Hello all! My name is Colby Gilley and I am a sophomore Classics major here at W&L involved with Florence As It Was project. As is the case for our whole team, I will be working with various aspects of the project, from writing a multitude of content essays, to working with arcGIS software to populate our 2D maps, to learning how to use drones to expedite our photogrammetry process, and beyond!
I’ve already begun researching and writing some of the content that will be uploaded to our website to help contextualize our project. Even though this is just the beginning, I can already see how much information this project will be bringing together. Just writing my first few essays, I have touched on a myriad of names, subjects, and events that will need to be described in detail on our site. Accompanying this need for content is a need to have a properly structered repository to help sort and organize this information. With this in mind, we have been brainstorming ways of reorganizing our website so that we can provide a framework that can handle our content. Due to the inherent interconnectivity of Florentine social life, we have considered placing a large portion of the sorting weight upon a tag system, which would allow us to connect a variety of subject matter throughout different locations in the site just by a hashtag. As we begin to publish more and more content to the site, we will be able to link this material to our 2D maps and 3D buildings, thus beginning the huge web of information which we expect this project to become.
These are exciting days for the Florence As It Was project. We are continuing to pursue our research while also seeking opportunities to grow our image and develop our presence in the academic world. We have great expectations for the future, and we look forward to what lies ahead of us!