The first meetup of the Philadelphia chapter is taking place on Tuesday. Philadelphia is home to vibrant technology and journalism communities. A couple dozen folks have already RSVPed, with a good mix of backgrounds representing both groups. This first meetup will be focused on getting to know each other, giving a little background on why it is important for these communities to connect, and planning next steps as a group.
At the third Hacks/Hackers NYC Demo Day, six speakers whizzed through their presentations covering several topics, from real-time data collection to content management systems. Here’s a rundown (in order of appearance): HunchWorks: Chris van der Walt kicked off the session with his project HunchWorks. The social media platform is part of the Global Pulse initiative, the United Nations effort to find new ways to collect real-time data and create platforms to connect people worldwide.
![Hacks/Hackers Hacking @ ONA11][1] Hacks/Hackers’ first annual hack day at ONA11 brought journalists and developers together to make ideas real. We built on the success of last year’s Hacks/Hackers @ ONA hack day by bringing about 45 people together in Boston. They showed up with data sets; reporting, analysis and coding skills, and a willingness to collaborate on a wide variety of ideas. In the end, ad hoc teams hatched seven projects, of which the judges gave awards to four.
In an era of “show, don’t just tell,” data visualization in journalism has become an increasingly important component of news reporting. Alastair Dant, interactive lead at The Guardian in London, joined Hacks/Hackers NYC on Sept. 19 for a presentation on his team’s work in reporting stories with big datasets. Jeremy Caplan, Education Director at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, compiled notes from Alistair’s talk. The Guardian first explored aggregate analysis and data visualization last year with an award-winning graphic that replays World Cup games, condensing 90 minutes of tweets into 90 seconds of interactive animation.
On Sept. 6, 2011 at the Texas Tribune in downtown Austin, Hacks/Hackers ATX hosted a presentation by Gregory Foster of Consumers Union on Wikileaks and Other Document Dumps. Foster led the group through the history of documentation leaks from the Pentagon Papers to the more current release of war logs known as Wikileaks. Each example was analyzed through the lens of several criteria: spectrum of secrecy, quantity of information, quality of information and intentionality of release.
Brighton, England’s Hacks/Hackers kickoff event starts today with a great lineup planned. Better yet, Hacks/Hackers Brighton will be live streaming the talks at Journalism.co.uk around 3:30 BST (10:30 a.m. ET/7:30 a.m. PT or check your local time) You can also follow along on Twitter at #hhbtn. Scheduled speakers include: Tom Hume and James Hugman from Future Platforms, showing Guardian Anywhere, an unofficial Guardian app for Android Robert Douglas from Ribot, who will demo a yet-to-be-released HTML5 Web app for mobile powered by the Guardian API Laura Oliver, community coordinator at the Guardian, who will show how Ushahidi-powered Crowdmap was used during clean up after the riots.
Post en español acá! We finally did it! About 40 people (including journalists, software programmers, and militants from Argentine human rights organizations) disembarked last August 13th at the Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires hackathon, which took place within the mega-exhibition Tecnópolis. The idea was to work all day on Mapa76.info, a software project for the automatic extraction and visualization of data from text documents. The software is focused on analyzing the trials of Argentina´s last military dictatorship, which ruled between 1976 and 1983.
English post here! Finalmente, ¡lo hicimos! Unas 40 personas (entre periodistas, programadores de software y militantes de organismos de Derechos Humanos de Argentina) desembarcamos el pasado 13 de agosto en el hackatón de Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires, ocurrido dentro de la megamuestra Tecnópolis. La idea fue trabajar durante todo el día sobre Mapa76.info, un proyecto de software de extracción automática de datos y visualización desde documentos de texto. El software está centrado en analizar los juicios de la última Dictadura Militar argentina, ocurrida entre 1976 y 1983.
On Aug. 2, Hacks/Hackers ATX was joined by City of Austin Demographer Ryan Robinson at the Austin American-Statesman. Robinson detailed several of the demographic shifts that have been occurring over the past decade, providing insight into ways these trends affect our social, economic and political climate. View his full presentation for more details and watch an excerpt below. Many thanks to Annette Priest of Revel Insight for sponsoring refreshments.
by Sandra Fish How can nonprofit news organizations build community and produce content across platforms while also building sustainable business models? That’s the complex question that emerged from the August meetup of Hacks/Hackers Colorado. Three nonprofits and one location-based startup made presentations to about 40 people Monday, Aug. 8, at the Techstars bunker in Boulder. Here’s a brief overview: Laura Frank founded the I-News Investigative Network in 2010 to produce investigative news stories across platforms to be used by news organizations in Colorado.