[SIGCIS-Members] SIGCIS Workshop - Grad student travel funding deadline approaches

[Thomas Haigh]

Hello everyone,

It was great to see the CFP for the very first SIGCIS workshop go out last
week. We already have a lot of interest, and the team is working hard to
make sure that it is memorable for the right reasons. Although the theme is
"Mike Mahoney and the Histories of Computing(s)" this encompasses pretty
much any history of computing topic - so don't feel put off if your work
does not directly relate to Mahoney. This is the first SIGCIS workshop, but
we hope it will become an annual event and eventually fill the need for a
regular international academic meeting in the history of computing to
supplement the various national and special topic workshops that come and
go.

As mentioned earlier, the deadline for SHOT and SIGCIS graduate student
travel funding applications is approaching. (Reminder: details are at
http://www.sigcis.org/?q=node/55. Apply to SHOT via
http://www.historyoftechnology.org/awards/travelgrants.html but send an
email to secretary at sigcis.org asking for consideration for our supplemental
funds).

To help graduate students interested in the workshop we are offering
expedited review of proposals if they are received by the end of TOMORROW,
Thursday May 28. You will hear back in time to meet the deadline for funding
applications.

We're particularly interested in submissions of work in progress and
dissertations in progress. The dissertations in progress session is an idea
copied from the Business History Conference, where I personally found it
very useful. You would pre circulate an actual or draft dissertation
proposal and then make a short presentation with lots of time for discussion
back and forth on framing, sources, organization, possible issues, etc. This
might be particularly valuable in history of computing since you probably
have between one and zero experts in the field on the faculty in your
graduate program. So benefiting from the early input of a group of
specialists could  greatly strengthen the dissertation and draw your
attention to ideas, resources and previous work you might otherwise miss.

The works in progress session would also be very suitable for graduate
students, as you can get helpful and immediate feedback on a chapter or
draft article.  

We can only run these sessions if we get enough submissions to fill them,
and I'm keen to see the workshop take advantage of its more intimate and
friendly scale so do things that would be impossible in the larger context
of the main conference. So please do consider contributing to them.

Tom Haigh
www.tomandmaria.com/tom