Here’s where some AAI/OC staff were in early January 2024.
In January 2024, Alexandria Archive Institute / Open Context (AAI/OC) staff attended the 2024 Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology organized by the Society for Historical Archaeology in Oakland, CA. The team had a booth for Open Context and Paulina and Sarah were part of a session on making field schools more accessible! Beyond that, there were many cool things that we enjoyed and we hope to give you a taste of the conference.
It was the first time that Open Context had a table at the conference and several years since an Open Context team member had attended an SHA conference. Paulina attended an SHA meeting in 2016, Eric was at one in the early days of Open Context when he published this article in SHA’s Technical Briefs, and Sarah attended her first one this year! With that in mind, here are some of our highlights from the meeting.
Paulina and Sarah reunited in Oakland at another conference booth!
It was great for the team to reunite in Oakland for another conference. Between the vibe of the city and things like a farmer’s market right next door Oakland is just a great place for conferences.
The Open Context booth was a great spot to chat with people about how we’re using Data Stories as a foundation for a new way to teach archaeological skills. We also handed out physical copies of the new Table of Contents for 2024. Chatting about those was a great chance to see peoples’ enthusiasm for the Data Stories and encourage them to use, reuse, and adapt the resources.
Here’s a sample of what we were giving out at the SHA booth
It was great to answer folks’ questions about what the Data Literacy Program and Open Context do. Beyond that, we got to see some people we met last year at the SCAs. We were also grateful to meet up with our colleagues from Cultural Heritage Imaging (CHI). They were there demonstrating their equipment and discussed professional best practices with visitors to the “tech room”. We were so inspired we’re considering doing a technology room demo for Open Context at the SHAs next year!
Lastly, an awesome part of the conference was getting to chat about DLP programs during “Making Field Schools More Accessible: Learning and Building from Current Programs” with Sarah Ayers-Rigsby and the other amazing presenters. Everyone has such awesome projects working on making field schools more accessible and we were grateful to present alongside such esteemed colleagues.
For those more interested in some outcomes from the panel, we hope to share more about that soon so stay tuned! For us, presenting on our upcoming programs, connecting with colleagues, and tabling were a great chance to promote the Data Literacy Program and Open Context to a different audience. Hopefully we’ll catch you at the next event.
