Hacks/Hackers Austin: Innovation in Media

Tim Lott, vice president of disruptive innovation of Cox Media Group, met with Hacks/Hackers Austin in a joint meetup with Online News Association on Jan. 28 at the Statesman to discuss the activities of his team. They are working on TwelveApp, but are also pioneering in new ways to approach innovation. During the talk, Tim discussed the lean startup process, working to develop a minimum viable product (MVP), that can be implemented and tested quickly. This process relies on iterative development and quick prototyping. Tim was joined by other members of his team, Zach McGhee and Rocky Medure.

There were several questions. Rob Quigley of The University of Texas asked what students should be doing to stay on top of innovation. Tim said students should “read a lot and practice creative confidence.” He went on to explain that a focus on making things that allow people to communicate and solve problems will be critical.

Another question had to do with risk around the sharing of ideas, with concerns that an idea could be “stolen.” Medure said, “There is enormous value in sharing ideas. It synthesizes new ideas.” It is unlikely that someone has the passion, commitment and resources to execute your idea, but your likelihood of success is much greater if you talk to more people.

Refreshments were sponsored by the Austin American-Statesman. Stay tuned for details on a February Hackathon. We appreciate the time that Tim, Zach and Rocky spent with us!

Tags: Austin, innovation

Hacks/Hackers Rabat: To E or not to Be

For the first time in Morocco, Hacks/Hackers was organized in November 2012, in Rabat, the capital, but the story did not start from that date. It started in February 2012, when some friends and I founded the first think tank in Morocco working on using media for development.

One of our reasons to establish this NGO, was to contribute in reducing the gap in the digital knowledge of journalists in Morocco.

As the founder and head of this think tank, I started contacting international foundations working in the same field. At the same time, Ayman Salah, ICFJ Knight fellow, was looking for a media partner in Morocco to establish Hacks/Hackers Rabat.

Destiny played well for both of us. I was in Egypt when he contacted me, so we met, he talked to me about Hacks/Hackers, it was my first time to discover this “American concept.” I liked it and did not hesitate to agree to be this media partner in Morocco.

What’s Hacks/Hackers? It becomes a common question that Moroccan journalists asked me every time I talked to them about our desire to open Hacks/Hackers in Morocco.

This was our first challenge, to explain the meaning of Hacks/Hackers, especially because English is not the first foreign language in Morocco (it’s French). The official languages are Arabic and Berber, so the mission was not as easy to translate as we thought.

We did our best to avoid this linguistic challenge by keeping “Hacks/Hackers” as a concept and word too, and not translate it into Arabic or French. We also chose to be patient in explaining the meaning to our target audience instead of using translation. We’d like to motivate Moroccan journalists to be open to new ways of learning new media, and not be stuck in the French school.

Our first meetup, “To E or Not To Be,” was very attractive for our target audience More than 50 participants attended Hacks/Hackers Rabat. We organized it in the only public institute for journalism and communication in Morocco, ISIC.

For the first time, senior journalists, junior journalists, bloggers, journalism students, NGO leaders, even politicians and delegates of the ministry of communication were in the same workshop to talk “Hacks/Hackers.”

I could not forget the positive reactions of our attendees, so I asked Ayman Salah to come again to organize another meetup. This time we selected Casablanca, the economic capital of Morocco. We chose different subjects from those selected for Rabat. “Spread your content, and “Show me the money” were our themes for Hacks/Hackers Casablanca.

In 2013, our target is to organize Hacks/Hackers Bus. We’d like to visit every Moroccan city. We’d like to put Hacks/Hackers in every corner of our country in accordance with the Hacks/Hackers mission to bring journalists, designers and developers together to create innovations for news and civic media.

Tags: meetup, Rabat

Hacks/Hackers New Delhi: New markets, new models

Hacks/Hackers New Delhi, the first Hacks/Hackers chapter in India, launched Dec. 5. About 50 journalists, techies and supporters came by What’s Up Bharat, in Hauz Khas Village to talk about the challenges of combining media and technology in India.

Nikhil Pahwa (@nixxin), founder and publisher of digital analysis site MediaNama, said he’s looking for people to take a closer look at ways to organize big data. He also suggested creating tools that can track the evolution of stories and ideas in real-time.

Kushan Mitra (@kushanmitra), managing editor of digital coordination and new projects at the Pioneer, led a conversation about the need for new revenue models in the digital media space, particularly in the Indian context.


And Narendra Nag (@narendranag), general manager of 2020Social, talked about his experiences as a hack/hacker for the past 10 years, and the fact that both journos and techies have a lot of learn from each other’s different viewpoints.



The crowd asked questions, enjoyed free pizza and cheap beer, and decided to throw a hackathon sometime in January. A few journalists asked for more workshops in coding and tech skills, and a lot of attendees were interested in a session on how to better understand Indian consumers’ digital behavior.

A good conversation and a great launch event that was also covered in The Sunday Guardian (New Delhi). For more info, check out this article.

Interested in Hacks/Hackers New Delhi? Sign up for the meetup or email NewDelhi@hackshackers.com. The event was sponsored by What’s Up Bharat and the Google Developer Group, New Delhi.

Tags: meetup, New Delhi

Hackathon{YAN} 2012: winners are announced :)

Hackathon{YAN} 2012 is already over , winners are announced.

After working over their ideas for 24 hours on December 23, 37 teams presented their projects and prototypes of their ideas.

In total more than 130 people took part in the Hackathon[YAN] 2012, which was the second large scale hackathon in Armenia. The first Hackathon[YAN] took place in 2011.

Awards ceremony for the winners of Hackathon[YAN] 2012 took place on 26 December 2012.

The winners listed bellow got prizes and certificates from organizations that were in charge of Hackathon[YAN] 2012.

• Best Microsoft technology application:
  Game Kinect Air Combat takes the MD kinect for Windows and allows you to become a combat pilot on a mission to destroy the enemy.

• Best Windows 8 application:
  A game named “Shelly” for tablets presented by the ApolloSoft: the fish Shelly is traveling in the ocean and overcoming a lot of obstacles.
• Best Windows phone applications:
  An interactive application presented by s.a.k.u. RAI team, which is based on  the  well known “4 seasons” toy’s aesthetics. The application can be used both as a means of weather forecast and also as a desktop widget.A game presented by the Gardeners team, where the gardener is struggling against the pests in his garden.

• Best Android applications:
  An entertaining game presented by the team Virtual Punch which is created by using the Augmented reality technology.SpiritSpanner, an old game “Where, With Whom, What are they doing, Who Comes, Who He Said” is turned into a fun application.

• Best rural development mobile applications:
  The mTech team presented an application for rapid response connecting health institutions, health professionals with rural areas.Save Life team presented an application which gives an opportunity to collect data base and verified information on blood donors.

• Best media project, the award is provided by Public Journalism Club with a sponsorship of Knight Mozilla OpenNews:
  TweetHood: TweetHood lets you see real-time tweets from anywhere in the world. You can explore you neighborhood of tweets or zoom into any place on the earth!Ever wondered what people in your neighborhood tweet about? People in your classroom, in your dorm, in your office, in the restaurant? Want to get a real-time feel of what is going on at your favorite conference you wished to be part of ? Enjoy the new way of discovering tweets based on Where rather than Who. (iOS& Android)

Encouraging awards were given to CyberGates, Appricot, Picture Coning, Hechhock teams from Sorsio Company.

Besides the money and other awards the best teams will get a unique opportunity to present their project to Bulgarian Eleven Accelerator venture fund, as well as to the potential investors and have business and technology advisory support from Microsoft Innovation Center and mLab ECA Regional laboratory for mobile solutions.

Hackathon[YAN] 2012 contest of innovative ideas and programming took place on 22-23 December 2012. 36 teams participated in it. During the 24-hour contest the teams developed their ideas and the demo versions of their solution/programme/application. On 23 December 2012 the teams represented the jury the outcome of their 24-hour work.

The members of the jury were:

Yeva Hyusyan, Microsoft Innovation Center, Director

Seda Muradyan, Head of Public Journalism Club

Karen Vardanyan, Union of Information Technology Enterprises, Executive director

Arsen Gevorgyan, Specific Features Localization LTD, Director

Artak Saroyan, “R&D Arts” Inc. Armenia,

Grigor Barseghyan, Microsoft RA, Director

Mariam Davtyan, MLab ECA Regional laboratory for mobile solutions, Project director

Hovhannes Avoyan, President of Soscio CJSC.

Hackathon[Yan] 2012 was organized by Microsoft Innovation Center Armenia, Microsoft RA, Enterprise Incubator Foundation, mLab ECA Regional laboratory for mobile solutions and Public Journalism Club. In 2011 Microsoft Innovation Center Armenia and Public Journalism Club organized the first Hackathon in Armenia. 32 teams took part in it.

Partners of the event: Soursio CJSC, Counterpart International Inc. Armenia, Yerevan Mathematical Machines Research Institute, GNC Alfa, Knight-Mozilla OpenNews.

 Hackathon[YAN] 2012 was implemented by the support of Counterpart International Inc Armenia.

The project was also supported by Knight-Mozilla OpenNews.

Information supporters of Hackathon[YAN] 2012 were http://panarmenian.net and http://ittrend.am/.

Tags: Armenia

Hacks/Hackers Austin: Intro to Programming for Communicators

Twenty-four members of Hacks/Hackers and the Online News Association community in Austin attended Cindy Royal’s workshop on Dec. 3 at Austin American-Statesman:  Intro to Programming for Communicators. This 2-hour workshop was meant for people with no experience, to introduce them to the most basic concepts of programming. Royal used JavaScript as the platform, but emphasized the concepts that were common amongst most programming languages.

Topics covered included:

• Why do I need to learn to program?
• Programming languages
• The Document Object Model
• Strings and numbers
• What’s a variable?
• Math and concatenation
• Methods
• Alerts and prompts
• Booleans – true or false
• If Statements and Loops
• Functions
• Arrays
• Events
• HTML integration – getElementById()

Check out the presentation above and the handout below.

Cindy Royal is an associate professor at Texas State University in San Marcos, just south of Austin. She has been teaching Web design and digital media concepts for more than a decade.

Tags: Austin

HACKATHON [YAN] 2012 best 24 hours event in Armenia

HACKATHON [YAN] 2012

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. Eleanor Roosevelt.

Biggest hack event of Armenia will be a unique opportunity to discuss, invent and  implement  great ideas !!!!

Microsoft Innovation Center Armenia in cooperation with Microsoft RA, Enterprise Incubator Foundation, mLab Regional Mobile Application Laboratory for ECA, Sourcio CJSC and Public Journalism Club, announces a call for Hackathon [YAN] 2012 contest of programming and innovative ideas.

When

22-23 December 2012

Where

Mergelyan Institute (Yerevan Mathematical Machines Research Institute, 3 Hakobyan Street, Yerevan, Armenia)

Have you  developed an application/game for Windows 8 or mobile phones,  do you have any innovative solution to address any concerning issue on any platform? If your answer is “Yes”, then participate in Hackathon[YAN] 2012 and implement your projects!

Within 24 hours, the teams consisted of programmers and non-programmers will develop the prototypes/demo versions of their programs, applications, mobile applications that will be assessed by the panel of experts.

If you can propose a burning issue in any sphere and suggest a technology-based solution to it, or you just have an innovative or interesting idea, this exciting competition will enable you not only to implement your idea, develop a mobile app that will be downloaded worldwide, but also to get valuable awards, funding and networking opportunities, and just enjoy an exciting environment.

Unlike the homonymous contest held last year when the topic was limited to proposition of solutions related to Yerevan, this year Hackathon [YAN] is open to any sphere without any limitations.

The application forms should be downloaded from www.mic.am and submitted online by sending it to apply@mic.am e-mail.  Submission deadline is 9 December 2012.

Hackathon[Yan] 2012 is organized by Microsoft Innovation Center Armenia, Microsoft RA, Enterprise Incubator Foundation, mLab ECA Regional laboratory for mobile solutions and Public Journalism Club. The event is held as part of the “Innovation through Technology” project – a public private partnership of MIC Armenia, Microsoft RA, USAID/Armenia, Government of Armenia, Enterprise Incubator Foundation (EIF), and State Engineering University of Armenia (SEUA).

Partners of the event:  Sourcio CJSC, Counterpart International Inc. Armenia, Yerevan Mathematical Machines Research Institute, GNC Alfa, Knight-Mozilla OpenNews.

The history of Hackathon[YAN]

 In 2011 Microsoft Innovation Center Armenia and Public Journalism Club organized the first Hackathon in Armenia. 32 teams and more than 150 participants took part in it. The presented programs were suggesting technological solutions to the problems of Yerevan. All the winning projects got financial awards, cooperation and funding opportunities. Two of the winning teams united and established BigBrain company which continues to work on new solutions on the basis of Kinect technology.www.citybugs.am website was launched and is now operating in cooperation with the Yerevan city hall, Information Flight mobile application project was transformed to MyNews Mobile and was implemented and launched before parliamentary elections. www.4car.am is including several ideas from Hackathon and was launched by the traffic police of RA in cooperation with Nikita mobile company.

How are we getting prepared? 

Before the Hackathon[YAN] the organizers will arrange a number of sessions with the applicants to ensure  participants are well aware of the contest process and terms, get familiar with the success stories of Hackathon[YAN] 2011, to assist them in designing and developing their projects and also help them establish connections with appropriate institutions and experts. We’ll also conduct several briefings and master classes.

Tags: entrepreneurship

Hacks/Hackers ATX: Music and Racing

The September and October meetings of Hacks/Hackers ATX (in conjunction with the Online News Association local), focused on topics around important parts of Austin culture. In September, the group talked about Music Apps and Blogging, featuring Daniel Senyard and Shannon Delaney of Vivogig and Ian Morales and AJ Miranda of Red River Noise and Austin Vida. Vivogig is a photo-sharing app focused on concert experiences and Red River Noise and Austin Vida are music blogs covering important aspects of the diverse music scene. Maira Garcia, formerly of Austin American-Statesman but now at The New York Times, organized the panel and moderated.

 

The October meetup focused on Covering the Circuit of the Americas. This is a new event for Austin. Taking place Nov. 16-18, the international crowd that enjoys Formula One racing will descend on our city. It is expected to draw 200,000 race fans and onlookers, bigger than both SXSW and Austin City Limits Festival. Kevin and Kerri Olsen of the blog Austin Grand Prix and Dave Doolittle of Austin American-Statesman discussed their plans for covering the inaugural event.

Both talks were held at the Austin American-Statesman, with the Statesman sponsoring the September meetup and the UT School of Journalism sponsoring October.

Stay tuned for our last meetup of 2012, Intro to Programming for Communicators.

Tags: Austin

Hacks/Hackers Paris discusses APIs

For its second session hosted by Qunb, Hacks/Hackers Paris focused on APIs. The first presentation, by Aurélien Fache from faberNovel explained what is an API and what it will be in the years to come. Afterward, Radio France and UPIAN showed an innovative use of the Storify API for their website “Clichés de campagne.”

“Everything is API, API is everywhere” could be a good summary for Aurélien Fache’s presentation. “An API is a interface to share information between two systems,” he said. Then, he showed some examples: withings.fr converts weight via API, and Cosm uses and API to monitor radioactivity in Fukushima, Japan. “There will be 250,000 APIs in 2014. The main output formats are xml and json, they are both machine-readable and user-readable,” he said. He then showed some tools to make JSON easier to read: Json Parser Online, and Mr. Data Converter by Shan Carter of The New York Times.

To conclude, Fache talked about “liquid medias” and “media as an API”: “The media should be liquid to be readable on all platforms: mobile, web, print, TV, etc.”

The second presentation was about “Clichés de campagnes” and other websites made by UPIAN and Radio France this year using the Storify API. “We thought we could mix professional photography with social media content. Better than a live-tweet, Storify was the tool for that. It’s a curation, made by a journalist. We could have used the API of each social media website, but Storify is already doing that,” the presenters said. Storify was a great tool to gather Twitter, Youtube, Soundcloud, text and more. “The good thing is that we could make a tool without thinking about the CMS. One of the side effect is that Storify can have some problems. So we downloaded the json given by Storify’s API.”

The result was so great, said Xavier Meunier of Radio France, that they decided to use it on other subjects. It’s not random content, it’s curated content. “This tool won’t replace breaking news or analysis, but it’s a new thing to keep in our toolbox. It was an opportunity to incorporate sounds, Radio France’s trademark. The result worth the work, as we continue for the elections in the USA,” he said.

After that, Webshell, which calls itself API of the APIs, presented their product and ToS;dr, a website they made to highlight complexity of terms of service for APIs.

The API will be discussed in Paris during Apidays, Dec. 3-4.

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Hacks/Hackers São Paulo: The First Hackathon

Developers and journalists gather for the first Hacks/Hackers São Paulo hackathon.

Hacks/Hackers São Paulo held its first hackathon on Oct. 20 during the W3C Brazil Conference, alongside the 2012 PERL international community conference. The hackathon, which drew about 50 people, happened during Web.br, an important gathering of the tech community in Brazil.

The hackathon attracted a large number of developers and a few journalists. Nevertheless the mix was right, as journalists helped different groups with their data mining skills. W3C, which joined ICFJ, OKFN and Abraji to create Hacks/Hackers São Paulo, also provided a team of front-end developers who helped refine hackathon ideas and improve the overall output.

Six hack groups formed and presented the following projects:

Transpolítica
Kako Fernandes and Raphael Agnelli created a graphical interface for a large dataset about congressional cabinet spending.

University student profiles
Hacker Diego Rabatone led a project to create an application that gives graphical interpretation of data released by the University of São Paulo. The code is on GitHub.

Para onde foi voto (Where My Vote Went)
Raphael Molesin improved on a project created during a previous hackaton. This time, he aggregated new data about local politicians’ spending and personal wealth.

Senado.cc
Hacker Vitor Batista basically managed to hack all the Brazilian senate’s so-called open data and he plans to dump it into a more friendly website, Senado.cc.

São Paulo Hackdash
Rogérios Alcantara and friends proposed adapting a platform that collects ideas for future hackathons. It’s inspired by the Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires HackDash.

Esplanada Aberta
This is a project by W3C professionals who have drawn a styled map of Brasilia’s main avenue — the place where our government ministers work — and then mapped the status of Brazil’s Freedom of Information laws by each government department.

No tags for this post.

Hacks/Hackers Amman Supports Jordanian Journalists

UNESCO’s Amman office was home to the technical day organized by Hacks/Hackers Amman Chapter with the objective to provide technology solution to different issues Jordanian journalists face.

Participants included a wide range of ‘hackers’, organizations and figures in the Ammani vibrant and dynamic tech scene, including Hacks/Hackers members, the Jordan Open Source Association and different prominent local IT companies and programmers. On the other hand, journalists and professionals from media organizations like ARIJ, Alghad daily and the Amman-based private TV station Roya, fully participated at the day by expressing some of the IT-related challenges they face and by understanding how technology can be an important, even critical, part of any media strategy to be taken into account.

The tech day was opened by a speech of ARIJ’s Director of Investigative Journalism, Saad Hattar, who stressed the importance of innovative tools on journalism, generally, and investigative journalism in the specific.

Ayman Salah, Knight International Journalism Fellow in the Middle East, explained how the use of some phone-based tools could be advantageous in remote areas where different communication channels are almost nonexistent, citing CGNet Swara, that allowed people in India to use mobile phones to send and receive reports in their local language, another use mentioned, was Swara’s previous utilization in Egypt; the two-way communication of the tool allowed people to listen to pre-recorded news reports from a newsroom, as well as allowing citizens to record audio news reports themselves by the only use of phones.

Similarly, Salah explained to participants how SMS tools can be used to send and receive reports in several fields, a good example he gave was the use of Frontline SMS to help fishermen in Ghana to be informed about better locations to sell their fish, as well as best stock prices for their catch and which species do offer a better profit margin.

Several journalists expressed their concerns about the authenticity of data collected in such ways, opening a fruitful discussion on how to make this citizen-reported pieces of news verifiable and how to adopt tools and methodologies to keep data collected by non-journalists reliable.

Later, Drupalist and JOSA member Mohammad Khamash, had a short introduction on open source technologies and how they help (and helped) different media organizations. Stressing on points like cost effectiveness and vendor lock-in, different media organizations realized the several benefits of open source software as they expressed their willing to better adopt these technologies in their workspaces.

Khamash discussed how the Jordan Open Source Association helped the local radio station, Radio Al-Balad, to switch to Linux operating system from a proprietary one, stressing how this move helped to cut expenses and, at the same time, keeping the organization’s workflow unaltered.

The Jordan Open Source Association, according to Khamash, used Drupal, an open source content management system (CMS), to create different web applications and web based tools relevant to several civil sections, he mentioned, as well, an array of examples of how Drupal has been used worldwide in the journalism sector.

Other open source CMSs, specifically WordPress, was seen to be well-known and of interest by the journalists participating in the day. IT professional, Zamil Safwan, suggested JOSA to hold training sessions about WordPress and basic programming, a suggestion well appreciated by JOSA’s vice president and Hacks/Hackers member, Mahmoud Aldwairi, who expressed intention to organize these sessions the sooner.

Khamash also mentioned a Citizen Journalism mobile app, developed by JOSA under Hacks/Hackers Amman Chapter, to allow smartphone holders to take and upload photos and videos taken by their handsets. Additionally, the app allows the transmission of text-based reports and is currently open to include new functionalities, like geo-tagging and better management by media organizations using the tool. A customized version of the app is going to be deployed at Community Media Network soon.

The day concluded with an open discussion about other several technologies that can push journalistic work ahead, the participants finally suggested the organization of other similar events to raise awareness about IT solutions and to push the overall advancement of media technologies in the Arab World.

Tags: Amman, Arab World, Drupal, Jordan, mapping, Middle East, mobile apps, SMS