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by | Dec 28, 2017 | Towhees

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Adrian Holovaty (born 1981) is an American web developer, musician and entrepreneur from Chicago, Illinois, living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is co-creator of the Django web framework and an advocate of "journalism via computer programming".

Life and career

Holovaty, a Ukrainian American, grew up in Naperville, Illinois and attended Naperville North High School. While serving as co-editor of the high school's newspaper, The North Star, a censored article about a faculty member sexually assaulting a student reignited an anti-censorship debate in the Illinois house of representatives.[1] He graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism in 2001 and worked as a web developer/journalist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Lawrence Journal-World and The Washington Post before starting EveryBlock, a web startup that provided "microlocal" news, in 2007.[2]

While working at the Lawrence Journal-World from 2002 to 2005, he and other web developers (Simon Willison, Jacob Kaplan-Moss and Wilson Miner[3]) created Django, an open source web application framework for Python. He and Kaplan-Moss served as the framework's Benevolent Dictators for Life until January 2014.[4] The pair wrote The Django Book, first published in 2007.

In 2012, he and PJ Macklin founded Soundslice, a website for learning, practicing and teaching music, via "interactive sheet music" that is synced with real audio and video recordings.[5]

In 2018, he was named co-chair of the W3C Music Notation Community Group, given responsibility over developing MNX, a new, open format for encoding music notation.[6]

Guitar

Holovaty is a Fingerstyle and Gypsy jazz guitarist. Since 2007 he has posted videos of his acoustic guitar arrangements on YouTube, building an audience of more than 30,000 subscribers.[7]

In 2023, he released an album of 10 original guitar instrumentals, "Melodic Guitar Music."[8]

He has served on the guitar faculty of Django In June, an instructional camp for Gypsy jazz music, for several years.[9]

Crime mapping innovations

In 2005, Holovaty launched chicagocrime.org, a Google Maps mashup of Chicago Police Department crime data.[10] The site won the 2005 Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism[11] and was named by The New York Times as one of 2005's best ideas.[12]

As one of the first Google Maps mashups, it helped influence Google to create its official Google Maps API.[13] Newspaper sites such as the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times have incorporated a map from EveryBlock, the successor to chicagocrime.org, into their web sites.[14]

In 2007, Holovaty was awarded a $1.1 million Knight Foundation grant and left his job as editor of editorial innovations at washingtonpost.com to start EveryBlock, the successor to chicagocrime.org.[15] On August 17, 2009, EveryBlock was officially acquired by MSNBC.[16] The terms of the deal were not disclosed.[17] In February 2013, NBC News announced that it was shutting down EveryBlock.[18] The service was re-launched by Comcast NBCUniversal in January, 2014 and operated in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Fresno, Hialeah, Houston, Medford, Nashville, Philadelphia, and Seattle.[19] On July 19, 2018, EveryBlock was acquired by social networking service Nextdoor and shut down.[20]

References

  1. ^ "School Newspaper in Illinois Revives a Debate Over Censorship". The New York Times. 28 September 1997. Retrieved 20 May 2020.
  2. ^ "Goodbye hyperlocal, hello microlocal - Holovaty.com". holovaty.com. Retrieved 14 July 2018.
  3. ^ "Django committers". djangoproject.com. Archived from the original on July 16, 2014. Retrieved January 1, 2022.
  4. ^ "Adrian and Jacob retiring as Django BDFLs - Holovaty.com". holovaty.com. Retrieved 14 July 2018.
  5. ^ "About Soundslice". Soundslice LLC. December 2023.
  6. ^ "Co-Chair Announcement". W3C Music Notation Community Group. Retrieved 29 Dec 2023.
  7. ^ "Adrian Holovaty". YouTube. Retrieved 14 July 2018.
  8. ^ "Melodic Guitar Music by Adrian Holovaty". December 2023.
  9. ^ "Adrian Holovaty". Retrieved 29 Dec 2023.
  10. ^ "Announcing chicagocrime.org - Holovaty.com". holovaty.com. Retrieved 14 July 2018.
  11. ^ "Batten winner! - Holovaty.com". holovaty.com. Retrieved 14 July 2018.
  12. ^ O'Connell, Pamela Licalzi (11 December 2005). "Do-It-Yourself Cartography". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 July 2018.
  13. ^ "The world is your JavaScript-enabled oyster". Retrieved 14 July 2018.
  14. ^ Street Wise: http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/June-2009/Street-Wise/
  15. ^ "Knight Foundation grant - Holovaty.com". holovaty.com. Retrieved 14 July 2018.
  16. ^ Nieman Journalism Lab. "EveryBlock". Encyclo: an encyclopedia of the future of news. Retrieved 1 April 2012.
  17. ^ "MSN - Outlook, Office, Skype, Bing, Breaking News, and Latest Videos". NBC News. Retrieved 14 July 2018.
  18. ^ "NBC News shuts down hyperlocal site EveryBlock". CNN. February 7, 2013. Retrieved February 7, 2013.
  19. ^ "EveryBlock: The Online Community for Your Neighborhood". Comcast. August 26, 2014. Retrieved June 27, 2018.
  20. ^ "Nirav Tolia-led Nextdoor Acquires Chicago's 'EveryBlock' Neighborhood News Site". IndiaWest. August 5, 2018. Archived from the original on September 15, 2021. Retrieved March 23, 2020.
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