New Orleans becomes a hackathon hub

Greetings, hacks and hackers! It was a packed week last week for Hacks/Hackers groups, with Caracas launching its own two-day Data Party, Singapore building tools together and Philadelphia taking a peep at some awesome National Geographic projects.

Plus, New Orleans‘ first hackathon generated so much interest among journos, coders and others in the area it looks like the beginning of a beautiful series of hackathons in the Gulf region. Organizer Samantha Sunne wrote about the hackathon and the cool projects it brought into the world for the Hacks/Hackers website. Check it out:

The week ahead:

• Boston is hosting lightning talks
• IRE in Missouri is holding its weekly open lab

Group spotlight:

New Orleans, which launched six months ago, cut straight to chase and held a hackathon last weekend. Organizer Troy Thibodeaux said the event was great fun and a great success. “We were fortunate to have so many talented participants whose interests converged around issues important to our community: housing, recycling, safety, public services and wetlands preservation,” he said.

Organizer Samantha Sunne wrote roundup of the projects for the website.

Worth a read:

• With elections coming up, newsrooms in France are partnering with Facebook and Google to fight fake news (FirstDraftNews)
• Poynter offers tips on covering Trump-related issues in your community without making the coverage all about Trump (Poynter)
• The BBC is funding 150 “local democracy reporters” at local newsrooms across the U.K. (Press Gazette)

Job openings:

• Asia:
• Indian Express is looking for a tech reporter in Delhi
• BBC has openings for a software engineer, UX designer and interactive journalist in Jakarta
• North America:
• IRE is looking for a newsroom trainer
• VTDigger is looking for a chief innovation officer
• Mississippi Today has openings for a database editor and web dev
• Sunlight Foundation is searching for an operations manager

Upcoming events:

• February:
• 11-12 – Amsterdam, Netherlands – Hackathon for Humanitarian Aid
• 16-17 – Warsaw, Poland – #RockitWAW, a networking conference for digital communications professionals
• 18-19 – Tucson, USA – News Hack Arizona
• 24-26 – Boston, USA – MisinfoCon, a summit on misinformation
• March:
• 2-5 – Jacksonville, USA – National Institute of Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR) conference
• 10-11 – Milan, Italy – Visualized Milan
• 10-16 – Austin, USA – SXSW Interactive Festival
• 15-16 – London, UK – The Guardian Changing Media Summit
• 23 – Miami, USA – Journalists & Editors workshop on Mobile Media Culture in the Americas
• 29-31 – Brussels, Belgium – RightsCon for a freer Internet
• 31-1 – Tonsberg, Norway – SKUP conference for investigative reporters and editors in Norway
• April:
• 5-9 – Perugia, Italy – International Journalism Festival
• 15-16 – Austin, USA – International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ)
• May:
• 1-4 – Jakarta, Indonesia – UNESCO’s conference for World Press Freedom Day
• 4-6 – Galway, Ireland – MoJoCon Mobile Journalism Conference
• 18-20 – Hamburg, Germany – International Press Institute congress on media freedom in the digital age
• 18-21 – Mechelen, Belgium – Dataharvest, the European Investigative Journalism Conference