NYC Meetup at Meetup Recap: Games, Ads, APIs and Scott Heiferman
Thanks to the 80-some of you who came to the Hacks and Hackers NYC meetup July 14. We’ve received a lot of positive feedback about the event. We’d love to hear your ideas for future talks about the intersection of journalism and technology. Leave a comment or email us at nyc[at]hackshackers[dot]com.
So on to it.
Nick Diakopoulos, a post-doc research associate at Rutgers University, talked about his work on turning data into information graphics games. One example is Salubrious Nation, which challenges players to guess the public health of a communities nationwide based on county demographics.
Another is Vox Civitas, which analyzed Twitter messages posted during President Obama’s State of the Union address. Graphing keywords on a chart showing time and message volume and adding a tweet window revealed interesting patterns. For instance, Nick and his colleagues noticed a spike about 28 minutes into the president’s speech. Turns out air force bases issued a burst of tweets as he spoke about funding for military family support. Search on the keyword “military” to see for yourself.
Nick mentioned he worked with other researchers to develop their own semantic analysis algorithm, which he said is about 65 percent accurate.
Vineet Gupta of Daylife proposed a Hacks & Hackers API challenge. Make an application using the Daylife API and Daylife will pitch it to its clients, which include major outlets and popular blogs. If they buy your app, Daylife splits the proceeds — you get 70 percent, they get 30 percent. Get the details and get cracking. Vineet Gupta will answer questions at vineet@daylife.com.
Brad Flora flew in from Chicago to talk about his real-time local online ad network, NowSpots. The service recently won a $250,000 grant from the Knight News Challenge, and Nieman Labs wrote that the service is expected to “bring order and intelligence to online advertising” by delivering current, relevant promotions and tracking performance.
Meetup co-founder Scott Heiferman introduced the company’s latest tool: Meetup Everywhere, a free, embeddable event mapping and scheduling platform. You can see it live on HuffPostGreen.
Noting the date, Scott quipped the French Revolution’s flashpoint event wasn’t “the Unliking of the Bastille.” As he wrapped up, he urged journalists to be a catalyst that motivates communities to meet in person and take civic action.
Hacks Hackers NYC member Zeb Dropkin has more about the meetup on his blog.
Our next event features The New York Times team that produced the crowdsourced photo project, “A Moment in Time.” To join us July 27 at the fabulous Open Plans Penthouse, RSVP ASAP. Our events always fill up fast.
