[1st-mile-nm] Fwd: Specify. Then Build. Seeking round two Knight News Challenge in-kind University partners - From E-Democracy.Org

[Tom Johnson]

Friends:

Note below the need/demand for big-pipe broadband as a requirement to
participate in this grant-getting effort.  I suspect we will only be seeing
more of this sort of thing.  Are we prepared to meet the challenge?

-tj

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Steven Clift <slc at publicus.net>
Date: Nov 26, 2007 11:23 AM
Subject: Specify. Then Build. Seeking round two Knight News Challenge
in-kind University partners - From E-Democracy.Org
To: JOURNET at cmich.edu


E-Democracy.Org is into round two for the Knight News Challenge -
http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/127 .

With our round two "Specify. Then Build." proposal we are looking for
universities interested in partnering to host (in-kind) citizen media
and engagement open source programming sprints. The partner would agree
to provide space, bandwidth, and *use of high speed (Internet 2) IP video
conferencing equipment* on a in-kind basis likely over a long weekend. We
will likely be connecting a site in the U.S. to a U.K. site for virtual
developer teams (typically 4 to 6 teams with 4 or 5 programmers at each
site). We would also need discounted or in-kind on-campus lodging within
reason for up to 20 to 30 people. We will be providing transportation to
the site for the selected participants. If we win the grant, we expect
to hold at least four programming sprints - two in 2009 and two in 2010.
I want be up front and note that the tight $500,000 US proposal does not
allow us to share funding to cover the physical space for hosting the
sprints assuming we find appropriate in-kind offers.

Also, we are interested in learning about existing or proposed research
that might be connected to this initiative.

Prior to the programming, sprints, we will be hosting very public
citizen media and engagement module/plug-in software specification
efforts. Instead of developing stand alone modules or modules/plug-ins
for one open source tools used for locally-oriented citizen media/online
engagement efforts, we are proposing an open specification process that
will lead to the competitive build out of modules for key open source
content management platforms (Drupal, Plone, etc.).

Finally, we may be able to leverage our evaluation budget to support
some research based on this rather experimental initiative.

If this effort matches your project's existing mission or goals we might
have a match and your endorsement will increase our chances of winning
the News Challenge.

For a copy the draft application, drop me an e-mail ASAP -
clift at publicus.net - because the final deadline for submission is Nov. 30.

Cheers,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org

P.S. For a short description of our round one proposal see -
http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/127 and below is information about the
scope of the Knight News Challenge:


THE KNIGHT NEWS CHALLENGE INITIATIVE SEEKS

• New ways for people to communicate interactively to help people better
understand one another in geographic communities, share know-how and
generate passion in solving local problems;
• New ways for people to use information, news and journalism in
geographic communities to imagine their collective possibilities as
communities, and to set and reach common community goals;

• New ways to dig for news and act on it in geographic communities,
including new ways to collect, prepare and distribute information, news
and journalism that reveals hard-to-know facts, identifies common
problems, clarifies community issues or points out practical courses of
action.

Keep in mind the purpose of the contest is to develop digital
communication projects that will help better connect people in physical
space, in the communities in which they work, live and vote.
In the words of Jack Knight: Thus we seek to bestir the people into an
awareness of their own condition, provide inspiration for their thoughts
and rouse them to pursue their true interests.






-- 
==========================================
J. T. Johnson
Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
www.analyticjournalism.com
505.577.6482(c)                                 505.473.9646(h)
http://www.jtjohnson.com                 tom at jtjohnson.com

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the
existing model obsolete."
                                                  -- Buckminster Fuller
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