anchor.diff:  Integrating CAR: Story ideas for the whole newsroom;Mark Wert (The Cincinnati Enquirer), Jaimi Dowdell (IRE and NICAR);Frisco/Burlington;Thursday;2 p.m. - 2:50 p.m.;"Data based reporting shouldn't be just a tool for economics, transportation or crime reporters; it can be used in other parts of the room. From features to sports, we&rsquo;ll talk about stories and techniques that can be used throughout the newsroom."
   CSVKit;Anthony DeBarros (USA TODAY), Christopher Groskopf (PANDA);Missouri Pacific;Thursday;2 p.m. - 2:50 p.m.;This suite of Python utilities is a Swiss Army knife for converting and working with comma-delimited text files. This demo will explain ways it can help you, from rearranging and trimming columns to generating stats and SQL statements to make tables.
   Worth doing for money - turning good work into money;Chase Davis (Center for Investigative Reporting), Matt Wynn (Omaha World-Herald);Illinois Central;Thursday;3 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.;"News applications can be so much more than Infographics 2.0. This session will talk about examples about how news apps teams have transformed their work into something more: namely, products &mdash; including some that actually make money. We want this to be a discussion. Come with your thoughts on methods, ethics and ideas."
  +Data viz in 20 minutes: jQuery DataTables;Christopher Schnaars (USA TODAY);Missouri Pacific;Thursday;3 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.;Use DataTables, an open-source jQuery plug-in, to post sortable datasets online within 20 minutes.
  +Health analyses for any newsroom;Charles Ornstein (ProPublica), Jeff Porter (Association of Health Care Journalists);Frisco/Burlington;Thursday;3 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.;"All newsrooms can produce meaningful stories about health care in their own communities with a dose of data. This session will focus on Medicare and Medicaid data you can localize, how to track disciplined doctors in your state, and the care of vulnerable residents in nursing homes. You&rsquo;ll leave with a handout listing online resources to explore and tips for both CAR beginners and longtime data users."
   CAR on a shoestring;"Kevin Crowe (Investigative Newsource), Patrick Sweet (The Citizens&#39; Voice), Mary Jo Webster (St. Paul Pioneer Press)";New York Central;Thursday;3 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.;How to do CAR stories with limited resources. Panelists will offer tips for winning over your boss, carving time out of your overworked schedule, useful (and cheap!) tools and story ideas that can be done anywhere.
  -Health analyses for any newsroom;Charles Ornstein (ProPublica), Jeff Porter (Association of Health Care Journalists);Frisco/Burlington;Thursday;3 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.;"All newsrooms can produce meaningful stories about health care in their own communities with a dose of data. This session will focus on Medicare and Medicaid data you can localize, how to track disciplined doctors in your state, and the care of vulnerable residents in nursing homes. You&rsquo;ll leave with a handout listing online resources to explore and tips for both CAR beginners and longtime data users."
  -Data viz in 20 minutes: jQuery DataTables;Christopher Schnaars (USA TODAY);Missouri Pacific;Thursday;3 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.;Use DataTables, an open-source jQuery plug-in, to post sortable datasets online within 20 minutes.
  +Free tools for Web scraping without programming;Chris Keller (Madison.com), Michelle Minkoff (The Associated Press);Illinois Central;Thursday;4 p.m. - 4:50 p.m.;"Turning wild data on the Web into structured formats that are useful for analysis and presentation can be one of the toughest barriers to data journalism. We'll take a rapid-fire tour of free tools on the Web (which don't require programming) that can help &mdash; some tried and true, some recently in production."
   Data for business investigations;Maurice Tamman (Thomson Reuters), Chris Taggart (OpenCorporates);Frisco/Burlington;Thursday;4 p.m. - 4:50 p.m.;We'll discuss concrete and essential tools for investigating business with data. This session will look at U.S. and global corporate data and navigating your way through the tangled (and incomplete) web with OpenCorporates.
   Get the most out of Google Fusion Tables;Rebecca Shapley (Google);Missouri Pacific;Thursday;4 p.m. - 4:50 p.m.;Google Fusion Tables allows you to easily publish relatively large data sets. Learn how this free tool can help journalists create maps, graphs and timelines, mash-up different data sets and collaborate on data.
   Turning your stories into a tablet/phone app;Daniel Lathrop (The Dallas Morning News), Will Sullivan (Lee Enterprises);New York Central;Thursday;4 p.m. - 4:50 p.m.;As news organizations dabble in new ways of finding revenue and journalists look to tell stories in new ways, what does a CAR story or project look like as a standalone app? We'll explore the emerging world as it relates to native apps, HTML5 apps, eBooks and other  mobile-enabled formats.
  -Free tools for Web scraping without programming;Chris Keller (Madison.com), Michelle Minkoff (The Associated Press);Illinois Central;Thursday;4 p.m. - 4:50 p.m.;"Turning wild data on the Web into structured formats that are useful for analysis and presentation can be one of the toughest barriers to data journalism. We'll take a rapid-fire tour of free tools on the Web (which don't require programming) that can help &mdash; some tried and true, some recently in production."
   Introduction to SPSS;Ron Campbell (The Orange County Register);Grand Hall II;Friday;9 a.m. - 9:50 a.m.;Navigate SPSS using descriptive statistics and frequencies. Create basic counts and percentages to help you understand your data. Do crosstabs to show the data in different ways, and statistical tests.
   Year in CAR;Mark Horvit (IRE and NICAR), Megan Luther (IRE and NICAR);Frisco/Burlington;Friday;9 a.m. - 9:50 a.m.;What were the big stories of the year? What were the most creative uses of data analysis? See what your colleagues have been up to and pick up some story ideas at the same time.
   Intro to Google Fusion Tables;Ryan Murphy (Texas Tribune), Matt Stiles (NPR);Grand Hall I;Friday;9 a.m. - 9:50 a.m.;Google Fusion Tables allows you easily to publish relatively large data sets. Learn how to create maps, graphs and timelines, mash-up different data sets and collaborate on data using this free, point-and-click tool.
  
positive.code: "PowerPivot and NodeXL: This is not your father&#39;s Excel";Peter Aldhous (New Scientist), Tom Torok (The New York Times);Missouri Pacific;Friday;9 a.m. - 9:50 a.m.;"Handle millions of calculations in a flash; join tables from different sources and do some cool network analyses with Excel, yes, Excel. A demo of free but extremely powerful analytic tools."
  Intro to SQLite;Troy Thibodeaux (The Associated Press);Jeffersonian/Knickerbocker;Friday;9 a.m. - 9:50 a.m.;SQL is the lingua franca of the database world. It'll let you get up close and personal with your data in ways that few tools can. SQLite is a popular, free and portable database manager. (If you use Firefox, you already have it installed!) This hands-on session will get you up and running, quickly creating your own SQLite databases and asking them to reveal their deepest secrets.
  Free tools for data visualization and analysis;Cheryl Phillips (The Seattle Times), Sharon Machlis (Computerworld);Illinois Central;Friday;10 a.m. - 10:50 a.m.;Get an overview of more than 20 different free tools available for cleaning, analyzing, visualizing and displaying data, as well as a discussion and examples of how some of these tools have been used to develop and present data-based stories.
  Excel 2;Aaron Kessler (100 Reporters);Wabash Cannonball;Friday;10 a.m. - 10:50 p.m.;Calculating ratios and rates.
  How to edit a story made of software;Aron Pilhofer (The New York Times), Scott Klein (ProPublica);New York Central;Friday;10 a.m. - 10:50 a.m.;There's a lot to think about when it comes to news apps, but not all of it is coding. What story is it telling? Does it tell it consistently and in a fact-based way? Does the story it tells agree with the reporting? What's the lede, what's the nut (yes, apps have those).
  SPSS: Basic linear regression;Ken McCall (Dayton Daily News);Grand Hall II;Friday;10 a.m. - 10:50 a.m.;"
  "
  Intro to Simile Exhibit;David Karger (MIT);Jeffersonian/Knickerbocker;Friday;10 a.m. - 10:50 a.m.;Hands-on session reviewing the publication tool Simile Exhibit to make presentations of data, timelines and maps.
  Advanced Google Fusion Tables;Adam Playford (The Palm Beach Post), Rebecca Shapley (Google);Grand Hall I;Friday;10 a.m. - 10:50 a.m.;With Google Fusion Tables and the tiniest dose of Javascript, you can create a highly custom interactive in a matter of hours. In this hands-on session, learn how to turn election results into an interactive map that tells a story, including a crash course on combining Fusion Tables with Google's mapping API to let readers dive into the data themselves. Best of all, you can do the whole thing without being an expert programmer, though comfort with simple Javascript will help.
  Mining data around the globe;"Helena Bengtsson (Sveriges Television), Andy Lehren (The New York Times), Nils Mulvad (Kaas &amp; Mulvad)";Frisco/Burlington;Friday;10 a.m. - 10:50 a.m.;Databases in the US can help reporters in other nations uncover key stories in their countries, and data from abroad can shed light on US laws and businesses. From abuses in EU subsidy programs for businesses, to tracking dangerous imports, to the US exporting environmental problems, this panel will highlight the wide range of possibilities from exploring databases both here and overseas.
  Making friends with map projections;Michael Corey (Center for Investigative Reporting), Ben Welsh (Los Angeles Times);Missouri Pacific;Friday;10 a.m. - 10:50 a.m.;An intro into the crucial but often intimidating world of map projections: What they are, why you have to care, and how you can use them to make maps from different sources play nicely together.
  Network analysis with NodeXL;Peter Aldhous (New Scientist);Grand Hall I;Friday;11 a.m. - 11:50 a.m.;"NodeXL is an add-in for Excel 2007 and 2010 that makes network analysis (aka social network analysis) simple and intuitive. You'll learn how to use the software by turning data from 2007 on voting patterns in the US Senate into an informative graphic revealing the chamber's underlying dynamics &mdash; and highlighting the few senators who broke the partisan mold."
  Latest trends in open records battles;Wendell Cochran (American University), David Smallman (Smallman Law PLLC), Mark Sableman (Thompson Coburn LLP);Illinois Central;Friday;11 a.m. - 11:50 a.m.;"Learn about the newest developments and trends that can help or hinder your attempts to get data and documents from government agencies, and that can provide protection &mdash; or leave you exposed &mdash; when your stories run."
  Intro to MySQL;Alex Richards (Chronicle of Higher Education);Grand Hall III;Friday;11 a.m. - 11:50 a.m.;The world's most popular database is also free. As in beer. This class will get you up to speed on the same software that powers Twitter and is used around the world for high-level analysis of big datasets.
  "What you need (and don&#39;t need) to do an election night map";John Keefe (WNYC Radio), Al Shaw (ProPublica), Scott Klein (ProPublica);New York Central;Friday;11 a.m. - 11:50 a.m.;"Election day is coming. If you think your site can't compete with the big national sites in covering your corner &mdash; or even all corners &mdash; of election night using live maps and data, you may be wrong. Come hear how some entrepreneurial sites did just that with existing staff and resources that are within the reach of even small newsrooms."
  SPSS: Using logistic regression;Jennifer LaFleur (ProPublica);Grand Hall II;Friday;11 a.m. - 11:50 a.m.;Linear regression helps you find relationships between two or more variables, but when an outcome has only two possibilities, you need a different tool. That my friends, is where logistic regression comes in.
  Excel 3;Rich Exner (Cleveland Plain Dealer);Wabash Cannonball;Friday;11 a.m. - 11:50 a.m.;Learn pivot tables, filtering and more.
  Web scraping with Google docs;Acton Gorton (University of Illinois), Sean Sposito (American Banker);Missouri Pacific;Friday;11 a.m. - 11:50 a.m.;Review methods for importing web data into the Google Docs platform. Learn to fetch external web data, create scripts to schedule fetches in batches and process the data. No programming skills required. Those familiar with the Microsoft Excel application will be familiar with many of the concepts. Experienced programmers can learn to develop web application proofs of concept, prototyping and fetching through API.
  OK, but where did that data come from? Data validation in the digital age;J.T. Johnson (Institute for Analytic Journalism), Cheryl Phillips (The Seattle Times);Frisco/Burlington;Friday;11 a.m. - 11:50 a.m.;"We know ""all data is dirty,"" but do you know it might not be valid or even how it came to be?  Understanding the pedigree/genealogy/parentage of the data set is a crucial step prior to even cleaning the data, or analyzing it.  This session will provide tips and methods to help you know if and when your data is legit and in appropriate context for your anticipated story."
  Media Lawyers Brown Bag;TBA;New York Central;Friday;noon - 1:50 p.m.;(Sponsored by Smallman Law PLLC and IRE)
  Access 1;Matt Carroll (The Boston Globe);Wabash Cannonball;Friday;2 p.m. - 2:50 p.m.;The purifying experience of filtering your data. Learn to select and sort data items you choose
  "PANDA Project show &amp; tell";Brian Boyer (Chicago Tribune), Christopher Groskopf (PANDA);Missouri Pacific;Friday;2 p.m. - 2:50 p.m.;PANDA wants to be your newsroom data appliance! Come learn what it can do for your organization and have a chance to ask questions and help guide the next six months of development.
  Mini-Boot Camp;Jaimi Dowdell (IRE and NICAR), David Donald (Center for Public Integrity), Jennifer LaFleur (ProPublica), Megan Luther (IRE and NICAR), Coulter Jones (IRE and NICAR), Mark Horvit (IRE and NICAR);"Grand Hall I&amp;II *pre-registration only";Friday;2 p.m. - 4:50 p.m.;
  Build your first News App with Django;Ben Welsh (Los Angeles Times), Derek Willis (The New York Times), Chase Davis (Center for Investigative Reporting), Matt Waite (University of Nebraska);Grand Hall III *pre-registered attendees;Friday;2 p.m. - 5 p.m.;
  Collaborating with data: Challenges and payoffs;Kevin Crowe (Investigative Newsource), Tom Detzel (ProPublica), Brant Houston (University of Illinois);Illinois Central;Friday;2 p.m. - 2:50 p.m.;Databases can and have provided dynamic starting points for collaborations among independent nonprofit newsrooms. This session will look at how to choose the right databases and how to begin a collaboration with data analysis.
  What to do when there is no data;Helena Bengtsson (Sveriges Television), Jennifer LaFleur (ProPublica);New York Central;Friday;2 p.m. - 2:50 p.m.;"Just because there isn&rsquo;t a database doesn&rsquo;t mean you can&rsquo;t do the story.  Using sampling, surveys and other techniques can help you build your own database. We&rsquo;ll give you some tips on how to build your own data."
  Google Refine;Dan Nguyen (ProPublica);Jeffersonian/Knickerbocker;Friday;2 p.m. - 2:50 p.m.;"Learn how to use Google Refine to work with messy data, such as detecting and fixing inconsistencies; and transforming data from one structure or format to another.  Use Google Refine when you need something: more powerful than a spreadsheet; more interactive and visual than scripting; more provisional / exploratory / experimental / playful than a database."
  Crime analyses for any newsroom;Jeremy Kohler (St Louis Post-Dispatch), Doug Smith (Los Angeles Times);Frisco/Burlington;Friday;2 p.m. - 2:50 p.m.;"A rundown of data-driven stories mined from the cops beat: analyzing the Uniform Crime Report, debunking most-dangerous-cities lists; studying officer-involved shootings; building a community-based crime report and integrating it into the news flow."
  Advanced functions in Excel;Mary Jo Webster (St. Paul Pioneer Press);Jeffersonian/Knickerbocker;Friday;3 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.;String functions, IF statements and other powerful tools you'll wish you had learned earlier.
  Failing government monopolies and looming alternatives;Paul Overberg (USA TODAY), Brad Guilmino (HNTB Corporation);Frisco/Burlington;Friday;3 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.;
  "Reporters&#39; Lab";"Tyler Dukes (The Reporters&#39; Lab), Charlie Szymanski (The Reporters&#39; Lab)";Missouri Pacific;Friday;3 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.;"The Reporters&rsquo; Lab is out to make your job as an investigative reporter easier, and our team wants to show you how. Learn how the lab is curating the best products for your newsroom and see a test drive of some of our own open-source tools for analyzing historical data and annotating video. We also want to hear your suggestions for reporting problems you&rsquo;d like us to solve."
  Making sure you tell a story;Anthony DeBarros (USA TODAY), Ron Nixon (The New York Times), Ben Welsh (Los Angeles Times);Illinois Central;Friday;3 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.;You have the data, the analysis, the graphics and the apps. But how well are you telling a story with them? This panel will examine ways to elevate your CAR work from mere data dump to something that informs and delights readers.
  Capturing and analyzing Twitter feeds;Alastair Dant (The Guardian), Daniel Lathrop (The Dallas Morning News);New York Central;Friday;3 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.;At peak times more than 12,000 Tweets are posted every second. 13.7 million were sent during the Super Bowl. With the Twitter API you can harness that raging river of noise and extract the signals that help you cover, communicate and explain the world around you. Oh, and we'll tell you how to get good leads.
  Access 2;Doug Haddix (Kiplinger Program - Ohio State University);Wabash Cannonball;Friday;3 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.;Summarizing databases with counting and summing.
  GeoCommons;Paul Monies (USA TODAY);Jeffersonian/Knickerbocker;Friday;4 p.m. - 4:50 p.m.;"Can&rsquo;t afford ArcGIS? Learning curve for QGIS too steep? Need to quickly analyze and present geographic data on deadline via the web? Take GeoCommons out for a spin in this hands-on demonstration of the online mapping service."
  Editing the CAR story;Mike Williams (Thomson Reuters), Manny Garcia (El Nuevo Herald);Frisco/Burlington;Friday;4 p.m. - 4:50 p.m.;Even veteran editors can find it imposing when they're responsible for assuring the accuracy of a CAR project. Get tips and advice on the best methods and practices for bulletproofing a story with a heavy data component.
  The Web as an investigative tool;Jaimi Dowdell (IRE and NICAR), Mark Horvit (IRE and NICAR);New York Central;Friday;4 p.m. - 4:50 p.m.;"If you&rsquo;re like most journalists, the Web has become one of your favorite places to go for backgrounding, digging and tip seeking. Imagine how much is out there that you haven&rsquo;t heard about. With a careful strategy and knowing where to look you can make your time online more effective and efficient. This session will help you do all these things and point you to the latest sites you never knew you couldn&rsquo;t live without."
  Mining federal contract data with the Federal Procurement Data System;Mike Fabey (Aviation Week), Yang Wang (Houston Chronicle);Missouri Pacific;Friday;4 p.m. - 4:50 p.m.;"Learn how to acquire and attack federal contracting data. This session will help you discover different ways of searching and downloading federal contract data from Federal Procurement Data System and USAspending.gov; and it will compare the pros and cons of the two data warehouses to give a clearer idea about how to efficiently get the type of data you want. We also will focus on using data provided by NICAR to dig deep into government contacts &mdash; especially Pentagon deals &mdash; for trends and travesties."
  Access 3;Jo Craven McGinty (The New York Times);Wabash Cannonball;Friday;4 p.m. - 4:50 p.m.;How to join tables, matching information from one file to another.
  Lightning Talks;Derek Willis (The New York Times);Illinois Central;Friday;4 p.m. - 4:50 p.m.;Sometimes you don't need 45 minutes to  explain a useful technique or interesting resource. Join your colleagues  for a session of short (5-minute) talks about doing CAR, Web  development or other related topics. Anyone can suggest an idea, and the  most popular talks will be given at this session. We'll provide a  computer with Internet access and a projector, and the rest is up to  you.
  RegEx to the rescue;John Perry (Atlanta Journal-Constitution);Grand Hall I;Saturday;9 a.m. - 9:50 a.m.;Regular expressions, a mini-language used for matching patterns in text, can be found everywhere: from databases to text editors to programming languages like Python and Ruby. In this hands-on class, we'll demonstrate how to use regex in a variety of contexts to perform basic data-cleaning and querying.
  Open gov - New data available from the transparency movement;David Herzog (IRE and NICAR), Abhi Nemani (Code for America), Alex Howard (OReilly Media), Chris Taggart (OpenCorporates);Illinois Central;Saturday;9 a.m. - 9:50 a.m.;Transparency advocates inside and outside of government are pushing to make more data available. Lean how you can tap into this information for your analysis and web applications.
  Tracking social media and turning it into investigations;"Brant Houston (University of Illinois), Nils Mulvad (Kaas &amp; Mulvad)";Frisco/Burlington;Saturday;9 a.m. - 9:50 a.m.;This session will look at examples and the best practices of building investigative stories from social media. The session will cover the challenges in collecting social media material, archiving, analyzing and verifying it.
  
negative.code: Title;Speaker;Place;Day;Time;Description
  "Follow the Money  Tracking Companies&#39; Influence on Politics Free business journalism training before the conference";Ron Nixon (The New York Times), Bill Allison (Sunlight Foundation);New York Central;Wednesday;12:30 p.m. - 5 p.m.;Come to a free Reynolds Center workshop on Wednesday, Feb. 22, the afternoon before the CAR Conference. Bring the name of a company you follow to this workshop and learn how to track its efforts at political influence from two experts: New York Times reporter Ron Nixon and Sunlight Foundation editorial director Bill Allison. They will help you:
  Welcome;Jaimi Dowdell (IRE and NICAR), Mark Horvit (IRE and NICAR), Megan Luther (IRE and NICAR);Frisco/Burlington;Thursday;8:30 a.m. - 8:50 a.m.;"Welcome to the conference! IRE staff will highlight key sessions and events that you won&rsquo;t want to miss while in St. Louis. We&rsquo;ll also give you a brief rundown on some of the resources IRE has to offer."
  "Why learn programming: A reporter&#39;s perspective";"Tommy Kaas (Kaas &amp; Mulvad), Ryan McNeill (The Dallas Morning News)";Illinois Central;Thursday;9 a.m. - 9:50 a.m.;Learn how adding a programming language to your toolbox can make you a better reporter.
  Tableau for Beginners;Daniel Hom (Tableau Public), Ross Perez (Tableau Public);Grand Hall I;Thursday;9 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.;Learn how to create beautiful, interactive data visualizations on short deadlines. No programming required.
  Against All -Spanish- odds;Mar Cabra (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists), David Cabo (Freelance software developer);Missouri Pacific;Thursday;9 a.m. - 9:50 a.m.;"In  Spain, ""lobbying"" is taboo, campaign contributions are a  mystery and transparency an illusion. We have one of the highest  unemployment rates in the world, and in the recent national elections,  the president-to-be refused to answer any questions from the press.  Journalist Mar Cabra and computer developer David Cabo will explain  their tricks to make journalism and accountability work in such aharsh environment. David and Mar will be sharing some of their  recent work, and welcoming the brainstorming of new ways around the system."
  NewsCamp::Text as data;Noah Smith (Carnegie Mellon University);New York Central;Thursday;9 a.m. - 9:50 a.m.;A computational linguist describes key ideas in thinking about text as data that, through statistics, can help us understand the behavior of people and society.  We'll show a range of examples that illustrate tradeoffs in statistical and computational complexity, linguistic sophistication, and weak vs. strong domain assumptions.
  Getting started: Digging deep with data journalism;"Jaimi Dowdell (IRE and NICAR), Momi Peralta Ramos (La Nacion), Rob O&#39;Dell (Arizona Daily Star)";Frisco/Burlington;Thursday;9 a.m. - 9:50 a.m.;"Are you new to data journalism or does this happen to be your first time at a CAR conference? If so, this session will help you get on track to make sure that you get the best experience possible from the 2012 CAR Conference. We&rsquo;ll highlight sessions and give you tips for success during and after the conference."
  NewsCamp::Investigating text in the wild;Sarah Cohen (Duke University);New York Central;Thursday;10 a.m. - 10:50 a.m.;How investigative reporters have found stories buried in text and ways investigators in other industries have mined their documents.
  Free tools for wrangling data;Steve Doig (Arizona State University), Matt Stiles (NPR);Illinois Central;Thursday;10 a.m. - 10:50 a.m.;Before you get to enjoy the thrill of finding that smoking-gun pattern in some data for your big project, you have to deal with the drudgery of acquiring and cleaning up the data. Happily, a well-stocked and expanding toolbox of free services and applications exists to help you scrape data from websites, export it from clunky formats like pdf, and clean up messy, unstandardized variables.
  Bring your mapping dreams to fruition: Tricks to customize basic tools;Michelle Minkoff (The Associated Press);Missouri Pacific;Thursday;10 a.m. - 10:50 a.m.;"In recent years, Web cartographers have seen a nearly unprecedented leap in the tools available to us. But the question remains &mdash; how do we manipulate these tools to tell OUR stories, ripe with data? What can we do to make our maps stand apart from the pack? This session will demo some strategies, with minimal HTML and JavaScript, that anyone can use to bring life to the mapping dreams you have in your head."
  How to track cheating in your local schools;Holly Hacker (The Dallas Morning News), John Perry (Atlanta Journal-Constitution);Frisco/Burlington;Thursday;10 a.m. - 10:50 a.m.;"Erasing to the top &mdash; How to tell if school testing gains are legitimate or too good to be true."
  Social Media Sleuthing: Backgrounding people and companies;Doug Haddix (Kiplinger Program - Ohio State University);Illinois Central;Thursday;11 a.m. - 11:50 a.m.;Tips and techniques for using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other  social media services to dig deep on individuals and organizations.
  NewsCamp::Jam Sessions;Jacob Perkins (Weotta), Jeremy Bowers (The Washington Post), Chase Davis (Center for Investigative Reporting);Jeffersonian/  Knickerbocker;Thursday;11 a.m. - 5:50 p.m.;
  From your computer to the web: Using Microsoft Cloud and Google Docs;Coulter Jones (IRE and NICAR), Cheryl Phillips (The Seattle Times);Missouri Pacific;Thursday;11 a.m. - 11:50 a.m.;Let your audience search your data. Learn tricks on how newsrooms can use Microsoft Cloud and Google Docs to quickly and easily display dynamic information online without programming.
  NewsCamp::Tools for unstructured text;Chase Davis (Center for Investigative Reporting), Loretta Auvil (National Center for Supercomputing Applications);New York Central;Thursday;11 a.m. - 11:50 a.m.;Reporters are used to working with rows and columns, but some of the best data available comes in the form of unstructured text. This session will give a sense of the tools and techniques critical for working with unstructured data, as well as their applications in the newsroom.
  The art of requesting and negotiating data;David Hunn (St. Louis Post-Dispatch), Jennifer LaFleur (ProPublica);Frisco/Burlington;Thursday;11 a.m. - 11:50 a.m.;"Getting any record can be a challenge, but wrangling data can introduce even more challenges.  We&rsquo;ll give you some tools and tips for getting data out of government agencies."
  NewsCamp::Music Lessons;Sarah Cohen (Duke University), Ted Han (DocumentCloud), Jonathan Stray (The Associated Press);Wabash Cannonball;Thursday;1 p.m. - 4:50 p.m.;
  Tableau for Pros;Daniel Hom (Tableau Public), Ross Perez (Tableau Public);Grand Hall I;Thursday;1:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.;Take your data visualization skills to the next level. In this class we'll push Tableau's capabilities further to create more complex visualizations. You'll learn how to:
  Locating the story: The latest in mapping;David Herzog (IRE and NICAR), Ben Welsh (Los Angeles Times);Illinois Central;Thursday;2 p.m. - 2:50 p.m.;See how journalists are using geographic information system (GIS) mapping to plot trends and uncover hidden spatial relationships. Also, learn how open-source and commercial GIS programs compare.
  