Structure of the IT/WXXI/#HHROC "continuing education" event

[Matthew Bernius]

Hi all,

On Wednesday, Matthew Leonard, Juan Vasquez and I met to hash out some of the specifics for the upcoming training event at WXXI.

The first half of the event will be a series of talks. The second half will be a series of short break-out sessions run in an "unconference" style. The day will wrap with us coming back together and trying to set some next steps for moving forward on collaborative projects.

Note that everything below is tentative and we'd like feedback/suggestions on everything.

Part 1 - Talks:
There are currently five talk slots. The general format we discussed was a 10/10 -- ten minutes of talk, ten minutes of discussion. The goal is to expose participants to either (a) working concepts or (b) easy and immediately usable skills. The talks should also include a focus on "where the 'real work' gets done" in the process.

After some brainstorming, these were the suggested topics we came up with:

• Data Journalism - finding, normalizing, and starting to work with data (presenter - #HHRoc)
• Journalism for Hackers - a presentation on the work of journalists and what goes into telling a compelling news story (presenter: IT)
  
• Showcase of past Database Driven Journalism Stories (presenter: IT/#HHRoc)
  
• Mapping & Visualizations - Terms, examples, and ideas (presenter #HHRoc or possibly Sean Lehman)
  
• Hackthons 101 - how do you organize and execute a community hacking event (presenter: Remy)
  
• How to partner with local schools and civic hacking organizations (panel with Andrea H, Remy, Michael R, and #HHRoc. Daniel P and others will also participate if they attend)
  

Part 2 - Unconference:

For those not familiar with unconferences, we'll be asking everyone to suggest potential break-out topics. Additional topics can be captured throughout the morning sessions. We'll set up a few different break out areas. Over lunch we'll then use the suggestions to organize the afternoon agenda. This will allow groups to dive deeper into topics discussed during the morning session, explore data sets they might have brought, or discuss possible collaborations and story ideas.

Here are a couple of the session ideas we could "seed" with:

1. Planning a Rochester IT Hackathon
2. Spec'ing the Meeting Minutes application that Matt Richmond had suggested
3. Working with a specific data set
4. Hands on training with pivot tables
5. Reddit and social media tools primer
6. Generating stories from regional transit data

Finally, rather than just ending the day, the last 15 minutes of the meeting will be dedicated to trying to find *at least* one project to partner on and come up with actionable next steps.

July 30th Tentative Event Schedule (subject to change):

----------------------------------------------
11:00 - Welcome & Introductions -- Matthew L. (15 minutes)

11:15 - Talk 1 (20 Min - ~10 min presentation/~10 min discussion)

11:35 - Talk 2 (20 Min)

11:55 - Break (5 Min)
12:00pm - Talk 3 (20 Min)
12:20pm - Talk 4 (20 Min)

12:40pm - Talk 5 (20 Min)

1:00pm - Lunch (30 min with possible lighting presentations)

1:30pm - Small Group Break Out Sessions 1 (20 min)

1:55pm - Check-in/Break (5 min)

2:00pm - Small Group Break Out Sessions 2 (20 min)

2:20pm - Check-in/Break (5 min)
2:25pm - Small Group Break Out Sessions 3 (20 min)

2:45pm - Wrap Up Discussion (15 min)

3:00pm - Wrap (and possibly walk to Genesee Tap Room for further networking)

Matthew and Juan, please correct anything I've gotten wrong. Everyone else, please provide feedback on this frame work.

Hope you're all having a good weekend!

- Matt

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Matthew Bernius
mBer...@gMail.com | http://www.mattbernius.com | @mattBernius
My calendar: http://bit.ly/hNWEII