This past Friday, September 29^th, Dr. Cole and I attended the Bmore Historic Unconference at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. The Unconference’s mission is dedicated to “people who care about public history and historic preservation in and around Baltimore.” The group of people who fit this description and attended the unconference covered a wide range of ages and professions. I had never heard of an ‘unconference’ before, and the democratic system behind it was very interesting. Any participant could propose their own session and pitch it to all the other attendees at the start of the conference. Then, everyone had the chance to vote for whichever proposed sessions they were most interested in, and based on the results of the voting process, the conference organizers and leaders set up the session schedule that included the most voted-for programming. Each session also designated a note-taker, so the information discussed in each could be shared with all the attendees.

Dr. Cole proposed the session we wanted to give: “Scripto Transcription Session: Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore (1890-1920),” and it made it onto the schedule! Our initial plan was to spend the first few minutes of the 50-minute session giving an overview of the Aperio project, what we accomplished and learned over the summer, and our goals for the project moving forward. Then, we wanted to have attendees try their hand at transcribing a file containing some WLCB meeting minutes through the Scripto plugin on our Omeka site. Unfortunately, technical issues with the museum’s wifi made it difficult for everyone to do this, and we ended up talking a lot more about the details of the WLCB and the project than we had initially planned. Luckily, the people who came to our session were interested in more than just the process of transcription—we got a lot of great questions regarding the goals, demographics, and inner workings of the Club itself! Despite the internet issues, we were able to get people up and running and transcribing for us, and questions and discussion regarding the Club continued throughout this process.

We also attended a very useful session right before ours about easy digital mapping techniques with Google Maps that will prove relevant in our own digital endeavors as we map Club members’ addresses over time. The final session we attended was an interesting discussion on how to best go about (if there is a ‘best way’) memorializing the sites in Maryland where lynchings occurred. There were also a myriad of other sessions we were unable to attend, covering topics including the recent removal of Baltimore’s Confederate monuments, Civil War history in general, Baltimore neighborhoods and their history, and museum and archival strategies. Overall, the Unconference was a fascinating experience! We got to share our own research and learn a great deal about others’ as well.