All too soon, we find ourselves at the close of another Digital Humanities conference. While we missed the spirit of our in-person meetings and the opportunity to be hosted by our colleagues in Ottawa, we were thrilled that so many were able to join in the virtual proceeding: some 1,000  joined and participated in the Humanities Commons DH2020 group! While the official conference week has come to a close, we hope the conversation continues. To this end, the discussion forum in Humanities Commons will remain open through Friday, 31 July 2020. The group itself will persist indefinitely, and everyone who registered for the conference will continue to be able to access it. The conference websites will remain available, along with a record of the synchronous events and the Book of Abstracts. More about how the virtual conference’s artifacts will be sustained can be found here.

As we shared earlier today, we will not be awarding the Fortier Prize this year. The Awards Committee agreed that under the circumstances it was impossible to judge fairly following the award’s protocol. We would like to thank the Awards Committee for their hard work and careful thought on this matter. You can read the full decision here.

We would like to reiterate our thanks to everyone helped make the conference possible, especially the DH2020 Assistants, Virtual Conference Organizing Committee, ADHO Communications Fellows, ADHO Executive Board, Kathleen Fitzpatrick and the Humanities Commons Team, the 2020 Program Committee, and the Local Organizers for DH2020 in Ottawa.

We hope you will continue to engage with the virtual DH2020 presentations over the coming week. In addition to searching and browsing the discussion forum, you can now view complete lists of the presentations and the methods they are grouped into.

Au revoir!

– Virtual DH2020 Organizing Committee

We are beyond ecstatic at the level of participation the virtual DH2020 conference has received. Several hundred of our colleagues have been able to present their scholarship in spite of the current global situation and the unanticipated need to adjust their presentations to fit a virtual format. An overwhelming number of participants are responding to their colleagues presentations in the Discussion forum, ensuring that the scholarly exchanges we so value at our in-person conferences still takes place.

At the end of an in-person conference, we are usually left with only our notes, photos, vague recollections, and perhaps a conference bag filled with business cards, pens, notepads, and other gear. Our asynchronous format on Humanities Commons this year affords us the possibility of a different kind of record: a virtual community in the DH2020 Humanities Commons group and a collection of presentations shared publicly and permanently in the CORE Repository or privately within the DH2020 group. Here’s how these elements will be sustained following the conference:

• Registration & admission to the DH2020 Humanities Commons group will close after Friday, 24 July. Just as we would at an in-person conference, we will not be continuing to accept registration, which includes access to the Humanities Commons group.
• All participants added to the Humanities Commons group by Friday, 24 July, will continue to have access to the group indefinitely. The group will remain available to members and will continue to be listed as private on the Humanities Commons platform.
• The Discussion Forum will remain open through Friday, 31 July. This will ensure that participants joining during the conference week (20-24 July) have an opportunity to view and respond to presentations. After 31 July, the Discussion Forums will be closed but will remain visible to everyone in the group.
• The Book of Abstracts will remain available indefinitely. The Book of Abstracts includes all proposals that were submitted and accepted to the DH2020 in Ottawa. In addition to the online version, a downloadable PDF will also be made available.
• Presentations submitted to CORE will remain publicly available on Humanities Commons indefinitely. These deposits, which have been assigned DOIs, can be accessed by anyone, regardless of whether they have a Humanities Commons account. They will be discoverable within the larger repository, or visitors will be able to find presentations by searching the repository for “DH2020”.
• Presentations that were uploaded directly to the Discussion Forum will remain privately available within the group unless authors request that their presentation be removed. Authors can make this request by Friday, 31 July, by sending us an email.
• The DH2020 Ottawa and Virtual DH2020 websites will remain available indefinitely.

Want to view all the conference abstracts in one place? Now you can! The DH2020 Ottawa team has just released the online Book of Abstracts: https://dh2020.adho.org/abstracts/. A downloadable PDF version is to come.

Registration for the virtual DH2020 conference is now open! Presenters and participants can register via the DH2020 ConfTool. Once registered, you will need to sign up for a Humanities Commons account and request access to the DH2020 Humanities Commons group. Group access will be granted beginning on 10 July. More information about how to register can be found on the DH2020 Humanities Commons site.

Conference registration will be managed through ConfTool. Registration information and instructions will be posted soon.