PROVIDEDH at EADH: Part One

On Friday, 7th December 2018, the Austria team of the PROVIDEDH project facilitated a preconference workshop at EADH 2018 which was held at National University of Ireland, Galway.  The workshop, titled “Developing biographical data projects using open innovation methods and practices”, focused on the critical role that collaborative project design, planning and decision-making can play in DH projects. Taking the transformation, exploration, and curation of biographical knowledge–in its journey from the analog to the digital–as their core concern, the facilitators employed Open Innovation (OI) and Design Thinking (DT) methods to enable “hybrid forums” for transdisciplinary problem-solving in biographical research. Whilst it was recognised that OI planning and related approaches are inspired in part by the urgency and goal-driven nature of the private-sector, the workshop demonstrated how DH practitioners can adapt these without any redirection of their fundamental values or purposes, and indeed how they stand to gain a great deal from the focus on creative collaboration. By offering participants the opportunity to look at biographical (DH) projects as change management processes in a digital transformation setting, the DT approach enables users to think beyond the technical issues of biographical DH project management, and consider the social and intellectual processes of this digital transformation. Serving as an example and in collaboration with Dimmons and DH@UVa, the Austrian team of the PROVIDEDH project interactively worked out and analysed context-related User Stories.