By Katherine Zhu
A group of 30-plus hacks and hackers gathered last week in the basement of the Tribune Tower for a “MoJo Beerstorm.”
The event, hosted by the Chicago group of Hacks/Hackers, was a brainstorming meeting intended to inspire participants to submit ideas for the Knight/Mozilla MoJo Innovation Challenge – a chance for individuals to shape the future of news and re-open the web, à la Firefox.
Phillip Smith, a key leader of the MoJo Challenge, flew in from Toronto to attend the May 24 event.
Almost two years ago, a couple of people interested in computer programming in journalism brainstormed an idea for a website where software developers working in journalism and media could go to get solutions to their programming problems from their peers.
The site — at help.hackshackers.com — has been running since**launched in **April 2010, attracting more than 200 registered users, 145 questions and more than 500,000 page views.
The question now for Hacks/Hackers members is: Should the site continue to exist?
On December 4thand 5th, Random Hacks of Kindness is holding a multi-city hackathon to create software to “mitigate or respond to disasters around the world and save lives.” The Hacks/Hackers community is invited to participate.
The organizers of Random Hacks of Kindness think both developers and journalists — who play such an important role in communications about natural disasters — can both contribute to the projects being developed.
This is the third Random Hacks of Kindness event.
For months now, Aron Pilhofer and I have been talking about a Web site where people doing computer programming in journalism could ask and answer questions, solve each other’s problems and, in general, build a supportive community. Somewhere along the way, someone said to me, “You mean, like Stack Overflow?” I went to visit the site — a thriving support community for software developers — and it looked very much like what we had in mind.
The Online News Association, the premier organization for online journalists, is holding a meetup Wednesday night (March 24), and you are invited. It’s not an official Hacks/Hackers event, but it’s a chance to network with Chicago area online journalists. Location: the [Holiday Club][2], 4000 N. Sheridan Rd. (near Sheridan and Irving Park).
The main speaker will be [Muhammad Saleem][3], the social media director of [ChicagoNow.com][4], who will report on what he learned at [South by Southwest Interactive][5].