I'm planning on attending this unique meeting at the offices of KQED in San Francisco: Hacks/Hackers Unite

It is an event bringing together journalists and developers and the goal of the weekend long event is to create a killer media application for the iPad and other tablet computers.

This event will be both a coding development camp and a journalistic boot camp. Teams of hacks (content creators) and hackers (developers and designers) will cooperate to tell develop media applications for the iPad and tablets that help inform, enlighten and tell stories for the public good. You can also build tablet-based tools for journalists.

REGISTER NOW (breakfast and lunch for both days included in price)
Each team must have at least one hack and hacker each. If you don't already have a team, we will have some activities to help you find one at the event. Also, find potential collaborators and propose, browse, and discuss ideas here. NEW: Here's a public wiki to also share ideas and find teams.

The apps will be judged by a panel that includes:

Harjeet Taggar, venture partner at Y Combinator; Andrew Fitzgerald, online news producer at Current TV; David Weekly, founder of Hacker Dojo and PBworks; and Craig Miller, senior editor of KQED Climate Watch.

I'm a big supporter of these types of cross-professional links. I'm hopeful that we will get a new types of professions: media engineer and media architect - part journalist and part coder.

The even will also have talks by:

Tony Deifell, Q Media labs, director, author of The Big Thaw: Charting a New Course for Journalism

David Weekly, Hacker Dojo, founding director, and PBworks, founder, chairman and chief product officer

Harjeet Taggar, Y Combinator, venture partner

Tim Olson, KQED, vice president of digital media and education

Daniel Jacobson, NPR, director of application development, digital media

Andrew Fitzgerald, Current TV, online news producer

Bruce Koon, KQED, news director

Craig Miller, KQED Climate Watch, senior editor

Jonathan Tepper, Demotix, COO and founder

Maya Baratz, MTV, product manager

Lanita Pace, Knight Digital Media Center at UC Berkeley, director

The event is the idea of Burt Herman, who also leads the Hacks/Hackers -- Journalism meets technology group.