Chicago hosted the NATO summit on 20–21 May 2012. In the months beforehand the lab collected news articles and tweets about it, and built two public applications from what it gathered.
What Sites are Saying was fed by 292 English-language news sources from around the world. Pick a term, "Afghanistan" or "protest," and a map showed, country by country, the articles that used it, so a reader could compare how the same summit was being reported in different countries' media.
What Tweets are Saying took the top words and phrases in NATO-related tweets over a given period, calculated once for the conversation worldwide and again for users who listed Chicago in their profiles, so the two could be set side by side. On a given morning the world was tweeting about Afghanistan while Chicago was tweeting about weekend traffic and street closures.
I was one of the two staff developers, with Jennifer Wilson
Jennifer WilsonDeveloper at Northwestern's Intelligent Information Laboratory and the Knight Lab, with a background in software startups; now at Test Innovators. Bachelor's in economics and MMSS from Northwestern, M.S. in computer science from DePaul.LinkedIn ↗. The students who designed the software and pages were Cary LeeCLCary LeeEngineering leader; Northwestern dual degree in computer science and vocal performance, 2012, then a software design engineer at Microsoft. On the NATO in Chicago team as a graduating senior.LinkedIn ↗, Gus WezerekGWGus WezerekVisual journalist, formerly of FiveThirtyEight. A Medill senior on the NATO in Chicago team in 2012, with internships at the Boston Globe and Wired behind him.FiveThirtyEight ↗, Sarah AdlerSASarah AdlerCo-founder and chief technology officer of Spoon University, later entrepreneur in residence at The New York Times. A Medill junior on the NATO in Chicago team in 2012.Northwestern Magazine ↗, and Dan HillDHDan HillNorthwestern journalism and computer science graduate who interned at The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Sacramento Bee. A Medill junior on the NATO in Chicago team in 2012.Profile ↗; Jeremy Gilbert
Jeremy GilbertKnight Chair in Digital Media Strategy at Northwestern's Medill school, where he oversees the Knight Lab. Formerly director of strategic initiatives at The Washington Post, and before that National Geographic and Poynter.LinkedIn ↗ gave the design direction, and Michael A. SilverMSMichael A. SilverThe Knight Lab's first executive director, 2011 to 2012, after more than twenty-five years at the Tribune Company building interactive information services.Knight Lab ↗, the lab's first executive director, ran the project. WTTW's Chicago Tonight and WGN-TV's Web Watchers both covered the site during the summit.