Hacks/Hackers Caracas and Taipei hold their first events

Greetings, hacks and hackers! There’s been significant interest in starting new Hacks/Hackers groups from North America to Latin America to Asia over the past few months. One of the newest members of the family, Caracas, held their first event last weekend: #DataYTequeños (cheesy sticks):

The next to get started is Taipei, so if you know anyone in Taiwan, spread the word!

The week ahead:

• Taipei is tackling QGIS for its first meetup
• London is featuring speakers from Bloomberg and the WSJ
• Miami is holding its regular OpenHack Miami
• IRE in Missouri is holding its weekly meeting

Group spotlight:

The brand new group in Caracas, Venezuela, got off to a booming start last weekend. More than 40 people showed up to a casual celebration of data and tequeños – Venezuelan cheesy bread sticks. Organizer Katherine Pennacchio had a hard time estimating how many people would attend, and said picking a venue to fit the crowd was important.

“And try to find an sponsor to be able to get free drinks or snacks. If not, give the option to buy drinks or food. Informality sometimes is good.”

Worth a read:

• Some are asking if Gannett’s predicted purchase of tronc will lead to an increase in grassroots journalism (Poynter)
• Wikileaks is seeing criticism from some of its most devoted followers thanks to its failure to reveal wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton (Bloomberg)
• ProPublica is expanding its data store to utilize the data collection and reporting it does for its investigations (NiemanLab)
• Poll weighting – the practice of making poll respondents count for more than just their one voice – is making one poll an outlier in the American election (NYTimes)

Job openings:

• Europe:
• The Financial Times has an opening for a data viz analyst
• North America:
• The CIA (yes, that one) is looking for a freelance interactive developer
• Mississippi Today, a new nonprofit, is seeking a web developer and designer
• Fox News is looking for a lead digital project manager
• CBS has an opening for a managing editor of digital content in Philadelphia
• NPR is accepting applications for its design/code/visualization internship
• NBC is seeking a product designer in New York
• Stanford is accepting applications for the John S. Knight journalism innovation fellowship
• Asia:
• The International New York Times needs an IT specialist in Hong Kong

Other upcoming events:

• October:
• Oct 14-15 – Washington, DC, USA – TransparencyCamp, the Sunlight Foundation’s unconference for open government
• Oct 17-17 – Vitoria, Brazil – Brazilian Conference of Citizen Media
• Oct 21 – Madrid, Spain – Medialab-Prado’s Data Driven Journalism Production Workshop
• Oct 21-23 – Cape Town, South Africa – Media Party Africa, co-run by Hacks/Hackers Africa and Code for Africa
• Oct 25-27 – Casablanca, Morocco – d|bootcamp, a three-day civic hacking workshop
• Oct 28-29 – Chicago and San Francisco, USA – Mobile Me & You
• Oct 28-30 – London, UK – MozFest, Mozilla’s open web conference
• November:
• Nov 3-4 – Buenos Aires, Argentina – FOPEA’s International Journalism Conference
• Nov 7-9 – Johannesburg, South Africa – African Investigative Journalism Conference
• Nov 22-23 – Covilha, Portugal – the Journalism and Mobile Devices Congress
• December:
• Dec 1-4 – Panama City, Panama – the International Anti-Corruption Conference
• Dec 2-3 – Dead Sea, Jordan – the Arab Investigative Journalism Conference