This morning, I’m presenting at SecondConf. I don’t generally like slide decks because they’ve got extremely low information-resolution — they leave so much unsaid. But the conference organizers tell me that the talks will be posted online. Check back for the full experience.
Tag Archives: Chicago Tribune
All the fun stuff we’ve been up to at the Trib
The blog has been a bit quiet lately (to the disappointment of very few, I’m sure) — but we’ve been releasing apps and blogging furiously over at our team site. Here’s a roundup of our recent posts:
Tools we love to use
- Quick-install Python/PostGIS geo stack on Snow Leopard
- Deploying ProPublica’s awesome table-setter tables to S3 using Fabric
- Quickly visualize and map a data set using Google Fusion Tables
Development techniques and best practices we’ve discovered
- Best practices in web development with Python and Django
- Advanced django project layout
- Refactoring fabfile.py for fast, robust Django deployment
- Fun with widgets and caching
Sharing our infrastructure
- Hello, Newsroom: a simple GeoDjango application
- Our GeoDjango Amazon EC2 image for news apps
- Nerd post roundup and preview (plus: our server architecture!)
For links to our recent projects, and to keep up on our work, visit apps.chicagotribune.com!
We’re hiring: A UX/IA expert *and* a web designer/developer
Cross-posted from the Chicago Tribune news apps team blog…
Join our team!
Requirements:
- A passion for the news
- An understanding of the inner workings of the web
- Attention to detail and hatred for inaccuracy
- A genuine and friendly disposition
Position one: User experience designer / information architect
Our team is in need of someone who will lead the design conversation. Someone who will interview stakeholders, develop personas, intuit features, arrange information, draw mockups, and everything else necessary to design a web site. You will work fast and agile, in tight iterations, and in close contact with our stakeholders — the editors and reporters of the Chicago Tribune.
You should also be ready to close the loop and put our work in front of users, take their feedback, and redesign it all — cuz that’s what you gotta do when you’re agile.
You must care deeply about usability and grok the web.
Extra points if you love to sketch, didn’t have to google ‘grok’, and don’t need an education on agile development practices.
Position two: Web designer / developer
We are also in need of a creative web designer. Someone who cuts tight, valid and semantic HTML/CSS and makes it look *hot*. Graphic design skills are a must, but we also require the ability to implement those designs. We need more than a photoshop jock. You will work fast and agile, in tight iterations, and in close contact with our stakeholders — the editors and reporters of the Chicago Tribune.
(If you’re a print designer, you’re probably not who we’re looking for, but we’ll do our best to not be prejudiced. Show us you’ve got serious web chops, and we’ll talk.)
Extra points if you have worked with Django (we’ll welcome Rails skillz too, they translate) and have built many beautiful websites.
Even more points (for both positions) if you know a thing or two about:
- Data science (statistics, exploratory data analysis, R)
- Information design (beautiful charts, graphs and other Tufte-geekery)
- Building and gardening social media or crowdsourcing applications
Some days we’ll huddle and sketch with reporters, imagining ways to present information and tell their story on the web — and we might turn that story around in a day, a week or a month. Other days, we’ll develop news products that’ll take months to realize.
Either way, we work fast and lean, relying heavily on frameworks, and following agile best practices. It’s fun.
Things we’ve built lately:
Gear you’ll get:
- One shiny, new MacBook Pro (or an iMac, if you’d prefer)
- One CDM (Cheap Dell Monitor)
- One comfy Aeron chair
- …all at a desk somewhere in the Tribune newsroom, where you’ll be surrounded by reporters arguing with the cops, yelling about the ball game, telling crazy stories, and otherwise practicing their trade.
There is no free pop, pinball or posh cafeteria.
But, you’ll like what you do. You’ll come to work energized, and leave satisfied that you’ve done something that will make your mom proud. You’ll have held our government accountable, spoken truth to power, given voice to the voiceless, and contributed to the public good.
Beat that, Google.
Interested? Email your info to newsapps@tribune.com. Thanks!
Hacker wanted: Code in the public interest, save journalism, in sunny Chicago, Illinois
UPDATE: We’ve filled the position, but may be hiring more soon.
If this looks like your dream job, please send an email anyway. 🙂
Cross-posted from our new team blog:
We’re looking for a great hacker to join our team at the Chicago Tribune.
Requirements:
- A passion for the news
- An understanding of the inner workings of the web
- Attention to detail and hatred for inaccuracy
- A genuine and friendly disposition
And, of course…
- Bad-ass programming skills and a love for the craft of making software
Tools we use (and thus, tools we hope you might know a thing or two about — if you don’t, that’s okay, but please explain yourself):
- HTML/CSS
- Python
- Django
- PostgreSQL
- PostGIS
- Ubuntu Linux + Amazon EC2
Our team is composed of generalists: We all write GUI code, mine data and manage servers. You ought to be equally comfortable wearing many hats. That said, we’ve all got our specialities, and would love to find a team member with a superpower which none of us already possess. Something like…
- Data science (statistics, exploratory data analysis, R)
- Information design (beautiful charts, graphs and other Tufte-geekery)
- Maintaining high-performance web sites (cuz we’re gonna get serious traffic)
- Building and gardening social media or crowdsourcing applications
You’ll work closely with reporters on the investigative and city desks, helping them research and present their work. Sometimes you’ll be screen scraping, mucking with data, visualizing and exploring information, and seeking truth. Other days, we’ll huddle and sketch with reporters, imagining ways to present information and tell stories on the web.
Sometimes we’ll knock out an application in a day, other times it’ll take a few weeks. Either way, we work fast and lean, relying heavily on frameworks, and following agile best practices. It’s fun.
Things we’ve built lately:
- City Council’s $3.7 million allowance: How aldermen spent taxpayer money
- Dry cleaners’ toxic legacy: Find sites near you
- Burr Oak Cemetery: Browse the headstones
- Clout goes to college: Find how your school ranks
Folks you’ll work with:
Gear you’ll get:
- One shiny, new MacBook Pro
- One CDM (Cheap Dell Monitor)
- One comfy Aeron chair
- …all at a desk somewhere in the Tribune newsroom, where you’ll be surrounded by reporters arguing with the cops, yelling about the ball game, telling crazy stories, and otherwise practicing their trade.
There is no free pop, pinball or posh cafeteria.
But, you’ll like what you do. You’ll come to work energized, and leave satisfied that you’ve done something that will make your mom proud. You’ll have held our government accountable, spoken truth to power, given voice to the voiceless, and contributed to the public good.
Beat that, Google.
Interested? Email your info to newsapps@tribune.com. Thanks!
Sex offenders: Your tweets (and LinkedIn and TimesPeople) are now a felony
Required qualifying statement: if you’re a sex offender, you’ve likelypossibly (as pointed out by Asim, a recent piece in The Economist suggests that sex criminals in the U.S. are often victims of our screwed-up laws) done something very bad, and of which I do not, in any way, approve. That said, I’m pretty sure you still have a few rights…
As reported in the Chicago Tribune today, social networking is now a felony for many Illinois residents:
One law taking effect Jan. 1 makes it a felony for registered sex offenders to use social networking sites, a move aimed at taking another step toward shutting down an avenue of contact between an offender and victim.
The bill defines social networking as such:
13 (h) "Social networking website" means an Internet website 14 containing profile web pages of the members of the website that 15 include the names or nicknames of such members, photographs 16 placed on the profile web pages by such members, or any other 17 personal or personally identifying information about such 18 members and links to other profile web pages on social 19 networking websites of friends or associates of such members 20 that can be accessed by other members or visitors to the 21 website. A social networking website provides members of or 22 visitors to such website the ability to leave messages or 23 comments on the profile web page that are visible to all or 24 some visitors to the profile web page and may also include a 25 form of electronic mail for members of the social networking 26 website.
Sure, it seems right to stop violent criminal perverts from poking around MySpace, but every damned site on the web is integrating social networking features nowadays. Is it offensive to the public interest if a sex offender shares an article on TimesPeople? What about LinkedIn? Do sex offenders not deserve a place to post their resume?
Or, what about a social network devoted to sex offenders trying to rehabilitate? If there isn’t a Ning for this already, there sure oughta be.
This is bad legislation. Sex criminals have rights too, and this law effectively bans them from the Web.
hacker journalist 