The latest Hacks/Hackers NYC gathering was all about photojournalism, hosted in the breathtaking Open Planspenthouse (with a wraparound balcony and a fantastic view) on July 27. Jonathan Tepper, co-founder of Demotix, talked about his crowdsourced photo wire based in London, and the team behind The New York Times’ “Moment in Time” discussed their project that mapped 14,000 user-submitted images onto an interactive globe.
Around 70 people attended with a good mix of programmers and content folk. There was a big contingent from Newsweek, which arrived together, and we even had a representative from 10gen, the company which makes MongoDB, the database that was used for the “Moment in Time” project. (He came wearing a MongoDB T-shirt, so was easy to spot)
We’re proud to announce the addition of a Los Angeles branch to the ever-growing Hacks/Hackers nationwide network.
Thursday, July 8, more than a dozen members of the Los Angeles journogeek scene joined up for the first introductory Hacks/Hackers LA meetup at Redwood Bar and Grill, conveniently located across the street from the LA Times.
Our first meetup was a mingling event for our community members to get to know each other and for us, the organizers, to get a feel for the kinds of ideas and interests floating around the Los Angeles community.
The Boston chapter is having its first speaker Meetup at the Microsoft NERD Center, 1 Memorial Drive, on Tuesday, July 20, organized by Matt Carroll et al. Munchies are sponsored by Microsoft and The Boston Globe/Boston.com.
Interested in learning more about the cutting-edge world of data visualization? Want to know how to turn lifeless data into game-changing charts, maps, and visuals? Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viégas, world-recognized leaders in data visualization, will be the main speakers.
We’ve scheduled our next New York City Meetup (more in the works!) at Meetup’s HQ.
Scott Heiferman, the chief executive of Meetup, will not crush an iPad with a sledgehammer for us, but he will give a talk on his vision of news and information: Why the future of social media isn’t media. How journalism and media will shape the 21st century by catalyzing community like never before.
Plus we’re looking for three or four short (~5 minutes) demos.
Thank you everyone who turned out for the first Hacks/Hackers gathering in Boston! We had a great crowd that mixed with attendees from the Knight Foundation’s conference on the Future of News Civic Media, with people from local news organizations like The Boston Globe and Boston.com, the Nieman Journalism Lab and also startups like pinyadda.
A photo is below, and check out more at the Boston meetup page: http://meetupbos.hackshackers.com
In conjunction with the Future of News and Civic Media Conference at MIT, Hacks/Hackers Boston is going to have an inaugural impromptu Meetup on Thursday, June 17 at 8 p.m. The place TBD, but probably in Cambridge near MIT. We’re looking for Boston folks to become lead organizers.
Out-of-town Hacks/Hackers, including Burt Herman and Jennifer 8. Lee will be there.
An astounding 170 folks showed up at last week’s inaugural Meetup on June 2 at Chinatown Brasserie to enjoy the dim sum (thanks to Patch). We uploaded photos, taken by Jigar Mehta, so feel free to tag them.
What we appreciated was that it was a pretty even balance of hacks and hackers, not to mention men and women. That’s New York City for you.
Plans
Lots of ideas came our way. We hope these will all happen sometimes in the next few months. Watch our calendar.
A hackathon of sorts.
A “speed-dating” event between hacks and hackers so they can meet each other and see what they are working on.
A demonstration of YouTube’s lates work regarding news (The head of their news and politics team now works out of Google’s New York office).
A briefing about the New York Times “Moment in Time” project, which gathered 10,000 photos from around the world.
A demo session for different content-related startups.
In addition, we’d like to get a talk about design and usability, if anyone has any suggestions for speakers/format/topic.
The word is out and already more than 100 people have signed up to attend the first Hacks/Hackers gathering in New York on June 2. Please sign up to attend at http://meetupnyc.hackshackers.com.
The first event will be focused on getting to know each other and assembling the wider journo-tech community to talk about what events you’d like to see in the future.
Hacks/Hackers co-founders Burt Herman and Aron Pilhofer will talk about the goals of the organization.
