Brian Robert Callahan is a Lecturer in the Information Technology & Web Science program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His research focuses on the infrastructural abilities and limitations of collaboration, in digital spaces and beyond. Brian is the Clerk and Director of Hypatia Software Organization, Inc., a 501(c)(3) charity organization that provides opportunities for experiencers of transmisogyny to flourish in software. Through a uniquely collaborative peer-mentoring model, Hypatia Software Organization provides spaces for impoverished transgender women and non-binary identifying individuals with mentors who share their gender identity, learning the basics of computer programming and systems administration in order to normalize transgender participation in technological creation and governance. Brian is currently the Lead Open Knowledge Developer for the PECE project. As an open source software developer himself, Brian contributes his broad scope of Unix knowledge and systems administration to the PECE Design Group. In this role as Lead Open Knowledge Developer, Brian manages the daily backend operations of the PECE platform, serving as the primary systems administrator for the current PECE network and heads installation for new PECE instances. He also contributes collaborative best practices for the platform. Additionally, Brian taught with the PECE platform. His “...in Culture” course series, taught at RPI with co-instructor Dr. Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn, uses PECE as a pedagogical tool for encouraging inter-student and cross-class collaborative work. In 2019, I will continue my role as Lead Open Knowledge Developer. I hope to stabilize the PECE distro in order to run a workshop at some point in 2019 to teach the basics of PECE systems administration and installation to potential new PECE admins. I also intend to write a publication aimed at digital humanities journals with Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn on our experiences using PECE as a pedagogical foundation in the classroom. I hope to present on PECE as a collaborative spaces and discussing best practices for academic digital collaboration at conferences such as the American Anthropological Association annual meeting. I also have plans to write an article about developing best practices on the backend side of PECE, comparing/contrasting to other digital humanities platforms.
