Events

Events are a vital part of how communities function. They are a chance to set the tone for a community, share work and values, develop skills and build relationships, and have fun while actually getting to see people in person--a real treat for those of us who work remotely or far from our friends.

I love events. Yes, you can be an introvert and love events. I enjoy organizing and facilitating events, and public speaking is one of my favorite things. Here are some events I've helped organize or contributed to in other ways.

Facilitation, organizing, community connection

  • Hacks/Hackers Philadelphia (2011 – present) Co-founded chapter to build connections between journalist and tech communities in Philadelphia. Helped foster hackathon project Ad Hawk that was adopted by the Sunlight Foundation.

  • Mozilla Festival (2012-present) Co-organized 20-35 hands-on, collaborative journalism sessions in multi-track conference. Created a space to celebrate, share, and hack on code and connect journalism with privacy, data, teaching, and science on the open web.

  • Allied Media Conference (2016) Co-organized Community Technology and Independent Media Track of 18 sessions about how to use technology to support our communities. Administered travel grants to facilitators.

  • SRCCON (2015-16) Co-led session outreach, selection, and support. Developed program with 40% of session leaders who identify as women and 25% who identify as people of color. Doubled the size of the travel scholarship program to allow 20 people from a diversity of backgrounds to attend. Planned facilitation training for session leaders to enable them to feel more comfortable leading small, collaborative sessions and to engage them as allies in putting into action the values we brought to the event.

    • SRCCON (2014) Staff point person for overall conference, the first time it was held. Created travel scholarship program and organized live transcription. Led outreach for participants and session proposals to ensure that the participants reflected the diversity of communities we work in. Helped shape the structure of the event and participated in conversations about how to make our values present in every aspect of the event from the schedule, to tasty local food, to fun side-events.

  • NICAR (2015-16) Co-led a “conversations track” of small, informal discussions on topics ranging from salaries to international journalism communities. Co-led facilitation training for session leaders who immediately used the tips, and thrived.

  • Knight/MIT Civic Media Hack Day (2013-14) Co-facilitated hackathon in advance of conference. Organized all logistics and event scheduling. Spurred CivOmega project, which received Knight and Sunlight funding for additional development.

Speaking about journalism, technology, and community (selected): Online News Association: 2011, 13, 15; National Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting: 2014-16; SRCCON: 2015; Allied Media Conference: 2015; LibrePlanet 2015; Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires Media Party: 2014, 15; Open Source Bridge: 2014; Mozilla Festival: 2012-13; Drupaldelphia: 2011-12.