Tyler Fisher of NPR Visuals joined us on Nov. 11 at the Statesman to talk about his team and their election coverage. Tyler is a recent graduate from Northwestern University with a major in Journalism. But Tyler has directed his career toward Web development and news applications.
In his talk, Tyler provided background on his team and the history of their election coverage. He provided a good dose of tech for the developers in the crowd, but handled the “how” and “why” questions for those who were interested in concepts and strategy.
The Hacks/Hackers Austin group was pleased to host a meetup featuring Google News. On October 20, Stacie Chan, a community manager at Google News, dropped by the Statesman to discuss various tools that journalists and journalism students can use. She also talked about the role of the Google News platform and how publishers can participate. Chan was in town wearing led shades for Texas State University’s Mass Comm Week.
On July 28, Jewel Loree, senior data analyst for Tableau, demonstrated the new Tableau for Mac. Tableau continues to make their tools more accessible and available, so that all journalists can add data visualization to their storytelling. Participants were able to check out new features and ask questions.
The gang from the Hacks Hackers Austin group got together with the Online News Association local on March 31 to discuss trends that emerged from the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR) and SXSW Interactive conferences. And, it was just a great excuse to get everyone together for some social interaction. Meeting at the Butterfly Bar at the Vortex, the conversation included talk of data, sensors and wearables and technology skills needed to succeed in journalism.
Hacks/Hackers Austin was one of several organizations that helped bring the Code With Me Workshop to the Texas capital city on May 18-19. Along with the local Online News Association and the Austin American-Statesman, with generous funding from the Knight-Mozilla Open News project and Texas State University, Code With Me provided of HTML, CSS and JavaScript skills for journalists. The workshop is the brainchild of Sisi Wei of Propublica and Tom Giratikanon of The New York Times.
On April 1, Hacks/Hackers ATX (in conjunction with ONA Austin) hosted Ben Jones and Jewell Loree of Tableau Public. The pair went through the comprehensive offering that Tableau provides for data visualization.
The meeting opened with a presentation from Harsh Patel of MakerSquare, a new organization providing Web development training in the Austin area.
Many thanks to Christian McDonald for arranging this event with refreshments sponsored by Tableau Public.
Tim Lott, vice president of disruptive innovation of Cox Media Group, met with Hacks/Hackers Austin in a joint meetup with Online News Association on Jan. 28 at the Statesman to discuss the activities of his team. They are working on TwelveApp, but are also pioneering in new ways to approach innovation. During the talk, Tim discussed the lean startup process, working to develop a minimum viable product (MVP), that can be implemented and tested quickly.
Twenty-four members of Hacks/Hackers and the Online News Association community in Austin attended Cindy Royal’s workshop on Dec. 3 at Austin American-Statesman: Intro to Programming for Communicators. This 2-hour workshop was meant for people with no experience, to introduce them to the most basic concepts of programming. Royal used JavaScript as the platform, but emphasized the concepts that were common amongst most programming languages.
Topics covered included:
Why do I need to learn to program?
The September and October meetings of Hacks/Hackers ATX (in conjunction with the Online News Association local), focused on topics around important parts of Austin culture. In September, the group talked about Music Apps and Blogging, featuring Daniel Senyard and Shannon Delaney of Vivogig and Ian Morales and AJ Miranda of Red River Noise and Austin Vida. Vivogig is a photo-sharing app focused on concert experiences and Red River Noise and Austin Vida are music blogs covering important aspects of the diverse music scene.
On August 20, Hacks/Hackers ATX, along with the local ONA group, got together at the Texas Tribune to discuss innovation. Rodney Gibbs, Chief Innovation Officer, and developer Noah Seger discussed the progression of Texas Tribune since it’s inception in 2009. Over the past three years, the organization has developed some of the most popular and heavily visited data projects including the state government salaries database and most recently, the Public Schools Explorer.