Hacks/Hackers ATX Teams Up with ONA Local

Happy New Year! Exciting changes are in the works for Hacks/Hackers ATX in 2012, joining up with a newly formed Online News Association local group. The two organizations hosted a debut meetup at Opal Divine’s Penn Field on January 5 to kick off the collaboration. The plan is to broaden the scope that was originated by Hacks/Hackers ATX since September 2010, but adding content that addresses general online news issues, while retaining the Hacks/Hackers presence in data, programming and user experiences.

The organizing group includes people from Texas State University, The University of Texas, Austin American-Statesman, Texas Tribune, local television stations and bloggers. Above, Rob Quigley, senior lecturer at UT, kicks off the event. Plans are to hold meetings on the fourth Monday of each month, with the first planned for Feb. 27. Details and location to come. For more information, join the ONA Austin Meetup group, follow on Twitter or Facebook. All meetings and events will also be posted on the Hacks/Hackers links (Meetup, Twitter, Facebook).

With more than 60 people attending the debut meetup, the joint group is off to a great start!

In other news, Hacks/Hackers ATX enjoyed co-hosting the Austin Holiday Web Bash, along with 18 other local meetup groups, at Buffalo Billiards on Dec. 13. The event, which collected food and donations for the Capital Area Food Bank, was attended by more than 500 area programmers, developers, designers, instructors and overall Web enthusiasts. It was a great time and a great success.

Holiday Web Bash Photo by Damon Clinkscales

Help by Hacks/Hackers is back

Since the start of Hacks/Hackers in 2009, we’ve heard from lots of people interested in the ways journalists and developers can help each other push what’s possible at the intersection of news and technology.

So we’re very pleased to kick off 2012 with the new version of Help by Hacks/Hackers, a forum for you to ask and answer any practical, forward-looking, and philosophical questions about news and media work.

To get started, log in. If you had an account on the old Help By site and need to reset your password, do so here. And if you have any technical problems with the site, email us at HelpBy [at] hackshackers.com.

A big thank you goes to Ben Balter for porting the data and setting things up on the backend.

Happy New Year everyone!

10 Days Left Until Hackathon[YAN] Yerevan 2011

Public Journalism Club and Microsoft Innovation Center Armenia, the organizers of Hackathon[YAN] Yerevan contest which will take place on 17-18 December 2011, have received over 50 applications from teams willing to take part in the competition. 50 teams submitted projects that aim at solving the issues of Yerevan, Armenia’s capital.

Projects will be hacking issues related to health, transportation, education, environment, problems of disabled people living in the city and tourism. Hachathon [YAN] Yerevan 2011 is dedicated to solving the problems that Yerevan and city’s inhabitants deal with.

The result of this Hachathon is most likely to be the creation of a number of prototypes for ready-made projects that can be implemented not only by municipal government but also by the structures and circles focused on the city issues, as well as through active engagement of people.

Hackathon[YAN] Yerevan 2011 contest will start on 17 December and will last 24 hours. During the round-the-clock contest, the teams will have to develop and publicly present their programs, applications, mobile solutions and web sites or their prototypes/demo versions to the panel of judges.

Prizes

• Best project. Best project will receive a prize from Yerevan Town Hall.
• Three best projects developed on the basis of Microsoft technology will receive cash prizes from Microsoft Innovation Center (1 million Armenian Drams= 2600 USD, 500, 000 Armenian Drams =1300 USD and 300,000 Armenian Drams = 755 USD respectively, which is about).
• Three best mobile solutions will receive cash prizes (500,000 Armenian Drams = 1300 USD each) from Enterprise Incubator Foundation in Armenia.
• Best social project will receive a cash prize of 350,000 Armenian Drams = 900 USD from Cronimet Charity Foundation. Best Media and Society project will receive an implementation grant from Alternative Resources in Media Programme.

Apart from the abovementioned prizes, the participating teams will also receive runner-up prizes and certificates from GNC Alfa Company, Public Journalism Club and Hacks/Hackers.

The panel of judges will have the right to dismiss the announcement of winners in several categories in case there are no projects complying with the terms and standards of the contest.

The deadline for submission of applications was 15 November 2011.

The organizers of the event have held over a dozen meetings with students, representatives of IT industry and public sector in universities presenting the Hackathon and helping interested applicants to form teams.

On November 30 and December 1, Karl Davies-Barrett, DPE technical Lead for CEE and Multi-Country, delivered workshop sessions designed specifically for the participants of Hackathon [YAN] Yerevan 2011 competition. Workshop sessions provided the teams with relevant knowledge on methodology of Microsoft cloud solutions software development as well as current trends and peculiarities of software development for Windows phones.

Purpose of Hackathon[YAN] Yerevan2011: To create an opportunity for creative and innovative people to collaboratively build programs aimed at resolving Yerevan’s issues; to build collaborative atmosphere for both programmers and other specialists for implementing innovative ideas and initiating social reforms; to encourage collaboration between representatives of the IT sector and other fields aimed at the implementation of projects and ideas serving the public interest. The contest is supported by Yerevan Town Hall, Microsoft, Counterpart International Representative Office in Armenia, Enterprise Incubator Foundation, leading telecommunications and information technology companies, media organizations. Media sponsors of Hackathon[YAN] Yerevan 2011 are PanarmenianNet Online News Publication and Arka News Agency.

Contact us if you want to learn more about Hackathon[YAN] Yerevan 2011 at info@pjc.am.

A Hacks/Hackers overview with Chrys Wu and a chat with Knight-Mozilla fellow Laurian Gridinoc at Hacks/Hackers Brighton

Hacks/Hackers global coordinator and New York co-organiser Chrys Wu (@MacDiva on Twitter) spent an evening with Hacks/Hackers Brighton on Tuesday, 22 November to report on what chapters around the world have been doing.

She explained Hacks/Hackers started just 18 months ago, with an idea originating in mid-2009.

“Developers and journalists really do need each other,” Wu said, explaining how a variety of social meetups, talks, demo days and hackathons are the basis for the Hacks/Hackers community.

The groups work to “improve the practice of journalism through tools and technologies”.

She explained that there are now many chapters around the world, including about 20 in Africa, with one launching in Cairo soon.

A group has also started in Yerevan, Armenia, and has announced a hackathon with help from Microsoft.

And because “talking is good; making is better,” developers and journalists spend hack days together, such as at Hacks/Hackers Hacking, an event which took place at ONA11, the Online News Association conference held in Boston in September.

The ONA11 hack day included a project where a team of about 10 hacks and hackers who took up a challenge to help NPR’s Andy Carvin work out how to visualise data from around 85,000 tweets.

A journalist from La Nacion in Argentina also tasked a group with developing a way to process data from PDFs in order to better understand gas prices in the country.

Chrys, a coder as well as a journalist, has spent time at The Los Angeles Times, where she worked on the Pulitzer prize-winning series, Altered Oceans; CBS and The Washington Post, having been recruited to help develop content distribution strategy.

She works with Hacks/Hackers chapters worldwide to help them launch and sustain local communities interested in journalism and technology.

Developer Laurian Gridinoc (@gridinoc on Twitter) is one of the first five winners of a Knight-Mozilla fellowship and will spend 10 months embedded within the BBC newsroom to generate ideas, train colleagues and bridge the gap between technology and the news.

Laurian told Hacks/Hackers Brighton about the proposal that resulted in him securing a funded placement and discussed the types of projects he will be working on.

He said there were around 300 ideas submitted, with 60 getting through to the first round. Twenty projects were invited to attend a learning lab in Berlin, and 11 finalists presented to news partners. Just five were selected to become Knight-Mozilla fellows, with one each at the BBC, Al Jazeera English, the Guardian, Zeit Online and the Boston Globe.

Each news organisation had different aims and selected a hack/hacker with skills and ambitions that matched their plans.

Gridinoc, who proposed a collaborative storyboarding tool, will be “trying to enhance storytelling”, particularly in online video.

He will be addressing problems with Adobe Flash and will expanding possibilities by constantly asking the question “what if”: “What if there weren’t the constraints of time? What if there weren’t any constrains on platforms?” he said.

He will then use open source assets to create his own code, templates and prototypes, spending a maximum of two weeks on a project.

Laurian hinted the kind of interactives he might produce at the BBC, demonstrating Tangle.js, a JavaScript library that provides provides a simple API for “tangling up” the values in a document, allowing the reader to explore a document by changing the values using a slider and seeing the resulting values change. (See this Tangle template demonstration).

Laurian also shared his interesting career path. While studying medicine he co-founded a brand strategy and interactive consultancy in Romania. He then followed his interest in the semantic web through a masters in computational linguistics and research into semantic navigation at Knowledge Media Institute (Open University). For the past year he has been based in Birmingham, implementing applications using semantic web technologies at the technology innovation company Talis.

Hacks/Hackers ATX, Ryan Murphy, Texas Tribune, Nov. 1, 2011

Ryan Murphy, data reporter at Texas Tribune, was the speaker for the November meetup of Hacks/Hackers ATX. He talked about a variety of projects that he uses in reporting publicly available information and how the Texas Tribune integrates various tools, like Google Fusion Tables, in their coverage.

The Tribune was kind enough to sponsor Home Slice Pizza for us. For December, we’ll be teaming up with some other Austin meetup groups for a holiday party. Details to come. And, in 2012, we’ll be making some changes, working together with an Online News Association Local to develop more programming and events. Thanks to everyone who has attended Hacks/Hackers ATX meetups since our inception.

How we made our maps | Hacks/Hackers NYC

When a story is best told through a visual representation of geography, maps are often the best way of telling it. Three journalists joined Hacks/Hackers NYC to explain how they approached mapmaking for their recent projects. Slides and code from their presentations are available in this link bundle.

While New York was preparing for Hurricane Irene, John Keefe, WNYC’s senior executive producer for news, decided to create a hurricane evacuation map so people could see whether or not they needed to leave their homes.

He used Google Fusion Tables to make what became one of WNYC’s most viral news application. The process was simple and fast, he said. John uploaded shapefiles of the evacuation zone found in the NYC Datamine to Google FusionTables using Shape to Fusion. He then customized his map with FusionTablesLayer Builder and added JavaScript to create a search box so users could see if they needed to evacuate. The final map:

Learn more about John’s process on his blog.

Albert Sun from The Wall Street Journal gave insight to how he made his Census Map Maker. Inspired by sites like the Redistricting Game and the Public Mapping Project, Albert set out to make his own map which would allow users to draw their own maps and find census information for the areas they marked. He used a JavaScript overlay on Google Maps and coded the map with GeoDjango.

Albert has open-sourced his code and posted it to Github.

ProPublica’s Jeff Larson spoke about two interactive maps he the produced for ProPublica’s investigation into corporate influence in the redistricting process. In his maps, Larson combined census data with district maps to show how voter districts were segregated in ways that would favor certain candidates or keep ethnic groups together in a voting bloc. (Watch a video about the complicated issue.)

Each map is dynamically generated from over 2GB of data through a new mapping library ProPublica wrote in-house with C, API and Ruby.

Watch all three presentations in the video below:

Hacks/Hackers ATX, Christian McDonald – Austin American Statesman, Oct. 4, 2011

On Oct. 4, Hacks/Hackers ATX met at Austin American-Statesman to hear from the Statesman’s own Christian McDonald on Deconstructing the Bastrop Complex Fire Map. We were all aware of the devastation of the wildfires in early September, and the Statesman used innovative techniques to provide the community with information and coverage. Check out his video and presentation (also on Slideshare) embedded below. Links associated with the presentation are available on Delicious.

We’d like to thank our sponsor Home Slice Pizza for donating the delicious pies. We also celebrated Hacks/Hackers ATX first year in existence. Many thanks to all who have attended our events. Next meeting is Nov. 1 at Texas Tribune.

Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires expands around the world

(Post en español)

Yes, we have grown.  Maybe too fast.  Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires has reached 470 members and continues to grow. The Buenos Aires chapter, founded in April of this year, and bringing together journalists and software programmers, has realized a series of activities in this city, crossing the borders of Latin America, and finally reaching Europe.  Several projects generated within that space have taken shape through collaborative efforts.  We held a networking meet-up for almost a hundred people, a hackathon on the Argentine elections, a web seminar for Latin America, and a conference in Prague on some of our projects; we then will arrive to London for the Mozilla Festival days before returning to Buenos Aires for a hackathon on HIV/AIDS.  In order not to over-saturate the official Hacks/Hackers blog, we’ve concentrated our activities here in one post.

On October 4, along with Guillermo Movia (Mozilla Argentina), we planted the seed of curiosity through Fundación Nuevo Periodismo de Iberoamérica (the Iberoamerican New Journalism Foundation), directed by Gabriel García Márquez and including hundreds of colleagues scattered across the continent.  On the way we found a good slogan: “Journalism didn’t crashed.  It’s just reinstalling its operating system.”  On October 18 we held a meet-up in  AreaTres, attending not only by journalists and software programmers but also local non-governmental organizations such as Fundación Huesped y Greenpeace, as well as Nxtp Labs, a fund devoted to accelerating projects.

Among the products shown there was PDF Spy, created after a Hacks/Hackers hack day held before the Online News Association annual conference in Boston. Participating in that hackathon were Angélica Peralta Ramos (from the interactive and multimedia department of the newspaper La Nación) and Matt Perry, who together won the prize for “most intriguing.”   PDF Spy tracks a page full of PDF files to see if they have been modified after their publication.  The code is in Github. It runs with the command |python pdfspy.py url-to-index-page path-to-archive|

Later came the presentation of “Hack Electoral en tiempo real” (Electoral Hack in Real Time), based on Google Fusion Tables.  This idea of Sergio Sorín’s was to cross the results of the national elections with previous votes and visualize the presidential elections in real time; it was done under the command of Martín Sarsale. A week later, on October 22, about 30 people worked with the support of the electoral cartography expert Andy Tow, and the finished product was published as http://elecciones.hhba.info.  The day of the elections, October 23, the platform caused a huge stir in the Argentine press, being mentioned or commented on by the national media, international blogs, and newspapers and websites from the country, some of whom forgot to include proper credits.

While that was happening, we were invited to Prague to participate in MediaFabric, an international conference organized by SourceFabric, based in the Czech Republic, which is developing a free content manager and is growing rapidly.  In addition to this writer, representatives for Latin America included Leo Prieto of Fayerwayer, Luis Manuel Botello of the Centro Internacional para Periodistas (International Center for Journalists, or ICFJ), James Breiner, currently in Beijing, David Brewer, who works with new media, and Annie Machon, a human rights activist and former British intelligence agent.

Thus two of the founders of Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires made it to the Mozilla Fest in London carrying a load of proposals generated in Argentina (Mapa76.info, an automatic data-extraction software, as well as the projects mentioned above), as a prelude to an imminent hackathon in mid-November in Buenos Aires with the Fundación Huesped. The results of that hackathon will be published initially in La Nación, but it will also be available by other means.  It will focus on resolving problems surrounding the diffusion of viral and participatory content, identifying sources, teaching and training, manuals of style, and thematic visualization maps and clouds, among others.

The Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires team includes Mariano Blejman, Martín Sarsale, Guillermo Movia, Mariana Berruezo, César Miquel, Ezequiel Clerici, and Sergio Sorín. English translation: Michael Romano.
Web Http://meetupba.hackshackers.com
Blog http://www.hackshackers.com
Mail: ba@hackshackers.com
Twitter @HacksHackersBA

Recent activities have received various forms of support from Mozilla Foundation, AreaTres, Fundación Desarrollar, La Nación, 360TV, Página/12,Vurbia Technologies, Télam, Globant, Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano y Sourcefabric.

Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires se expande por el mundo

(English post)

Sí, hemos crecido. Tal vez demasiado rápido. Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires llega a casi 470 inscriptos, y sigue subiendo. El capítulo de Buenos Aires que reune periodistas y programadores de software fundado en abril de este año propuso una serie de actividades que explotaron en esta ciudad, traspasaron las fronteras por América latina, y finalmente por Europa. También han tomado forma algunos de los proyectos generados en el espacio, con esfuerto y trabajo colaborativo. Hicimos un meetup para casi cien personas, un hackatón sobre las elecciones argentinas, un seminario para América latina, una conferencia en Praga sobre algunos de nuestros proyectos, y desembarcaremos en el Mozilla Festival de Londres, días antes de realizar un nuevo hackatón en Buenos Aires sobre temáticas de VIH/SIDA. Para no saturar de posts el blog oficial de Hacks/Hackers, concentramos las actividades en una sola publicación.

El 4 de octubre, junto a Guillermo Movia (Mozilla Argentina), sembramos la semilla de la curiosidad a través de la Fundación Nuevo Periodismo de Iberoamérica, dirigida por Gabriel García Márquez ante cientos de colegas esparcidos por todo el continente. En el camino encontramos un buen slogan: “El periodismo no se colgó, sólo está resintalando su sistema operativo”. El 18 de octubre, realizamos un meetup en AreaTres al que asistieron no solamente periodistas y programadores de software sino también organizaciones no gubernamentales como Fundación Huesped y Greenpeace local, además de Nxtp Labs, un fondo acelerador de proyectos.

Entre los productos que se mostraron estaba el PDF Spy, creado luego de una jornada de trabajo de Hacks/Hackers en Boston, en el marco de la ONA2011. De aquel hackatón participó Angélica Peralta Ramos (del área Interactiva y Multimedia de La Nación) y Matt Perry quienes ganaron el premio a “lo más intrigante”. PDF Spy rastrea una página web llena de archivos pdf para saber si estos han sido modificados con posterioridad a su publicación. Código en Github. Se lanza con el comando con |python pdfspy.py url-to-index-page path-to-archive|

Luego se presentó el “Hack Electoral en tiempo real” basado en Google Fusion Tables. La idea de Sergio Sorín fue cruzar los resultados de las elecciones nacionales con votaciones anteriores, y visualizar las elecciones presidenciales en tiempo real, bajo el comando de Martín Sarsale. Una semana después, el 22 de octubre, unas 30 personas trabajaron con el soporte del experto Andy Tow en cartografía electoral, y el producto se publicó como http://elecciones.hhba.info El día de las elecciones, 23 de octubre, la plataforma causó un altísimo impacto en la prensa argentina, fue levantada o comentada por medios nacionales, blogs internacionales y diarios o sitios del interior del país, algunos que olvidaron colocar los créditos La web creada para la ocasión tuvo unas 20 mil visitas.

Mientras eso ocurría, fuimos invitados a participar en Praga del MediaFabric, una conferencia internacional organizada por SourceFabric, asentados en República Checa, que desarrollan un manejador de contenidos libre y que está creciendo rápidamente. Además de este cronista, también participaron por América latina Leo Prieto de Fayerwayer, Luis Manuel Botello del Centro Internacional para Periodistas (ICFJ), James Breiner, actualmente en Beijing, David Brewer sobre nuevos medios y Annie Machon, ex agente de inteligencia británica activista por los derechos civiles.

De tal modo, dos de los fundadores de Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires llegamos al Mozilla Fest de Londres con una batería de propuestas generadas en Argentina (Mapa76.info, software de extracción automática de datos, y los trabajos anteriormente mencionados), y en la antesala de un inminente hackatón durante mediados de noviembre en Buenos Aires, junto a la Fundación Huesped. El resultado del hackatón se publicará inicialmente en La Nación, pero también quedará disponible para otros medios. Se pondrá el foco en resolver problemas de difusión de contenido viral y participativo, identificación de fuentes, trivias de aprendizaje y capacitación, manuales de estilo, mapas y nubes de visualización temática, entre otras propuestas.

El Equipo de Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires está conformado por Mariano Blejman, Martín Sarsale, Guillermo Movia, Mariana Berruezo, César Miquel, Ezequiel Clerici y Sergio Sorín.

Web Http://meetupba.hackshackers.com
Blog http://www.hackshackers.com
Mail: ba@hackshackers.com
Twitter @HacksHackersBA

Las recientes actividades han sido apoyadas de diversas formas por Mozilla Foundation, AreaTres, Fundación Desarrollar, La Nación, 360TV, Página 12, Vurbia Technologies, Télam, Globant, Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano y Sourcefabric.

First Large-Scale Hackathon in Armenia

Hackathon[YAN] Yerevan 2011

Public Journalism Club a Yerevan based Non-Profit, chapter of Hacks/Hackers in Armenia and Microsoft Innovation Center in Armenia in association with Yerevan City Hall will launch  Hackathon[YAN] Yerevan 2011 contest of innovative ideas that will take place on 17 December, 2011 in Yerevan, Armenia.

Why Hackathon[YAN] ? Well, because most Armenian last names end with YAN

This will be the first large scale Hackathon organized in Armenia.

The Hackathon[YAN] Yerevan 2011 will be aimed at finding innovative solutions  to the problems existing in Yerevan and encouraging the engagement of residents in finding solutions for them.

The result of the contest is most likely to be the creation of a number of prototypes for ready-made projects that can be implemented not only by municipal government but also by the institutions and circles focused on the city issues.

We expect to observe developments of innovative projects that will  encourage active engagement of people in the resolution of different issues that can be addressed by crowd-sourcing strategies.

Hackathon[YAN] Yerevan 2011 is waiting for great ideas which can be submitted here.

The organizers will help applicants, to form teams, to find experts or developers if needed. We will provide working space for teams, for brainstorming, developing and refining their projects before the actual Hackathon[YAN] Yerevan 2011 contest.

Before the actual event, the organizers will also conduct meetings for applicants where the experts of various spheres will brief teams on unresolved  issues of Yerevan city, that need innovative solutions. They will consult and help teams to refine problems and ideas for enhancing projects.

Hackathon[YAN] Yerevan 2011 will start on 17 December and will last 24 hours.

The teams made up of developers and other specialists will be given only 24 hours to develop and present to the panel a program or its prototype (demo version) aimed at solving a specific problem.

The winners will be announced the same day.

The award winning teams will receive numerous major prizes and will be provided with investment opportunities.

Application deadline: 30 October, 2011

The contest is supported by Yerevan municipality, Microsoft, Counterpart International Representative Office in Armenia, Enterprise Incubator Foundation, leading telecommunications and information technology companies, media organizations.

The information sponsor of Hackathon[YAN] Yerevan 2011 is PanarmenianNet online news agency.

For more information write us at info (at) pjc dot am