FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Hacks/Hackers Unite, May 22-23: Journalists and technologists collaborate on first-ever storytelling/hacking workshop to build iPad and tablet news applications
CONTACT: Burt Herman, 650 453 8787, burtherman@gmail.com
Note: Media and guests are requested to register (free) at http://unite.hackshackers.com/register to attend the final project presentations and judging to be held from 4:20-6:30pm on Sunday, May 23 at KQED, 2601 Mariposa Street, San Francisco. Tickets to the full workshop have sold out.
SAN FRANCISCO, May 19 – Teams of journalists and software developers will join together this weekend to build news and reporting applications for the iPad and tablet devices, aiming to create the killer tablet media app in the first event of its kind.
Hosted at KQED’s San Francisco headquarters on May 22-23, “Hacks/Hackers Unite” is produced by Hacks/Hackers, an organization of journalists and technology professionals.
Hacks/Hackers was launched in the Bay Area in November by Burt Herman, a former Associated Press bureau chief and correspondent and 2008-9 Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University. Co-founders include Rich Gordon, associate professor and director of digital innovation at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, and Aron Pilhofer, editor of Interactive News Technologies at The New York Times.
“The iPad has been hailed by some as a potential savior in this time of media turmoil, but we haven’t yet seen the killer news application that takes full advantage of tablet devices and touch interfaces,” Herman said. “We aim to fuse technology with journalism from the start of the storytelling process to create new ways to present information.”
“The future of journalism is going to come from journalists, technologists and entrepreneurs working together,” said Tony Deifell, author of ”The Big Thaw: Charting a New Course for Journalism,” and founder of Q Media Labs that is helping organize the event.
“We hope to learn and exchange ideas with the extensive and dynamic developer and journalism community in the Bay Area who are working in this space,” said Tim Olsen, KQED vice president of digital media and education.
Speakers for the event also include Jennifer Bove, principal at Kicker Studio; Timothy Jordan, developer advocate at Google; Kevin Cooke, senior developer at KQED; and Maya Baratz, product manager for MTV.
The panel of judges includes Harjeet Taggar, venture partner at Y Combinator; Andrew Fitzgerald, online news producer at Current TV; David Weekly, founder of Hacker Dojo and PBworks; and Craig Miller, senior editor of KQED Climate Watch.
Final demonstrations and judging will be Sunday, May 23, from 4:20-6:30pm.In addition to KQED and NPR, other sponsors of the event include Demotix, UC Berkeley’s Knight Digital Media Center and Speck Products. The website with event information is at http://unite.hackshackers.com/. The opening speakers present Saturday from 9:30am-11:30am and final presentations will be livestreamed at http://www.livestream.com/hacksandhackers. The Twitter hashtag is #hhunite.
About Hacks/Hackers:
Hacks/Hackers is a community of people who seek to inspire each other, share information and collaborate to invent the future of media and journalism.
The roots of Hacks/Hackers were planted in 2009, based on the interests of three people interested in the intersection of journalism and technology. In Massachusetts, at a conference organized by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Aron Pilhofer of The New York Times and Rich Gordon from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, proposed creating “a network of people interested in Web/digital application development and technology innovation supporting the mission and goals of journalism.” Meanwhile, in Silicon Valley, Burt Herman, a former AP foreign correspondent fresh from a Knight journalism fellowship at Stanford University, launched a group bringing the journalism and technology communities together at casual face-to-face gatherings to trade ideas and find potential collaborators.
From opposite sides of the country, we coincidentally both hit on the name of “Hacks and Hackers” as a way to symbolize what the group was about. The terms conveyed the grassroots spirit of the community we wanted to build both online and off, made up of the people doing the real work on the ground. The three decided to join together to build the community under the shorter name Hacks/Hackers, which has since grown to more than 600 members from around the world. Events connected to Hacks/Hackers have been held in the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington DC and Chicago, and the group’s first New York event is scheduled for June 2.
Hacks/Hackers has also launched a question-and-answer site for media and technology issues at http://help.hackshackers.com. The group’s main site is http://hackshackers.com.
