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Next NYC Meetup, July 14 at Meetup HQ with Scott Heiferman

We’ve scheduled our next New York City Meetup (more in the works!) at Meetup’s HQ.

Scott Heiferman, the chief executive of Meetup, will not crush an iPad with a sledgehammer for us, but he will give a talk on his vision of news and information: Why the future of social media isn’t media. How journalism and media will shape the 21st century by catalyzing community like never before.

Plus we’re looking for three or four short (~5 minutes) demos. Email nyc[at]hackshackers[dot]com if you would like to present.

Meetup’s auditorium fits about 70 people max, so we will maintain a waiting list.

We’re charging $10, in part to cover the drinks and yummy food. Suggestions for kinds of food welcome. If you have trouble with the cost (student?), please email us, we don’t want the $10 to be a deterrent. You can volunteer to help with set-up and cleanup.

Thanks Boston for our first get-together

Thank you everyone who turned out for the first Hacks/Hackers gathering in Boston! We had a great crowd that mixed with attendees from the Knight Foundation’s conference on the Future of News Civic Media, with people from local news organizations like The Boston Globe and Boston.com, the Nieman Journalism Lab and also startups like pinyadda.

A photo is below, and check out more at the Boston meetup page: http://meetupbos.hackshackers.com

New York City Hacks/Hackers Inaugural Meetup Draws 170 People

New York City June 2 Meetup at Chinatown Brasserie

An astounding 170 folks showed up at last week’s inaugural Meetup on June 2 at Chinatown Brasserie to enjoy the dim sum (thanks to Patch).  We uploaded photos, taken by Jigar Mehta, so feel free to tag them.

What we appreciated was that it was a pretty even balance of hacks and hackers, not to mention men and women. That’s New York City for you.

Plans
Lots of  ideas came our way. We hope these will all happen sometimes in the next few months. Watch our calendar.

• A hackathon of sorts.
• A “speed-dating” event between hacks and hackers so they can meet each other and see what they are working on.
• A demonstration of YouTube’s lates work regarding news (The head of their news and politics team now works out of Google’s New York office).
• A briefing about the New York Times “Moment in Time” project, which gathered 10,000 photos from around the world.
• A demo session for different content-related startups.

In addition, we’d like to get a talk about design and usability, if anyone has any suggestions for speakers/format/topic.

[...]

Hacks/Hackers coming to NYC on June 2

The word is out and already more than 100 people have signed up to attend the first Hacks/Hackers gathering in New York on June 2. Please sign up to attend at http://meetupnyc.hackshackers.com.

The first event will be focused on getting to know each other and assembling the wider journo-tech community to talk about what events you’d like to see in the future.

Hacks/Hackers co-founders Burt Herman and Aron Pilhofer will talk about the goals of the organization. Jennifer 8. Lee, who is helping to organize the event, will discuss her work with the Knight Foundation to support journalism innovation. Josh Cohen, senior business product manager at Google News, will also make some remarks. Folks from Patch, our main sponsor (thank you), will be discussing their approach to news and technology, as well as the skills and experience they are looking for on their product and tech teams, where they are hiring right now.

We outgrew plans to have the event at Jennifer’s loft with her famous dimsum, but we’ll be in good hands at the China Brasserie. We look forward to seeing you there!

Welcome to the online home of Hacks/Hackers

Welcome to Hacks/Hackers, the online community for discussion around real-life meetups of the same name.

This site will be a group blog about journalism and technology from the epicenter of the media revolution. We will talk about new tools and solutions, highlight best practices, and celebrate innovators and entrepreneurs working to build the future of news.

In this new era, the power is in the audience’s hands. We have only begun to see how the news and information will change from the equalizing power of the Internet. Mobile and wireless technology has made media even more a part of our lives at every moment. Meanwhile, traditional media are struggling to adapt as their monopoly on distribution slips away. By choice or necessity, journalists are becoming entrepreneurs and building personal brands, starting sites focused on niche topics and local beats.

Where this leads us will incorporate some of journalism’s well-worn traditions, like fact checking and critical thinking. But the new media age will be built in greater collaboration with audiences, who can now all commit acts of journalism.

News has always fundamentally been about “social media,” giving people common stories to share and connecting them to others far away. News is now more social than ever, with friends acting as de-facto editors and conversations blossoming on social networking sites.

I look forward to following this journey with all of you and fostering a community of people deeply engaged in not only talking about the future of media, but also actively experimenting to push things forward. There will be stumbles and failures along the way, all of which will help us figure out where we’re going.

Hacks and Hackers panel on future of online magazines, Jan. 7, 2010. (Photo by Patrick Donohue)