About the Speakers: Dr. Donna Bowman (breakout session)

Donna Bowman is Associate Professor and Associate Dean of the Honors College at the University of Central Arkansas.  She holds a  doctorate in theology from the University of Virginia.  Her books include The Divine Decision: A Process Doctrine of Election (Westminster John Know, 2002), Handbook of Process Theology (co-edited with Jay McDaniel, Chalice Press, 2007), and the forthcoming Cosmology, Ecology, and the Energy of God (co-edited with Clayton Crockett, Fordham University Press, 2011).  She has presented extensively on technology in Honors education at national and regional conferences.  On Twitter she is @donnadb; on Ravelry, paksenarrion.

Dr. Bowman is leading one of our breakout sessions. Her talk is titled “A Thousand Little Things: How Crafting Networks Turn Social Organization Into Material Productivity”

Dr. Bowman provided this description:

The power of social networks to compile and distribute information, and to facilitate in-person and online organizing, is well accepted.  Not as well understood is the potential intersection between virtual connection and the creation and manipulation of the material world. Thanks to clever and sensitive tools like Ravelry.com, people and information are being brought together to foster an explosion in handcrafting impossible in previous media environments.  We will explore several examples of how well-designed user-formed database and activity organization can impact not just cyberspace, not just relationships, but the tactile, concrete world we shape with the skill of our hands.