#HASTAC2013 Interactive Archive

Version 2.0 The figshare and HASTAC versions of this post have been updated accordingly.

UPDATE Thursday 2 May 2013, 08:48am BST.

Unfortunately I did not have time to do a new collection increasing the number of tweets to collect. The initial collection used the default 1500, and even though I did it on the Monday morning (BST time) after the conference the archive did not go back enough (it can only go back 7 days). In retrospect I should have aimed to collect more tweets than the default 1500 the first time around, but I was concerned the script would time out.

I only found some time this morning to try again (script having timed out when I tried 18,000 tweets, which is the maximum output), and using 17,500 at worked this time, taking me as back as 26/04/13, 08:2243, which is more than 24 hours before my previous collection.The Conference information says activities started on 25/04/13 (Thursday) but as the programme and now both #hastac2013 archives confirm the day with the most activity was 27/04/13 (Saturday). Therefore though this new collection does not go as back as the 25th, at least it covers the day before activity peaked. Where the previous archive had 1500 tweets, this new one gathered 3,898.

Here two screeshots of the second archive’s summary charts right after I ran the collection:

3898 tweets collected, archive started 26/04/13 8:22:43. Archive set up by Ernesto Priego using TAGS.

#HASTAC2013 Tweet Volume Over Time, second collection, with peak on 28/04/13, reaching ∼1200 tweets. Archive set up by Ernesto Priego

You can see a published interactive archive of this new archive here.

I link to the published spreadsheets from the PDF version of this post that can be downloaded from figshare.

HASTAC2013 Interactive Archive. Ernesto Priego. figshare.
http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.693045

[Version 1.0 below]

As they describe it themselves, the Humanities, Arts, Science, Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC – “haystack” hastac.org), is “an organisation at the international forefront of knowledge mobilization for our digital present and innovation in the academy.” I have had the honour to be a HASTAC Scholar blogging at their site since 2010.

2013 marks the 10th anniversary of HASTAC’s founding, and on 25th-28th April they celebrated their decennial conference, titled “The Storm of Progress: New Horizons, New Narratives, New Codes”, in Toronto, Canada.

I was able to participate in the conference via pre-recorded video thanks to Fiona Barnett’s kind invitation on Saturday the 27th. While I as presenting in real life at the Forms of Innovation workshop at Durham, UK, my video was being shown in Toronto! This also means that while colleagues were live-tweeting about my session at #formsinn, they were also live-tweeting from #hastac2013…

Anyway many of us were able to follow the proceedings of the HASTAC conference through a lively Twitter backchannel. I believe the backchannel is a useful research resource on its own, and of course it allows us to perform some ‘meta’ analysis of the network itself. I set up a Google spreadsheet to collect #HASTAC2013 tweets and created an interactive archive that visualises the interactions in real time. (This will make demands from your browser…)

[I have done an intial archive covering only the latest (at the time of publishing) 1500 tweets, as high values may no work due to script timeouts, but I am currently experimenting trying to get the majority of the #hastac2013 output. Will update accordingly. Times from my archiving are GMT].