The Center for Investigative Reporting is pleased to announce that Visual.ly, a community platform for data visualization and infographics, will be donating $10,000 in development time to help produce the winning project at TechRaking III's data journalism design sprint. CIR and Visual.ly will be working together to develop the conference's winning idea into a usable product.
Last year, Coco Studios donated $10,000 worth of hours for the winning news game pitch at CIR's TechRaking II: Gaming the News conference with IGN. "Hair Net Hero," a game that challenges players to create a healthy school lunch, was TechRaking II's winning concept. It's in development now and will be launched in late September.
TechRaking III, "Mining the News," is a free invite-only event co-hosted by Google and will be held at the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif. Designed for data professionals and journalists, the conference will connect innovative data models and practices with high-quality investigative journalism. Media and data experts will explore the benefits of open data and how to equip the next generation of journalists with 21st-century research skills. Participants also will dive into specific best practices to help journalists produce groundbreaking investigations – data journalism design sprints will result in a winning project at the end of the day.
Launched in April 2011, Visual.ly makes it possible to present information and meaning in a bite-sized visual way that makes sense in the age of big data. The platform has grown to include a library of more than 40,000 infographics, a robust community of almost 150,000 and a suite of offerings that includes premium services, free self-service tools and a marketplace that automates the infographic creation process.