GeoJourNews: To the Presses!

A short week after our conference celebrating news and maps, and a short month away from State of the Map, we wanted to write and wrap up some of the awesome of GeoJourNews. On May 15th (that is 5/15/15, the best of palindrome days!) we convened over 150 geographers, researchers and mappers to give keynotes and lightning talks on the topic of news maps. We featured 16 speakers, from a few countries and a varied program of newsrooms, attracting the communities of our planning partners at Parson’s Journalism + Design program and Knight Mozilla Open News. We learned, mapped, and built together a program of impressive talks and projects! Read on to learn more!

Relive the Magic!

Now that we’ve had a chance to process some of the footage and solicit speaker slides, we’ll be posting those so you can revisit the conference chapter by chapter. Check the schedule here to learn about the names and affiliations of all our featured speakers, and follow along on this blog as we incrementally post the remastered recordings and slides as shared with us :). Meanwhile, check out this Storify summary of the social conversation surrounding the conference!

Daytime Talks

• Nadja Popovich (link | twitter)
• Miguel Peixe: (link | twitter)
• Michael Keller (link | twitter | video)
• Amanda Hickman (link | twitter | video)
• Martin Burch (link | twitter | video)
• Max Rust (link | twitter)
• Daniel Goddemeyer (link | twitter)
• Silvio Da Silva (link)
• Ben Wellington (link | twitter)
• Jeff Larson (link | twitter)

Evening Talks

• Allison McCann (link | twitter)
• Engin Onder (link | twitter)
• Eduardo Acquarone (link | twitter)
• Jairo Mejia (link | twitter)
• David Manthos ([link] | twitter)
• Nikki Zeichner (link | twitter)
• Noah Veltman (link | twitter)
• April Rabkin (link | twitter)

Check out our pre-event blog post for more information on the above speakers too!

May 16th, marked the day of our followup MapHack, where a small crew of hackers, designers, and journalists came together for a half-day of learning, building and debugging maps. We had Coders for America working on civic tech projects, journalists collaborating on beach mapping and eco hacks, coders working on some slick experiments in SQL, and someone launched a pun twitter @CartoCSSPuns. Don’t miss our next event so you can share in the wonders of collab mapping with our community!

Become a GeoNewsie!

Are you a journalist crafting investigative pieces supported by swell maps? We want to hear from you and help. Email Aurelia on the Community Team to score some account upgrades, hear about our special account offer with IRE, and how you can apply for a speakers slot at next year’s GeoJournews!

To that end, we recognize that though we tried our best to solicit the perfect speaker set, there’s always room for geographic and experiential diversity among conference speakers, if you have someone in mind that we should reach out to for the next round, or otherwise want to leave us feedback on your experience in attending, please fill out this [super-duper-short survey].

Attend More Events!

In followup, we want you to know about some related events in the coming months, that promise to satiate your summer mapping fancy with solid talks and great opportunities to network, learn, and share.

• State of the Map: the best conference for Open Street Map enthusiasts and contributors hosts in NYC at the United Nations this year. Check it out June 6-8th, in New York.
• SRCCON: the best conference for data newsies, journalists, freelancers and provocative thinkers who want to make newsrooms and news production better, stronger, faster than before. Check it out June 25-26th, in Minneapolis.
• Hacking Journalism: a great opportunity to meet and make with other geonewsies! Check it out July 11-12, Washington D.C..

Stay tuned for more info on our video captures and our push toward State of the Map! See you soon, and happy mapping!