Tag: unconference

  • the “Versatile” PhD (warning: a bit of a rant ahead)

    the “Versatile” PhD (warning: a bit of a rant ahead)

    This morning I received a message from my university’s career center informing me that they now subscribe to a pay-for service called “The Versatile PhD” which has:

    * Examples of successful resumes and cover letters that real PhDs and ABDs used to get their first post-academic positions

    * A collection of first-person narratives written by successful non-academic PhDs and ABDs, describing how their careers have developed after grad school until now

    * Archived panel discussions where PhDs and ABDs working in specific non-academic fields describe their jobs and answer questions.  Past topics include Federal Government, Policy Analysis, Freelance Writing and Editing, Higher Education Consulting, Management Consulting, and University Administration.

    In an effort to understand this service (after I determined that my university login was not working to get me access to the site), I went to their website and learned that it’s geared especially towards the Humanities and Social Sciences, “to help humanities and social science PhDs identify and prepare for possible non-academic careers. We want them to be informed about employment realities, educated about nonacademic career options, and supported in preparing for a range of possible careers, so that in the end, they have choices.”  It’s a laudable goal, and I commend the Versatile PhD service and my uni’s Career Center for providing options for all of us unemployable PhD-types.  But it seems to me, that such stories are available in many places online, such as in Bethany Nowviskie’s open-source (i.e. free) book “#alt-ac: Alternate Academic Careers for Humanities Scholars.”

    Call me cynical, but it seems to me that the Career Center could better serve its Humanities constituents by giving them the skills to search the web and become digitally literate in open-source offerings rather than offering canned content about possible careers from a proprietary service.

    Do you agree?

    Photo taken at THATCamp–a crowd-sourced open-access alt-ac unconference for the Humanities.

  • Camp-ing

    Those of you who know me well, know that I enjoy camping.  But lately I haven’t done much of the sleeping-in-a-tent-and-sleeping-bag variety of camping.  Instead, I’ve been attending a variety of “camp” style conferences.  There was THATCamp SoCal, then WhereCampSF, and just this weekend I attended OC WordCamp (oh, and in two weeks I’ll be camping yet again–this time at the mothership THATCamp in Fairfax, Virginia).  What I remember nearly every time I attend one of these events, is just how sWordCamp logotimulating it is to be an environment with similarly-geeky tech-curious people.  The energy and the ideas associated with the camp movement are far more enlivening than traditional-style conferences (although, I love those too!).

    Being a tech-minded historian can be lonely business.  It’s also hard work to stay abreast of the latest trends in the field and to teach myself new skills.  Meeting up with campers a few times a year inspires me to stretch myself in new directions and to keep focused on my digital endeavors.  Learning about others’ development projects makes me a better administrator, blogger, podcaster, organizer, and researcher, as I apply their work to my own (WP plugins galore!).   I came away from this past weekend with loads of ideas to apply at Chapman University and to the Past Tense lecture series and to my efforts with the Making History Podcast.

    There are so many problems with the ossified structures of traditional academic conferences, and it seems to me that planning committees could do well to look to the Camp movement for keeping their events relevant in a post-web 2.0 world (pssst….I even learned of a groovy event-planning WP plugin that they could use).