OpenNews: Elections Code Convening. Open your code with us!
This year has been a year of trying new things at OpenNews. One of the big things we’ve been doing is experimenting with ways of bringing newsroom developers together to open up projects together. We call them Code Convenings, and we’re opening up applications for our third Convening today.
The idea behind Code Convenings is pretty simple: we’ve found that often the thing holds code back from being open-sourced is just finding the time to do that last-mile abstraction work and creating first-class documentation. Code Convenings bring devs together for a couple days to do exactly that. We feed you, put you up in a hotel, and give you the time and space to do the work that’s necessary to get some great code out.
Our first code convening was in Portland Oregon this spring, and resulted in four great projects being opened up–since then, they’ve been used and reused numerous times. Our second code convening brought together folks to collaborate on a single code base, resulting in the creation of the California Civic Data Coalition. We considered both these convenings prototypes: opportunities to try things out with a reduced number of variables. As a result, we invited folks to take part, but kept the lead-up quiet–no need to promote while we were still figuring things out. Well, we think we’ve got this relatively figured now, so we’re going public for the last Code Convening of the year.
We’re hosting an OpenNews Code Convening in New York City November 13 & 14, and we want your news developers to take part. This will be coming soon after the midterm elections in the United States, and so we’ve chosen “Elections” as the organizing theme of this convening. If your newsroom has been working on some interesting code this election cycle, that you’d like an opportunity to open up to the larger journalism code community, you should apply.
We’re moving pretty quickly here: The application opens today and closes on October 17. We’ll be selecting a maximum of five projects, and will notify folks if theirs have been chosen by October 21. You’ll need to commit two people or, if you can only send one, work with us to find a good partner) to the two days of the convening, and we’ll cover food and travel. It will be so awesome.
This is a great opportunity to get code out into the world: take it!
