Where you’ll find me and where I’ve spoken

Hello. I’m Chrys Wu. I’m also known as MacDiva (remember the days of handles?) and I’m from the internet. You can also find me at the following events, though the ones in 2015 are subject to change. Those where I spoke or hosted are in purple. Note this is not a comprehensive list.

Over the years, I’ve been asked to present and teach about journalism, coding, collaboration and culture. If you’d like me to bring my unique perspective to your event, contact me.

Year Event Dates City Specifically,…
2016 Codex Literary Hackathon Jan. 8–10 Cambridge, MA
Google Women Techmakers Summit March 5 New York, NY
NICAR March 10–13 Denver, CO Every year, the NICAR links lista> is a testament to the collective spirit of the investigative reporting community. This year, in addition to compiling the list, I moderated a discussion with engineer Ricardo Brom (La Nacíon, Argentina), Tyler Dukes (WRAL News, Raleigh, NC) and Tania Montalvo (Animal Politico, Mexico) that was "All About the Analysis" and offered guidance during the career roundtable
Grace Hopper Academy March 23 New York, NY The Grace Hopper Academy is a coding bootcamp for women. The staff invited me to talk about code and development at The New York Times.
Future History Festival April 8–9 Baltimore, MD
FITC April 17–19 Toronto, Canada FITC organizers extended an invitation to give a talk about this year's theme, "Level up." Since I do a lot of "backstage" work to help large groups of people do just that, I decided to write a new talk called "Everyday Transformative Powers". The quasi-transcript is on my site.
Write/Speak/Code June 15–19 Chicago, IL
IRE Conference June 16–19 New Orleans, LA Moderating "All About the Analysis and Panama Papers: How the world's largest collaborative investigation came together. I'm also running for re-election to the IRE board. Be sure to vote.
2015 Cracking the Code Jan. 30 New York, NY I was invited to judge the "Cracking the Code" hackathon, an event that closed the Women Digital News Entrepreneurs Summit hosted by the International Women's Media Foundation.
Tapestry Data Storytelling Conference March 4 Athens, GA
IRE CAR Conference a.k.a. NICAR March 5–8 Atlanta This is one of my favorite conferences of the year. I love it for its camaraderie and opportunities to learn. This year I'm speaking on a panel about bridging the journalist-developer gap. I'm also collecting NICAR tutorials, presentations and resources on my blog.
UAF-Africa, Harvard Law School & Ford Foundation-East Africa Office Roundtable March 9 Cambridge, MA
Write/Speak/Code March 19–21 New York, NY I hosted a panel on writing for developers featuring developers Chiu-Ki Chan, Corey Latislaw and Pamela Selle; and editors Julie Steele and Debra Cauley Williams (who is always looking for developers who want to write).
Yale Data Hack March 28 New Haven, CT
Tech Meetup at The White House April 17 Washington, DC
CAJ Annual Conference June 5–7 Halifax, Canada
Sally Conference July 25 New York, NY
Visualized Oct. 8–9 New York, NY
2014 Visualized Feb. 6–7 New York, NY Visualized 2014 introduces attendees to another spectacular lineup of people who meld data, story and design into narrative.
Tapestry Conference Feb. 26 Annapolis, MD
NICAR Feb. 27–March 2 Baltimore, MD NICAR is probably the best learning/tutorial conference for people interested in investigative journalism. It's very hands-on, and the journalists and trainers are great. Once again, I'll be collecting slides, presentations and tutorials for everyone to learn from. And this year, I discussing "It's not just for looks: Presentation as a storytelling tool" with Alyson Hurt (NPR), Helene Sears (BBC) and Aron Pilhofer (The New York Times). Read the slides from our presentation.
Chicas Poderosas Miami April 17–20 Miami, FL The founder of Chicas Poderosas asked me to give an inspirational opening keynote for the inaugural gathering of Chicas Poderosas in Miami. The audience was mostly from Latin America: journalists (many of whom have never written code before), developers (many who'd never worked with journalists before) and other professionals who'd never attended a hack event of this kind. Read the slides (in Spanish).
Alaska Press Club April 24–26 Anchorage, AK I spoke about data and journalism at the annual conference of the Alaska Press club.
Media Hack Days May 2–4 Aarhus, Denmark This 3-day event explores platforms, storytelling techniques and revenue strategies. I am honored to be one of the speakers and a participant. (Slides)
OLITA Digital Odyssey June 6 Ontario, Canada Had things turned out differently, I might have become a research librarian/information scientist. So it was an honor to be asked to give the keynote speech for the Ontario Library Association's annual conference on research, learning, accessibility and usability associated with technology in libraries. (Slides)
IRE Conference June 26–29 San Francisco, CA During the "Data Journalism Ethics: Tricky Questions Buried in the Numbers" session, I spoke about the ethics of confusion, as in: Deception is clearly unethical, but at what point is the likelihood of confusion also unethical? Audio from my talk can be found here.
Robot Film Festival July 12–13 San Francisco, CA The Robot Film Festival returned to San Francisco to celebrate short films about (and sometimes by) robots. Our partners at Bot & Dolly (the design & engineering company that made the movie "Gravity" possible) have been tremendous.
Google Media Summit NYC July 28 New York, NY I was invited to give a talk on mobile development, and invited colleagues from the NYT Now team to discuss their product development process with me.
Paperless Post Tech Talk Aug. 5 New York, NY At this invited talk, I spoke about the role of data and design in engaging with an audience.
ONA dCamp: Digital Security Aug. 23 Washington, D.C. This one-day training and design workshop explores digital security practices and products for journalists. I moderated a discussion with Delphine Halgand, Reporters Without Borders; Shauna Dillavou, CommunityRED and Seamus Tuohy, Internews.
Visualization Montréal (VisMTL) Oct. 10 Montréal, Canada Montréal has quite a few professionals who work in information visualization and dataviz. I put my figurative NYT hat on and showed the ways in which we use visualization at The New York Times — and not just in our visual reporting. I showed some of the visualization tools we've created internally to better understand our readers and discover patterns in data. It was my first presentation in French, and hopefully I'll have the opportunity to do that again. Read the slides.
Çingleton4 Oct. 10-12 Montréal, Canada This was the final bow for a heartfelt conference of independent iOS and Mac OS developers. My favorite talk, tech-and-design nerd that I am, was by Dave Addey, who talked about the ways type and design in film have shaped our collective impression of "we are in the future now." His blog, "Typeset In The Future is dedicated to fonts in sci-fi. When (if?) his talk is uploaded to Vimeo, you should watch it.
Hack the Universe at the American Museum of Natural History Nov. 7-8 New York, NY Who doesn't love space? AMNH developed The Digital Universe, a complete and accurate 3D atlas of the cosmos. As a piece of software, it is tremendously compact and fast. But it's also a complicated and foreign interface for the layperson. The museum decided to invite the public to explore the stars and come up with new tools, educational means, interfaces and visualizations. It's the first overnight hackathon I've been to in many years and it was awesome.
Visualized.io London Nov. 22 London, UK The single-track Visualized conference has spawned an independently organized offshoot through the singular efforts of designer Maral Pourkazemi.
2013 Flatiron School Nov. 25 New York, NY The good folks at Flatiron School invited me to give a talk about the way I use code in my work as an organizer of technology-oriented meetups, and as Developer Advocate at The New York Times.
XOXO Sept. 19–22 Portland, OR
Strata Conference + Hadoop World Oct. 28–30 New York, NY
Online News Association Conference Oct. 17–19 Atlanta, GA Northwestern University Knight Lab chief Miranda Mulligan and I discussed what university educators can do to help students keep pace with the media industry.
AAJA National Convention Aug. 21–24 New York, NY There are many ways to keep users happy and engaged through user experience design. I'll be showing attendees my approach.
Catalytic Converter Aug. 9–11 Cambridge, MA
Write/Speak/Code June 20-22 New York, NY Write/Speak/Code is a 3-day, action-oriented for women developers. Each day is dedicated to a full day of training, mentoring and coaching women in thought leadership, technical conference speaking, and open-source code contribution. I am proud to be one of the founders of this event and I'm moderating the Devs Write panel.
Gotham Ruby Conference (GORUCO) June 8 New York, NY For the first time, the Goruco organizing committee has explicitly committed itself to gender diversity. As part of that effort, I was asked to join the advisory board, and I'm actively seeking women speakers. Get in touch if you'd like to share your Ruby specific or development-related experience at the conference. For a taste of past talks, head to the video page.
Eyeo Festival June 5-8 Minneapolis Art, code and design collide in a festival of data visualization.
SXSW Interactive March 8–12 Austin, TX I am on the SXSW Accelerator Board and constantly looking for new innovations and startup ideas for the 2013 pitch competition and beyond. This year, it's great to see competitors from outside the usual hubs in California and New York and Boston.
NICAR Feb. 28–March 3 Louisville, KY NICAR is probably the best learning/tutorial conference for people interested in investigative journalism. It's very hands-on, and the journalists and trainers are great. I've collected slides, presentations and tutorials from previous NICAR conferences for everyone to learn from, and I've did the same in 2013.
2012 Cloud Gathering Conference Nov. 14 New York, NY Diversity in media matters, even online. The Cloud Gathering Conference came together to put some muscle behind the idea.
Visualized Nov. 8-9 New York, NY I emceed Friday's sessions, which included a number of luminaries in data, design and communication.
Strata Conference & Hadoop World Oct. 23-25 New York, NY One of the largest conferences on data, especially big data, returns to New York. I was happy to be part of the programming advisory committee again.
Online News Association Conference Sept. 20-22 San Francisco, CA I hosted Hacks/Hackers Hacking @ ONA12, a hack day for journalists, designers and developers interested in advancing what’s possible in online news. A lot of great projects came out of the event and people made new professional ties — always a bonus in an industry that swaps and trades talent almost as fast as the MLB does.
White House Safety Datapalooza Sept. 14 Washington, DC The White House CTO’s office invited me to give a "TED-style talk" about data journalism, which was live-streamed to the public. (Transcript)
Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires Media Party Aug. 30 - Sept. 1 Buenos Aires, Argentina
Awesome Summit: Connect July 23 Cambridge, MA Spent the day rethinking fundraising and philanthropy. Speaking of which, do you have an awesome idea that needs funding? Apply for an Awesome Foundation grant.
Robot Film Festival July 14 New York, NY I co-produced and stage managed a unique, juried short film festival about, you guessed it: robots. Watch the winners.
Public Safety Data Jam May 16 Washington, DC The White House CTO’s office extended an invitation to participate in a brainstorming session on public access to government data.
NYU Young Media Weekend April 21 New York, NY Journalists Erik Hinton, Andrei Scheinkman, Al Shaw and I took part in a panel about data journalism organized by the editorial staff of the student publication NYU Local. Our goal was to inspire the attendees and explain the work we do in and outside the newsroom. Read the writeup.
TechRaking April 12 Mountain View, CA LinkedIn’s principle data scientist Pete Skomoroch and I were asked to a lead session on data as product. Having heard about Pete from other data scientists, I was honored to have the chance to do this with him. Read the post-conference writeup. And learn more about Pete.
NYC12, the spring College Media Convention March 18 New York, NY My talk "Amazing People Doing Awesome Things" focused on collaboration between coders and non-coders, and the importance of working in concert even if you’re capable of completing a project alone.
SXSW Interactive March 9-12 Austin, TX To me, this conference is massive to the point of being overwhelming. When things got to be too much, I took a tip from Michael Lopp ("Rands in Repose") and decided to put myself in a public place with a friend or two and let people know about it. This, like Michael’s writing, worked brilliantly.
NICAR Feb. 23 St. Louis, MO This is one of the best hands-on conferences for journalists interested in investigative and data-driven reporting. I collected slides, presentations and tutorials and they’re an abundant trove to learn from.
SparkCamp: Data Jan. 13-15 Austin, TX About 80 journalists gathered at this invite-only unconference to talk about the many facets of data: how to get it, how to clean it, how to interrogate it, how to test it, and how to present it. What I liked most was the number of people who came from outside the journalism world. Here are the top 10 things one attendee learned from the event.
2011 NewsFoo Dec. 2-4 Phoenix, AZ During this event, I met the incredible Nicola Twilley, urbanist and futurist. She gave an abbreviated version of her talk, "To Understand Refrigeration is to Understand the World." It stopped all of us in our tracks. She's currently working on a research project documenting unique venues in the North American landscape. If she comes to your town, make a point to talk with her.
Hacks/Hackers Brighton Nov. 22 Brighton, UK Sarah Marshall, the Hacks/Hackers Brighton organizer, invited me to come talk with the group about what Hacks/Hackers groups worldwide have been doing and give a little history about the movement. If you’d like to attend a Hacks/Hackers meetup, see if there’s a chapter in your area.
BUILD Nov. 7-11 Belfast, Northern Ireland This was a truly extraordinary design conference, and as I understand it, organizer Andy McMillan is the primary reason it exists. He did a tremendous job arranging a mix of workshops, film screenings and presentations, and the speakers, particularly Wilson Miner and Craig Mod, were breathtaking.
Mozilla Festival Nov. 4-6 London, UK It was here that the Data Journalism Handbook was born and I was happy to contribute. Get the Web version for free or buy a hard copy from O’Reilly.
Online News Association Conference Sept. 22-24 Boston, MA I hosted Hacks/Hackers Hacking @ ONA11 along with Hacks/Hackers Boston organizer Matt Carroll and Phillip Smith of the Mozilla Foundation. The 40-some journalists participating came up with several projects, including an easy-to-use interactive bar chart generator, a PDF inspector, and a way to find your own trending topics on Twitter.
Strata Summit Sept. 20-21 New York, NY Though not as big as Strata Conference in Santa Clara, CA, it was nonetheless interesting to hear from so many people working with data in startups, finance, healthcare and other industries.
PyGotham Sept. 17 New York, NY NYC Python powerhouse Gloria Willadsen invited me to speak about coders, non-coders and community. You can watch some of the conference presentations here.
Social Media Workshop, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism Aug. 19 New York, NY I taught fundamental social media skills, tips and techniques to the incoming class of graduate students.
Moby Dick Project July 29 Stanford, CA From the mind of Ben Huh came this one-day hack fest that was more about innovation and design than coding. And that was awesome. I worked with a small team to come up with a possible solution to delivering the news you want given specific time constraints.
Robot Film Festival July 16-17 New York, NY I joined roboticists Heather Knight and Marek Michalowski to produce the first-ever short film festival dedicated to celebrating robot-human interaction. The two-day extravaganza included film screenings, a family filmmaking workshop, cocktail parties, a robot red carpet, and live performances during the awards ceremony. Watch the films.
MIT-Knight Civic Media Conference June 22-24 Cambridge, MA The 2010-2011 Knight News Challenge winners were announced during this three-day conference on news and civic media. I held an unconference session on improving improving hackathons.
BarCamp NewsInnovation April 30 Philadelphia, PA
Entrepreneurial Journalism (COM 480), College of Staten Island-CUNY April 6 Staten Island, NY Dr. Chris W. Anderson asked me to speak about the changing newsroom, entrepreneurship and bringing technologists into a new journalism business.
SXSW Interactive March 11-15 Austin, TX
TransportationCamp East March 5-6 New York, NY
Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Web Conference Jan. 28-29 San Francisco, CA I spoke about "The Social Life of an Online Story," explaining how social networks, sharing tools and strategic content marketing work together to drive traffic.
Hack Club: Lego Mindstorms Showdown Jan. 14-15 New York, NY I met a guy at a BreadPig hackathon and we built a Lego Mindstorms robot that fought valiantly in a sumo tournament. I only wish I knew Python at the time so we could have included more sophisticated programming. (Impedance!) Watch the final battle.
2010 NewsFoo Dec. 3-5 Phoenix, AZ Along with Adaptive Path chief creative officer Jesse James Garrett, I led a discussion on improving user experience in online news.
The Great Urban Hack Nov. 6-7 New York, NY Hacks/Hackers NYC’s second hackathon turned out to be its most ambitious to date. I co-hosted an overnight hackathon with a theme of making New York easier to understand for its residents. My team’s contribution: The New York City Roach Map. (It continues to update every week!)
Online News Association Conference Oct. 28-30 Washington, DC Having founded and led ONA’s social media efforts at the 2007 conference, I decided this was to be my fourth and final as the social media point person. I conducted all of the strategic planning for sponsorship, social media marketing leading up to the conferences, and element integration. During the conference, I did curation and live-tweeting on the @ONA10 account, managed several live blogging volunteers, and coordinated with the live stream team to ensure complete real-time coverage of the conference, which broke all previous registered attendance records.
AAJA Annual Conference Aug. 4-7 Los Angeles, CA I closed the advanced social media session a day after attendees had crammed the rooms of the beginner and intermediate panels. Of all the public presentations I’ve given, this is the one people bring up most often.
NewU News Entrepreneurs Bootcamp Aug. 3-4 Los Angeles, CA I was a mentor for UNITY’s inaugural journalism startup bootcamp, NewU, and also spoke to the group about user engagement and social marketing. There’s an element of competition between the mentor-protégé teams, and I’m very proud of my mentee, Toan Lam, who won the AAJA prize for his business idea, Go Inspire Go.
ONADC Summer School Series: The Real-Time Web July 26 McLean, VA I gave a keynote talk on the evolution of tools for networked communication.
MIT-Knight Future of News & Civic Media Conference June 16-18 Cambridge, MA I led people through a rollicking, participatory session called "Managing and Maintaining Online Communities" that was voted Best of the Barcamps as the three-day conference wrapped up.
WeMedia Tabula Rasa April 29 New York, NY I was on a "Feedback & Foresight" panel with Roger Black, Roger Fidler, Jeff Jarvis and Rick Robinson. Each of us was asked to posit, parry and predict where the media industry was headed and what consumers would be doing now that the iPad had been released.
BCNI Philly April 24 Philadelphia, PA
ONA Parachute Training Feb. 20 Boca Raton, FL I led a practical session about "Harnessing the Power of Social Media." My talk was counter-scheduled against one by my friend William Couch, who has made the shift from designer at USA Today to front-end engineer at Twitter. William is hugely talented, and I was worried I’d be talking to an empty room. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. And people still tell me how much they got out of my talk. That’s gratifying.