Ben Jones of Tableau will join us for this month’s Hacks/Hackers and ONA-Austin meetup to demonstrate their free data visualization tool, Tableau Public, and show how journalists and others can use it to explore data and make visualizations that help tell stories.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m. for hors d’oeuvres and socializing, with the presentation at 7 p.m. Tableau will host a social afterward at a nearby bar venue to be determined.
The meeting will be in the first floor conference room of the Austin American-Statesman office building at 305 S. Congress Ave.
(For those interested in a more in-depth look at Tableau, they are hosting a 4-hour workshop during Data Day Texas on March 30th. Austin Hacks/Hackers can get a 20% discount by using the code “hacks-hackers-20″ at http://datadaytexas.com.)
Are you headed down to Austin for SXSWi? Join us at the Awesomest Journalism Party. Ever. III. from 5 to 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 9. We’re getting together with journalists and tech folks at Palm Door, 401 Sabine St., just two blocks from the Convention Center and featuring awesome Austin food, awesome Texas beer and an awesome photobooth from SnapFiesta.
Say hi to ONA’s Jeanne Brooks and Jen Mizgata at the party and while you’re at SXSWi. Network with SXSW attendees and meet the awesome ONA Austin folks.
Join us on Monday, January 28 as we discuss Innovation in Media. Tim Lott is vice president for disruptive innovation at Cox Media Group, parent company of the Austin American-Statesman.
He oversees a small skunkworks operation based in Capital Factory, the tech incubator in downtown Austin. The team is responsible for developing new products and spinoff businesses for the media giant. Their first product, still in beta, is a news and information aggregator called “12″. You can download it on your iPad at www.twelveapp.com.
Tim will address strategy and development and provide a demonstration of the app. This will be an interesting look at how new ideas are generated by media companies.
Tell your friends and share on social media. Looking forward to kicking off a great 2013!
Join us for some holiday fun. We’re teaming up with more than 20 Austin organizations to host this event. Details at www.refreshaustin.org/bash. There will be an open bar, while it lasts. Admission is one can of food to be donated to the Capital Area Food Bank.
ONA Austin: Intro to Programming for Communicators
We’ve been talking a lot about programming, data and communication in conjunction with our partner group Hacks/Hackers (this meetup is being sponsored by both ONA and HH). We’ve seen some interesting projects and collaborations. But now might be a good time to cover some basic programming skills, just to get everyone on track. This will be the first of several workshops that we can host over the next year to familiarize people with programming and Web development.
You don’t need any prior experience with programming or Web design to attend.
In this 2 hour workshop, we’ll cover:
Why do I need to learn to program?
Programming languages
Strings and numbers
What’s a variable?
Math and concatenation
Alerts and prompts
Booleans – true or false
If Statements and Loops
Functions, Objects and Methods
You won’t be an experienced programmer at the end of this session, but you will gain a better understanding of programming concepts and terms. We’ll be using Javascript, but we will discuss how these concepts apply to any programming language that you might use.
Bring a laptop. All you’ll need is a browser and an html editor (a free one like Komodo Edit or Text Wrangler is fine) or text editor (Notepad or TextEdit). Or, it’s fine if you just want to sit in and observe.
Note for TextEdit – before coming to the meetup, please go to Preferences and change the following:
Under New Document Tab, choose Plain Text
Under Open and Save, make sure the first two items are checked under “When Opening a File:”
Cindy Royal (cindyroyal.com) will instruct the group. She’s been teaching Web design for the past 12 years, first as a phd student at UT and now as an Associate Professor at Texas State.
And, stay tuned for a message about the Web Dev Holiday Bash coming up in a few weeks.
Next month, the marvels of the auto racing world will speed down a newly constructed track that his risen in the countryside near the Texas 130 toll road. The caviar crowd from around the world will fly private jets and helicopters to get here. Fans from all over the world have booked flights – and hotel rooms across Central Texas. The Formula One faithful, and the local public, will watch it all with intense interest as the Circuit of The Americas makes it debut.
The Austin American-Statesman and theaustingrandprix.com have been covering this mammoth sports event since the time it was announced, and they will be there when the engines fire up. David Doolittle, the person behind the popular @statesmanF1 Twitter account and the editor for the Statesman’s Formula One coverage, will join Kerri and Kevin Olsen, who are behind theaustingrandprix.com, to talk about their challenges of covering such a huge event using digital platforms and how they plan to take on race week while bumping elbows with the international media.
Please join us on Oct. 22 at the Statesman to see how social media, blogging, video and more go into covering a worldwide spectacle.
The Online Music Startup: How vivogig, Red River Noise/Austin Vida cover music
What does it take to start your own website or app that covers music through photos, videos, blog posts and more? Daniel Senyard and Shannon Delaney of vivogig and Ian Morales and AJ Miranda of Austin Vida/Red River Noise will share their thoughts and expertise on how they began their startups in our September meeting.
Daniel Senyard, CEO of vivogig, is the team’s visionary and meeting man. Daniel uses his years of marketing, project management, journalism and web marketing experience to build and foster communities, grow relationships and raise funds. The first show Daniel went to was UB40.
Shannon Delaney, content manager for vivogig, created a social media plan for vivogig and works to implement the plan on a daily basis. In addition to handling the social media accounts, she is in charge of vivogig’s music blog, which provides readers with music news, reviews, previews, giveaways, opinions and more. Shannon graduated with a master’s degree in mass communication from Texas State University.
Ian Morales, editor in chief of Austin Vida and Red River Noise, has attended small shows and big concerts in Austin since his high school days, when there were more all-ages venues in town. After a few years in the corporate world, Ian left to work as the marketing manager and events coordinator for a tattoo parlor on Austin’s famed Sixth Street. Since 2008, Ian has been interviewing bands and writing reviews for Double Stereo (formerly CD Fuse), Austin Vida and his personal music blog. If he speaks loudly, it’s because his ears are still ringing from that Rage Against The Machine concert in ’99.
AJ Miranda, managing editor and multimedia editor for Austin Vida and Red River Noise, grew up in California but has lived in Texas since 2002. Launching ‘NITES, a Blog for Austinites, in 2008, he created an outlet for his interest in videography, photography and writing, while at the same time shining a much-needed spotlight on the plethora of unknown talent in his city. He has a journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin and has written about business and city life for The Wall Street Journal, The Denver Post and Laredo Morning Times.
Note: ONA Austin is seeking sponsorships. Please let us know if you or your company or organization are interested by leaving a comment on the meetup.com page or emailing Maira Garcia (mairalgarcia@gmail.com).
Please join Hacks/Hackers ATX and the Online News Association Austin Local for Innovation at Texas Tribune. Rodney Gibbs, the Chief Innovation Officer, will discuss some of their innovative apps, including the new Public Schools Explorer. It’ll be a great opportunity to find out what goes on behind the scenes at Texas Tribune and to find out how they integrate technology with engaging content. Perhaps Rodney can share some of their plans for the future, too.
Appropriately, we’ll be at the Texas Tribune this time (823 Congress Ave, 2nd floor – around the corner from the museum), starting at 6:30pm. We’re cross-posting on both Hacks/Hackers ATX and the ONA meetup group, so feel free to RSVP on either meetup group.
Refreshments for this meeting will be sponsored by Lewis Knight of the Paintbrush Ranch in Wimberley. Lewis is also a TXST alum and a current Ph.D. student at UT. Thanks Lewis!
Please arrive before 7pm, as the guard won’t be available after that to let people in. Hope to see you on Mon., Aug 6 at 6:30pm for this event.
Online groups are increasingly going offline. Not entirely, of course, but creating IRL (In Real Life) relationships based on online connections are one of the greatest benefits of creating an online identity in the first place. But what do those offline groups look like, how do they evolve and what purpose do they serve? The Austin Food Blogger Alliance grew out of informal happy hours and potlucks that started back in 2008, when Addie Broyles, who was just starting a food blog for the Statesman at the time, reached out to established food bloggers in Austin to get a feel for the community she was jumping into.
As the group grew, so did its potential. In late 2010, Addie and a handful of the most active members of the informal group put the wheels in motion for AFBA, which is the first food blogger alliance of its kind in the country. The group now has more than 130 members and is in the process of creating a community cookbook; not a digital book, but one of those so-called “real books” that will help the group raise money to give back to the food community through scholarships, grants and donations to other nonprofits.
Addie will talk about the pros and cons of formalizing a group to the extent that AFBA has, what the future of the organization looks like and, through a conversation with attendees, what AFBA and ONA can learn from one another.
We’ll use this discussion as fodder in a closing brainstorming session on what our members want out of ONA-Austin in the coming months. Please come with ideas about what you would like to see or participate in at future ONA-Austin meetings.
NEW LOCATION: This meeting will be in a new location at the Capital Factory space on the 16th floor of the Austin Centre complex (which includes the Omni hotel) at 700 Brazos St. Being a Monday, street parking should be available for free after 6 p.m., or fee lots are scattered about.
What makes a writer effective when there are so many voices online? How do you cut through the clutter and reach a large audience? Two of the very best of Austin’s online writers, Tolly Moseley and Omar Gallaga, will answer those questions and more at our next meetup.
Tolly, the energetic voice behind the popular blog Austin Eavesdropper, is also a book publicist, radio producer, social media whiz, TV host and all-around great person.
Omar, the sarcastic-in-good-fun and authoritative voice behind the Austin360.com tech blog Digital Savant, is also an ocasional tech columnist for CNN and contributor to NPR, a social media snark king and another all-around great person.
Tolly and Omar will provide plenty of laughs and insight into what it takes to be a digital journalist. We hope you can join us!
Note: ONA Austin is seeking a sponsor to cover the costs of tacos and tea. Please let us know if you’re interested by leaving a comment on the meetup.com page or by tweeting Robert Quigley.
After Apple booted Google Maps from iOS last year, Daniel Graf led the development of a beautiful, refreshed mapping experience that shot to number one in the iTunes store and kicked Apple’s ass on its own turf. Here’s how Graf made it happen—in his own words:
“We have a very successful Android version of Google Maps, so the easiest thing to do was to say, this is super-successful, users love it, so why don’t we just port it over to iOS? But I wanted to challenge the team. While the Android version is a great product, you can also tell it’s been around for a while. You have to access everything via menus—it’s not really best-use-case driven anymore. I said, let’s take a step back—what if we could start from scratch and forget anything we’ve ever done? We have the foundation—the Google data, the mapping data, the local business data, the imagery, the navigation algorithms—it’s a dream to start with.”
