Hacker journalist
Greater New York City Area
- Current
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- Intern at ProPublica
- Founder, Consultant at Praseos
- Past
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- Founder, Architect at Daixo
- Director of Product Development, Sr. Software Architect at SAVO Group
- Architect at kCura
- Consultant at Lante
- Education
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- Northwestern University
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Connections
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187
connections
- Industry
- Newspapers
- Websites
Brian Boyer’s Summary
What's a hacker journalist? Picture a photo journalist -- more than just a photographer, a photo journalist tells stories with a camera. Now replace “camera” with “laptop.”
I'm a software developer and a journalist, one of the first two computer geeks invited to pursue a masters degree in journalism at Medill as a part of a Knight News Challenge grant.
It's been a thrilling experience. As a print/paragraphs reporter, I focused mainly on health and science topics: agriculture, childhood obesity, and Chicago-area waterways, to name a few. As a hacker journalist, I've blogged, tweeted, and created the non-narrative web-based news projects, enviroVOTE and News Mixer.
For more on those projects and my writing, see my Links/Clips/Work website linked above.
This spring I'll be working for three months on web projects at ProPublica, a non-profit investigative journalism organization in New York.
Prior to attending Northwestern, I co-founded a startup building web-based electronic medical records software, and previous to that I was the head software architect and managed a team of developers as the director of software development at a medium-sized software shop in Chicago.
I'm also a consultant who helps companies with the aspects of making software, including: architecture, agile development, hiring, product management, project management, product design, usability, accessibility, and web standards.
As a programmer, I'm particularly keen on using open source tools like Python, Django, Ruby and Rails, and have been doing so for the past few years. I'm extremely well-versed in the usual web stuff (HTML, CSS, SQL, Javascript, etc.) and I've worked at length with C#, VB.Net, ASP.Net, and many other Microsoft technologies to build enterprise server, web and desktop applications.
Brian Boyer’s Specialties:
Journalism, writing, data visualization, software architecture, agile development, hiring, product management, project management, design process, usability, accessibility, web standards
Brian Boyer’s Experience
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Intern
ProPublica
(Newspapers industry)
February 2009 — Present (6 months)
ProPublica has asked me to join their team for an internship in New York. I'll pass the springtime working on various projects to create, visualize, and build interactivity around investigative news stories on the web. It'll be cool.
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Founder, Consultant
Praseos
(Internet industry)
June 2007 — Present (2 years 2 months)
Praseos is a consultancy specializing in how to make software: architecture, agile development, hiring, development methodologies, product management, project management, design processes, usability, web standards, and more.
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Founder, Architect
Daixo
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)
October 2006 — September 2007 (1 year)
Daixo is building the first friendly electronic medical records system ever designed for private practice. I was a founding member of Daixo, and led software development as well as marketing until leaving to pursue my master's degree.
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Director of Product Development, Sr. Software Architect
SAVO Group
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Software industry)
February 2005 — October 2006 (1 year 9 months)
I led all aspects of the product development group at SAVO. Technically, this included architecture, APIs and interoperability, and automated testing, as well as creation of coding standards and best practices. Organizationally, I led the creation and implementation of new practices in project management, hiring, and knowledge sharing.
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Architect
kCura
(Computer Software industry)
2001 — 2005 (4 years)
At kCura, I learned the trade of software development, creating desktop, server, and web applications and working in both consulting and product development. We were early adopters in many technologies and processes, including advanced source control and automated testing procedures, WebDAV and AJAX (before it had a snappy acromyn), and Agile development methodologies.
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Consultant
Lante
(Public Company; LNTE; Information Technology and Services industry)
2000 — 2001 (1 year)
Lante built dot-com businesses before the dot-com bust. I worked on then bleeding-edge web software. We played ping-pong in our Aeron chairs and used phrases like paradigm shift and e-marketplace without irony.
Brian Boyer’s Education
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Northwestern University
MS , Journalism , 2008 — 2008
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
BS , Computer Science , 1996 — 2000
- Activities and Societies:
- Technology and Management, Starcourse, James Scholar
Additional Information
Brian Boyer’s Websites:
Brian Boyer’s Groups:
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Medill Alumni
Brian Boyer’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- consulting offers
- new ventures
- job inquiries
- expertise requests
- business deals
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
