It’s hard to believe, but the Digital Cultural Heritage D.C. Meetup is coming up on its 6th Birthday. Starting in September of 2012, the Meetup has hosted more than 60 events with more than 100 speakers. What started out as an event launched and coordinated by four folks shifted over time to be coordinated by myself and Atiba. In an effort to make the group more open and transparent and more sustainable, we’ve decided to try and slightly formalize the process for coordinating the group and invite others into the circle to coordinate this. To that end, we are announcing an opportunity for members of the D.C. Digital Cultural Heritage Community to join the two of us as members of the DCHDC Board.
What Will the DCHDC Board Be?
The DCHDC Board will be a a new group that will meet quarterly to coordinate planning the meetup. The core part of this involves coordinating with lightning talk speakers and being on hand for many of the meetups. Beyond that, there are also lots of other potential directions this could go. The group could try out any number of new things too.
Why You Want to Consider Volunteering for the DCHDC Board
We’ve gotten a lot out of helping coordinate these events. It’s a great community, and it’s a great way to learn about and network with other professionals in the area. We imagine this could be a particularly good way for some early career or graduate students in the area to get involved and get some experience coordinating and running this kind of programing.
What Participating as a DCHDC Board Member Entails
We imagine the board commitment working as follows. Each member will;
- Participate in quarterly face-to-face board meetings to check in on things and work out a plan for the coming quarter.
- Sign on for one or two year terms with the ability to stay on or rotate off.
- Take the lead on programing at least 2 of the meetups each year, including picking a theme and wrangling a set of speakers.
- Come to as many of the meetups as they can make it to, but commit to being at at least 2-3 of the meetups to help facilitate (ideally including the meetups they have programmed).
- Envision, propose, and implement any new ideas for ways to further develop the community.
How to Volunteer for Consideration for the Board
Send Atiba and me an email before November 1st with the following (akpertilla & trevor.johnowens each respectively @gmail.com.)
- A short bio or a link to your bio online
- A few sentences about your interest in participating and any ideas you might have for the group (potential themes/speakers and any other ideas you’ve got)
- Confirm if you would like to sign on to do this for one year or for two.
Plan and Next Steps
We are currently planning out the last set of meetups for the year and our idea is to bring this group together for a meeting in January. So we imagine that the first of these meetings would take place in January.