Media Innovation Events
Upcoming Events
Past Hacks/Hackers Events
September 2023 | Workshop: Design the Newsroom of 2030 (At ONA 24 in Atlanta)
How will AI transform the newsroom by 2030? Several dozen journalists joined Hacks/Hackers at ONA 24 in Atlanta in September for an in-person workshop, Designing the Future Newsroom Workshop: AI in 2030. Workshop participants were encouraged to think from first principles about building a newsroom from the ground up, planning how AI will be integrated into all aspects of their work, with the goal to enhance journalism and increase community engagement.
September 2023 | Is the First AI Election an Opportunity or Nightmare for Democracy? (AI Real Talk Series)
Can AI enhance democratic processes, streamline voter engagement, and provide insightful data analytics, or does it pose significant risks, including the amplification of misinformation and potential manipulation of voter behavior? Join us as we hear from experts about how AI is being deployed for the upcoming election season, exploring both its potential benefits and dangers to democracy.
Our panel explored these questions as part of an in-depth discussion on the legal battles shaping the future of media and technology.
Watch their discussion on YouTube:
August 2023 | To Sue or Not to Sue - The Legal Battle Over AI and Journalism (AI Real Talk Series)
From Condé Nast to Forbes, from The New York Times to Mother Jones, publishers are taking legal action against AI companies for utilizing journalistic work without permission. Do they have a valid case?
Our panel explored these questions as part of an in-depth discussion on the legal battles shaping the future of media and technology.
Watch their discussion on YouTube:
August 2023 | RIP Web: AI is in Your Interface? (AI Real Talk Series)
If the web browser is the interface of the internet today, how will we interact in the AI future? With chatbots, AI summarization apps and voice assistants, publishers are data fodder for the omniscient computer brain to answer user questions with precisely what they want to know. How will publishers adapt to these new interfaces where their brands fade into the background?
Our AI Real Talk panel discussed these questions. Watch their discussion on YouTube:
July 2023 | Should News Organizations Date AI Companies? (AI Real Talk Series)
Joined by former partnership executives from major tech companies to launch the AI Real Talk series, we considered whether news organizations will face the same challenges with AI companies as they did with tech giants like Google, Meta, and Twitter. This kick-off discussion featured partnership execs who previously worked at all three of those major platforms. Explore how lessons from past partnerships can inform successful collaborations with AI companies today.
Watch the discussion here:
Summer 2024 | Hacks/Hackers leads AI x Journalism ideathon at Poynter Summit on AI, Ethics, and Journalism
More than 50 journalists, editors, and technologists attended Poynter’s summit to discuss and help develop Poynter’s new AI ethics framework while brainstorming ideas about how to introduce emerging technologies into newsroom workflows. Hacks/Hackers was invited to lead an ideathon that saw five teams prototype new generative AI tools. The ideas pushed the boundaries of AI use beyond traditional applications like translation, transcription, summarization and content automation, envisioning the future of news delivery and consumption.
Spring 2024 | Open Source AI Hackathon at the Brown Institute at Columbia
More than 100 journalists, coders, and product designers attended the Hacks/Hackers Open Source AI hackathon in New York to learn about and experiment with open-source AI and journalism.
Hackathon participants explored how AI might enable new, personalized experiences for journalism audiences, how to train large language models to increase accuracy and trust, and how to design platforms that ensure a human is always kept in the loop.
Spring 2024 | AI x Journalism House at SXSW 2024
Hacks/Hackers hosted an AI x Journalism House in the heart of downtown Austin alongside SXSW. For two days, we organized presentations, discussions, and workshops attended by nearly 200 people with speakers and attendees from news and technology organizations including The New York Times, The Texas Tribune, Texas Monthly, Online News Association, Hugging Face, and many others.
Fall 2023 | Hacks/Hackers launches AI x Journalism training
More than 10,600 journalists from 147 countries attended How to use ChatGPT and other generative AI tools in your newsrooms, an online course led by Hacks/Hackers and Aimee Rinehart, Senior Product Manager AI Strategy for The Associated Press, and offered by Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas, Austin. At the end of the course, nearly 1,500 participants in the course completed a survey about how they thought AI might impact journalism.
November 2023 | WikiConference North America 2023
This four-day meetup of Wikipedians in November 2023 focused on information reliability and credibility. The conference included 247 attendees from all over North America and the Caribbean who gathered in Toronto to participate in workshops and hackathons. The event included a WikiCred track devoted to credibility issues and a soft launch of credibility microgrants (as noted above). Keynote speakers included Selena Deckelmann, Chief Product and Technology Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation; Ha-Loan Phan, Wikimedia Canada Chair; Pierre Choffet, Consultant for Wikimedia Canada; and Sue Gardner, Canadian journalist and former Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. This was the first meetup since the community’s last in-person conference in 2019 – also supported by Hacks/Hackers – which was held at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
June 2023 | Media Party Chicago
Media Party Chicago is part of an ongoing series of international gatherings where journalists, technologists, and media entrepreneurs come together to discuss evolving realities of local newsrooms, the emerging influence of AI on media reliability and credibility, and the impacts of mis/disinformation on democracy. Media Party events offer workshops, lightning talks that explore solutions to challenges affecting the media ecosystem, and hackathons where teams seek creative solutions to current problems).
October 2022 | Conference for Truth and Trust Online
Truth and Trust Online 2022 took place in October 2022 as a hybrid conference while both an in-person event at Boston University and an online event.Supported by Hacks/Hackers, the annual Conference for Truth and Trust Online brings together practitioners, technologists, academics, and platforms, to share, discuss, and collaborate on useful technical innovations and research that improves the truthfulness and trustworthiness of online communications.
August 2022 | Misinformation Village @ DEFCON
Hacks/Hackers and the MisinfoCon community convened Misinformation Village at DEFCON30, the largest annual official gathering of hackers North America. Misinformation Village @ DEFCON explored the challenge of disinformation not only as an information disorder but also a security threat and a threat to democratic norms and democratic expression online.
2019 | WikiCredCon at MIT
In partnership with Wikiconference North America and Credibility Coalition, Hacks/Hackers convenes WikiCredCon at MIT. Aimed at fostering collaborative approaches to understanding the veracity, quality and credibility of online information, the four-day conference brought together 350 Wikipedians, technologists, researchers, and journalists, as well as representatives from web platforms which are increasingly using Wikipedia to assess the credibility of information.
2018 | Misinfocon 3.0 in Kyiv
Building on the strength and momentum of our first two MisinfoCons at MIT in Boston and at the Mozilla Festival in London, “MisinfoCon 3.0” was convened by Hacks/Hackers in Kyiv, Ukraine, in collaboration with IREX. The ‘con featured speakers on international policy, technology and media literacy, and explored the global implications of misinformation as well as identifying methods of fighting it.
Donate to Hacks/Hackers
Help increase Hacks/Hackers capacity to support emerging and impactful projects. Your financial support will strengthen the trustworthiness of information at every level of the media ecosystem: journalism, platforms, communities, verification, fact checking, and reader experience.
Your gift will increase Hacks/Hackers capacity to support emerging and impactful projects. Thank you for helping to strengthen the trustworthiness of information at every level of the media ecosystem: journalism, platforms, communities, verification, fact checking, and reader experience.
Mail a Check
Please make your check payable to “Hacks/Hackers” and mail it to:
Hacks/Hackers712 H St NE PMB 96681Washington, DC 20002
All checks received will be used wherever the need is greatest. If you would like to give to a specific project, please contact donate@hackshackers.com.
Send a Wire Transfer
If you would like to donate via wire transfer, please contact donate@hackshackers.com.