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Hacks/Hackers Workshop!
We have the excellent honor of hosting a Hacks/Hackers NYC workshop, where 50+ journalists will learn how to get started with Arduino and sensors. Woot! For those of you following along, or investigating later, here are our slides.
12 a 15 de junio: vamos a hackear los Sanfermines 2014
¿Hack o hacker? ¿Editor, periodista, desarrollador, comunicador, publicista, analista, gamificador, diseñador… pero sanferminero? Entonces este es tu evento que es, también, el penúltimo proyecto en el que me he embarcado.
En esta ocasión, he tenido la enorme fortuna de colaborar con el Laboratorio de Innovación Periodística del Diario de Navarra, Hacks/Hackers, Knight-Mozilla OpenNews y todo el equipo hacksanferminero.
Juntos hemos lanzado esta primera edición de un hackathon internacional para la ideación, creación y desarrollo de aplicaciones relacionadas con las mejores fiestas del mundo, como sabemos todos los pamploneses y algunos de los que nos visitan cada año: los Sanfermines.
Si te animas, tenemos tres categorías:
Data journalism: periodismo de datos
Smart City: aplicaciones servicio
Games: juegos temáticos
Revisa los datasets existentes, iremos añadiendo más (no dejes de enviarnos aquellos que conozcas o puedas compartir), dale al coco, sube y revisa los proyectos yregístrate (indícanos si trabajarás online o físicamente).
Otras personas podrán sumarse a tu proyecto y tú podrás sumarte al de otros para configurar los equipos que trabajarán durante el evento y que se crearán esos mismos días.
¿Necesitas inspiración?
¡En la web también encontrarás proyectos de otros que nos encantan! No te olvides de revisar el blog para conocer las novedades y en @hacksanfermin y el hashtag #hacksanfermin.
¿Tienes una idea? Siempre será bienvenida: ¡contáctanos!
HHMIA: Show-and-tell with Sun Sentinel's Dana Williams and Rachel Schallom
At Hacks/Hackers Miami's Oct. 28 meetup, Sun Sentinel web designer Rachel Schallom and database editor Dana Williams walked us through their Sex Predators Unleashed project, the paper's first responsive, custom-built interactive media project.
The project's data analysis components were extensive, cross-referencing a sex offender registry with other prison records to learn which sexual predators were released and then committed additional violent crimes. They found more than 500 sexual predators who fit this category. Williams built the final database portion of the project on the Yii framework, which was effective but later proved problematic as it is primarily used for enterprise applications.
Schallom designed the project using Bootstrap and some common jQuery plugins. Schallom's goals were to make the project both responsive and media-rich, featuring videos, photo galleries, documents and information graphics. She also chose to make the multi-part story one large, continuous scroll, arguing that spreading stories out over multiple days is a print conceit.
The team faced numerous challenges along the way. For example, the project wasn't integrated into the main site's new paywall, and it wasn't appropriate for advertising. However, the project resulted in huge changes within the judicial system — the director of the predator program was ousted and the issue will be at the forefront of the upcoming legislative session.
OpenHack Miami
I spent most of our weekly hack night this week working with Susan on a Code for Miami open government survey for candidates for elected office. Despite increasing press around the country about civic hacking and the importance of accessible, useable public data, we still face an uphill battle on awareness in Miami. The survey includes five easy-to-answer questions for those seeking office along with a letter explaining what open government is and pointing to examples in cities like Chicago, New York, San Francisco, the Twin Cities, etc. I'll spend a chunk of free time this week seeking potential institutional supporters of the survey so that politicians will see that these issues are important to a broad swath of their constituents. The group will revise and edit the letter and survey collaboratively so we can send it to potential supporters next Monday.
Some other Code for Miami projects were in the works too. Miguel worked on translating the Code for Miami page into Spanish. Cristina refined scraper for the StatesDecoded initiative to get the county code of ordinances into a more usable, and search-engine friendly format, while Ernie tackled some front-end issues.
Why Develop in the Newsroom
As we talk with people about the fellowships, one question keeps coming up: I’m a talented coder—why develop in the newsroom? So this week, one month out from our deadline to apply, we’ve posed that very question to people who do this for a living. (more)
Dan Sinker, Knight-Mozilla OpenNews Project
So, why develop in the newsroom? Newsrooms differ from publication to publication, but generally, here's my take on why you might want to work in one, dear talented coder:
coming up with innovative ways to convey the news to readers is more rewarding than a/b testing a marketing campaign
you care more about real world problems than shaving yaks
you like to learn
... and you definitely like to teach
you're not in tech to sit in a dark room and come up with more efficient algorithms
... but sometimes you like coming up with more efficient ways of doing things
... because you don't have the budget to throw more hardware at a problem
Because what other job would have you at various points:
partying with the IOC in a small seaside town in southern Russia
teaching a room full of reporters what PGP stands for
sitting on a panel in front of a standing-room only conference room with leading thinkers on open-source
author of the "Tweet of the Moment" - and it's about horse personals... for a major sporting event
Develop in the newsroom because you like challenges that come with rewards. Do it because you'll love it.
Try it, you'll see.
Periodismo de datos: Lo que se viene
¿Qué hacen un periodista, un diseñador y un programador en una sala de redacción juntos? Periodismo de datos. Es la oportunidad que emerge de la crisis del periodismo. Es lo que se está hablando. Es lo que se viene. Los ‘equipos interactivos de noticias’, como comúnmente se los denomina, se han convertido en el baluarte de periódicos de renombrada trayectoria como el New York Times o la BBC. Y con justa razón. Están ampliando los límites del periodismo de una forma que hasta hace poco nos resultaba inimaginable.
El periodismo de datos es una disciplina que ha ido evolucionando con la creciente disponibilidad de datos y el desarrollo de herramientas digitales. En la actualidad se impone casi como una necesidad para manejar grandes flujos de información. En el Data Journalism Handbook, Mirko Lorenz de la Deutsche Welle expresa:
“Hoy las noticias fluyen al mismo tiempo que suceden, a través de múltiples fuentes, testigos presenciales y blogs, y lo que ha sucedido es filtrado a través de una vasta red de conexiones sociales, se jerarquiza, se comenta y muy a menudo se ignora”.
El desafío está en reunir, filtrar y visualizar todo lo que ocurre más allá de lo que el periodista puede conocer, desafío que a juzgar por los ejemplos está siendo muy bien cortejado.
Avalanchas de información ya se han presentado de forma inteligente y entretenida, generando noticias de amplias repercusiones. El Wall Street Journal, por ejemplo, logró mostrar cómo las familias sobreviven la crisis en la zona del euro recolectando datos demográficos, imágenes, audios y relatos escritos.
Con Harassmap, una herramienta que mapea reportes de abusos, el Guardian de Inglaterra proveyó información actualizada sobre casos de acoso sexual a mujeres en Egipto durante las protestas, ayudando a prevenir nuevos hechos de esta índole. Un caso más cercano a casa es el de La Nación de Argentina, que ha desarrollado una aplicación para mostrar a dónde van los subsidios del sistema de transporte público, y otra que detalla los bienes de los miembros del gabinete y su evolución patrimonial (imaginense algo así en Paraguay).
Pero ejemplos geniales como estos no son la única razón por la que el periodismo de datos está prosperando. Esta disciplina representa una invariable oportunidad para los negocios. Crece el interés de las empresas de invertir en periódicos que innovan con su información. Y cómo no, se generan empleos.
Y en Paraguay, ¿para cuándo periodismo de datos? Son varios los desafíos pero también enorme la gama de oportunidades que tenemos, un tema digno de abordar en otro artículo. ¿Cosa de animarse? Por supuesto.
Build Brighton are responsible for two of the most popular exhibits at the Maker's Fair of this year's Brighton Digital Festival: Robo-Xylo and Scalexercise.
Matt Edwards put "around 100 hours" of knowledge and effort into each of the two xylophones, above, which use midi data to play songs from a nearby laptop, before taking them on tour to other maker's faires in Manchester, Derby and Dublin before coming to Brighton.
For the more health-minded attendees, Build Brighton have also put together a scalextrix track powered by an exercise bike and cross-trainer. Behold, Scalexercise!
Masterminded by Mike Pountney, the contraption was actually "extremely straightforward" to build, whereas the construction of the track itself was started in June before being brought to the Maker's Faire in Brighton.
Straightforward for him maybe, but us Luddite journos will just stick to panting away on the bike, thank you very much.
Hacks/Hackers Boston: Using mapping to inform the world
By Matt Carroll
Online mapping has exploded in popularity over the past few years, driven by the easy-to-use of new tools. Almost anyone can quickly learn how to turn information into an informative map or post a map on their site from one of the many companies specializing in data visualizations.
A crowd of more than 30 journalists and technologists got a glimpse of some of those tools Tuesday night at a meetup called “Using mapping to inform the world.”
The meetup featured SeeClickFix and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, both of which use mapping – in very different ways – to help people understand the world around them.
SeeClickFix allows people to easily report problems such as a potholes or graffiti to city officials, said Kevin Donohue, a community manager with the Connecticut-based company. The information is also displayed on maps that allow users to comment.
The app is popular with city officials, who can see which problems are generating the most complaints, and with online news sites. Boston.com has used the application in its hyperlocal section.
Donohue said residents in Oakland, Calif. used the app to leave 300 comments about a dangerous intersection, which led the city to make changes.
The MAPC, a regional planning agency for Greater Boston, takes a different approach. The agency, through its Metro Boston DataCommon, makes reams of data available to residents, who can simply view it or use it to create their own sophisticated maps. (No data uploads are allowed at this point.)
Some of the maps have been incredibly revealing, said Holly St. Clair, director of data services. One user mashed together income and the cost of housing and transportation to make a revealing map.
The MBTA Budget Calculator was created Christian Spanring, a developer with the group, and allowed users to experiment with trying to fix the MBTA’s budget by adjusting a number of costs and revenues.
The meetup, run through the Boston chapter of Hacks/Hackers, was held at Northeastern University and was organized by Dan Kennedy, an assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern and author of Media Nation, the online journalism blog.
