events

Events

The UCLDH Events page was redeveloped in late 2010 following the realisation that the DH Blog didn't offer a viable interface when it came to presenting future events in a human-readable fashion. The new Events page hopefully does.

The big idea

As a matter of editorial policy, event announcements should no longer be posted to the DH Blog. Instead, they should be published through the Events section of the main UCLDH site here on Silva.

UCLDH events obviously include public occasions (co-)organised or (co-)sponsored by UCLDH, but they also include public occasions featuring UCLDH people. If, for instance, Claire Warwick delivers a Lunchtime Lecture, that's a UCLDH event. If a UCLDH research student speaks anywhere in Greater London, that, presumably, would be a UCLDH event, too.

UCLDH Events should be posted as soon as they are confirmed, as the Events main page acts as a programme.

Reminders of any event, perhaps with a "see you there" message or a commendation of the speaker may be posted to the DH Blog a day or three before the event, linking to the announcement in the Events section.

While event announcements are no longer considered valid contributions to the DH Blog, event-related posts very much are. Such posts, in addition to event reminders, may be event write-ups, for instance, and should continue to be categorised as "event" and, as the case may be, "DDH".

Posting guidelines

Here's a step-by-step guide on how to update the UCLDH Events page.

1. Open the posting interface

O pen the posting interface, then click on "new..." and select "Silva Agenda Item" from the bottom of the list. [The Silva Events module was probably developed at ETH Zürich, and in German "Agenda" means programme, amongst other things. The confusing term "agenda" appears to be poor localisation on UCL's part.] This will take you to a dialogue that requires you to fill in the event's vital statistics. Once you've provided those, click on "save + edit", which will allow you to fill in the event details using a regular textarea.

Bob is your uncle now.

2. Add your events

When adding events, please observe the following guidelines:

Announcement copy: Silva will re-use the first paragraph of any announcement as a teaser on the Events overview pages. Care should therefore be taken to pack the most important information about any event in the first paragraph, and, conversely, leave non-essential information out of it. The first paragraph should include the name(s) of the main actor(s) and it should end on a short event description that packs the event in a nutshell. A few design guidelines on how to craft an event announcement:
- Do not repeat time and location in the first paragraph: you have already entered these through the form fields of the dialog that brought you to the text area that allows you to input the article copy. The time and location data will be prefixed to the article body on the web page, so adding it again in the article copy is redundant.
- Take care to include the speaker(s) or excursion guide(s) by name in the first paragraph, link their name(s) to their online profile(s), if any, but do not include their job title(s) and affiliation(s) in the first paragraph. This will keep the first paragraph uncluttered.
- Avoid formulaic politeness markers such as "We are please to invite you". The plain facts will do.
- Link generously. The institution at which an event takes place will usually have a website, etc.
- If the event is part of a UCLDH event series, make sure you type out the full name of that event series in the first paragraph and hyperlink it to the respective event series main page, ie Decoding Digital Humanities, Painless Introductions, Digital Excursions. ('Introductions' and 'Excursions' need not be pluralised: 'this Digital Excursion will...' is fine.)
- In the first paragraph, also avoid repeating the event title or part of the event title. Instead, make sure that the speaker or event organiser/ sponsor supplies you both with a title and a short event description that does not merely restate the title (sample edit in PDF format illustrating the point). End the first paragraph on the brief event description. Note that announcements can and should go on the site when the date and the location are confirmed, even if a full event description is not available yet. Full descriptions can be added when updating the announcement closer to the time.
- The second paragraph should start or contain the full event description.
- Any additional background information on, for instance, the institution hosting the event, should be presented after the full event description, ie in the third paragraph at the earliest (sample edit regarding this point in a PDF file).
- If the event is a lecture or is presented by anyone with known credentials, job descriptions and/or affiliations, the penultimate paragraph of an event article should consists of a single sentence that identifies the speaker(s)/ guide(s) by their name(s), job description(s) and professional affiliation(s), all of which hyperlinked to any available web pages
- The last paragraph of an event article gives the full address of the venue, along with the postal code hyperlinked to the corresponding spot on a Google map.
- Throughout the event posting, identify institutions (etc.) by their full names without adding the acronyms by which they are also known (except for UCL).

The Anatomy of a UCLDH event announcement [PDF] illustrates many of these points using a sample announcement.

Event icons: The DDH, Digital Excursions and Painless Introductions feed each have their own event type icon: when adding the icon, make sure it is inserted before any copy and that the image alignment is set to float right. Events that aren't part of any event series should be illustrated with a custom image that should be floated right as well. A good size for such icons is 150 x 150 pixels (example).
Ready-made copy by third parties, unpublished: UCLDH Events articles appear without bylines; their voice is presumed to be impersonal, representing the Centre as a whole rather than the person who writes, edits or posts them. If a third-party speaker or organiser of a UCLDH event provides a ready-made, previously unpublished announcement, the copy may be recycled and/or edited without any need to credit the words to their source: quoting may not be required. Among the points that need to be observed:
- If first-person personal pronouns in supplied copy ('we', 'our') refer to institutions other than UCLDH, change them to the coresponding third person pronoun ('they', 'their') or substitute a suitable noun phrase (sample edits in a PDF file).
Ready-made copy by third parties, previously published: If an announcement has been posted online elsewhere, it may be a good idea to cite the copy as a blockquote -- in full or in part -- and link to the source. Blockquotes are introduced by body copy identifying the source and a colon; do not attempt to fake a byline. Note that Silva in its current iteration [Jan 2011] does not support point-and-click generation of blockquote HTML tags. Please follow the guidelines on adding HTML.

The UCLDH Events Newsletter

The UCLDH Events Newsletter is an announce-only mailing list that runs on UCL's Mailman install.

Mailman lists automatically come with their own public-facing 'info page'. These pages are ugly, so we decided to route around the ugliness and build an info page of our own. (Mailman list info pages also serve as a gateway to Mailman's extensive customisation features that are usually available to every list subscriber. Since UCLDH Events is announce-only, subscribers don't need these customisation features, another reason to ditch the Mailman info page)

Mailman mailing list are often discussion lists, but we've tied the configuration down so as to make UCLDH Events Newsletter an announce-only list, following instructions. provided by IT at Portland State University

As part of the lock-down, we've set every list member's moderation to 'on', so they can't post to the list. As a consequence, you will need to go to the list of subscribers and uncheck the box in the Mod (first) column for anyone who will be sending announcements to the list.
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