A group of coders and journos got together for a Saturday of programming at Austin Community College’s Eastview Campus for the first Hacks/Hackers ATX News Hackathon. The day was quite productive with a variety of news apps discussed and developed over the course of the day. It was a great meeting of technology, news and academia with representation from The University of Texas, Texas State University, The Texas Tribune and many more entities.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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:
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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The Hacks/Hackers NYC is throwing an open(source).athon in the OpenPlans penthouse on Oct 2 to see how much great software for news/information we can open source in 12 hours? If you are a hacker, bring your code and get the time and some help to push it out the door (Or bring your expertise and help others). If you are a hack, we need excellent writers and editors to help with documentation.