Marcus Fields’ summer internship with HASTAC 2015
Over the past several months, RCAHer Marcus Fields continued his internship in East Lansing working in event management with the HASTAC 2015 planning committee, and helped to successfully host an international conference here on MSU’s campus. Thanks for sharing your summer’s work with us, Marcus!
This summer, I finished a project that I’ve been working on for over a year. I started last May when the planning committee for HASTAC 2015 brought me on board as an Event Management Intern through the arts and cultural management program here at MSU.
HASTAC (pronounced haystack) is an alliance of humanists, artists, scientists and technologists working together to transform the future of learning. The HASTAC community shares news, tools, research and insights about pedagogy, technological innovations, and digital humanities. Every year, the HASTAC Steering Committee chooses a local committee from universities around the world to spearhead the planning and implementation of their annual conference. They chose MSU’s College of Arts and Letters to host the 2015 Conference.
Our team spent a long time brainstorming what we wanted the conference to look like. We wanted the program to fit the goals of both HASTAC and the College of Arts & Letters. We also wanted to make this conference stand out from past conferences. These are some of my favorite features that we developed for HASTAC 2015:
We had an “unconference” for HASTAC Scholars on the day before the conference. The scholars program is a student-driven community of graduate and undergraduate students whose work centers around HASTAC’s mission. The major idea behind an “unconference” is that the program is loosely structured. In our case, participants developed the program the morning of the event. We also waived the registration fee at both the unconference and the main conference for MSU graduate and undergraduate students.
HASTAC Scholars break out into discussion after developing the day’s schedule and goals during the unconference.
That evening, we planned a pretty spectacular VIP reception welcoming the HASTAC Steering committee and the HASTAC Scholars. The reception took place at Abrams Planetarium, where we had the MSU Food Truck, an MSU Dairy Store ice cream cart, and a Pink Floyd laser show that was custom-designed for us by the planetarium’s production coordinator, John French.
Attendees enjoy the VIP welcome reception at Abrams Planetarium on Wednesday, May 27th.
We also developed an amazing program for our 400 international attendees. Taking place at the Kellogg Center, attendees had the chance to attend two full days of panel discussions, paper presentations, lightning talks, performances, poster presentations, and workshops. Topics ranged in focus from pedagogy, coding, gaming, philosophy, history, publishing, social media, literature, technology, collaboration, virtual reality, activism, and more. We strove for gender diversity in our sessions and ended up with zero all-male panels. We also established a “virtual program” that was live streamed on YouTube for those who could not attend the conference in person. In addition, we presented our entire schedule on a mobile application instead of printing hundreds of copies.
Attendees creating a teaching philosophy with a SparkFun Arduino Inventor’s Kit during a breakout session.
We brought in three fantastic plenary presentations as well. Scott B. Weingart (from Carnegie Mellon University) spoke about disciplinary isolation, scholarly specialization, and creating intentional academic communities. Roopika Risam (from Salem State University) focused on how digital humanities already exist within a matrix of East, West, arts, and science and how we might reshape the map by decentering North America and Western Europe in favor of a more distributed network. Finally, our keynote speakers, Cezanne Charles and John Marshall, co-direct a hybrid design studio called rootoftwo. They presented on two projects: Whithervanes, a Neurotic Early Worrying System (NEWS), which is a network of 21st century weather vanes placed on the top of buildings that detect, measure, and respond to fear on the internet and THR_33 (Tea House for Robots), which is comprised of a responsive environment and a group of robotically enhanced domestic appliances.
Plenary speakers present during general sessions in the BIG 10 Ballroom.
5) Broad Art Museum Reception
Finally, we planned a conference-wide welcome reception after the keynote presentation. The Broad Art Museum proved to be a beautiful location for the reception, and we had perfect weather. Attendees had the opportunity to walk by the Red Cedar and through north campus beforehand.
Conference attendees enjoy refreshments and mingle during the welcome reception at the Broad Art Museum.
My work on this project helped me learn what it takes to plan a conference and make it successful. I learned about conference management, registration, programming, sponsorship, logistics, and more. Now, as a continuation of my internship, I’ve teamed up with the CAL Accessibility Team to start planning the Making Learning Accessible Conference, which will will provide information and training to MSU students, faculty, and staff on designing universally accessible courses, websites, and content.
The HASTAC Planning and Steering Committees pose for a picture before the final plenary talk on Friday, May 29th.
Photo Credits: Dave Trumpie, Trumpie Photography