Code with me: Digital Journalism
Taylor Dewey on
Code with me: Portland is a two day, student-mentor workshop that teaches journalists the foundations of coding in languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Founded by Sisi Wei and Tom Giratikanon, Code with me has been successful in Washington DC and Miami, and Code with me: Portland promises to be the biggest workshop yet, with 36 student and 22 mentors! With about two students to every mentor, the classes are very personal and hands-on. Between learning how to code, the journalists use mentor time to help with personal projects.
Portland’s organizer, a former WordPress.com VIP support engineer, helped organize the workshop and invited Jeremy Felt and me to be mentors. The mentors are talented and diverse, ranging from 10uppers and Automatticians to designers, developers, and editors from newspapers like the Seattle Times.
The primary goal of Code with me is to help journalists understand code so that they can better integrate into their work. Many of the attendees were inspired after reading the New York Times’s “Snow Fall”, a showcase for crafting and coding an online presentation around a single, great story. Snow Fall is a great example of how technology can enhance storytelling without restraining or complicating it.
Jeremy and I are really looking forward to interacting with journalists, and excited to be learning the pedagogy of teaching coding from Tom and Sisi. Since web technologies are constantly evolving, teaching some coding basics can be a challenge. As we interact with publishers on a daily basis here at 10up, learning some better methodologies will be invaluable.
At Code with me, we will be teaching journalists and researchers techniques that make stories more effective, immersive, and interactive. I can’t wait to see how Portland journalists apply these ideas!
If you want to learn more about Code with me, you can follow them on Twitter. Code with me: Portland takes place on May 4-5.