This session will show users how the content management system of he Cuban Theater Digital Archive (cubantheater.org) works. It will allow artists, scholars, and librarians to test it out and consider its use for other theater/performance digital archives. The platform is built upon a relational database structure that guides the creation of a modular system architecture, built using existing open source software to ensure interoperability with other tools or modules being developed elsewhere to support digital humanities initiatives. This infrastructure provides rich interaction and easy navigation of site content, facilitates contributions of text and multimedia content from geographically dispersed partners while placing intellectual property rights at the forefront of the content submission work flow, increases capacity to create and deliver video content along with appropriate metadata, and allows for the peer review, approval, and innovative scholarly interaction with and publication of site content.  works.

For the technologically savvy: This content management framework, named Romeu after the Cuban musician Armando Romeu, was made live at cubantheater.org in early 2012, with access to the system opened to all significant content contributors. In addition, the Romeu software powering the CTDA was made available as open source software at github.com/umdsp/romeu. Romeu is built on the Python-based Django framework and it aims to be a simple but powerful content management system for multilingual theatrical archives. Vaunting itself as a “web framework for perfectionists with deadlines,” Django allows for the quick, elegant deployment of textual data-driven websites. As another plus, the Python programming language which underpins it has always been at the forefront of internationalization, a distinct advantage when compared with certain other options on the open source market.

I will lead a workshop on the basics of WordPress. I’ve been on WordPress since about 2009, after first being on Movable Type. I have a freestanding install for my main site and several WordPress.com hosted sites as well. I can talk about working with WordPress, compare/contrast custom installs vs. WordPress.com hosting and so forth.

Also I’d like to talk to people about scaling and integrating new platforms as they emerge. How do you create a content strategy that is integrated across all platforms, how do we you scale quickly and how do you work with new platforms like Storify or Rebel Mouse?

Neverwinter is an upcoming (still in beta) massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) for the Microsoft Windows platform. It was developed by the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) corporation, Perfect World, and Cryptic Studios. A staple of D&D is user-created game content; this new game finds a way to re-mediate the classic D&D story and dungeon creation tools into an MMORPG.  By using the “The Foundry” tool, players of Neverwinter can create quests/stories for other people to play through in game. This is a new tool that artists can use to make art. It is also so brand new that you can be an innovator in this genre.

This teach session will give you an introduction to Neverwinter, and to how “The Foundry” can be used to create quests.

Technical requirements: Optimally, I will need to hook a personal laptop up to a projector/the internet (I am a GC student).  If this doesn’t seem feasible, I can build a demonstration using whatever we have. Just let me know with enough time to get it together.

Time requirements: I can’t make it to the conference on Thursday morning because I am teaching in Brooklyn. I would prefer to hold this session on Friday.