Welcome David Ryan, Our Second Summer News Apps Apprentice

cqatMnsBThis week we're excited to welcome our second summer news apps apprentice, David Ryan, to the INN Nerds team.

David is a journalist and developer studying at The Cronkite School at Arizona State University. He's an avid news consumer passionate about design and technologies that enable creators and consumers.

Most recently David was the Engagement Editor and Front-End Developer for the 2014 News21 investigation into gun rights and regulations. As part of the team in the Public Insight Network bureau, David tested new methods of engagement around news topics, added major publishing partners for News21 and grew News21’s social media following.

Prior to News21, David was a summer intern with the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting  assisting on a public safety investigation. He also built digital products and advised student startups in the Gannett New Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab and lead a redesign and migration of Forrester Research's intranet.

Find David on Twitter at @dryanmedia or email him at david@inn.org.

We're excited to have David with us for the summer and we hope you'll join us in welcoming him!

Join Our Team! Help Make Our Support Process and Documentation Awesome

As a team we're committed to being among the best in the business in how we support and document the products we build.

We also want to be completely transparent about our internal processes and even our strategy because we believe that this helps us to be accountable to our teammates, INN member organizations and clients. And also because we want to involve the community in everything that we do.

This is a lot of work. So, to help us make our support process and documentation even better, we're now hiring a new full-time role to focus on just this part of our work.

Specifically, this person will own our support process and documentation, including:

  • Communicating with members and clients
  • Refining our support and project management workflow
  • Resolving bugs and issues (collaborating with other team members when needed)
  • Writing great documentation to help people maximize their use of the products we build

The ideal candidate for this position is a detail-oriented self starter who wants to help us provide exemplary service to INN members and our paid consulting clients. This person should have experience making things for the web, a passion for sharing what they know with others and be excited about being a leader in creating documentation and training resources to assist people in their adoption and use of the products we build.

Here's the full job posting and you can get in touch with us anytime if you have questions about the position. Even if you don't meet all of the qualifications but you're passionate about this kind of work and what our team is up to, don't hesitate to reach out and/or apply.

As with all of our positions, working remotely is possible (encouraged, really) and we are committed to creating a workplace where diversity is valued. Candidates from under-represented groups in media and technology are strongly encouraged to apply.

Data Visualization and Photo Resources For Your Visual Journalism Toolkit

Improving the visuals on your site can have a dramatic difference in how your stories are received and how they spread, but we find that many INN members do not have photographers on staff or the budget to invest in complex data-driven news applications and visualizations.

One of our goals with Largo, the open source WordPress framework we've developed for INN members, is to make it much easier for members to have websites that look as good and function as well as the best for-profit and larger non-profit publishers.

This summer we're planning to do some work on making it easier to tell stories visually in Largo and as part of that process we wanted to do a survey of tools that members are already using in the hopes that we can identify some best practices and develop tools, resources and training to make it easy as possible to integrate them with your website.

Our goal is to help journalists to use data and other visual elements to enhance their investigations and storytelling.

A quick side-note: if you use Largo and/or are interested in helping us to figure out how to improve the framework and build tools to support your data and visual storytelling, we're putting together a working group to help us define the work we need to do to make your lives easier. Please drop us a line if you're willing to help us out this summer as we work through this process.

Here are some of the tools we've found so far that may end up as part of the toolkit that we recommend to our members and other journalists.

For quick, basic plots

Check out Visualizer, a WordPress plugin, and Datawrapper, an open-source tool that will provide you code to embed visualizations in your posts. Both tools have the basic types of visualizations (pie chart, bar graph, scatterplot, map, etc.) which you can create by importing a CSV or Excel file. Both are also easy to use, even if you're not very tech savvy and they incorporate some nice default design patterns.

Choose Visualizer if you would like to work with a WordPress plugin or Datawrapper if you don’t mind working with embedded code.

Another great tool for simple charts is ChartBuilder, an open source tool developed by Quartz. This tool allows you to create simple charts and then either copy the html for the chart or export it as an image to use in your stories.

For the data ninja

If you have complex data or want to showcase your data in ways other than with simple graphs and charts, spend some time with tools such as StoryMapJS, TimelineJS, Vis, or Kumu - which are all already compatible with WordPress/Largo by using an embed code (usually an iframe) within your stories.

As their names imply, StoryMapJS and TimelineJS help you create maps and timelines, respectively, to illustrate your data through space and time. Both were developed by the Knight Lab at Northwestern University so they're both designed with journalism applications in mind.

For network and relationship data, there is Vis and Kumu. Both tools are interactive and flexible and easy to use and Vis was designed particularly with journalists in mind.

For the code-savvy

Many of our members do not have an in-house developer, but for those team members interested in learning to code and to use one of the hottest data visualization tools today, you might want to try the d3.js WordPress plugin, Wp-D3.

With D3 you can create any type of visualization you can possibly imagine and make it interactive, too. You might also want to check out NVD3, which also has a WordPress plugin. The developers of this tool were inspired by D3 to create re-usable visualizations.

Recommendations from members

We also heard from some INN member organizations about a few other data visualization tools they like to use.

Canva.com  is great, free, way to make infographics. I've used it to create a graphic on a health care report card. It took about 10 minutes. I'm playing with it to make a customized NCHN template for when I have data like bar charts or graphs (make the bar chart background transparent in photoshop and drop it on the template background. (Rose Hoban, North Carolina Health News)

Another one that's extremely easy to use  for infographics is http://infogr.am. They have many templates to choose from. It's free also but to remove their branding and attach your logo you have to upgrade and pay a little monthly fee.  (Jeremy Chapman, Montana Center for Investigative Reporting)

http://piktochart.com/ has more flexibility than Infogr.am and the professional account is just $40 a year for nonprofits. I like Infogr.am for straightforward graphics; Piktochart for everything else. (Pam Dempsey, Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting)

Photo resources

It can also be difficult to find photos to use if you don't have a photographer on your staff or freelance budget to create original photography to go with your stories. Here are some photo resources members recommended if you need to find photos that are free to use.

Getty Images allows many of its photos to be embedded. (Jason Alcorn, Investigate West) They've got gorgeous photos. It doesn't work all the time, but when it does it's a great money saver. (Diane Schemo, 100 Reporters)

Another good source for stock photography is Free Images (formerly Stock.xchng) and you can search Creative Commons images from various sources here: http://search.creativecommons.org/(Trevor Aaronson, Florida Center for Investigative Reporting)

I love using U.S. government images, which almost never have copyright or licensing requirements. The portal I go through is here, which will also get you to state photo archive pages.  You'll find subject and agency links there. (Naomi Schalit, Pine Tree Watchdog)

The Library of Congress has a nice collection of digital images you can browse. Useful for historical photos or #TBT. Most of the images are free to use but check the copyrights to be sure (Pam Dempsey, Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting)

Many Flickr users share their photos under a Creative Commons license, which allows anyone to use those photos under certain conditions (have to attribute, no derivative works, and non-commercial use only are the main three). Use Flickr advanced search to search only Creative Commons-licensed photos then look at individual photos to check for any of those conditions. No pre-clearance from photographers required. (Jason Alcorn, Investigate West)

Flickr also has this site called "The Commons" which includes a repository of public photography from all over the world. (Luis Gomez, INN)

Your suggestions

We hope you found some new tools and resources in the list above to help with your work. Let us know if you have other tools or resources for visual journalism that you would recommend to other INN members!

Welcome Our New Summer Apprentice: Dani Litovsky Alcalá!

perfilThis week we're really excited to welcome the first of our two summer apprentices, Dana "Dani" Litovsky Alcalá.

Dani will be starting an MS in Computational Analysis & Public Policy at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy starting Fall 2015. She holds a degree in International Political Economy from the University of Texas at Dallas.

At UT Dallas, Dani was involved in economics and political science research and was an avid community volunteer. She interned in Washington, DC at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and spent a summer in Lima, Peru working for IDL-Reporteros, a team of investigative journalists.

Dani is passionate about data science, statistics and their application to public policy and journalism. After finishing college, she taught herself to program and worked on data analysis and design-development projects.

When she's not thinking about algorithms and statistical significance, Dani enjoys working as a Spanish-English translator for a publication in Peru, updating her blog, powerlifting and yoga, cooking, and eating sushi. You can connect with her on Twitter @DataDanaL.

At INN, she'll be working with us on integrating data projects with Largo as well as on our recently-announced news apps and data consulting work in partnership with member organizations.

I hope you'll join me in welcoming her to the team!

April’s News Nerd Book Club: Practical Empathy

91kIIztgk1LJoin us for the April News Nerd Book Club hangout on Wednesday, April 8 at 1 pm ET.

This month we'll be reading Practical Empathy by Indi Young.

From the book's description:

"Conventional product development focuses on the solution. Empathy is a mindset that focuses on people, helping you to understand their thinking patterns and perspectives. Practical Empathy will show you how to gather and compare these patterns to make better decisions, improve your strategy, and collaborate successfully."

Sounds great to us.

The meeting this month will be held via Google Hangout and the invite and link to RSVP are right here.

Hope to see you in a few weeks. Happy reading!

Welcome Our Newest Team Member – Nick Bennett

nick-bennettWe're excited to welcome the newest addition to our team, Nick Bennett.

Nick comes from being Hoy Chicago's first News Application Developer, where he led their site migration, developed a custom WordPress theme and plugins, and trained and supported the newsroom staff. Before that he spent 11 years helping people improve their relationship with technology by providing full service technical support at Kellogg School of Management.

Nick's duties as a News Applications Developer at INN include working on Largo, INN's WordPress framework for member sites and contributing to internal products and editorial projects for our members and clients.

He's also passionate about teaching and learning and we're excited to have him around to continue to improve our documentation and help our members and clients to use the products we build.

His first day on the job is Monday, March 9.

Make him feel welcome by dropping him an email at nick@inn.org or on Twitter: @yoyoohrho.

Nerd Alert Issue 8: Hello! This is Dog!

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Dog here. I fetched you some links.

 


HOT LINKS

What we're reading this week

  Adam: Many people don’t think giving good advice is a skill that can be learned and developed, but this article thoroughly explores ways to get the most out of an advisor/advisee relationship with helpful tips for both sides.

  Ben: I’ve been coming back to this vim tutorial a lot this week. It introduces you to a new way of editing text just a bit at a time, starting with the things you already do and then introducing you to new ways of thinking. I’m still using a traditional text editor for most coding, but the cult of vi is growing on me.

  Denise: I love to read “how I did the story” blog posts. I almost always learn something practical that I can put to use. In this post on the IRE website, two data reporters from the Wall Street Journal talk about the importance of listening to sources who are skeptical of your data (yes, even data from official sources such as the FBI).

  Kaeti: OK, so we know that criticism is essential to growth and learning. But how do you give productive feedback that will actually make things better (without crush spirits, hopes and dreams in the process)? Dennis Field offers some great advice on how to give designers better feedback, and most of this advice can be applied to all types of work. In short, focus on the problems you’re trying to solve and treat each other like human beings.

  Meredith: Inspired by a tweet earlier this week about designing for older adults, I found this piece on designing user interfaces for your mom.  The fun is reading folks comments, as many people  have experience supporting their parents and helping them stay connected.

  Ryan: The folks at De Correspondent spent some time exploring how the function of simple links, which have gone untouched for decades, might be changed to improve the reading experience for their audience. They describe three approaches: info cards, side notes and featured links, all of which look to minimize distractions and enable the reader to focus on the story or article at hand.

  Will: Forget checking man pages for common tasks with less than obvious commands. With bropages, you get at that tar command you need without having to remember a thing.

  Bert: Sorry not sorry.


This week's guest contributor: Tom Meagher, The Marshall Project -@ultracasual

Over the past couple days I’ve been thinking about two very different people whose careers inspired me.

The first is Emanuel Ocasio, who spent 45 years as a pressman at the New York Times. What struck me about Emanuel’s story was the way he and other newspaper press operators and printers invested in learning their craft. He spent a decade studying every aspect of typography and the printing process, poring over a tome called “Newspaper Course” by the International Typographical Union (I’d love to see a copy of this book).

The other is Rear Admiral Grace Hopper. Gillian Jacobs produced this short documentary about the admiral that appeared on fivethirtyeight.com this week. For nearly 40 years, from World War II to the dawn of the internet, this mathematician helped build the world of computing and programming as we know it.

For those of us figuring out how to do journalism in this still young and freewheeling medium, it’s good to remember Emanuel and Grace and the generations of journalists, printers and programmers who preceded us. They cared about their craft, because their work mattered. We should care just as much.


Each week we ask someone from outside our team to contribute a link, tool or idea. Are you our next guest star? We think you might be. Send us a note at nerds@inn.org.


We Made A Thing

Our projects, manifest

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This week we officially announced the release of Largo version 0.4 (our WordPress framework for news publishers) and we also revamped the project website! (in 24 hours)


Some Other Stuff

Gather ye rosebuds

LISTEN: More taiko drums, you say?

COOK: Nordic Food Lab is a non-profit, open-source organization that investigates food diversity and deliciousness. This blog is something else.

WATCH: The immortal Thumbs Carllile.

GIF: It's Friday. Dance it off.

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Did you read the whole thing? Feel free to forward it to all your friends. Human or canine. 

Announcing Largo Version 0.4

largo-sqWe're excited to announce a new version of Largo, the open source WordPress framework we build and maintain for our member organizations.

Version 0.4 is a huge update that's been in the works for a while. In this release, we've more or less rebuilt the Largo theme from the ground up to make it more stable and easier to use. Here's a list of some of the things included in this update:

wcijProbably the most visible change is the addition of a number of new homepage layouts, which are much more visual and "magazine-like" to really highlight the feature reporting that many of our members are doing. We've also retained and polished up the previous homepage layouts (with the exception of the "carousel" layout, which is deprecated in version 0.4) and have added a new homepage framework to make it much easier to create your own custom homepage layouts from a child theme. Many of the new layouts also allow a user to switch between viewing "top stories" and "all recent stories" in a traditional "river" view, remembering their preference on subsequent visits.

Faith-based state group seeks Waupun prison abuse probe   WisconsinWatch.orgWe've also completely redesigned the article template to allow for more easy creation of immersive stories. The new default article template in Largo removes the sidebar to reduce distraction and adds a new featured media area at the top of the story with support for a large "hero" image, video or other embedded content (maps, audio, etc.). If you prefer the traditional two-column layout on story pages, we've kept that, too. You can simply select the template you'd like to use in the theme options and will have the option to override it on select stories. These improvements also include streamlining the publishing interface to make it easy to add and manage featured media by reducing the number of boxes you have to search through to find what you're looking for.

read-nextThe bottom of the article page template is now a WordPress widget area to make it easier to rearrange the elements that appear there. This includes the addition of a number of new widgets for related content, author bios, and an optional disclaimer that you can easily add to the bottom of all your stories, or selectively override on a per-story basis.

Site navigation is also cleaner, easier to manage and more mobile friendly, including an option to use a "sticky" header that remains visible when a user scrolls. Article pages now also have a sticky footer with social sharing links, the ability to easily follow authors and topics, and more.

follow

And we've replaced the clunky older/newer posts navigation used on many pages of the site with a simpler "load more posts" infinite scroll.

catCategory pages have been redesigned to give more prominence to featured stories and it is now possible to create and use custom sidebars on category and tag pages. In addition, we've added a new optional "content type" taxonomy to allow you to group stories by type. For example, if you'd like to have a page for just your data projects without having to use categories or tags, now you can!

User profiles are also now easier to manage with the option to upload avatar photos directly in WordPress instead of relying on Gravatar and with better validation for social media accounts to make sure your accounts get linked up correctly. We've also added a new widget to display a list of the writers and editors on your site with their avatar photos, titles, bios, etc.

optionsOn the admin side, we've tried to simplify wherever possible and have moved less-frequently used settings to an optional tab of the theme options to keep them easily available but out of the way. This includes things like optional taxonomies and a number of new integrations with services such as Google Custom Search that you can use to enhance the functionality of your site. One additional option allows you to easily change the color scheme of your site using a LESS/CSS customizer directly from the admin without having to edit your theme files directly.

For developers, we've reorganized the theme files in a way that we hope will make it a lot easier to develop child themes based on Largo. You'll also notice that we've begun to add unit tests for the theme, helper functions for debugging, and more hooks, filters and constants to make it easier to add, remove or modify various pieces of Largo functionality. We also have an updated sample child theme that includes ample documentation and recommended best practices for working with Largo. We welcome your feedback if there's anything else we can do to make your lives easier.

helpdeskAnd last but not least, we've completely revamped the Largo documentation, added a knowledge base with answers to our most frequently asked questions and implemented a new help desk system to better keep tabs on your questions for us.

Oh right, and the ubiquitous "assorted bug fixes."

Updating to the new version is as simple as downloading the new theme (zip) and replacing your existing copy of the Largo parent theme. Then, when you login to your site for the first time, you'll be prompted to apply a database update to make sure all of your settings are preserved. As this is a major update, we strongly recommend creating a backup of your site before making the update and, ideally, testing the new version on a staging site to make sure you have a handle on the changes before applying it to your live site. Just a reminder that if you require more assistance making this update, we offer paid services and we'd be happy to help. Details on that program can be found here.

For INN members who host their sites with us, this update is available today but we'd like to spend some time working with you to walk through the new features. Please drop us a line at support@largoproject.org if you'd like to be among the first sites to make the update, otherwise we'll be reaching out to you in the coming weeks to schedule these consultations.

Thanks to every member of the INN Nerds team who worked on this release, particularly Ryan Nagle, who took lead on this one, but also to Meredith Melragon who did a lot of the work improving our documentation, Kaeti Hinck who jumped in late in the cycle to help us polish the visual design, and our software apprentices Ben Keith and Will Haynes who both contributed a lot of code to this release. Thanks also to a couple of open source contributors, particularly Ben Byrne and Daniel Bachhuber.

The next release! 0.5 will be focused on improving performance, developer documentation and evaluating third-party libraries, as well as some continued improvements to the design of the default theme. It is scheduled for release at the end of March. We're now keeping the Largo roadmap public on GitHub, so you can see more of what's planned for future releases.

Nerd Alert Issue Seven: Five-alarm nerd at the corner of 24th and Broadway

False alarm. But since you're already here...some links for your trouble:


HOT LINKS

What we're reading this week

  AdamThis article really resonated me with this week, particularly the discussion of why rookies often outperform their more experienced peers. Sometimes, ignorance and inexperience are virtues, particularly for managers because our teams perform their best when we hire and encourage people who are smarter than we are.

 Ben: Quick Left’s 2014 CSS Report is an interesting look at how websites are styled. Who would have thought that Bootstrap’s default blue color (#428BCA) would be so prevalent? If you want to get the same sort of report about your own site, check out CSSstats.com.

 Denise: Journalists are pretty good at pointing out problems. What if we also focused on solutions to those problems? We just might have more impact and become more relevant to our audiences. This handy, illustrated (and free) guide from the Solutions Journalism Network gives some pointers on how to report, write and promote stories with more solutions.

 Kaeti: Why are some teams smarter than others? During recent studies, psychologists found that the best teams were distinguished by three characteristics: members contributed more equally to discussions (versus one or two people dominating), they were better at reading the emotional state of their colleagues, and teams with more women outperformed teams with more men. What could this research mean for how we work together and how we design our organizations?

  Meredith: Users will share what they want, their ideas for improvement and their frustrations.   Two Rdio users took to Medium to share their wish list, a mock up of a mini player, and finally why they are abandoning the service.   They offered thoughtful feedback from users who care about the service.  The question is what will happen next.

 Ryan: Chartist is a charting library that aims to simplify charting libraries. It does not include an events framework, it does not have any enormous external dependencies. The syntax, structure and "flow" of the code is the easiest to follow of any charting library I've seen. Oh yeah, its charts are also responsive out of the box. I'm looking forward to using this on an upcoming project. It looks very promising!

  Bert: Shut up and take my money.


This week's guest contributor: Ben Byrne - Chief Creative Officer  at Cornershop Creative - @drywall

It’s old now, by Internet standards, but I return to this piece (and others like it) regularly. Maybe I suffer from imposter syndrome more than others, but I suspect not… although how pervasive it is probably varies by field. Regardless, I think it’s important to take time to remind ourselves that we’re not perfect, and that in fact we probably do better work — code, journalism, art, whatever — if we embrace that fact.


Each week we ask someone from outside our team to contribute a link, tool or idea. Are you our next guest star? We think you might be. Send us a note at nerds@inn.org.


We Made A Thing

Our projects, manifest

Largo__color_horiz1

We wanted you to be the first to know.

On Monday we'll be releasing version 0.4 of Largo, our WordPress theme/framework developed specifically for news organizations. There are far too many exciting things in this release to list them all here but we're really excited to share them with you.

If you're an INN member using our hosted version of Largo we'll be taking some time to work with you to make the update, which will be available to you starting on Monday. If you want to be among the earliest sites to make the switch, please send us an email and we'll add you to our list.

A major focus of the past few months has also been to improve documentation for Largo so we're also happy to announce updated docs (now hosted on readthedocs), a new knowledge base and help desk system to make it far easier for you to get help should you need it, and an updated and now heavily-documented WordPress child theme to help developers get up and running with Largo.

Look for the full launch announcement on Monday at largoproject.org, but if you want to start checking out the code it's available here. If you want to see the new version in action, INN members Wisconsin Watch, City Limits, Chicago Reporter and Voice of OC are some of our early beta partners who already have sites in the wild.


Shout Out

Work we admire by our journalism peers

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NPR's visuals team shares useful insights into how users interacted (or didn't) with their election app, which was designed to be experienced passively.


Some Other Stuff

Gather ye rosebuds

LISTEN: Adam's wearing out his copy of Red Sovine's 1966 release on Starday Records, Town and Country Action. A few highlights.

COOK: "This version of Momofuku’s ramen broth hails from 2010. It has changed since then, but we present it here in the interest of open source broth sharing and an abiding interest in soup!"

WATCH: Supercharged Smart Cars? Of course that's a thing.

GIF: Until next week!

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This email was pretty good, right? Let your friends in on the secret.

Nerd Alert Issue Six: Is This Thing On?

Some light reading for your next meeting, conference call or hangout.


HOT LINKS

What we're reading this week

  Adam: Shazna Nessa warns that as data visualization is increasingly designed for nerds by nerds we risk losing readers if we don't take our audience’s visual literacy into account.

 Ben: At this month’s book club meeting, we discussed how some of Ida Tarbell’s articles were first serialized in McClure’s Magazine, then bound and published in book format. I was curious if any organization still did that. Just yesterday it was announced that The Lantern, student-run official newspaper of The Ohio State University (disclosure: my alma mater) has published a book-format recap of the 2014 Ohio State Buckeyes football season. Can your organization do something similar?

 Denise: People are more than just dots on a map. Jacob Harris of the New York Times wrote this thoughtful piece about empathetic visualization design. Often our data represents people who died in a war, or were victims of crime or other terrible things. How can journalists make sure the human aspect comes through in our visualizations?

 Kaeti: In order to grow as organizations — and as people — we need to be able to admit our mistakes and learn from them. Instead of punishing employees who mess up, Etsy adopted the blameless post-mortem. This process encourages colleagues to own their mistakes, investigate what led to a particular system failure, and share what they learn with the team — all without fear of retribution. By investing in a culture where people can admit failure, we’re more able to identify problematic organizational patterns and grow together without shame or secrecy.

  Meredith: Stephen Godfrey is the owner of Rough Trade Records and co-founder of Flotsm, a beta social network. In this piece he reflects on his motivation to create it. I appreciate their lofty ideals --  “harness the wisdom of crowds; make better decisions; connect with minds, freely.”

 Ryan: The new Google Translate app will blow your mind with its "World Lens" and conversation translation features. The World Lens allows you to point your phone at a sign and have it translated on screen before your eyes. You can also carry on a conversation in an unfamiliar language by having your phone act as an interpreter. The fact that this technology exists and is something anyone can carry around in their pocket is proof that we're living in the future.

  Bert: About time I got a little attention around here.


This week's guest contributor: Chris Keller - data editor at KPCC - Southern California Public Radio

This six-year-old or so post draws a distinction between the "maker’s schedule" and the "manager’s schedule," and after it came across my Twitter feed over the weekend, it burrowed into that part of the brain that re-assess how work gets done. Many of us organize, participate or sit through meetings of all kinds, and I believe we’ve always kind of acknowledged them as a necessary evil. But - and I hate to say it - I’ve never really explored why I feel the way I do about meetings. This post has got me thinking in that direction more and how I can better navigate each work day, the never-ending flow of information and the constant competition for each other’s time.

Some early thoughts:

  • More to-the-point conversations.
  • Meet to move forward.
  • Parse larger tasks into smaller chunks.
  • To get things daily use a pen and paper.

Each week we ask someone from outside our team to contribute a link, tool or idea. Are you our next guest star? We think you might be. Send us a note at nerds@inn.org.


We Made A Thing

Our projects, manifest

Some big announcements coming next week about Largo! But for this week you can apply for our summer apprenticeship program or to be our next full-time news apps developer.


Shout Out

Work we admire by our journalism peers

map-1

Michael Keller at Al Jazeera America built a nifty jQuery wrapper for ProPublica's Stateline library, adding some no-fuss tooltips, legends and source lines.


 

Some Other Stuff

Gather ye rosebuds

LISTEN: Is this the world's longest mixtape?

COOK: Eat your brussels sprouts.

WATCH: In honor of Keller & Keller, here's Keller & Keller.

GIF: This pretty much sums it up.

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You’ve done it again. You’ve made it all the way through our newsletter. High five!