The Media Party at Buenos Aires: the biggest Hacks/Hackers meetup ever
With more than 970 participants from three continents, the Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires Media Party became “the world’s largest event of Hacks/Hackers in the history of this organization”, according to Dan Sinker, director of Knight-Mozilla OpenNews, who came to the meetup. Held Aug. 29-31 in Ciudad Cultural Konex, Buenos Aires, the largest media festival in Latin America brought together journalists, software programmers and designers to work for the future of media.
In this second edition, over 30 international guests came to Buenos Aires. Among them, Jacqui Maher of The New York Times, Ryan Mark of Chicago Tribune, Joe Germuska and Miranda Mulligan from Knight Lab, and Brian Boyer from NPR. Winners of the Knight News Challenges were also in attendance, like Ted Han of DocumentCloud, Miguel Paz of Poderopedia, Shannon Dosemagen of Public Lab, Waldo Jaquit of The State Decoded, Nuno Vargas of the d.school, at Stanford University, and the entire Knight-Mozilla OpenNews team, consisting of eight software programmers working in major newspapers around the world and its director Dan Sinker.
The Knight Fellows from the International Center For Journalists, who are working on different projects in Latin America, also came to the Media Party along with ICFJ’s Vice President of Programs Patrick Butler. For the first time, seven representatives of Hacks/Hackers groups in Africa attended, along with Knight Fellow Justin Arenstein. From Prague, Douglas Arellanes from Sourcefabric came to lead a workshop on Airtime. There were also participants from Hacks/Hackers Mexico, Paraguay and Argentine cities like Rosario and Mendoza. In addition, the winners of the Editors Lab (La Nación) had a space to display their prototype, along with Antoine Laurent from the Global Editors Network.
During the second edition of the Media Party, the Hacks/Hackers meetup reached 2,770 members and nearly 800 new registered members. The meeting had massive coverage in newspapers, websites, radio and television, reaching 150 articles published in various media, and was declared of “Interest” by the Argentine Senate. The Media Party was organized by Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires (HHBA), the local group of a global network that brings together journalists and programmers, which is led by Mariano Blejman, ICFJ Knight Fellow.
The agenda was intense: in the first two days international experts delivered keynotes on use cases ( “Too much information” by Jacqui Maher, or “If it doesn’t work on mobile, it doesn’t work” by Brian Boyer) and 50 simultaneous workshops taught by the same international guests along with local trainers. On the first day, attendees were able to visit the Media Fair, learning more about regional projects and meet their creators. Sixty innovative Latin American media projects were featured in the Media Fair, along with government portals and journalism startups.
The workshops featured international trainers such as Nuno Vargas, a Knight Fellow at Stanford who led a training on “Design thinking,” “Chicas Poderosas” by Mariana Santos and “D3 for beginners” by Ariel Aizemberg. During afternoon workshops, the attendees learned about the production of data journalism pieces, citizen journalism, news you can use and news applications based on open data projects in addition to media innovation and open government. Also two projects of regional impact were launched: OpenDataLatinoamerica.org, a data portal, and the Media Factory, a media accelerator that will invest $ 75,000 per company to help startups grow.
On the last day, Aug. 31, the event was crowned with a large and open hackathon where teams developed at least 12 innovative projects, including GlobalWamp, PDF Challenge and Hackatools. Closing the hackathon, the organizers announced the HacksLabs, an incubator for innovative projects in Latin America that will start donating US$20,000 in small microgrants financed by the World Bank Institute.
The HHBA Media Party was sponsored by Knight Mozilla OpenNews, the International Center For Journalists, the Knight Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation, the World Bank Institute, Fundación Desarrollar Argentina, Sourcefabric, AreaTres, Globant, USLA, Eter, Fopea, Nxtp.Labs, Media Factory, Ami, Pinlatam, FNPI, Mazalan Comunicaciones, Wayra, Terra and Debajo Tierra.
