In this post, we find our digital projects editor, Terence, traveling to the University of Kentucky to meet with Intermezzo editors Jeff Rice, Eric Detweiler, and Sergio C. Figueiredo. The conversation revolved around integrating Manifold with their series, which encourages writers to experiment with form, style, content, and approach to break down the barrier between the scholarly and the creative.

Reviewing the work that Jeff and his team had undertaken in preparation for the meetings, Terence clearly saw that Intermezzo was fully invested in exploring and breaking boundaries. Already online was a research project analyzing the content of Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) job posts to trace how they rhetorically depict human actants. Made up of a series of brief texts and Google On Air Hangouts between senior scholars, this project demonstrates the kind of investigative and creative project that Manifold enables.

Even after all their work ahead of the meetings, the Intermezzo team was glad to have had Terence come down for the in-person training. While we’ve worked from the beginning to make the system as intuitive as possible, Manifold affords so much functionality beyond the obvious that having a guided and dedicated dive into its capabilities really makes a difference. “With this team already so well versed in the platform, we were able to focus in on the ways Manifold could streamline their existing production processes and explore new tactics they could leverage, depending on the needs of a particular project. With Manifold’s versatility, authors and editors have a range of editorial options available to them that are really fun to plumb in this kind of group setting.” Terence’s report suggests that much of what they discussed will be portable. “It was exciting to hear how the themes we discussed could be used not only in relation to Manifold but also in their respective classrooms—from emerging trends in digital scholarship to finding ways within their institutions to make scholarly content more readily accessible and financially viable for students.”

We had a really productive @ManifoldScholar / Intermezzo training day here yesterday in Lexington. Today @drfabulous, @EricSDet, @doubleosergo, and I are going to be digging into workflow, getting into some CSS and Markdown weeds, and we may even get a book published!

— Terence Smyre (@tremayning) October 4, 2019

Intermezzo, a series of enculturation, is dedicated to the mid-length scholarly work and emphasizes creativity of form, style, content, and approach. Intermezzo publishes essays that are too long to be journal articles but too short to be monographs on a variety of topics, academic or not. Authors are encouraged to experiment with form, style, content, and approach in order to break down the barrier between the scholarly and the creative. With Manifold’s multimedia capability, Intermezzo aims to showcase the creative scholarly possibilities at the interstices of video, sound, and content.

Visit the Intermezzo website for more information.

• Miles Traveled: 1,645

• Dining Delights: “Jeff made sure everyone at our meetings was well nourished. From the Greek for lunch on Thursday to the taco spread on Friday—everything was amazing. But the highlight was undoubtedly the evening meal at Middle Fork Kitchen. The chicken I had was so tender and flavorful. I’ve never had anything like it. But right there with it were the cinnamon-roasted sweet potatoes. Holy wow were those good!” Quotes like this remind us all that we should never feel bad for Terence when his flights get delayed.

  We aren't joking around here at Intermezzo for our @ManifoldScholar working lunch. Holy wow! Thank you, @drfabulous! This is amazing!

  — Terence Smyre (@tremayning) October 4, 2019

• Travel Trials: It had to happen eventually: Terence lost his voice during the training. “I don’t know what happened. I didn’t feel poorly, but as Thursday progressed my voice started slipping away from me. I felt terrible that I couldn’t contribute more at dinner. Thankfully after a good rest I regained some of my volume for Friday. Here’s hoping I’m back to normal next week in New York!”