Every week, I put together an events listing for Source. All over the world, people organize hack days and conferences and workshops and meetups to discuss, invent, gripe, and marvel at journalism and technology. There are a lot of events. I get to attend some of them. OpenNews sponsors many.

Already this year, OpenNews has sponsored an array of events. Beyond trainings, OpenNews has supported:

• Hack Jersey, the first news hackathon in New Jersey. It took place on a college campus and a great mix of college students and old-school reporters participated. Look out for a Q&A soon with Tom Meagher about lessons from organizing your first hackathon.

The New Year for OpenNews kicked off with an incredible feature on Source about the “Snow Fall” story in the New York Times. It was awesome how Erin Kissane made that story happen in a week that many people (including me) were on vacation. She had it ready to publish on January 1. On top of the kickass story, a great conversation began in the comments. And people just keep commenting. The comments demonstrate so clearly the community that is coalescing around Source and around journalism and code more broadly. My favorite comment came from an educator who talked about ways to use the original story and the Source follow-up in her undergraduate class. It just so perfectly encapsulated what I’m looking forward to with OpenNews for this year: documenting great work, learning together, and supporting this growing community.

It’s January, which means it’s time for Fun-a-Day. I’ve dabbled with Fun-a-Day in the past and always enjoy the wrap-up show. Last year I wrote zine-related journal entries. Didn’t want to just write again this year, but I have no skills in the visual arts so, photo captions! It’s still writing, but will get me thinking about images and thinking about documenting events. Looking back at old photos, even a few words on the back can bring the image to life instead of it being a static scene of who knows what. I’d like to get better at documentation of many forms this year so I hope this will be one step in that direction, and in the process I may learn a little about family, friends, and what the heck I’ve seen on my travels.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to my call for writing suggestions. I got about 27 responses and rounding up, that’s $150 to donate to literacy organizations. I chose to split it between For Love of Children in D.C., Young Chicago Authors, and the Center for Literacy in Philly.

A lot of the advice boiled down to: Just fucking do it. Just write. Do it. Whatever you need to do, wherever you need to be, however you need to motivate yourself, do it. I appreciate the wide variety of examples people shared about how to actually get out of your own head and start getting words on the page. It was neat to hear stories I never knew from old friends and to hear from folks I’ve never even met.

I marvel at that map. OpenNews sponsored 21 hack days around the world during 2012. Mozilla, of course, is an international organization, and that map shows so clearly how international it and the journalism technology community are. And, 2013 is already on track to include events in Africa and in areas of Europe and Asia where OpenNews has not been before.* So, what all do those pins on the map represent?