Week 8: DirectHERS

Group Project Update

Previous week’s work: the team has agreed to slightly change the work approach by breaking the team into two sub-teams, one focused on the encoding and the other dedicated to the development of the website. The PM, research lead, and outreach lead work in the first sub-team, and two developers/designers work in the second sub-team.
The former has been putting a lot of effort into the research phase and investigating potential issues that might arise in the longer term, such as citing and copyright problems.
The latter has been designing and building the website containing two sections, one dedicated to the project and its contents and the second centered around creating a search engine prototype.
The outreach planning also continues by creating materials for upcoming promotional campaigns, such as short symposium talks, social media, and on-campus outreach.
What has been achieved: basic XML training, data scraping model, logo, color palette, tag procedure, basic web structure, a shared account for GitHub and social media, and all work plan drafts.

Actions for the team for the next two weeks:
– For the research team: provide the web team with a short summary of the directors they are researching/encoding, plus usable pictures of them (due by March 22);
– For the research team: provide the web team with an XML sample (tentative samples due by March 22 and a pilot sample [one long XML file] of five directors due by March 29);
– For the research team: meet before class on March 22 to generate templates for the customized glossary and XML file. If necessary, meet again before class on March 29 to further polish the templates.
– For the web team: review the XML samples to find any potential errors and feed the information back to the research team. All error records will eventually be posted to the website under resource-the XML tutorial package.
– For the web team: elaborate on the way to replicate one of the suggested websites and prepare the script to host the contents;
– For everyone: explore potential solutions through technical and content perspectives for the fair use/copyright issue brought up by the PM. PM and outreach lead will meet Prof. Jill Cirasella this week to ask for advice.

 

The PM works with the web team in two weeks:
– Decide what contents will make it to the final cut and will be destined to be published on the website.

Home: Key feature info/headline introducing the website’s main purpose

About: Team and project introduction

Research (might need to be separated into different navigation bars, pending team decision): Lab notes/Error records/Tag search/pilot search functionality/useful materials

Inspiration (maybe Explore): connections/inspirations with other existing projects

Get in Touch: Contact info and a place for comment submission

 

WEEK 8 — MORE THAN SURVIVING  PROJECT & TEAM UPDATE

The project has a number of moving parts — with a custom database being developed that will support a timeline, map and front end experience, there’s a lot to come together for the project to be public ready. The early stages of the project have been devoted to solidifying frameworks and processes to bring them to life, and at week 8 we have truly put our project plan in motion. Being able to learn from each other and engage with each person’s expertise (!) and curiosity has been a tremendously engaging and educational experience.  

DESIGN
Estefany is refining our project’s visual identity, pulling cultural references into the final expression. This includes drawing inspiration from the meaning of Wampanoag—People of the First Light. Generally referring to the Wampanoag’s location on the East coast where the sun first breaks on Turtle Island, Estefany has also drawn a message of hope and forward thinking, portrayed in a sunrise icon. She is also fine tuning the color palette and font hierarchy that will give our front end expression its unique character. Our intention is to be confident and rooted in positivity and hope. The purple central to her work is being tweaked to move it even closer to the shades that emerge in Wampum, a type of shell with ceremonial significance that was used as currency, adornment, and to capture and record treaties and emotional and spiritual intentions.

Next Steps:
Our intention is to have an agreed upon identity within the next week so we can begin putting it into action across social and to inform the front end design of the website. 

 

RESEARCH
This past week Elizabeth and Majel further ironed out the process for gathering research and transferring it into the database structure. In examining the various types of events and activists that will need to be accounted for, it became apparent that not all of the data could be treated the same in the research process. Decisions about how to group information for the fullest comprehension were taken with our primary audience in mind. It is very important that our visitors can feel the interconnectivity of the narratives that intersect on local, state, and national levels and that the context from which activism emerged is at the forefront. 

This week we’ve created a finite list of activists and selected a representational sampling of  their activities which we can account for in our database. A step-by-step process has been templated in ClickUp, enabling us to distribute the work beyond a single teammate. 


Next Steps
With the process in place we can now build on the existing work and start turning out bios and event write ups to populate the database. This is to be completed by the end of March.  

 

 

TECH
Elizabeth and Zelda have been very busy determining the appropriate platforms, software and framework for our interactive project features: the timeline and the map. Elizabeth, having built out wireframes to demonstrate the functionality of TimelineJS, shared the back end requirements with Zelda. Zelda has now taken these requirements and that of the database environment they are building and written the code that will integrate our local google sheets and the formal hosted database that will eventually sit behind our website. They have walked us through their decisions, and, with new information from the research side, have made adjustments to help properly reflect the stories we are telling. Key decision making on Zelda’s part was to give the local database (where researchers input data), the liaising code and commands with the formal database (housed in google collab), and the formal hosted database (to be developed once the local work is complete) each its own home to ensure there is distinction and clarity of use for future project participants. 

Next Steps
Zelda will be building out the framework for the front end of the site—setting up pages and architecture in preparation for the full build when the visual identity is finalized.  Once research is complete and input into the database we will begin testing the interactive features in earnest.

 

OUTREACH
With a work plan in place and a growing outreach list, Estefany is well situated to kick things off once we have our social channels and eventually the site up and running.

Next Steps
Estefany is meeting with her counterpart Maria from another team to exchange ideas and potential network connections. She’s also started to consider events and a social calendar, but this is secondary to completing the visual design which has a direct impact on our outreach efforts. 

 

MOVING FORWARD
Still on the docket is website copy, social media calendar and asset creation, and outreach. These items will kick off in earnest once the items above have been either completed or in a well developed state. By the end of the month it is our intention that our front end will start to take shape in earnest, and our focus will shift to content creation, outreach, and fine tuning tech as needed.  

Games for our WordPress site (Overbaked)

The concept for the site and the would be general look of website is done as discussed with our team. I have been researching and finding the best methods and games to incorporate in our website. There is a choice of creating the games from scratch using Python and its vast options of supporting Visual tools in creating those needed games, (later we can embed them in our website) or we can use the already tested and created games for wordpress. There are many and the choices and the preferences will be discussed with the group and we will choose the best plugins and/or use combination of Python coding in creating those games to better fit our agenda. We are definitely going to be creating a Bingo game, and I have already communicated the tools and the relevant resources with the wider group and  optionally we also want to create a trivia game, and it will in my opinion add to the fuller experience regarding our final product. There are many options going forwards and we will discuss that with our team.

On the side I am familiar with Python and I will try to create some alternatives for our games but so far we are gravitating towards proven products that already exist and are already tested. I will work  on my Python games to see if they hold up and/or can add to the experience of our website. There are many resources that will help us with that project and everything I do find I put it in our shared google document.

DirectHERS – Week 8 Group Update

During the last few days the team has been deployed on two different fronts, one is the ongoing encoding activity and the other is the construction of the website which will be the used to display some of our work.

Just a reminder, the outcome of the work we are doing is destined to sit “behind the scenes”, which means that the data we are creating will, hopefully, be part of, or contribute to, bigger and more established projects that would have a greater capacity to leverage existing, and already operational, search engines.

With this in mind, our website will be the testimony of our efforts in both learning, often creatively, how to research, review, catalogue and encode information that are not necessarily widely available nor particularly well indexed, and yes, we know that this might not be the most visually appealing outcome, BUT we are committed to do our best to make the design experience as pleasant as possible for our readers!

The palette of colours chosen is displayed below; these are also the wonderful colours of our logo!Website Palette

Under review: the font, so far we have shortlisted a bunch, but we still need to agree on one; we have used GoogleFonts.com, mainly because it offers a wide variety of free options.

The idea is to have a navigation bar on top with a few tabs that will be used to move from one page to another. So far, we have included our bios, a short ‘about’ section, the project inspiration and the research part. In the pipeline: a space dedicated to tutorials and resources where to upload training material and encoding notes.  Yet to be added: our social, which will have a dedicated tab.

We are currently working on integrating a pseudo search engine which could be seen as a pilot version of what the product of our work could look like “from the stage” (just to carry on with the theatre metaphor!).

Website landing page

Tech note: the website is being constructed locally and a pilot version will be pushed to our GitHub repository later on this month. This means that the website is not yet available to be accessed by external users. On the search engine: the team is exploring 3 different avenues that could help upload a mini XML database and make it searchable.

 

 Week 8 | More Than Surviving

This week has been interesting—ups and downs and all arounds. I was able to dig into the research more and started to uncover some idiosyncrasies in the types of events that can be captured. Some of the petitions signed by Wampanoag activists, for example, were part of larger campaigns that spanned the state and sometimes country (Ex. Against the annexation of Florida and Texas). In these instances more than one Wampanoag community may have participated and so that needed to be reflected on the map. That has implications for the structure of the database, data entry, and formatting. We were able to diagram out a few scenarios and determined potential solutions to help streamline the research, notations, and data structure. It’s been interesting watching the shape of things evolve and needing to make adjustments as we go along—learning is fully activated.

On the “up” side I was able to uncover evidence of Wampanoag ancestry of an important historic figure who I had strongly suspected of being of our community. After hunting through genealogy archives, petitions, and various New England historic society documents I had a major breakthrough. I am now 99% sure that Mary J. “Polly” Johnson, a prominent member of New Bedford society, active member in the anti-slavery movement, participant in the Underground Railroad and host to Frederick Douglass when he first arrived to freedom is in fact Wampanoag likely on both sides of her parentage. Due to various spellings of her parents names (Isaac vs. Isaiah Anna vs. Hannah) her connection to her parents and siblings is somewhat obscured in the records. Her brothers went on to marry into the Wampanoag community in Aquinnah (Martha’s Vineyard) and one even went into business with another prominent Wampanoag family (the Cuffes). So that just knocked my socks off…and made me incredibly angry. I, again, had to face just how pervasive the erasure of our presence has been and see so much work laid out before me to contribute to our reinstatement in public history.

It only reinforces the importance of this work, and I continue to be incredible thankful for the resourceful brilliant team helping to get this project off the ground.

Update

A lot has happened over the last few week. I lost home and found a new home in DirectHERS!! I will take this opportunity to show my gratitude towards Miaoling, Maria, Gemma and JP for including me in the process.

So what is my role? I hold a floating role in the group which is just perfect for me. This will provide me the opportunity to involve in every process where contribution is required.

So what have I done so far? I attended a media and outreach plan rehearsal presentation of Maria. Provided my feedback on the plan and contribute with some written on technical aspect. Wrote a twitter scrapper. Also, I found a way to scrape linkedin in case the group requires.

So what the future holds? I am in the process of designing a workshop for the group which I will briefly present on Wednesday focusing on how to scrape twitter for mentions and hashtags. I will meet Gemma Tuesday to figure out about the searching of xml. Also, I have already worked on a resource what Filipa has forwarded for us to publish xml in the web. I have a demo for that as well, would present if necessary. Last but not the least, I will write a Instagram scrapper whenever I can.

In a nutshell, I am here to help the group in every way possible. I got their backs!! In the process, it is a great opportunity for me to see the whole project unfolding and gathering expertise that I do not usually excel.

Ob&Up: Website Start and Concept

Below are a few things about the beginnings of our website. RC is designing and developing the site. 

Two Considerations that determined the preliminary design:

Words first: Since this is a project about language, we’ve decided to work with a text-focused approach (as opposed to showing delicious cakes). We purposely wanted to strip the site of any visual opulence.

Color Inspiration: The color scheme is influenced by one of the images prevalent in the GBBS opening sequences. 

 

Here is a look at the (top of the) landing page:

We want to lead with (an) interactive game/s. Bingo and/or perhaps trivia. For now, while Nuraly investigates the game designed possibility, you’ll see a placeholder that shows PBS’s GBBS Bingo card — an existing card RC found (!) that is much, um, greener and has a much broader focus than our game, which will solely feature judging language. 

Preliminary tabs at the bottom of the landing page include those featured below.. These might change depending on where our research findings lead us. We might have a collection of corpus visualizations that we’d like to share, additional games, or related digressions. So, tbd.

We’ve posted a link to the site in progress in the class google doc. The tabs are already functional and populated with relevant preliminary content.

 

More Than Surviving: Wireframes

Over the past few weeks, the More Than Surviving team has been focused on research and back-end development. However, early in the project, Majel developed the initial wireframes for the site pages, map, and timeline, and we’ve been working together to refine the features and develop the style. I took some time today to rework the wireframes in Sketch, which is free for students. Using Sketch will allow us to preview visual variants as we decide on colors and fonts (led by Estefany!). It also exports values that can be pasted straight into the site’s CSS — something that appeals to me as a slow coder.

With that background, here’s a preview of key pages from our site:

 

Bio

Apparently I missed this prompt and did my own thing for Week 5! So here this is now.

(I’m also writing this in a tone that can be used for the website for our projects so please ignore the weird level of formality atypical of me lol)

Hi! My name is Teddy Manning (any pronouns) and I’m a computational linguist and Master’s student at The Graduate Center, CUNY. I have a BA in Linguistics with a minor in Deaf Studies from Boston University, and am currently doing research in authorship attribution, stylometry, and transgender dialectology on Project Map Lemon through the EVL Lab at Duquesne University. My research interests include quantitative linguistics, the aforementioned authorship attribution and stylometry, and textual analysis. With OB&UP, I’m conducting textual analysis of The Great British Baking Show, naturally.

Week 7 — More Than Surviving

We’re trucking along with lots of great things in the works. Each teammate has been able to make impressive progress on the various moving parts. Elizabeth nailed down our timeline tech and shared various lay-outs with us, with one very closely mirroring the original wireframes right out of the box. Some extra styling once the visual identity is nailed down and it will tie in nicely with the rest of the site. Estefany has started the visual approach was also able to give our outreach plan shape and start building out what has become a really robust contact list.

We have a database structure thanks to Zelda. They walked us through the basics of database vocabulary and functionality and gave great pointers on naming systems to ensure everything is unique and easy to read. This was especially useful to me as I get familiar with the process of transferring my research into something that speaks to the work that everyone else is doing. 

I’ve been focusing on ramping up the research process using the templates I created to guide with our first activist, Absalom Boston of Nantucket, and his participation in the desegregation of Nantucket schools and ensuring equal access to education of all children in Massachusetts. The more I dug in the sources the more I came across leads on other activists and events. It’s a struggle at times to stay on task and not chase down the new information, but I’m doing my best to just note those paths for future reference and stay on task. I realize, more than ever, that this site will be “alive” with edits rolling in as the net gets cast wider and awareness of the texture of that era emerges even more. I  am feeling good that  the data for our first two entries is captured, and, along with the team’s incredible work, it’s clear we are well on our way to bringing MTS to life.