Popathon

Growing a community of web-native storytellers

Telling stories born on the web

Popathon is an international series of hackathon events bringing together digital storytellers, technologists and designers to prototype the future of web-native storytelling.

Why?

Visual storytelling has been with us since the beginning of times. Through the ages the way we tell stories has changed along with the evolution of different media. The capability of the web enables stories to be interactive, dynamic and participatory, allowing for engaging experiences around them. While this is hugely exciting, we believe a language of web-native storytelling is still developing and want to help that process along by hands-on collaboration.

How?

For one weekend, participants team up to brainstorm ideas, create open-source code and demo prototypes of their own web-native stories. Participants compete against the clock, not against each other. Teams are formed by combining different skills and spend a short and intense period creating a story prototype that is born on the web. After the final sprint all prototypes are presented in a live demo open to the public. All the source code powering the projects is shared as an open-source (MIT licensed) repository on Github for others to study and build on beyond the event.

Participatory

We believe disciplines like filmmaking, development and design already offer the most important skills required to make engaging stories that work on the web. By having different perspectives around the table, we share our expertise and learn from eachother.

Productive

They say the best way to predict the future is to create it. Creating something together also happens to be the way we learn most effectively. That's why every Popathon has as its prime mission to create a working prototype that can be shared with the world.

Purposeful

We want to contribute to a wider community of creators who embrace the web as the platform for their storytelling. By sharing all projects created at Popathon open-source, we let people build on the knowledge generated beyond the event.

Coming Soon

This ever unfolding story of digital pre-natives was waiting to be told. A real-time dynamic life story that is different every time.
StereotypeCelona

How stereotypical are your ideas about the people living in the different parts of Barcelona? An interactive video quiz with embedded data visualisation.
BCN Says

Big cities are a constant buzz. Imagine you can conduct the sounds of your city into an urban symphony. Come in to play while listening what Barcelona has to say.

Teams thrive when different skills are combined. Popathon invites 3 specialities to the mix, each with their own perspective and benefits to gain from taking part.

Filmmakers / Storytellers

Explore how your storytelling can become dynamic and interactive
Brainstorm and prototype new ideas for a new medium
Meet and collaborate with designers and developers

Technologists

Experiment with new libraries and frameworks in an informal setting
Create a visually-rich interactive multimedia project
Meet & collaborate with designers and filmmakers

Designers

Design the future of storytelling on the web.
Tackle questions like: what does an interactive film look like?
Meet & collaborate with filmmakers and developers

Upcoming: Popathon at Brighton Digital Festival

12-13 September 2014, at Lighthouse

Popathon invites filmmakers, technologists and designers to collaborate on storytelling projects that can only exist on the web. This special edition of Popathon is presented in partnership with Lighthouse and Mozilla.

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