After the three judges (Geoffrey Rockwell, Michael Sperberg-McQueen, Tobias Blanke) reviewed the entries to the Developers’ Challenge, they chose a winner, and it was announced at the DH2010 final banquet, on Saturday evening , 10th July.

It was Patrick Juola (Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Duquesne University) for his piece of software called “Once Upon a Time/Monkeying Around” — a game based on computer linguistic methods that could be applied against the WWI poetry collection, the Swift archives data and perhaps other of the textual collections that were provided in the DC datasets.  There is a bit more detail about Patrick’s submission, including the citation  from the judges, at this site’s Developers’ Challenge/And the Winner is… webpage .  We are also announcing the winner to Humanist, and through other DH channels.

Many thanks to the other contestants who contributed a number of really imaginative software ideas.  Also, many thanks to our three judges who had to sift though the submissions under a tight time pressure and select a winner, and to Dan Cohen who gladly fit time for the Developers’ Challenge into the THATCamp schedule. Finally, many thanks to our data providers who provided a rich and sophisticated range of data for our developers to play with.

Congratulations to Patrick!

… John Bradley and Gabriel Bodard.

THATCamp London is running a Developers’ Challenge (DC) in parallel with THATCamp London and DH2010. (see information about this at thatcamplondon.org/developers-challenge/).  As a part of the Challenge, one of the first sessions in the THATCamp will be a get-together session where some of the data providers meet some or all of the developer-contestants. In addition, this session will be the place where DC participants can get copies of data that we currently hold only in CD or DVD format.

We hope the exchange of information at this session will be in both directions!  The data provider can describe some aspects of his/her data to the developers, of course — but we also think that the developers might want to share ideas about how data from our data providers could be made available that makes it more readily exploited by developers such as themselves.

Although this session will be launching the Developers’ Challenge and there will be some business to do related to that, we hope the session will not be restricted to only DC participants!  Please join us if you have views on the broader topic of technical issues around the the reuse of scholarly digital data.

… John Bradley () and Gabriel Bodard ().

THATCamp London/DH2010 is being held in King’s recently renovated facility called the Anatomy Theatre and Museum (ATAM) — a Grade 1 listed space which is described as a facility “for exploration and innovation in performance and e-research.”  The ATAM’s website describes the Museum space as equipped with facilities such as “white wall storyboarding with e-beams, software to support thinking, deliberation, and creativity, an access grid equipped studio space with multi-directional digital recording facility, sprung performance floor, and immersive screen and sound environment.”

It would be great if, as a part of the THATCamp experience, one or more groups proposed sessions that exploited some of the specialised facilities available.  The ATAM’s technical expert will be with us throughout the time there, so many things can be arranged on short notice.  We would welcome your suggestions.  If you would like to explore some ideas you might have in more detail, please contact me, John Bradley at .