Hope all you hacks and hackers are ready for NICAR! (Or at least ready to follow it on Twitter.) Hacks/Hackers Colorado is hosting a happy hour for everyone in Denver, with drinks sponsored by the Knight Lab and Tableau. (Sadly, the beers cannot be shared on Twitter.)

The intrepid website committee is asking for opinions on their plans for a new and improved website. Please comment on the Google doc! This is for anybody who needs or wants a Hacks/Hackers website, no design or web experience needed.

The week ahead:

• Miami is holding its first annual Hack-for-Good, a weekend hackathon that draws nonprofits and tech developers together
• Halifax is sharing some Excel tricks for getting the most out of your data
• Colorado is hosting a happy hour in honor of the NICAR conference. Come on by and say hi!

Group spotlight:

Hacks/Hackers IRE, located at IRE’s headquarters at the University of Missouri, has taken a few different forms over the years. Since last summer, James Gordon has been running it as a weekly open lab for students or anyone else interested in coming in to work on a journalism or tech project.

“We’re constantly playing around with the format. I initially tried to have a specific discussion topic planned ahead of time, but there are a lot of students who show up specifically because they are having trouble with an assignment or setting up their environment on their machine. For that reason, we now occasionally have an “open lab” with no planned discussion. Just a space for people get and give help.

We also have a Slack going for attendants, which I have found to be great for keeping the conversation going in between meetups. Members will share articles and resources they have found useful and also get and receive help.”

The Connect series has been picking up momentum, with New York hosting the third event in two months, 120 entrepreneurs-to-be at CUNY last weekend. On that note, another big announcement:

Austin or Brussels are still coming up in April, so subscribe for updates on the Connect site and keep an eye on the Twitter hashtag.

Worth a read:

• ProPublica released Hell and High Water, a news app showing how unprepared Houston is for when (not if) it gets hit by the next big hurricane. They also published a detailed nerd box on how they made the app (ProPublica)
• The Nation published a thoughtful story on how the digital revolution is pushing valuable, veteran reporters out of the industry (The Nation)
• The newly created Guardian Mobile Innovation Lab published an essay outlining five broad areas it plans to explore, and asks for suggestions (Medium)
• A lot of people shared this list of 10 low-cost tools for newsgathering and verification, showing that any newsroom (or newsperson) can do these things on practically any budget (First Draft News)

Job openings:

• Stringr, a new media company, is looking for a full-stack developer
• Mozilla is looking for a UX/UI designer to work from either the NYT or Washington Post offices
• The Center for Public Integrity is looking for a data-savvy news apps developer
• McClatchy, also in D.C., is hiring a new data editor
• The Dallas Morning News is hiring a computational journalist
• Bloomberg is looking for a data viz designer to join its UX team in New York
• Mongabay, a news site dedicated to covering the rainforest, is hiring three reporters in Colombia and Peru
• MinnPost, a nonprofit news org in Minneapolis, is looking for a data and investigative reporter
• The International Center for Journalists is accepting applications for a Knight fellowship in Kazakhstan

Call to action:

The website committee is revving up and getting ready to redo the website, so chime in with your thoughts or how you use the site already. Let us know at #hackshackers or on the Google doc! If you’ve got a Github account, you can get in touch with the committee on their repo.

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