Planning my PhillyDH Incubator proposal

I’ve been looking forward to this all day. For those of you who haven’t heard about it, Digital Humanities in the Delaware Valley (http://phillydh.org/) is holding a PhillyDH Incubator Event this Thursday to help people get their digital projects off the ground. If your project gets chosen, there will be a hackathon to build it or get it at least to a proof-of-concept stage; if it’s not chosen, you still get feedback on your project. It’s a win-win, really.

The Jacobite disturbances project I want to pitch is especially timely for me because not only am I finishing the dissertation and getting ever closer to moving on from it, the Jacobite Studies Trust is holding a conference in Paris this summer. I’m presenting a paper that is the foundation for this project and hoping to talk to a few people to get support and, let’s be honest, funding leads, if not funding itself. Ideally, I’d like to go to the conference with the project at a proof-of-concept stage to show people that 1) it’s a valid project, 2) it’s a manageable project, and 3) it is a project that deserves funding.

This came through on Twitter just a little bit ago and it perfectly sums up what I’m trying to do with the PhillyDH event to prepare for the Paris conference:

@amandafrench: Don’t get people to agree: just build something, says @FranBerman. Indeed. Existence is an excellent argument. #crwu