Hacks/Hackers Heartland had a lightning talk event on March 24 at the Harper Center of Creighton University in Omaha. Among the presenters: Matt Waite, formerly of St. Petersburg Times and Politifact (now a professor at University of Nebraska), who sees a need for more fundamental hacking. Here is pdf of the slides (light on text, but full of images from the Matrix.) and the video
The line up for the April 5 Demo Day has been announced. You’ll hear from: Toby Murdock, Kapost publishing system Matt Terenzio, Localeaks anonymous news tips Jonathan Hall, SenseCast Kinect-driven news displays Nathan Freitas, The Guardian Project open-source mobile security Larry Adams, Narrative Science data-driven story generator Steven Romalewski and David Burgoon, OASISnyc interactive New York City maps The lightning talks are 5 minutes a piece, with a brief Q&A after each.
We kicked off our first demo event last night with a packed house at Tableau Software (our event sponsor) in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. More than 50 hacks and hackers packed the meeting space to learn about recent innovations at Tableau, Intersect, The Seattle Times, Journalism That Matters-Pacific Northwest and Microsoft Fuse Labs. Guests also spent a good chunk of time eating, drinking and making connections during the fully catered (thanks, Tableau) networking session that we’re hoping will lead to some cool projects in the near future.
We kicked off the “Coding for Beginners” intro course at New York City’s General Assembly with Dan Nguyen tonight. It sold out in a day. And we are working on scheduling more classes.. It was packed.
Join Hacks/Hackers Toronto on March 29th for an evening of presentations, demos and chatter on the topic of online communities and journalism. We have three terrific talks planned, and we have an exciting new space to host the event and foster conversation afterwards. Craig Silverman, Ivor Tossell, Kim Fox, Mason Wright, Phillip Smith are hosting. Time: 7 p.m. March 28. Place: Radiolaria 1166 Dundas St West Toronto, ON Itinerary: First, Kim Fox of CBC News online and Jennifer MacMillan of The Globe and Mail will talk about different approaches to story comments — why we open stories to comments, when to allow them and factors to consider.
Great opportunity for hacks and hackers. Early stage investor NYC SeedStart is taking applications now for its 12-week media-focused bootcamp. The program offers seed funding to two-person (or more) teams based in New York focused on creating media products for digital content, mobile technology, advertising infrastructure or e-commerce. The application deadline is March 31. The program will give up to 10 companies $20,000, office space, and time in exchange for a small piece of equity (5%).
UPDATE: Watch UStream video of the 2011 Seattle Hacks/Hackers demo beginning at 6:3o p.m. on Tuesday, March 29, 2011. Free live streaming by Ustream Thanks to everyone who submitted entries for our first demo event! We received far more applications than we could accommodate for this first round. The bad news: We couldn’t possibly fit all of your presentation pitches into one event. The good news: We’re already thinking of new ways to feature innovative projects, products and ideas in the coming months!
We’re hosting a News+Gaming hackathon on April 22 and 23, at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, sponsored by Seattle-based BigDoor, which offers a gamification API. To participate, register on our Meetup.com page. We will have great food. The agenda: – Friday, April 22, 6:30 p.m.: Social event with talks about gaming mechanics (alcohol too!). Find hack day partners for Saturday and share ideas. – Saturday, April 23: Daylong hackathon at CUNY in midtown starting at ~9 a.
Update: It’s sold out and we are seeing huge demand for another class. So we are working on finding new time/space. Hacks/Hackers is teaming up with tech space General Assembly to start offering courses in the digital journalism space! Our first offering is by Dan Nguyen (@dancow), a news application developer at Pro Publica (and photographer of many of our Hacks/Hackers events), who will be teaching “Coding for Beginners.” Date & Time: Thursday, March 24, 8-9:30 p.
[View the story “The “Awesomest Journalism Party” Leaves its Marq” on Storify]