From iPads to Android, mobile is the future of media. But how can news organizations capitalize on mobile mania to better connect with their audiences? That’s a key question that journalists can’t answer alone.
To tackle this problem, The Media Consortium, a national network of leading independent media outlets, and Hacks/Hackers are hosting an Independent Media Mobile Hackathon in Chicago from Oct 9-10.
The mission is to create mobile applications that merge gaming mechanics and news delivery. Our panel of distinguished judges will award prizes to the top three prototype applications at the end of the Hackathon, and a $1,000 cash prize will be distributed to programmers behind the weekend’s top application.
This is a great opportunity to get your work noticed by local and national media outlets—and score some sweet prizes including cash, ebooks, t-shirts, XKCD comics, merch from Mozilla, and more. Judges include:
Brad Flora, of The Windy Citizen and Knight News Challenge winner
Brant Houston, executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc.
Shinji Kuwayama, lead developer at Groupon.
Registration has been open for just a few weeks and we’ve already sold out of journalist slots. The Hacker slots are going quickly. If you’ve got experience developing mobile applications and are interested in journalism, please RSVP today. Please contact us with any questions.
Hackathon Goals
The hackathon’s call to action centers on the frame of “News + Fun + Community.” All prototype apps must focus on creatively delivering news and information via gaming mechanics, such as community engagement, video, rewards based systems, sharing, location-based opportunities, games, and more. All prototype apps created at the hackathon must be cross-platform (accessible via mobile web, tablet computer, smartphone, etc.). We are also committed to making all code generated at the hackathon open source and available immediately to all participants.
Stay tuned for more updates about the hackathon, sponsors and prizes. And, hackers,don’t forget to RSVP!
Hacks/Hackers Austin will hold its first meetup Thursday, September 30 from 6-8 p.m. at Austin’s Pizza on the Drag (2324 Guadalupe, Austin 78705). Join us upstairs in the bar for free pizza and drinks (while drink tickets last/cash bar thereafter) and great conversation. It’s a very cool room with windows all around overlooking UT. Stay tuned for more details and surprises.
Please RSVP for this event!
The Austin chapter is the seventh group, after San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, London, Boston and Chicago.
The following is a guest post by Corey Takahashi, who attended a Poynter seminar for journalists and programming through a scholarship provided with Hacks/Hackers.
The key lesson I learned at Poynter’s first seminar on programming and journalism is how much overlap there already is between these two worlds, and the extent to which old-school reporting is at the heart of some of the industry’s most successful and innovative news apps and online features.
The Hacks/Hackers NYC is throwing an open(source).athon in the OpenPlans penthouse on Oct 2 to see how much great software for news/information we can open source in 12 hours?
If you are a hacker, bring your code and get the time and some help to push it out the door (Or bring your expertise and help others). If you are a hack, we need excellent writers and editors to help with documentation.
Hacks/Hackers Chicago is getting into gear with its first Meetup on Wednesday, Sept. 15 from 6-8 p.m. at the Holiday Club (4000 N Sheridan Road). More details below
Meet up, geek out, and enjoy complimentary food and beverages with programmers, journalists and others in Chicago’s media and tech communities who want to explore and strengthen the connections between technology and journalism. In addition to refreshments and conversation, Chicago Tribune News Applications Editor Brian Boyer will talk about the Apps team’s first year, and The Media Consortium’s Tracy Van Slyke will give a special sneak preview of its upcoming Independent Media Mobile Hack-A-Thon.
At ProPublica, we make a habit of sharing. We give our biggest stories for free to news organizations, and we hand out recipes for some of our most complex investigations. We encourage other news organizations to steal our stories, and give out, free to use, clean, reliable, analyzed data that is often available nowhere else. Our mission is to have real-world impact, and we think the best path to that is not through owning an issue, but through igniting coverage of an issue everywhere.
We’re delighted to announce that the first international chapter of Hacks/Hackers got off to a fantastic start yesterday.
Having originally expected a modest turnout, we were bowled over when more than 50 journalists and coders gathered at The Shooting Star pub in Spitalfields on Wednesday evening for the first London Hacks/Hackers meetup. A big thank you to everyone who turned up!
Attendees represented a whole host of media brands including The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, BBC, CNN, MSN, Reed Business Information and Emap.
