Since 2005, my blog has become a sandbox for experiments with new forms of multimedia production. And if there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that innovation always starts with experimenting, serendipity and lots of fun.
By that time, it became obvious to me (full disclosure) that the “freaky guys of the IT dept.” and “the selfish morons in the newsroom” had many things in common, even if they don’t speak the same language.
They all dream of a better world. Better news, better navigation, better fact-checking, better look and feel, better interactivity … better everything. It’s a matter of survival, is it not?
Journalists sometimes call themselves “hacks,” a tongue-in-cheek term for someone who can churn out words in any situation. Hackers use the digital equivalent of duct tape to whip out code. Hacks/Hackers tries to bridge those two worlds.
Collaboration is the grassroots movement of the web. And it’s also the future of news. Listening to the people formerly-known as the audience, building apps to help them make their own opinions, live-covering global ‘hard news’ or telling them endless stories … every kind of task requires that journalists and developers talk to each other, share passions & tips, for a better user experience (and, yes, so as to pay the bills).
So when Burt Herman told me a couple months ago about meetups dedicated to helping journalists and developers cross each others’ paths and “fly high”, laptop on laps, a smartphone on one hand and a beer on the other, I was enthusiastic.
See what Hacks/Hackers meetings have already done in New York (with Facebook), in San Francisco (with Google) in Chicago, Austin, Toronto, etc. Pretty exciting, isn’t it?
Are you a developer, passionate about Drupal/Wordpress? A chief editor in Radio or TV News? A freelance designer ? A hardcore visual app producer ? A journalism student? An HTML 5 guru? A compulsive data-digger ? A killer web-documentarian? A serial graphist? A sleeping cell of the new CSS Empire?
If so, let’s meet, let’s chat, have a glass of good wine …. and see what happens!
Free entrance & wi-fi (just book a seat)
WHEN? Thursday November 18th – from 7.30 pm
WHERE? : Pixel Wine Bar, 39 Ernest Allard, 1000 Brussels
… Spread the word!
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Photo Credits: Flickr CC Dan Nguyen NY.
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