Hacks/Hackers off and running after IRE, tronc and Brexit news

This week, journalists chortled over tronc’s “deadly swarm of buzzwords,” watched the U.S. Congress livestream over Periscope and traded tips and tools after a record-setting IRE conference. Let’s see what hacks and hackers are getting up to next week.

But first, consider taking a minute to answer OpenNews’s survey on how they can help journalists and technologists better expand their networks and collaborate. Knight and Mozilla partner with a lot of Hacks/Hackers folks, and dedicate a lot of time and money to making these kinds of projects accessible to hacks and hackers across the world.

The week ahead:

• Miami is partnering with other groups to hold a Visual Storytelling Summit
• Brisbane is discussing the future of radio
• Rosario is learning search engine hacks
• Miami and IRE are holding their regular weekly open labs

Chapter spotlight:

Austin, Texas, held a session last week on UX design. Co-organizer Becca Aaronson said her own outlet, The Texas Tribune, shared its techniques but also invited others to share, as a way to get the group more engaged.

“We had a ‘bad idea’ party, and everyone shared the worst possible ideas to improve news websites. It included everything from endless pop-ups to sites that make your phone explode, literally. The bad idea party got people laughing, and open to do creative thinking. It was a fun way to bring the group together, and everyone could actively participate.”

Worth a read:

• Sree Sreenivasan lost his job at the New York Met and made the news for making the best of it (Quartz)
• Data prediction models for assessing high-risk criminals are facing a backlash (NYTimes)
• A few publishers are experimenting with publishing and monetizing their content on Medium (Nieman Lab)
• Poynter assembled some of the most damning reviews of tronc, Inc.’s new publicity video (Poynter)

Job openings:

• North America:
• Pew Research Center is looking for a digital producer to join its data team
• U.S. News is hiring a front-end developer
• Planet Labs wants to hire a civic data scientist
• Spoon University, a startup covering university food culture, is hiring a front-end engineer
• Philly.com is hiring an analyst and an engineer
• Europe:
• BBC3 is hiring a web developer and a development lead
• Africa:
• The Citizen Justice Network is hiring an editorial intern
• BBC Africa is hiring multimedia journalists in Tanzania

Upcoming events:

• July 19 – Austin, Texas, USA – Front Porch, a conference for web design and development
• July 28-29 – Portland, Oregon, USA – SRC CON, a Mozilla conference for journalist coders
• July 29-31 – Atlanta, USA – the first Women Who Code hackathon