Thank you to everyone who came out to the first Hacks/Hackers Philly meetup! Over 30 people attended, and according to the sign-in sheet the hack/hacker distribution was roughly half/half. Great to see a mix of backgrounds and interests.
This Tuesday, journalists and technologists will gather at the first Hacks/Hackers Philly meetup. And, wow, as of right now 34 people are RSVPed. That's incredible! It speaks to the need for a group to help connect the vibrant technology and journalism communities doing amazing work in Philadelphia, but largely working separately.
If I were in charge... journalism and technology would not just become better connected, but the newsroom culture would take on best practices that have worked well for software development. At this year's Online News Association conference, a pre-conference session discussed how to relate agile software development best practices to the newsroom and a conference session reiterated the value of #fail.
I presented about how once newsrooms embrace the culture of #fail and remove barriers to it, there are a lot of tactics and tools from the tech industry that can help journalists:
Last weekend, I participated on a panel at the Online News Association conference: ‘If I Were in Charge, I’d _____’. I would #fail.
More detailed blog post coming very soon, but for now, my slides. You can also see my presentation at the very end of the video linked above.
Better late than never. My first website. And it's a Drupal 7 site. Fitting.
So, iterative development! I will launch this and break things and try harder and keep improving it. Please let me know if you have any suggestions. Design is not my strongest skill, but I'm learning. I was anti-Twitter for a long time and now I'm semi-obsessed. It's just so freakin fun. The same will be said for maintaining a personal Drupal site. I'm sure of it.