NYC’s Open(source).athon: Coding, Bao and Demos

Put more than forty Hacks/Hackers members in the gorgeous OpenPlans penthouse with plentiful caffeine, wifi, and a coding mission and you have the first Hacks/Hackers open(source).athon in New York City, which took place on October 2 and attracted participants from as Chicago (from The Chicago Tribune), Washington DC (from Publish2) and even Florida (from The Poynter Institute).

The day-long event was the brainchild of Scott Klein, editor of news applications of Pro Publica, who knew from his own work that newsrooms around the world had useful and unique in-house software, but no time to open-source them for others to use. When Hacks/Hackers NYC wanted to hold a “techie event,” he raised his hand with this idea. (Moral of the story, send in your ideas to Hacks/Hackers, we might implement them.)

And thus, the seed idea for open(source).athon was born, so he, Jennifer 8. Lee, Chrys Wu, and Al Shaw set the wheels in motion for event, which was supported by Google, the Knight Foundation and O’Reilly Media.