HS Open Data Journalism Hackathon

Build News Apps from Open Government data

 

Group work during the first HS Open hackathon in March 2011 in Helsinki. Photo: Juhani Niiranen / HS

Description

Friday 21st September the biggest Finnish news paper Helsingin Sanomat invites coders, designers, journalists and open data activists to HS Open Hackathon to build visualizations or applications that use open data. Using data from the World Bank or some other international source (see the Data section below) groups of three will create a working application or visualization from scratch.

Teams will be formed based on individual skills, so that every participant can use their own expertise in the project. In every team there is at least one coder, journalist and a designer. Every group in encouraged to plan their work beforehand.

The goal for each group is to make an News Application that tells a visual story on a global topic such as health, children’s welfare or inequality around the world. News Application can also crowdsource data or be a game. A good goal for the day is to produce 560×400 pixel application that can be embedded into any web page.

In the previous Hackathons, some of the best applications have been bought and published by Helsingin Sanomat. For the Finnish speaking audience the data journalism -blog HSnext is good source of information.

Data

As the event is global, we are building visualizations on global data sets. You can mash up and use the following data sets, or what ever data you feel is necessary.

The organizers will make a mash up of some of the data available for hackathon. The data will be provided in CSV, Excel and JSON formats to speed up the hackathon.

Schedule

11.30-12.00 Introduction: What we aim to do? 12.00-18.00 Work in groups: 13.00 Lunch is served 18.00 Every groups presents their work for other participants

Registration

Participation is free of charge and lunch is included (with hackathon registration only it is not possible to participate other OKfest sessions - ticket is needed for those). Registration will open on Friday 24.8.2012 and close on Monday 17.9.2012 [LINK TO THE REGISTRATION FORM]. Some time after the registration you will receive email with further information.

Maximum number of participants is 80. However, the aim is to have more or less equal number journalists, designers and programmers. If the number of registered participants in one of these areas of expertise reaches 30, we will close registration for them and keep it open for others. As this is an international event we want to make sure also that at least half of the places saved for people coming from somewhere else than Finland.

Hackathon Hosts

Antti Poikola, Finland, @apoikola

Esa Mäkinen, Finland, @EsaMakinen

Details

Location: Open Knowledge Festival venue, Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture (Hämeentie 135 C Helsinki), HACK workshop spaces 1-2-3-4

Date & Time: Fri 21, 11:30 - 19:30

Topic Stream: Data Journalism and Visualisation

Planning Etherpad: http://okfestival.okfnpad.org/HS-open-data-journalism-hackathon