Imagining I was working with another journalist who’d put together a story on mining in Latin America, I set out to build an interactive map in four hours (7-11pm, February 16th, 2014.) that could accompany that piece. I wanted to see how long it would take me, on a deadline, to make this kind of thing. And I’m pretty happy with the result. With another four hours it could be ready for prime time.

The results can be explored by clicking here:

Challenges

Was this journalism? I felt for the coders and developers at ProPublica, NYTimes, Boston Globe, etc. Did they run into existential questions about whether they were actually doing journalism versus just making pretty things? Does the demand for interactivity from the Internet readership mean more resources are being diverted to building these kind of things rather than actual reporting?

Finding the right images Did I want to tell the story with aerial shots from Google Maps or on-the-ground photography? Which was best to show the immensity of these open pit mines?

What to write for the blurbs The 70 word budget I had for each interactive slide was extremely limited. What did I have to leave out?

Coding, coding, coding The javascript for this basic interactive map was not (overly) difficult, but making the thing look pretty with CSS was time-consuming. Still not happy with it.

Only made 4 of 10. My top 10 list is six short. Too much time was wasted cropping images, debugging code and researching the blurbs. Had I access to in-house resources–like a journalist’s database with the latest stats and newspegs on each mine–I’d have been golden.

Tools

Leaflet is a Javascript library whose inventor was recently hired by the folks at MapBox. It’s streamlined mapping and allows for tons of customization.

William’s Four-Hour Challenge

Saturday, February 15, 11:57pm

Sidney Pacific (S-P) Graduate Residence, a graduate dorm at MIT with 700 graduate students, hosted Open Doors Night on Saturday, February 15 from 8pm to 11pm. During Open Doors Night, several residents host small parties in their apartments and residents go around from room to room, meeting new people and enjoying snacks, hors d’oeuvres, and desserts.

I decided to make Open Doors Night my four-hour challenge and tell the story in the style of “Humans of New York“, a blog that features photos and quotes from New Yorkers in their daily lives. Here are the 15 hosts, what they served, and what they said.

Katie (and Georgia)
ebelskivers
“It’s a family tradition!”

———-

Erin
chocolate and plain croissants, teriyaki pork, lamb
“Why do you enjoy cooking?”
“It’s like the PhD grind, but you can eat it immediately!”

———-

Atul and Pawan
aloo paratha, laddu
“It’s an opportunity to expose people to Indian food and Indian traditions.”

———-

Stephanie and Jen
pinwheels (cheddar & bacon, spinach & mushrooms), sushi (spam & pineapple, crab meat & cucumber, salmon & cucumber), salted caramel turtle cookies
“This is my fifth time hosting Open Doors Night!”
“We thought we were going to be lazy but ended up doing a lot!”

———-

Mariana
canapés, hummus, tabbouleh salad, tomato bites
“I got this book [on Lebanese cuisine] for Christmas.”

———-

Vadim
fresh fruit, croissants, coconut sweets, pizza, tea
“What’s been the most interesting thing that’s happened this evening?”
“I like the conversations. We talked about computational biology.”

———-

Isaac (and Fabián)
brownies, homemade whipped cream, empanadas
“Brownie?”
“Sure!”

———-

Julie (and Neel)
brownies, cupcakes, chocolate-covered pretzels, raisinettes
“This is awesome! You open your door and people come and say hi!”

———-

Ramesh and Szymon
stuffed mushrooms, peppermint brownie balls
“The stuffed mushrooms are gone! There was sundried tomato and herb and bacon, spinach, and feta… and they both turned out really well.”

———-

Hoss
nachos, cookies
“I’m very thankful for MIT residential life for doing some of the living for grad students. (laughs) That’s not grammatically correct!”

———-

Holly (and George)
appetizers from the freezer (bacon-wrapped tater tots and more)
“What is your favorite recipe to make and why?”
“I like new recipes. I’ve made a new recipe every day for the past year.”

———-

Sumit
Various snacks (nachos, chicken wings)
“I wanted to make what people were familiar with, in large quantities!”

———-

Yu-Pu
sweet potato bread, almond hot chocolate
“I got into baking because I have more free time this year.”

———-

Rachael
shortcakes
“I decided to make lemon raspberry and strawberry shortcakes because they seemed like late-spring/early-summer foods, which seemed like a good idea in a blizzard!”

———-

Steve and Frank
brownies, tea
“You’re the last apartment in my article! How do you want to be quoted?”
“We have too much tea.” “Live long and prosper.” “Tea, Earl Gray, hot.”

Challenge time: Feb 14, 8am-noon EST

Challenge: Gather 100+ first kiss stories from people around the world and overlay them on a map. The topic was chosen for its universality, and ease of recall.

Click to view the map and the stories. The map clusters all stories from a certain city. To view them all, expand the list (>>) on the left of the map.

Objectives:

• do a project pegged to a timely and (largely) shared theme, Valentine’s Day, that involves other users in creating content;
• find alternative ways to gather/present information;
• do a story that broadens traditional news values – from “what is new” to “what is”; from “public interest” to “personal stake”; from “conflict” to “life events”.

Tools:

• ZeeMaps.com (I discovered this tool early in the morning; it’s the first map making tool I came across that looked easy enough. The ability to upload spreadsheets sealed the deal.).
• Google Forms – decided to use forms to collect data (Name, Story, City, Country) for two reasons: 1. Ease of input by users. 2. Some form of control over what gets posted to the map.
• Bit.ly – to make custom URLs to be shared and later be able to count clicks.
• Social media – Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Instagram.

Results (at 11:50 am, 10 mins before closing the challenge):

• 180 collected stories;
• 36 shares on my original Facebook post (doesn’t count direct posts by others);
• 4 retweets on four total Tweets;
• 498 clicks on Bit.ly form link; 212 clicks on Bit.ly map link;
• 8 bogus entries deleted

Issues/Conclusions:

• given the response rate, this was a successful project, that would be easy to replicate for other topics – from the mundane (favorite restaurants) to the more serious (stories of poverty);
• many of the shares were endorsements, with people commenting and praising the project, not just passing it on. This is a sign of sharing because it was relevant/interesting to them;
• couldn’t embed the map directly into WordPress, because the iframe code isn’t working, and I couldn’t figure it out in time;
• the map tool clusters all entries from the same city, and makes browsing less satisfying. One can still see all entries on a list, but it’s less fun. Potential solution for future projects: use streets, GPS coordinates, different types of markers;
• a pre-existing social network is extremely helpful for quick-turnaround projects. Facebook was by far the tool that helped me best; Twitter barely had any traction;
• such projects are – at least early on – heavily biased to the geography of one’s network. Potential solution: partnering with others across the globe, extending one’s social network.
• I had issues with Romanian diacritics and had to clean the spreadsheet by hand and turns ASCII (?) code into letters.
• a tool that collects and uploads data/stories to a map in one-step (ideally with administrative privileges) would make the process smoother. One could even build analysis tools on top of it: sort by gender, by age, by other variables. [They might exist; I didn’t have time to look for one in the allotted challenge time].