The first week of working together as a team has been…so many things. Above all, I am excited and grateful to have the team we do.  While I am not typically self-conscious about presenting my own work, I have been weirdly anxious about every member of our group feeling that this is a valuable experience worthy of their time and talents. That base insecurity (or guilt or whatever it is) has been interesting to observe in myself and I will get over it, perhaps most fully when my professional responsibilities ease next week and I can fully throw myself into the heart of the project with much more ample time. Time, as a resource, can never be taken for granted, and as obvious as that is, I think it’s worth restating.

Amanda, I am genuinely surprised to see you write about impostor syndrome; there’s no way I would have guessed you were feeling that way. The calm, capable organization you demonstrated in giving us a concrete plan provided me with palpable relief. As you said, scope sprawl is real and while we did have moments of building out grander visions, collectively, we were able to bring ourselves back to the present, manageable, next set of to-do items. Each and every member of our group contributed something that moved us forward in a tangible way from their area of skill/expertise. Phil offered a sample prototype and lived experience with different tools we can consider; Vallerie recommended connections with specific student populations; Maggi pushed us to philosophically consider whose voices are centered and practically unravel how to manage multimedia; Amanda kept us grounded and warded off the sense of overwhelm by laying out the immediate steps to bring ideas into their next stage of reality.

A final point from this week before I return to revising the project proposal: we spoke several times about mission and guiding principles. Among those I noted:

1. Consistent with DH values on a larger scale, we agree that where we end up may be different from where we are beginning. And this would not be a failure, but possibly a greater success. With that said, we also need other working assumptions…
2. Supporting multiple media formats is part of the distinguishing value of our project, as well as an important means of compelling storytelling.
3. At the highest level, this is an archive (not an account-based site building out user engagement with things like comments, chat, etc). Limiting capacities here is intentional and essential.

There is a lot more I could say, but I’ll stop here for now except to say thank you to my team and that I am excited about all I can imagine (and all that I don’t even yet know to imagine) in the weeks ahead!