I’m stopping mid-travel on the way to spend a long weekend making a newspaper in a field, because an exciting new thing happened today.

I’m going to be teaming up with some of the guys at Neon Tribe – a local web dev firm who make awesomely exciting shiny Internet things with open data – to learn more data skills. I’m hoping to collaborate to bring a few of my long-brewing ideas to fruition, make a few shiny things together, and ultimately learn and improve the skills I need to make shiny things all by myself.

It’s not clear yet how much time I’ll get to spend doing this – most if not all will have to be outside my standard working hours as there are heavy constraints on resources in the newsroom right now – but even if it’s just an hour a week being a hack in a roomful of hackers, absorbing, learning and imparting with a few projects to focus on, it’s going to be a very exciting and – I hope – productive time.