Decol Futures: March 20, 2025

Focus: 11 Month Online Curatorial Class, Considerations for Open Source DAM Solutions, and More

Author

Dana Reijerkerk
March 20, 2025

A newsletter to learn about practical ways to decolonize your research and data work-lives with byte-sized drabbles about the daily life of a data professional.

Behind-the-Scenes: Conference Proposals, Doodles, and a Video Game Workshop

Little bird doodle. The bird has seen things.

I’ve been doodling character sprite art to concept out my next indie video game. In my past two games, I worked with artists and focused on writing the story, coding it, and coordinating the other pieces—sound, voice acting lines, music, and art—but this time I want to dip my toes in the art.

I like the wide-eyed horror look with simple shapes. My next step is animating a walk cycle and then adding it in engine.

Very early in the month, my collaborator Dr. kYmberly Keeton and I presented a video game workshop for students at Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas, Texas. It was a blast! I don’t normally work with kids, so this was a treat. They made 100 word text stories in Twine, an interactive fiction video game engine.

The rest of the month is full of conference proposals. I try to present at least twice a year so it’s a long process of applying, waiting for an answer, and then scrambling for new conference when rejected. If you’re in cultural heritage, the SAA Research Forum is always free to attend and present at.

Industry Insights: Considerations for Open Source DAM Solutions

I wrote an article for DAM News this month that talks about the pros and cons of open-source and proprietary DAM solutions. A lot of my data work involves back-end data so I often work with developers who have no idea what curation is or what staff in cultural heritage organizations do on the daily. In terms of DAM, that ignorance can be frustrating because DAM managers often don’t have the words to communicate with developers.

For DAM solutions, it’s important to recognize that “cost” is a spectrum of things including your sanity. If your organization is considering whether to adopt open-source DAM tools, keep these questions in mind:

  • What kind of in-house developer support is there?

  • What automated DAM functions does a tool support?

  • What is the cost?

Curated Content: Skill Up Opportunities

  • Deadline to apply: March 27, 2025

  • Fully online, with weekly live zoom calls that are recorded in case you miss it

  • Cost: 11 installments of 225 EUR/$243 per month (total 2475 EUR/$2,678) or 1 installment of 1980 EUR/$2,142 (save 20%)

This program looks cool because it involves doing a curatorial portfolio project and teaches conceptual and practical knowledge. I also liked that it’s marketed for curators in museums, film festivals, media, galleries, and other art and culture production industries.

  • Conference Date: May 7, 2025

  • Only in-person, no recordings of the event sadly

  • Cost: Early bird registration was $150 (price ends March 26, 2025 and goes up)

    I’m going to this! It’s a one-day event at MoMA with speakers from the Library of Congress, MoMa, The Huntington, and Yale. The program looks like we’ll learn about how MoMa and the Getty did a data migration. This will also be a people event where we’re going to have to say hi to lots of strangers. Attend at your own social battery risk.

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