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Inside the Knight News Challenge at Bay Area Hacks/Hackers
News Hackathon Austin on Oct. 16: Hacks/Hackers/Hacking
On October 16, Hacks/Hackers ATX presents a day-long Hackathon bringing journalists, news bloggers, and government employees together with technology developers to create data-driven news applications, seeking and making sense of open data available from the State of Texas and other sources. The day will start with examples of data-driven news presented by Matt Stiles and Niran Babalola from the Texas Tribune. Then communicators and developers will form groups to define and build applications from sources such as http://www.texastransparency.org/opendata.
Lunch will be served (courtesy of Community Impact Newspaper). Other sponsors include EFF-Austin, GNI Strategies, Hacks/Hackers, funded by the Knight Foundation, Midas Networks, Plutopia Productions, Texas Observer, and Texas Tribune.
Please RSVP for this event.
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.
Hacks/Hackers Austin Sept. 30 Debut Meetup Draws > 40
The Austin chapter of Hacks/Hackers kicked off with a social meetup on September 30 at Austin’s Pizza near The University of Texas campus. More than 40 communicators and coders got together for some pizza and beverage, with lots of promise that these initial contacts will lead to some valuable collaborations.
In addition to the socializing and snacks, there were door prizes provided by Gowalla, Texas Tribune, Austin American-Statesman and Austin’s Pizza. Many thanks to everyone who came out to make this event a success. Thanks as well to Christian McDonald, Matt Stiles, Niran Babalola and Jon Lebkowsky for their help in organizing this event.
In the works for Hacks/Hackers ATX is a News Hackathon on 10⁄16 and next regular meeting on October 26 with special guest Jacqui Maher from The New York Times Interactive News Technology Team. Join our Meetup group, follow @hackshackersatx on Twitter and “like” us on Facebook, to stay in touch.
Open(source).athon in NYC kicks off
Hi from the inaugural Hacks/Hackers NYC Hackathon, where the caffeine has been replenished and the coders are getting down to geekery.
For the full-real time experience, you can follow @opensourceathon and watch #hackshackers. I’ll be blogging notes from the day, recapping the speakers’ presentations and chronicling what the programming teams are working on.
We started the day with a crisis: Coffee shortage! Fortunately, Jenny 8. Lee charged into the fray and returned with provisions. Lots and lots of fully-caffeine-loaded provisions (we unanimously ruled decaf “not coffee”).
Armed with java and bagels, we gathered for the opening presentation from Aaron Williamson, counsel to the Software Freedom Law Center.
Hacks/Hackers NYC and Facebook: Making Your News Social
(Photo of the Hacks/Hackers NYC meetup at OpenPlans by Dan Nguyen/Flickr) You asked for the slides from Justin Osofsky’s Facebook for publishers presentation, and we’ve got ’em, along with statistics. Working Together to Build Social News We’ll have notes from the meetup in a bit…
Data And Metadata In News Gathering and Management by Hacks/Hacks NYC
(A big thanks to Daniel Bachhuber for initiating notes on TypeWithMe.com, with help from Greg Linch and Chrys Wu. This is version 5 of the notes, lightly edited, with more context added.)
Since time immemorial, two major knowledge management questions have bedeviled news organizations. First, when faced with a giant pile of primary source material, how does a reporter intelligently and efficiently discover the newsworthy bits? Second, how should the organization index and expose the latest news and archival material to both consumers and reporters?
To answer these questions, Lotico the New York Semantic Web and Hacks/Hackers teamed up on Sept. 30 to have speakers from ThomsonReuters, The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Aol News present on their work in Computer Assisted Reporting. Turnout was tremendous with most people showing up despite the fact that the event was free.
The lineup:
— Ken Ellis, Proposition Leader at Thomson Reuters;
— Stuart Myles, Deputy Director of Schema Standards at The Associated Press;
— Tom Torok of The New York Times;
— Maurice “Mo” Tamman of The Wall Street Journal;
— Justin Cleary, Senior Product manager at Aol News
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Come for the ONA conference, stay for the hacking
Hacks/Hackers is hosting a hackathon in conjunction with the annual Online News Association conference that is being held Oct. 28-30 this year in Washington DC. We’re calling it Hacks/Hackers/Hacking. With all the journalistic and Web talent gathered in one place, this will be an amazing chance for people to work together aside from the usual newsroom rush. We also want to draw people from across the DC technology and media community.
Hackers: Compete for a $1K Prize at the Independent Media Mobile Hackathon in Chicago
From iPads to Android, mobile is the future of media. But how can news organizations capitalize on mobile mania to better connect with their audiences? That’s a key question that journalists can’t answer alone.
To tackle this problem, The Media Consortium, a national network of leading independent media outlets, and Hacks/Hackers are hosting an Independent Media Mobile Hackathon in Chicago from Oct 9-10.
The mission is to create mobile applications that merge gaming mechanics and news delivery. Our panel of distinguished judges will award prizes to the top three prototype applications at the end of the Hackathon, and a $1,000 cash prize will be distributed to programmers behind the weekend’s top application.
This is a great opportunity to get your work noticed by local and national media outlets—and score some sweet prizes including cash, ebooks, t-shirts, XKCD comics, merch from Mozilla, and more. Judges include:
- Brad Flora, of The Windy Citizen and Knight News Challenge winner
- Brant Houston, executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc.
- Shinji Kuwayama, lead developer at Groupon.
Registration has been open for just a few weeks and we’ve already sold out of journalist slots. The Hacker slots are going quickly. If you’ve got experience developing mobile applications and are interested in journalism, please RSVP today. Please contact us with any questions.
Hackathon Goals
The hackathon’s call to action centers on the frame of “News + Fun + Community.” All prototype apps must focus on creatively delivering news and information via gaming mechanics, such as community engagement, video, rewards based systems, sharing, location-based opportunities, games, and more. All prototype apps created at the hackathon must be cross-platform (accessible via mobile web, tablet computer, smartphone, etc.). We are also committed to making all code generated at the hackathon open source and available immediately to all participants.
Stay tuned for more updates about the hackathon, sponsors and prizes. And, hackers, don’t forget to RSVP!
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