Tara McPherson (University of Southern California) began by describing her own "escape" from her former identity as a literary scholar, emphasizing the need for humanities scholars in the field of computing. She advocated a more involved approach in which the humanities scholar moves beyond the role of "content provider" towards collaborative efforts and new forms of authorship; ideally, the digital humanities scholar "should write AND visualize theory" rather than perpetuating old conventions.

With the multinational potential of scholarship in the digital humanities, the impetus is on us as scholars to think about what we want to do and what kinds of audiences we hope to reach. As editor of the journal Vectors (http://www.vectorsjournal.org/), McPherson deals with innovative projects that could not exist in traditional print formats, such as the collaborative work "Killer Entertainments" by Jennifer Terry and Raegan Terry that displays video produced by soldiers in Iraq in an interactive interface.

"Killer Entertainments" (http://www.vectorsjournal.org/index.php?page=7&projectId=8)

Wendy Chun (Brown University) described her concept of a new theory within media studies, "running theory," that modifies Lovink and Wark's argument for "theory on the run" (a theory that travels along the same media vectors as the material it engages) and recasts theory as the site of an alliance in which theoretical and technological questions are merged. Her project "Programmed Visions" plays with the idea of race as origins, as some form of programmability similar to software.

"Programmed Visions"(http://www.vectorsjournal.org/index.php?page=7&projectId=8)

Craig Dietrich (University of Maine) focused on effective management of resources, including servers, code, server farms, electricity, oil, but also people (programmers, writers and scholars), in his thoughts about digital humanities projects. Collaborations between people in different fields can ideally create projects are distributed and networked in innovative ways. His project "Thoughtmesh" provides a way for scholars to generate their own tags linking their work to the work of others to create new networks.

Another project currently being developed at the University of Maine deals with the problem of archiving online projects and material; by working with artists and creators to develop collaboration and documentation of their projects, Dietrich hopes to document the ways in which culture can be preserved.

"Thoughmesh" (http://thoughtmesh.net/)

Sharon Daniel (University of California at Santa Cruz) views herself as a "context-provider" rather than a "content-provider." Her work on "Public Secrets" and the upcoming project "Blood Sugar" expand the definition of who constitutes the public, traversing the boundaries between inside and outside, public and private. "Public Secrets" reveals the secret injustices of the penal system through an interactive interface of over 600 linked and interconnected statements by female prisoners. "Blood Sugar" is the result of many hours of conversation with drug users who use the needle exchange offered by an HIV education and prevention program; the conversations are preserved intact, unlike "Public Secrets," and are linked through "parasitic connections and the space they inhabit."

"Public Secrets"(http://www.vectorsjournal.org/index.php?page=7&projectId=57)

During the Q&A session that followed, one audience member asked about the friction between the work produced and the ways in which it is evaluated in academia, as well as the idea of scholarship as practice rather than as representation.

McPherson noted that there are fields in which different models for evaluation exist, such as screenwriters who are evaluated for screenplays that never got produced as well as for those that did, and architects who are evaluated for their models or plans. For her, the question of producing new mechanisms is reinforced by humanities' awareness of its own waning relevance.

Daniel mentioned that while she feels lucky to inhabit a type of hybrid space since artists not pressured to publish scholarship, born-digital works are rarely exhibited in museums and commercial galleries.

For Chun, collaboration and networking is the key. The idea of alliance and the need for projects to be in contact with each other is pivotal, since change will not happen from just one group alone.