Hacks/Hackers Colorado Meetup (Denver)

We've got a great lineup for this Friday's meetup. Yes, there will be plenty of beer, food, and socializing thanks to our sponsors (read more about them below). Please RSVP so we're sure to buy enough vittles and suds for everyone.

We'll also have three (maybe four) fast, fantastic, and informal presentation "stations" to kick off the weekend with some serious inspiration. We'll split up into groups and rotate through Creative Density's versatile co-working space to hear about...

iPhone Panorama photos with Occipital, presenting the company's 360 Panorama as a tool for mobile journalism. The application makes it incredibly easy to capture and share 360-degree photos with an iPhone. Panoramas are a way to rapidly convey context, and they are very engaging to view: A single panorama of recent tornado destruction in Missouri quickly amassed over 300K views. Learn how to capture panoramas, how to share them on Twitter, and how to embed them. Occipital will also talk about the idea behind 360verse.com (http://360verse.com/) , a real-time stream of panoramas from around the world; how its underlying search engine is being designed specifically with journalism in mind; and how it can be used to add context to stories—even if you're not able to capture photos or panoramas yourself.

Collaboration and crowdsourcing with Wendy Norris: It's the peanut butter and chocolate of journalism: collaboration and crowdsourcing. Great on their own. Even better together. Wendy is a freelance journalist and 2011 Knight Fellow at Stanford. She is developing a prototype app for coordinating crowdsourced news projects.

Idea to Reality: How to Refine, Build, and Iterate a Software Prototype with Mike Kramlich: Mike will talk about how to take an idea for a new service or software product and turn it into a working, functional demo. Many of us have ideas for services and products we think can help move journalism forward. Mike will walk us through the steps of refining an idea and making it real. Mike is a software developer and entrepreneur with experienc as a staff engineer for major corporations and travel websites such as Orbitz. He's also been an independent contractor, helping startups get off the ground via architecture, technical leadership, and nuts-and-bolts code slinging. On the other hand, Mike has some experience with what doesn't work, which he will also share, unveiling some of the mystery and myths around software and web development.

Social media with Erika Napoletano: Erika is the Head Redhead at Redhead Writing, a Denver-based digital strategies consultancy. Recently named by the Denver Post (http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_16877750) as one of Colorado's top online personalities, she's a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine (http://www.entrepreneur.com/author/1709) and the author of two books forthcoming in the spring of 2012. Her blog, RedheadWriting (http://www.redheadwriting.com/), is a bastion for unpopular thoughts and blunt advice, and strives to say what others should (but don't or won't) about business and life in general. Her client list includes the who's who of Silicon Valley startups and law firms like Fenwick & West (the law firm for Google, Facebook, and Twitter), and her only goal in business is to keep companies from looking like assholes online. She has more bicycles than ex-husbands and likes banana milkshakes. You can stalk her on Twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/redheadwriting) and OMFG like her on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/RedheadWriting) if you dare. She's an expert on nothing except screwing up royally and learning from her mistakes, and helps companies create distinct online personalities that set them apart from the crowd, no matter what their industry.

A big thanks to our sponsors for helping to make this meetup possible. They'll be around Friday to share more about their businesses, so be sure to chat them up.

Occipital is based in Boulder and builds computer vision and augmented reality software for iOS devices.

Creative Density is a coworking community and shared workspace in Denver for mobile professionals.

See you Friday at 5:30!

--Vanessa, Dusty, and Mike