On April 22, 2020 we had a wonderful virtual soft launch for the Caribbean Women Healers digital humanities project. We had over 70 people from around the world attend through a Zoom call. If you want to catch up to view presentations and a Q&A we’ve made the recording publicly available to stream. Please check it out to listen to Alai, Anna, healer Jannes Martinez, and members of Libraries’ digital scholarship team talk about their work and importance of this project giving voice and representation to healers traditions

Following the recording we’ve received messages asking us how we coordinated the virtual event. This blog post highlights the logistics and thought processes with the hope that you all feel empowered to run your own virtual soft launch gatherings for your own digital humanities projects.

Coordinating the virtual soft launch was more than sending out a Zoom meeting invite to friends and colleagues. Before it and using a licensed Zoom account, one of our top priorities was to make sure all event participants were protected from Zoombombing. A week prior we performed troubleshooting to ensure participants would not be able to share their screens, turned off participant reactions, and stopped people from being able to turn their microphones on. We also turned the waiting room on so to let people into the launch right before it began. Suggestions that helped us think through these protective actions can be found in the helpful New York Times article How to Prevent ‘Zoombombing’ in a Few Easy Steps.

After troubleshooting the technology, we decided not to share the Zoom invite publicly through social media. Instead an RSVP using the University of Oregon’s Qualtrics was setup to collect participant first and last names and e-mail addresses. This way we could send the invite directly to emails submitted. Project team members then shared out the RSVP through their professional and personal networks via Facebook, Twitter, listservs, the DH Slack channel, and more. To our excitement, there were over 230 people sign up to join us for the launch!

The day of the soft launch, an e-mail message with the Zoom link was forwarded to all who completed an RSVP. Part of this message was an ask for participants to submit questions before or during the event for the Q&A portion of the event. We decided to use Google Forms because it was easy to setup, access, and share.

If you have any questions or comments for how to setup your own digital humanities event on Zoom through the University of Oregon then reach out to Digital Scholarship Services in the UO Libraries. We’re happy to help you out with your scholarly communications!