, is why I haven’t been keeping up with the weekly updates).

The first few days were spent working on some fascinating theory (I sense a lot of reading in my future), and then the class split into groups. The instructors of this course invented a game to create games, and so we played this game to come up with a game design. It’s really neat – the last time they taught this course one of the groups took their idea to a kickstarter! (It got fully funded, too). The idea we prototyped was a storytelling game along the same lines as dix-it (fantastic game, by the way, especially with the right people). A group of players draw one protagonist card and one setting card. Then a timer is set and one player draws a “bad” card and has to say a line or two of a story (using the setting and protag) while trying to put a good spin on the bad card. The next player then draws a bad card and does the same thing, trying to build off the previous player’s story bit. The end goal is to make the story end on a happy note.

Messy design process (complete with fish)!

We made paper cards and playtested a few rounds – not bad! Something I’d try with the right group of people. I don’t think we’ll be making any kickstarters, though we learned a lot. It was essentially a super short project process, complete with bumps and hurdles. Not a bad ending for just a few days. I also was able to ask some advice about my project from the instructors, and I have a much clearer idea of a timeline and the project’s overall future than I did before.

I feel like I have grown a lot from this trip. Here’s hoping the return trip to the US goes well!