Investigate and Hack in Kalmar

Grävmaskin (a kind of investigative power shovel), image checks, predictability, talk and chat with news, real-time updates of geodata for articles, an easier check of persons before starting an investigation, efficient tools for journalism. And all this in just about 20 hours of intense development.

Publicerad 8 april 2019

A more than fully booked Hackathon started with a breakfast at the Infomaker office kitchen. Participants from media companies, journalists, Infomaker, Newscycle, wire provider, and image providers from all over the world joined us in Kalmar and the Grävseminariet. Preparations had been made by the Infomaker team making sure that the hackers had access to relevant environments and API’s to use during the Hackathon. On-site was one of the providers of Acta Publica API, a service that provides a public access document archive, hoping to support hacks to make journalists doing research in a more efficient way.

Participants gathering at Infomaker. (photo Erik Thörnqvist)

Introduction by the organizing committee, Nina Månsson, Peter Månsson, Mikael Larsson Ek, Patrik Granlöv. (photo Vibeke Ewing)

Fouad Yousefi leader for Investigative Journalists participated in the Hackathon (Grävföreningen. Journalist at SVT ) (photo Vibeke Ewing).

People were teaming up and we filled the Gota Media house with 12 teams shaping up their ideas and started to discuss, making sketches. It was a comfortable feeling in Gota Media lunch and lecture area. The coffee machine provided us with 238 cups of coffee and that is on top of the coffee we got from the prepared coffee in thermoses.

The organizers Geoff Kehrer, Newscycle US together with Erik Törnqvist and Nina Månsson Infomaker, Sweden. (photo Vibeke Ewing)

Sumathi Jothikarunakarani and the team from Gota Media are working on their hack on finding data about people. (photo Vibeke Ewing)

Anja Bjerleus was also part of the Gota Media team. (photo Vibeke Ewing)

Olof Carlerud, Scott Roessler, Karin Söderlund and Leo Brunnick in discussions on the Hackathon.(photo Vibeke Ewing)

Scott Roessler, CEO and Leo Brunnick, CDO, at Newscycle traveled to Kalmar to join the Hackathon. (photo Vibeke Ewing)

Infomaker Hackathon Gräv 2019. The Hackathon badge. The team from Gota Media is working on their idea for the Hackathon. (photo Vibeke Ewing)

The North Media A/S's Jonas Schelde and Steen Jensen visited a Infomaker Hackathon for the first time. Here in discussion with Peter Persson, Infomaker. The Gräv Hackathon 2019 was the fifth Hackathon organized by Infomaker. (photo Vibeke Ewing)

Grävseminariet

The second day we were in the conference venue Kalmarsalen and now we were among all the journalists in the conference Grävseminariet. The place gets full of new questions of what a Hackathon is. The Grävseminarium is a conference for investigative journalism and for two days there are seminars, workshops in investigative data journalism, collaborative work on investigative projects, meetings for journalism lecturers and added to that was the Hackathon.

The developers continue to work on their ideas and the helpers hang around. (photo Nina Månsson)

A hackathon is in general an event where developers meet to program and explore ideas, concepts or test a prototype by programming. In this Hackathon in Kalmar, the focus is mainly on journalism and investigative journalism. To increase the possibility for collaboration and sharing of experiences with investigative journalists and media actors we had an email channel open for posting of ideas. You could have your own idea you want to develop or get inspiration from an investigative idea posted to us. When the Hackathon started we had a couple of journalists participating in the Hackathon. One important thing to have on a Hackathon is a sticker. We had the "investigative hat"-sticker 2019, posted on the windows as a very nice removable sticker.

The sticker by Joakim Holmevi at Infomaker. (photo Vibeke Ewing)

Preparations and time for the demo

The preparations of the demo, which Peter Månsson held together with the teams, started off Friday at noon with tech test at the conference hall. Eleven teams were preparing demos and photos of all the teams were taken in the very busy Hackathon programming room, where the last things were added to the hacks and the demos.