After SRCCON, much remains to be done
“Don’t just show your code,” Dan Sinker said. “Share your code.”
Well, duh.
Or not?
Dan, of course, is the head of the Knight-Mozilla OpenNews project, which promotes global collaboration to create the tools journalism needs to thrive on the open web.
He was speaking to about 200 developers and journalists who had travelled to Philadelphia for SRCCON, organized by Dan and his team.
Tickets to SRCCON had sold out in about 40 seconds, so it’s safe to say that all of us attending were on board with open source and sharing ideas. So why is Dan still banging that drum?
Maybe because there’s still so much work to be done.
The good news is, there are more and more organizations like those at SRCCON that are helping journalists improve their technical skills and understanding. We’re developing and distributing open source code. We’re spreading ideas. Just not fast enough:
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The workflows and dynamics in newsrooms have barely changed since the pre-digital age.
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User-generated content is playing a larger role in news, but journalists still don’t have the right tools to verify that content.
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Editors understand that blogs play a key role in live coverage, but most are still handing over the rights to their content to expensive proprietary services.
If you see these problems as opportunities, Sourcefabric is with you. Find a way or make one, we always say. These needs are driving our development on tools like Citizen Desk and Live Blog and the Superdesk technology that powers them.
Dan’s reminder helps keep us focused. We need events like SRCCON to remind us that we all achieve more, faster and better when we work together.
We had a great time in Philadelphia, brainstorming and collaborating with so many talented, motivated and inspiring people. Petr Jašek and I learned a lot about how other newsroom coders work. We got to meet some fantastic people and the tools they make and use.
Thanks to the some blazingly fast stenographers, you can read transcripts of all the SRCCON sessions here. (They did not transcribe the SRCCON House Party, the beer tasting or us playing Magic: The Gathering, which is probably a good thing.)
And thanks to everyone at SRCCON who shared their ideas and time, and thanks to Dan for the reminder.
Sourcefabric will be at ONA14 in Chicago, September 25–27. Meet us there!