Annotation + future of engagement: An audience that writes more than you

Comment sections are about trolls and flame wars, right? Not anymore. User comments, once nasty backwaters of internet malice, are re-emerging as a powerful way to engage your audience and learn from the crowd. From Disqus and Hypothes.is to Quora and RapGenius, new platforms are making it possible to annotate and comment the best of what the user-generated Web can do.

Disqus and new arrival Hypothes.is, two pioneers in the space, will show us how commenting and annotation is rewriting the Web. Disqus is a wildly popular commenting system hosting 20 million comments per month, and non-profit startup Hypothes.is is building the open-source dream first tried by Netscape's creators combining sentence-level Web annotation with peer-review communities on everything from news to ballot initiatives. This future Web, they say, will serve up the best of what "people formerly known as the audience" can deliver.

Come meet Sam Parker (@renr), Head of product at Disqus, and Dan Whaley (@dwhly), Founder at Hypothes.is, at HacksHackers. We'll discuss what's next, and the real-life experiences of dealing with an audience that writes more than you.

The Hacks/Hackers event will be at the Storify offices (149 9th St #404, San Francisco, CA 94103), on Thursday, August 22 at 7 PM).

Speakers:
Dan Whaley (@dwhly), Founder at Hypothes.is
Sam Parker (@renr), Head of product at Disqus

Agenda:
7-7:30 Drinks and bonhomie
7:30-8:30 Presentation and discussion
8:30-9:00 Whatever the night brings