Popathon is an international series of hackathon events bringing together digital storytellers, technologists and designers to prototype the future of web-native storytelling.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This ever unfolding story of digital pre-natives was waiting to be told. A real-time dynamic life story that is different every time.
How stereotypical are your ideas about the people living in the different parts of Barcelona? An interactive video quiz with embedded data visualisation.
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.
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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