[transliteracy unconference]

Well, I made it to the conference despite the morning's excitement (or kitchen fire) and am so glad I did. It was my first *unconference* and seemed, well, very relaxed?

Howard Rheingold kicked things off for us and then we just had to decide what we wanted to spend the rest of the day talking about. The day was divided into three sessions and each session had four groups. We could flit between groups and attend the various discussions but I found myself staying with each group for the duration of the session. That way, as Dave noted, we could really develop our ideas.

I decided to jump right in during the first session and chose to join the group discussing ethics (yes ethics!) of transliteracy. Wow! What a way to begin! The idea of power, access, gender, and other cultures made their way into our conversations. A few of us (Roland Harwood who organised the event and Shani Lee) had been to the NESTA event on Tuesday night so we made references to Howard's talk and the idea that no matter what culture we happen to be from or live in, we can all spot cheaters...Like Mark Earls' talk on the eyes above the money box. So, who's eyes are watching the 'net?

Session two incorporated lunch so rather than joining any of the groups, including the one discussing collaboration while walking along the canal (which I really wanted to join)...I satisfied some hunger pains. However, I did get to talk to Ruth at length and she made some pertinent points about transliteracy as a concept. We (as in the PaRT group or perhaps anyone who wants to use the concept) need to make sure it's a robust term that stands up to critque or questions...like Ruth's: how is transliteracy different from linguistics? (I think I got that right). The idea of clarifying how transliteracy is different from other fields that do similar things came up during our final discussion too. I've been wondering about this...how IS transliteracy different? Well, thinking about linguistics (discourse analysis) is the key perhaps in the word: "lingu"-istics? it comes down to language? Sure, as Ruth pointed out, linguistics takes into account genre (the way in which people are interacting, a conversation or a television show), how they are related (I think this is tenor), and then the way their interaction refers to wider discourses, i.e. history. But, isn't this just about language? However, the ideas behind linguistics, like being aware of the larger context and how discourses (in the general sense, not just grammar/words) might be related to the interpretation of a transliterate production certainly are useful. As you can see, there's lots more thinking and firming up to be done.

The discussion with Ruth did not impede our eating and soon we finished and were able to join the group on their walk. Lucky for me, Ruth was able to give me a demonstration of linguist analysis in a transliterate way (we were walking and talking). She spotted a couple sitting on the grass and gave me an example of an analysis including genre and tenor (we just made some assumptions about their wider discourses!).

After a cup of coffee it was on to session three, the final of the small group discussions. I made my way to the back where we tackled transliteracy in terms of a historical context. We had some loaded conversations and argued about how, ultimately, has the right and responsibility to publish knowledge. Hugo Worthy and Dave (I believe) brought up the idea of a bazaar where anyone can come and exchange (or buy) goods/services rather than a hierarchical effusion of knowledge (for some reason "cathedral" came up as a metaphor).

Good thing that I only needed to do the live note-taking for the final, full group discussion as my brain was befuddled, baffled, and uncertain (nothing new I'm sure). Some of the issues raised in the final session included Ruth's caveat that we be sure of how transliteracy is different or whether, I think, it might just remain a more vague concept which enables people from other disciplines to discuss the crossing of boundaries. Also Dave reminded us that

"there's a window through which we look at tech cultural, concerned window is staying the same size thus we're looking at it more abstractly, if the window were to widen and if we could understand the language behind the structure which informs the practises we can transform the lit. - to gain power over the computing, danger of losing that knowledge and leaving it to other people."

Meg Pickard gave us a good idea of transliteracy in practise when she told us about a tour of Alcatraz she had experienced. It was an audio tour so she had on some headphones but on the recording were sounds of innmates, chains etc...so that Meg said it felt more like a visual and spatial experience rather than just aural. When I looked up Alcatraz now, I found that they're going to start podcasting: Radio Free Alcatraz.


For my roughly-taken and typo-riddled notes have a look at the unconference wiki page.