Knight Foundation
Knights News Challenge Winners

Knights News Challenge Winners

Welcome

Thank you for your interest in the Knight News Challenge. The contest for 2008 has ended.

The Knight News Challenge is a contest awarding as much as $5 million a year for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news. Last year’s winners included a diverse collection of 33 individuals, private and public entities, ranging from MIT to MTV. Knight Foundation plans to invest at least $25 million over five years in the search for bold community news experiments.

2008 Knight News Challenge Update

The decision-making process has concluded. Seventeen projects have been chosen. The 2008 winners will be announced at the Editor & Publisher Interactive Media Conference in Las Vegas on May 14, 2008.

Click here for more information about the Knight News Challenge.

Explota El Voto

Primary Contact Name

Mr. Fred Sotelo

Describe your project

Our project is specific to empowering U.S. Latinos with relevant bi-lingual news, updates and information focused on increasing voter turn out at the election polls. Our hope is that the greater community is equipped with the insight of “Project Based Living” our notion of gaining the awareness to impact issues that affect them. Understanding the digital divide in terms of ethnic communities, our strategy will be to integrate both traditional media with web 2.0 technologies to deliver real-time news from a holistic approach that will include everyday people’s perspectives along with quality reliable sources. People will go to where they are comfortable and feel secure with information, we will provide this outlet. ONLINE, we will use www.explotaelvoto.org a mixed use web 2.0 site that will integrate a social network, and video content platform to include news, blogging, debates and forums for US Latinos to express themselves, share and communicate news and ideas along with our army of community reporters. OFFLINE, we will utilize traditional TV, we have secured a relationship with LATV television the fastest growing bi-lingual network that reaches Latinos in the US contingent on funding to promote our grassroots and voter awareness efforts built around up to date information that addresses issues that affect US Latinos. Under the leadership of Fred Sotelo and direction of Rick Najera VP of programming-LATV, Explota El Voto will be producing and launching a special election segment with LATV, along with a 12 episode “Explota El Voto” reality show that will allow our correspondents to interview civic, community, business leaders and youth in reference to real issues that affect Latinos in the US from immigration, health to education across both LATV’s TV network and EXPLOTOELVOTO.org in Key Latino Markets off line that include Los Angeles, Houston, New York, Chicago, Miami, Orlando, San Antonio, Albuquerque-Santa Fe, Boston, Corpus Christi, Denver-Boulder, Hartford-New Haven, Laredo, Monterey-Salinas-Santa Cruz, plus new

Primary Contact Email

sotelo@toltecmedia.net

Organization or Business Name

Urban Latino Development Corporation

Who would want to use it and why?

US Latinos and those interested in US Latinos. We will create a sense of community in terms of perspective and interactions. The internet and technology are the next generation civil rights issue, the lack of inclusion in workforce development, training, access, and fair representation of content delivery and content production is no different today than traditional print and electronic media in the past. There has been an absence of backline programmers, producers, writers, personalities, ownership, etc….The need we will fill is simple: we will outreach to the U.S Latino community holistically as well as bring the communities perspective to life and leverage 2008 election year as the centerpiece for news content.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

Because I am a ‘Social Entrepreneur in Action’, committed to making it happen.” --Fred Sotelo. With over 20 years of business and activism as benchmarks of Sotelo’s life, he was 15 when he started his first business, Sonic Sound, a disc jockey business. As a student at SDSU, Sotelo’s activities included recruiting high school students to pursue a higher education and in 1991, he co-founded TRIBE (Training Right in Business and Education). The mentoring program involved at-risk middle school nd high school students in the San Diego Unified School District. As an activist, and community and civic leader Sotelo currently serves as chairman of the board of Casa Familiar a non profit community development organization. In addition, Sotelo also co-founded Explota El Voto, a nonprofit, nonpartisan voter outreach effort to inspire young people in disadvantaged communities of color to find their voice through civic engagement. His personal commitment and passion for giving back to his community by mentoring and motivating urban at-risk youth populations continues to be a personal driving force. Professionally, Fred Sotelo is the President and CEO of Toltec Media, a strategic marketing and promotions niche firm with enterprises focusing on ethnic-urban segments and online solutions utilizing cause-related marketing partnerships. Sotelo’s unique insight into the Urban/Latino community and his original and creative approach to market penetration utilizing relationship marketing and signature events, have been instrumental in delivering highly integrated marketing communications campaigns and online systems that have improved customer satisfaction, attendance/traffic, and overall marketing effectiveness on behalf of clients. With national accounts including State Farm, the National Council of La Raza [NCLR], The National Society of Hispanic MBA’s, [NSHMBA] Brinker International, US Bank, and the ALMA Awards to name a few. Today, Toltec Media under Sotelo’s helm has emerged as a sought-after practitioner of highly effective guerrilla

U.S. State

CA

Country

United States

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

The potentially bigger thing that might happen is the unleashing of a social movement propelled by a Latino community civically engaged and empowered to affect their future. What else big and unexpected? That as a result of the momentum being generated by Explota El voto and the ancillary activities a key presidential debate would take place. Imagine the candidates debating during an Explota El Voto produced event…where Hispanics would be the main audience and candidates would be presented with the documented issues of a community of color poised to continue to play a significant current and future role in this country. Asking the candidates their platform and how they would address the various social and economic concerns of the millions of Americans of color…and be aired/televized across mainstream networks…giving a voice and bringing Latinos out of the shadows of social and economic disenfranchisement by reaching our goal: to create a movement of like minded individuals, groups, and organizations that will share and distribute information to promote civil engagement, voter awareness and activism among Latinos in the US. We are on the verge of changing history. We feel that a better America starts with fair representation and the right of “one person equals one vote” being fundamental to achieving equality. We will encourage people to invite others to join EXPLOTA EL VOTO and together [we can] make a difference today. EXPLOTA EL VOTO hopes to see the increasing population of Latinos reflected at the ballot box in November 2008 and represented in mainstream America, as a result. Social empowerment starts with an awareness that is relevent to the community. Our approach is to work from the ground up and execute a grass roots civil engangement movement in the US Latino community. Our key vehicles are going to be integrated via 1. LATV 13 episode reality television series Explota El Voto in 25 major Hispanic Markets that include the big three Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. 2. A bi-lingual trusted dynamic user genera

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

We will measure in various formats—but specifically in a qualitative and quantitaive models. Qualitative: increased particpation [engagement] of Latinos in on/offline forums, events and LATV Explota El Voto reality show viewership… potentially we estimate that via our 13 week series on LATV nationally along with online efforts of www.explotaelvoto.org and youtube.com viewership we have a potential 9-13 million homes that we will have reach to and if we have a 2% viewership, would result in 180,000-260,000 homes reach each week. Most importantly, our goal is to go beyond the linguistic approach of dominate spanish language coverage, media placement, etc and truly implement a bi-lingual strategy with an inter-generational approach. Recognizing the diversity of Latinos in the Uniteds States in terms of acculturation and thought. Explota El Voto will utilize its tools of realtime news postings, and feed back loops that will allow us to respond to various needs and identigy gaps. We will create mechanisims to review and document activities. Last, we will utilized part of our funding to publish a Research Journal of year long campaign with both theroy and measured outcomes. Quantitative: By the number of new and unique registered voters enlisted and tracked through the online and offline systems…

Web site

http://www.explotaelvoto.org

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$1000000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

There is a need to provide unique communication and interactive vehicles to express the Latino voice. Our proposal will go beyond what every one else is doing and expand on an integrated bi-lingual, generational strategy, including tradtional media , web 2.0, integrated with traditional grassroot organizing. Two big gaps in creating social impact in the U.S Hispanic community are a lack of financial resources and utilization of technoloy. We believe that in order to create change there is enough room for a hundred more organizations like Explota El Voto and our approach will be to enable others with “Human Resources” to learn and do what we are doing, our system is going to be replicable. We will be using opensource technology solutions as well as including all of our resources as public domain. Last, we are working on creating a generational movement of civic engagement and the notion of getting involved in activities that influence your everyday life similar to the educational concept of PROJECT BASED LEARNING, we believe that everyday is PROJECT BASED LIVING and in order to develop and make it you have to participate.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$1500000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

The opportunity lies in both the conceptual framework we are proposing and in the practical implementation of the activities. In essence, the approach, the strategies, the innovative spirit and the passion and conviction of those involved providing a platform to impact change for the Hispanic community is what will make this project more successful than others. In addition, the following specific strategies will be set up to support this vision: ExplotaElVoto.ORG- Bi-lingual Social Network web 2.0 site. Will have all the latest interactive community features of MySpace such as community journalist blogs, photos, instant messaging, alerts, peer 2 peer communications to be launched in February 08. “Explota El Voto…The Media Machine”: Explota El Voto will create interactive digital commercials, psa’s and ads from user community for targeted media partners and online properties to include coverage of news and issues, interviews, and sound bites of local community persons, celebrity endorsements encouraging the importance of voting and voter turnout. Street Teams: We deploy a strategy similar to those used by radio stations and record companies that includes heavy guerrilla marketing, face to face interaction and on site remotes that include high traffic areas such as colleges, retail outlets, concerts, clubs and special events. Online Voter Registration drives: Explota El Voto.com will present links to where users can access voter registration forms and information. “Explota El Voto Election Tour”: In 2008, Explota El Voto will have a “La Lucha” Street Team in select targeted cities in the Southwest United States, where we will organize events, create awareness, register voters and engage the greater Latino Community. There will be targeted campaigns in San Diego, Los Angeles, Inland Empire, San Berndino County, Las Vegas, Phoenix and select markets in Texas. They will include: Special events with celebrity and media tie ins, an aggressive email campaign and mini websites; Intense street canvassing with face to face mar

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

1years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

People will learn about what we are doing through word of mouth, online social networks [my space etc], offline and online media advertising, grassroots marketing, viral human relationship factor of the community taking intrinsic ownership of Explota El Voto. There will be a full blown media and marketing campaign deployed.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

Partnerships: We are proud to announce a number of key partnerships that will help us “Create Awareness and create content for the Explota El Voto Network” with a “Que Pasa!”-“Whats up!” And “My vote counts” - LATV – We have an MOU with LATV Vice President ofü“Mi Voto Cuenta” message. Programming Rick Najera, to cross promote our grassroots and voter awareness efforts. We will also be launching a special Explota El Voto 13 episode series with LATV, in more than 25 major Latino markets across the country, Explota El Voto and LATV will bring together young people and the elderly for “concilios” [councils] to discuss key issues in communities in a reality show format with Citiüreal people asking and answering the questions as our correspondents. . Group – Southern California VP of Commuity Relations Gustavo Bidart has expressed Citi Group’s commitment to undisclosed amount of financial support for 2008.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

While this project is unique to us we will engage commnuity partners throughout the country to broaden our reach and penetrate communities. In addition we will engage street promotion teams to canvass and blanket communities with specific and powerful GOTV messages while educating people on the issues that affect their lives the most [ie health, education, jobs, environment, etc]. We have solid and synergistic relationships with national organizations and local non profits in most major Hispanic Markets.

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

While there are online voter registration efforts underway such as Move On and others, the unique wraparound nature of our approach encompasses attitudinal shifts and social interactions as well as reality show type of viewership with ultimate goal of turning passive viewership into action…. We feel that our activities are complimentary to organizations such as NALEO, SouthWest Voter Registration, NCLR, MALDEF, LULAC in fact Explota El Voto can enhance others efforts based oun our mass media appeal and technology, our priority will be to include other CBO’s in our www.ExplotaElVoto.org social network as key VIP resources with each having their own mini sites in ExplotaElVoto.org. Last we will invite other organizations to be part or our trusted resource network for our army of social journalists, movement historians, and street promoters.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

We guarantee that the manner of traditional GOTV [Get Out To Vote] campaigns and their established but predictable mechanisms will change forever once exposed to our robust holistic and multimedia approach in Explota El Voto. We guarantee that the Latino voter will have found an outlet, a portal, a community to inquire, review, research and self-empower to claim their stake in the American dream through embracing the notion of “PROJECT BASED LIVING” a way of life, working together, everyday, to make this world better for all.

What is the Knight News Challenge?

Wed, 04/09/2008 - 14:38 — divya

The Knight News Challenge is a contest run by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which has earmarked $25 million over a five-year period.

As much as $5 million will be given away this year. Anyone can apply.

The goal is to spur innovation in the delivery of information and news using digital media.

Whether it’s election coverage, crime statistics, little league scores, road conditions or anything else; we’re looking for smart, innovative solutions that connect people with the news and information that matters to them most.

What kind of projects will get funded?

Wed, 04/09/2008 - 14:39 — divya

If you can say yes to every one of these, then your idea qualifies for submission:
Digital – Your idea uses digital technology (computers, the internet, cell phones, that sort of thing).
Innovative – Your idea is new and original. It’s different from what people have done before. You are, in some way, breaking new ground.
News/information – Your idea is about giving people access to what they want to know.
Timely – Your idea delivers news or information while it’s still fresh.
Community-building – Your idea helps create a sense of community among some group of individuals.
Limited geographic area – Your idea affects people in a specific area, which could be as big as a state or province, or as small as a city block. (If your idea is national or worldwide in scope, it must work at a regional level.)
Open Source – The inner workings of what you create will be visible to the world, so that others can take it and improve upon it. (Read more here.)

What is the process for applying?

Wed, 04/09/2008 - 14:40 — divya

The only place you can apply is here on the Knight News Challenge web site. No applications are accepted by mail, e-mail, fax, or any other means.

First, you take about 20 minutes to fill out a simple form that tells us the essence of your idea. If we think your idea shows promise, we’ll ask you to write a full proposal. (This is to keep you from wasting a lot of time if we aren’t interested.)

You will be asked whether you want your entry to be “open” or “closed.” If you choose “open,” then others will be able to read and comment on your submission.

Those who submit their applications and proposals in the open process are seeking the wisdom of the crowd to help improve their ideas and their application. They don’t care if others try to develop the same idea, or if others help them with their work. They get to revise their application based on public feedback. On the other hand, those who submit in the closed process are confident they have a good idea, and they don’t want public help developing it further. They are ready to be judged on their idea as it is when they submit it. Neither type of entry has an advantage with the reviewers, who simply are looking for great ideas.

The “entry” is the first step of the application process, and it is fairly quick and easy to complete. The “proposal” is the second step, and it is more detailed. You will be notified whether or not you make it to the “proposal” stage.

What is the Knight Foundation?

Wed, 04/09/2008 - 14:40 — divya

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation invests in journalism excellence worldwide and in the vitality of 26 U.S. communities. Since 1950 the foundation has granted more than $300 million to advance quality journalism and freedom of expression. It focuses on projects with the potential to create transformational change. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.

What is the Young Creators Award?

Wed, 04/09/2008 - 14:41 — divya

The Knight Foundation places a high priority on engaging young people to shape their own future. For that reason, we have set aside $500,000 of this year's Knight News Challenge funding specifically for people 25 and under, and we have enlisted MTV, the world's premier television network for young people, as a partner. Your odds of winning could be bigger by choosing this category because of a smaller pool of contestants.

What is the maximum I can apply for under the Young Creators Award?

Wed, 04/09/2008 - 14:41 — divya

You may request up to $500,000. If you wish to apply for more, choose one of the other two categories.

The Continuum Project - Location Based Services for Web and Mobile Publishing

Primary Contact Name

Miss Fang Lin

Describe your project

The Continuum Project (CP) will use Mo'Blast technologies to help local communities establish an online presence. Mo'Blast Inc., an innovator in location-based technologies, has developed a scalable solution for the geotagging, aggregating, and distribution of multimedia content on the Web and mobile phones. The system (Mo'Blast), currently in alpha stage development, includes the following: a global landmark database; support for geotagging (latitude, longitude, altitude) of content in text, photos, audio, and video formats; a local search engine; distributed systems and distributed caching facilities for speed and performance; open APIs for third-party developers; and a low cost structure. Furthermore, Mo'Blast provides end-to-end transcoding and image processing services so that videos and images from different sources (Web cam, mobile phone, and video cameras) can be uploaded, processed, and streamed efficiently in real-time, on the Internet. The proposed Continuum Project will be a toolkit built on top of Mo'Blast. It will be free for non-commercial use. CP will provide a set of tools for a content moderator to create a channel (online community), assign it a location, define a locale (language and timezone), invite members, and assign write permissions. CP will also allow skinning of Web sites and adding/removing of tools and third-party widgets. Content creators will be able to submit content via smart phones and computers. Once published, channel content is accessible to members on Internet enabled devices. Community members can discover content by proximity (where I am), by channel, by tags, and by time. Alternatively, members can define a radar (area of interest) to see an aggregate view of all channel postings inside that radar.

Primary Contact Email

flashgirl111@yahoo.com

Organization or Business Name

Mo'Blast

Who would want to use it and why?

Schools, non-profit organizations, community advocacy groups, and city services will want to use CP to promote, inform, and engage their community members. To inform, the local police or a citizen watch group would want to set up a channel to alert people nearby, a crime has occurred. CP will have a proximity broadcast feature that allows the moderator to define a range of broadcast, such as 25 miles from a crime scene. People with radar set to that area, or has the “I'm here” feature turned on, will receive an alert on screen. To promote recycling volunteers and community groups, can use CP to landmark places to drop off batteries, old cell phones, computers etc. CP, therefore, is a tool for a community and a tool for a group of communities to exchange ideas and work together.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

Mo'Blast is the best company to develop this project because our expertise is technology. We are geeks. We know what kinds of problems can be solved by software since, in all likelihood, we have either solved it or have seriously thought about it. This is precisely the case here. We believe having developed Mo'Blast location-based platform gives us significant advantages over our competitors. We have, in our estimate, a 90% head start in the race. In addition, we have solved the two most difficult problems plaguing existing location-based service (LBS) solutions; scalability and cost. Current solutions cannot support growing number of users on a global scale without incurring inexorable cost or performance penalties. Mo'Blast has overcome those issues. Lastly we hope you would pick us, because we sincerely believe in the merit of our product and the benefits it will have to local communities.

U.S. State

CA

Country

United States

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

Socially, people will perceive CP as the place to find and bond with other locals who share the same passion. As a result, more people, especially the tech-savvy generation, would partake in local community projects became they feel empowered. Technically, the project will support millions of users and attract many third party developers to our platform. CP would popularize widgets on its geographical community platform similar to how Facebook spurs widgets development on their social network platform. Finally, Our APIs would be building blocks for future geospatial applications.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

We will measure by popularity and effectiveness. Popularity is the easier of the two to track and it consists of be the following; the amount of Internet traffic, the number of registered users, the number of active users, the number of channels, the number of third party widgets, and the amount of content added per day. Effectiveness would require regular feedback from users and community moderators. We will actively encourage our users to help us improve our services by participating in Internet surveys and usability studies.

Web site

http://www.moblast.com

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$750000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

We answer the need to reach people locally in a way that’s more practical, flexible, and powerful. It’s more practical than a typical Google Map mashup because it gives content the center stage. Content is searchable, portable to mobile devices, and can be archived. It is more flexible because communities can customize widgets to fit their needs. It is more powerful because content can be aggregate from more than one sources, in new interesting ways.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$2000000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

Our unique opportunity is little downside risk. Our team has been quietly researching and developing our LSB infrastructure for over two years. We have a very complex, well-designed, feature-rich framework in place that others do not have. We also have a team of talented developers who are passionate about what we do. So much so, we have each invested our own time and capital in the success of this project. We know our efforts cannot be easily replicated. While we think our strength is the design of the solution; in the short term, our asset is rather intangible and hard to discern among our competitors. In the long run, however, the flexibility to add features, the lower cost to maintain and grow the system will win out.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

2years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

We plan to launch two side-by-side marketing campaigns. The first will be a proactive campaign that targets student-lead social responsibility programs at MBA schools. We will select and contact 100 schools, like the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business in UC Berkeley, to introduce the CP toolkit. Our goal will be to invite students in those programs to use the toolkit and to assist local non-profit organizations in creating channels. The second campaign will be an ad campaign to lure people to our website. We estimate we will spend $10,000 on Google AdWords.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

No. We have not pursued any funding or investment prior.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

No

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

Jaiku (recently bought by Google), Loopt, and Plazes are some companies that come to mind in the LBS space. Jaiku has sharing of “activity stream” and is available on Nokia’s S60 phones. Loopt is a location-based social site. One can send messages to friends and track where they are. Plazes has sharing of activities at a location with groups. Our work fit as the next innovation in the LBS area. We introduce new algorithms, back-end design, support multiple channel aggregation based on a defined location, content discovery, search, and archive support that our competitors do not have.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

With the funding we seek from Knight, we can guarantee a server farm to support 300 organizations, and cover bandwidth expenses for up to five million users for one year. Ultimately, we want to see our project become self-sustaining. Mo’Blast will commit to establish a Continuum Fund to help pay for future expenses. We will contribute a percentage of our ad revenue from the commercial release of CP toolkit to fund the non-commercial sites. Additional funding could come from sponsorship and advertisement on the non-commercial site on a need only basis. It is our intention to keep the non-profit channels ad free; however, we cannot guarantee this beyond the first year.

The MIT Museum Without Walls:Today, MIT; tomorrow, the World

Primary Contact Name

Professor John Durant Ph.D.

Describe your project

Once there were guidebooks; then there were audio-guides; now, we have the means within our grasp to create a revolutionary 21st century navigation, guidance and information system that will simultaneously serve and strengthen the wider community that shares a presence on the MIT campus. We propose to combine locative and WiFi technologies with a multi-media content aggregation system to create an electronic resource that will deliver location-specific, continuously updated stories to users’ hand-held devices. The near-term goal is to enrich the life of the extended MIT community by transforming the MIT campus itself into something approaching a locative wiki, to which all can contribute and from which all will benefit. The long-term goal is to create an open software system and content aggregation resource that other campuses and communities can use to create their own location aware guidance systems – a gift, if you will, from MIT to the wider world. The MIT Museum Without Walls will enable entirely new kinds of community life to blossom on the MIT campus. An individual walking through the campus will be able to explore MIT’s achievements, traditions and values; to contribute his or her own experiences for others to enjoy; and even to locate other individuals nearby who are willing to meet over coffee to discuss issues of common interest. In these and similar ways, the project will combine mobile technology with community building. The project will break new ground technically, by combining location-awareness, wireless hand held devices and the Web to enable users to contribute and access information flexibly as they move through complex indoor and outdoor environments; and it will break new ground interpretively, by creating a continuously evolving body of location-specific stories about everything from history to breaking news, collecting and making available the accumulating memories and experiences of an entire community.

Primary Contact Email

jdurant@mit.edu

Organization or Business Name

MIT Museum

Who would want to use it and why?

We see two broad categories of users: the MIT community; and the wider community within which MIT is located. The MIT community includes students and their families, faculty and staff, and alumni. Within this community, there are many groups, including: Living Groups (e.g., dorms, fraternities & sororities); undergraduate and graduate student clubs and interest groups; and organizations supporting specific activities (e.g., publications, radio stations, academic and professional conferences). The wider community includes: academic and other professional organizations and individuals; commercial organizations (service providers, research partners, etc.); school teachers and students regionally and nationally; MIT’s neighbors in Cambridge and the Greater Boston Metropolitan Area; and travelers and tourists to the a

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

MIT is uniquely well placed to support this project. The campus is small enough to be manageable but large enough to be of interest from the point of view of locative mobile technologies. In addition, the campus is equipped with an extensive WiFi network; it is the home of many research groups and labs with relevant technical expertise, including: the MIT Media Lab; the SENSEable City Lab; and 'Living the Future', an emerging inter-faculty initiative led by the School of Engineering. The MIT Museum is developing rapidly in pursuit of its mission to make MIT’s research and innovation accessible to all. Recent initiatives such as the Cambridge Science Festival (which included a unique 2-mile 'Human Genome Trail' through the City) and the opening of the 'Mark Epstein Innovation Gallery' at its headquarters facility are the beginning of an ambitious program designed to engage MIT more closely with its extended community – faculty, staff, students and alumni, on the one hand; and MIT’s multiple external audiences and visitors, on the other. MIT Museum Director of Technology Allan Doyle is an MIT alumnus (EECS, '80) who has been working in the field of open source geospatial systems for more than a decade, has developed open standards for web mapping and is currently working on GeoRSS and GeoJSON. Additional team members include: Associate Professor and SENSEable City Lab Director Carlo Ratti who holds a dual appointment at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the MIT Media Lab; award-winning author and broadcaster Bruce Gellerman, 3 time recipient of the prestigious AAAS science journalism prize. He is recognized as a pioneer in location aware content creation and currently hosts Public Radio International's environmental program Living on Earth; and MIT Museum Director and Adjunct Professor in the MIT Science, Technology & Society Program, John Durant, who is a specialist with extensive international experience in public engagement with science and technology.

U.S. State

Ca

Country

United States

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

Our fundamental goal is to alter the way individuals can interact with their cultural and social environment, with particular emphasis on science and technology aspects. Much as Web 2.0 social networking has changed the notion of interconnectedness among individuals, we aim to change the understanding of the relationship of place and culture. We believe MWOW is among the first to experiment with new forms of science and technology communication based on a holistic understanding of a specific community. MIT is a rich and complicated place with a unique culture. The experience of getting to know MIT is challenging, especially for newcomers and visitors. With MWOW we want to make a leap from social networking to cultural networking, from Web 2.0 to Culture 2.0. By way of example, those of us who are frequent travelers are literally dropped into different places on a monthly or weekly basis. How often do we yearn to spend the small amount of time at each location connecting to the local culture? We develop little tricks, like going to the same place for breakfast each day, learning a smidgen of the language, brightening at the merest hint of recognition by the locals as someone who is more than just a tourist. With MWOW, we hope to fast-track that experience. Our experience so far with the process of teaching digital storytelling is that the act of assembling personal and community stories, is itself a powerful community building exercise. Getting a group of people together, teaching them how to tell stories, and having them interact while they construct their stories provides an unparalleled bonding experience. If all the stars align, we will provide an example of how to strengthen a large, diverse community through the collection and telling of stories; and how to connect newcomers to the community to its culture. But more importantly, we will help develop tools that allow other communities (esp. other science and technology communities) to do the same thing for themselves.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

We believe there are three key measures of success for MWOW. First, we want to measure the ways MWOW becomes part of the communal discourse at MIT. Do people talk about it, with it, and through it to each other? The intention is to create a kind of ubiquitous technology and cultural asset that is always present and available. Second, we believe that ultimate success is measured by the degree to which the project is emulated and adopted by other organizations or communities. We want to make MWOW a practical communication technology. While we hope this becomes a global phenomenon, we anticipate expanding initially into the communities of Cambridge and Boston. Third, we intend to measure the success of our own contributions to MWOW using the means typical to museum and visitor studies specialists.

* The first measure is the most difficult to create. Initially, indirect information about usage levels or communal awareness will be used. Ultimately, if we are successful, the community will take MWOW for granted in the same manner it takes electricity or telephone service for granted. The creation of content for MWOW will require extensive communal participation. We intend to develop instruments that allow participants to evaluate their specific programs, test their overall awareness, as well as educate them about the larger goals of the project.
* The second measure is a matter of testing, counting and review of the outreach programs we develop. For each software and hardware element, specific tests to evaluate the technology will be developed. For example, how quickly is the system able to determine user location? Does the system deliver the appropriate content for that location and user?
* Third, we intend to create a set of data or stories that will be used to study user interests in the type of content and style of presentation as well as investigate the considerable challenges of user interface design.

Web site

http://museum.mit.edu

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$1600000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

MIT's campus comprises 157 buildings with over 11 million square feet of space on 156 acres. If you search Google for "MIT", you get over 500 million hits. MIT's own Google search engine indexes over 3.5 million documents. The Institute Archives has tens of millions of items, the Libraries' catalog more than 5 million items, the video production group has thousands of hours of digital video and thousands more of older analog video. The MIT museum has 1.5 million objects. Together this is an astounding amount of information about science and technology – and about our community. There are other communities that have more stuff, others with far less. Every community has a history and a culture shaped by its environment and its members. So where do you go to learn about a community such as MIT? How do you find the stories that infuse life into the Institute’s material culture? Can you remove the intimidation factor that many feel towards MIT, towards science and technology more generally? You can visit MIT's web site and find MIT Facts at http://web.mit.edu/facts/ - filled with important details, but those facts don't even begin to tell our story. Online you can find the news releases announcing a Nobel prize or other noteworthy discovery. Dig deep and you will find quirky bits such as the first Baker House Piano Drop in 1972, human-powered airplanes or the world’s largest hologram collection. You can delve into the course materials for everything from calculus to “Godzilla and the Bullet Train: Technology and Culture in Modern Japan.” And, of course, you can learn about the admissions process, student activities, and every department. But it is not the same as being here, walking around the campus. Learning about any new cultures is not easy. Our street address is 77 Massachusetts Ave. but truthfully there is no obvious entry point. MWOW aims to change that for MIT. We want to become the 21st century gateway for MIT. We want to provide the tools that help others build their own points of entry, exchange and community.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$3200000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

MIT is a hothouse of creativity, one of the world’s most prominent science and technology research universities. It is a future-minded community that relishes its embrace of some of the world’s greatest challenges. Anticipating considerable attention when it celebrates its 150th anniversary in the spring of 2011, MIT has been planning projects for several years. The MIT Museum started MWOW as part of our mission to foster public engagement with science and technology. MIT’s anniversary—when the eyes of the world will be on the Institute as we reflect on our past and look towards our future—is an incredible opportunity for our project to provide the storytelling medium. Our plan is to use the momentum generated by this celebration to spur the MIT community (faulty, staff, students, and alumni/ae) to provide the stories. MWOW is more than a pan-Institute StoryCorps. It is also a research project drawing on the results of many labs and research groups at MIT. And, it is a research platform that will be an Institute-wide resource for testing new components, software and other technologies that often lack a critical mass of content to work with. As has been often noted, MIT is an environment that encourages partnerships. Unlike previous efforts, however, MWOW features collaboration between a museum and university-based research labs. We anticipate that this relationship will be a model for other museum/cultural organization partnerships with scientists and engineers that combine technical achievements with high quality content. Finally, we have the recent example of MIT’s highly successful Open CourseWare initiative. By working with MIT's service providers such as Information Services and Technologies, Facilities, and the Academic Media Production Services, we can develop the infrastructure to sustain the project. Thus we ensure that MWOW doesn't remain a laboratory curiosity but instead becomes a lasting gift to the world.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

4years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

As one of the premier places in the world for invention and discovery MIT has developed a vast network of digital and traditional multi-media resources to promote its accomplishments. As part of MIT’s 150th anniversary commemoration, MWOW will make use of this cutting-edge infrastructure to inform the public of the project’s possibilities and promise. In addition, we intend to continue our current outreach efforts, and those of MIT including those of its News Office and publications such as Technology Review. Project members will continue to participate in a variety of national and international conferences as well as local user groups. We will expand the number of public meetings to report progress, discuss new ideas and solicit support. Our website (http://museum.mit.edu/mwow) would be expanded. However, we believe MWOW will itself become a unique resource that will promote awareness of the project in ways we can only imagine. When they invented the car bumper, no one had yet dreamed of the bumper sticker. Likewise, MWOW creates a new space where the community can invent entirely new ways of communicating and connecting. We will provide members of the MIT community and the wider public with the tools to create mobile media content and the context in which to place and access their stories: the MWOW database. MWOW is an ambitious experiment to develop a large-scale, location-aware, mobile media environment. As people contribute stories to the project, we will also encourage them to develop innovative methods for creating (and using!) them. The goal is to get our content creators to collaborate across disciplines and time zones, form wiki-mobile media communities, and develop widgets that can be wirelessly collected and connected. The effect will be viral and historic, carrying on the time-honored MIT tradition of creating a place where science and serendipity uniquely combine to build something that is far more than the sum of its parts.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

The following MIT groups have provided $100K in seed funding for this project:

* MIT Office of President
* MIT School of Architecture, Office of Dean
* MIT Media Laboratory, SENSEable Cities Group
* MIT School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Office of the Dean
* MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society
* MIT Association of Alumni and Alumnae
* MIT Academic Media Production Services

The MIT Museum has provided $100K in in-kind contributions of staff time. Outside MIT, we have received two grants totaling $100K from the Lord Foundation of Massachusetts. We have developed a partnership with the Nokia Cambridge Research Center, who have provided handheld devices, and with Cooper Perkins, a Boston-area product engineering firm who have provided project planning services. We have been working with MIT's Office of Corporate Relations to form additional technology development partnerships.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

We have already developed relationships with several key research groups at MIT, many service organizations at MIT, and some outside experts. We highlight the two most important of our current partnerships here. We're working closely with the SENSEable Cities group at MIT, led by Prof. Carlo Ratti. This group is known for its work in high-profile demonstrations at venues such as the Venice Biennale and the 2008 World Expo in Zaragoza. Included in Carlo's group are software engineers, designers, and architects. His group has experience in indoor location using WiFi technology and is currently working with the MIT Museum to produce a "second generation" demonstration of an MWOW handheld device. The SENSEable Cities group will provide continued engineering and design expertise to the MIT Museum. Our partnership with Bruce Gellerman, currently producer of the NPR show, Living on Earth, and principal in a venture to produce location-based audio content called SoundTreks will continue. Bruce brings expertise in high production value audio content to the MWOW project. Jackson Braider, also a SoundTreks principal, as well as a folklorist and musicologist will be part of our team. Other MIT groups that will contribute expertise and/or content to our project.

* Center for Reflective Community Practice – Digital Storytelling
* Media Lab's Media Fabrics Group – Storytelling technology
* Urban Information Systems Group – Spatial databases
* Teacher Education Program – Augmented reality games
* PlaceMap – User interfaces, instrumentation
* Academic Media Production Services – Video library & services
* MIT World – Video library of major lectures at MIT
* Information Office – Tour planning
* Libraries – Institute Archives & Special Collections, Lewis Music Library
* List Visual Arts Center – Art collection, artist biographies

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

MWOW is an amalgamation of many technologies. We are actively monitoring, engaged in, and learning from the efforts of others in many different facets of our project, including the following. Under each topic we list some of the relevant players, organizations, or conferences.

* Location technology – MIT's iFind group, Skyhook Wireless, Where2.0
* Digital Storytelling – MIT's Center for Reflective Community Practice
* Museums/non-profit organizations – Museums and the Web, Museum Computer Network
* Commercial locative tour providers – UnTravel Media, OmniNav
* Web platform developers/operators – Google, Yahoo, Microsoft
* Spatial Open Source Components – FOSS4G, OSGeo.org
* Database technology – Flamenco, PostGIS
* Research projects – MScapers.com, PlaceLab.org, DigitalHistory.UWO.ca

In addition to meeting with many representatives of these efforts, we are building a repository to such projects in the News section of our website at http://museum.mit.edu/mwow/news/ We envision our work as benefiting from much of the existing work in this area ("standing on the shoulders of giants") and as making instrumental contributions. In particular, we will focus intensely on developing relationships among projects that will enhance information exchange, software development, content reuse, and standards development. Our intent is to develop and foster a level of standardization and interchange that helps the overall growth and maturation of locative multimedia and digital storytelling. On the content development side, experiments in the development and long-term preservation of digital media that are focused on science and technology topics and communities are harder to find. One animating passion for the MIT Museum has been the care and dissemination of digital information. However, MWOW is more than an electronic archive (MIT's DSpace is an example of a pioneering effort.). It is an experiment in the cutting edge of information dissemination by museums allowing the transcendence of the physical limitations of bricks-and-mortar galleries.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

We guarantee that a novel multimedia platform will be created, comprising the following key components:

* a digital database designed to efficiently index and retrieve multi-media content on a scale sufficient to do justice to MIT – past, present and future;
* the capacity for individuals to upload new content to the digital database;
* integrated locative technology capable of operating indoors and outdoors across the MIT campus;
* software to enable users equipped with hand-held devices to conveniently and intuitively access the digital database, in ways that are responsive to individual interests;
* an initial repository of approximately 200 multimedia stories sufficient to support a first phase of ‘MIT Museum Without Walls’ use;
* a supported tour service, based in the MIT Museum and the MIT Visitor Information Center, to enable visitors to the campus to experience the ‘MIT Museum Without Walls’ during the Institute’s sesquicentennial year (2011);
* open source licenses and creative commons licenses to enable others to use the ‘MIT Museum Without Walls’ software and content without charge.

The grant requested from the Knight Foundation is sufficient to secure the multimedia platform and an initial repository of stories; further funding is being sought to greatly enlarge the repository of stories. However, true functionality is guaranteed with Knight Foundation funding alone. The truly innovative point of this project is that we simultaneously create a transformative resource for the MIT community and offer a scaleable platform that is freely available for use by other communities – here in Cambridge, throughout North America and worldwide.

Interactive Narratives 2.0 ((http://interactivenarratives.org/) )

Primary Contact Name

Mr. Andrew DeVigal

Describe your project

I launched Interactive Narratives back in July 2003. It began as personal bookmarking system where I can keep track of multimedia packages as I lectured and conducted workshops at The Poynter Institute and around the country. I quickly discovered that such a database had widespread usefulness and appeal. Common feedback from folks throughout the industry was that they felt isolated during their multimedia reporting and editing process. Times have changed. A bit. There are certainly more journalists and other storytellers out there with the passion to tell their narratives in multimedia. But there's also a lot of data smog that clog up the ability to see what's great and how we can learn from each other. Today's web 2.0 universe empowers the users to help create social networks and connect with each other. But there's still the need to distinguish the powerful and insightful stories. Time is too short to sift through the YouTubes of the world. In comes Interactive Narratives 2.0. (IN2.0) My goal is to turn Interactive Narratives into a truly community-based site through direct user engagement, user entries into the database, ratings systems and comments. In addition, new features will allow multimedia storytellers to connect directly with each other to share, explore, inspire and, potentially, collaborate. And back-end goal is not to re-invent the web 2.0 wheel but to develop a steering wheel so the community can help guide and lead the way to effective storytelling and narratives. I'd like to take the current website of Interactive Narratives and make it into a truly social network website for telling interactive stories on the web from both professional and citizen journalists alike. The documents attached are the project plans, wireframes and visual mockups we have already started to make this update to the site. I should also note that the Online News Association has agreed to pay $10,000 to help fund a portion of this plan.

Primary Contact Email

andrew.devigal@gmail.com

Organization or Business Name

Interactive Narratives

Who would want to use it and why?

Multimedia journalists, citizen journalists or anyone with an interactive story to share would be able to put up content or links to be reviewed by their peers and community. The community of interactive storytellers is relatively insular developing their packages often times alone or in a much smaller shop. IN2.0 will bridge these gaps. The success through these connections is to help each other in developing even stronger and powerful stories through collaborative reporting, editing and producing. Photographers will connect with like minded editors. Producers will find interactive developers with the same passion. Visual designers will align with similar database thinkers. And so on as storytellers across many backgrounds are collaborating beyond geographic or, for that matter, specialty limits.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

nteractive Narratives has the best database for this type off material out there. A community that contributes to this knowledge base would only make it better. And I would also argue that I am not the best person to develop this project even further. I’ve done as much as I can do at this point. I see the community as the best organization that can develop this project to the next level. This proposal would just allow me to put the right folks in play to allow the Open Source community make it the site it should be…a community for multimedia storytellers.

U.S. State

NY

Country

United States

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

The big picture of this project is to surface the stories that may not have the distribution level of major news organizations. This can be achieved beyond the ability to raise the awareness of stories through its rating and user-commenting system. But if the stars were all aligned, an over-arching work flow as a result of the collaboration inside IN2.0 comes from two storytellers from distinct backgrounds come together to tell a multimedia narrative that maybe not have been possible be before. To be more specific, there's this scenario between two typical IN2.0 persona: Freelance photographer, Justin Light, has been covering the continued atrocities happening inside a specific orphanage in Vietnam. But the sounds can add another depth to his narrative. He has an audio recorder but he's otherwise ill-equipped to edit and piece the story together. He also feels that his time is better served by reporting on the stories. Juggling too much might jeopardize his ability to capture the right moments. Justin has been a fan of IN2.0. He's created a community of his own. He's been inspired from the work linked to from the site. Through one of his communities, Justin connected with a multimedia producer, Laura Web. Laura is a New York based freelance producer who's done work with other photographers. Through Interactive Narratives, Justin posted his editing and production needs and described his story he's been reporting from in Vietnam. Laura, who speaks a little Vietnamese and has enjoyed frequent visits to the land, was drawn to Justin's pitch. They connect, agree on an arrangement and set expectations. Production is done mostly over the Internet with a few raw materials shipped. Collaboration ensues. From there, the distribution sky is the limit. Ultimately, this powerful and moving package is again linked to from Interactive Narratives. The community is moved. Another generation of interactive storytellers is inspired and connect to tell those untold stories.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

The yardstick measuring the difference would be the quality of exchanges on the site. I think the site would have made a difference if the conversations lead to rich learning opportunities, point to amazing interactive work that may not have been widely spread before and if the stories produced are from connections made through the site. This can all be discovered through the exchanges on Interactive Narratives 2.0.

Web site

http://interactivenarratives.org

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$100000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

IN2.0 will truly be gathering place for multimedia storytellers. It's not a place for just professionals but also freelancers, students and citizen journalists telling stories in interactive narratives. The site will go beyond the critiques. The site will go beyond collecting the blog postings into one space. To recite the answer to question #6, this site will gather those storytellers that care of the high-standards of their narratives. There is no other place on the web that has truly brought together the doers of multimedia storytelling and inspire collaboration. And no other site is taking the challenge of pushing those messages across other social networks out there.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$110000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

Interactive Narratives, in many ways, already has a built-in audience from the last 3 years. It also has a built-in database of resources and interactive stories that the bloggers is now only catching up to. And it has a rich historical perspective of where we've been. The goal isn't to replicate the conversation happening in the blogosphere but rather enhance it as well as surfacing the voices of the individuals in the crowd. The co-branding with ONA will also allow us to maintain the focus on journalism and yet open it all forms of storytelling. In addition, another distinctive approach to Interactive Narratives is the brevity of the general message. There are times when brevity key and when the message is told in short form. Multimedia storytellers, as with many journalists, are busy. Many need to re-learn a craft, explore new opportunities to tell a story and be inspired from discussion. But it's also very important to focus on the story gathering process. Hence, most folks I know appreciate the brevity of a message. Messages in the critique portion of the site will be kept to 300 words or less.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

1years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

We're planning to launch the site with ONA so the built-in audience will allow us to get the word out with the new functionality of the site and the redesign. Also, this proposal includes Facebook app development that will allow us to tap into the audience of the multimedia and storytelling community within that space. In addition, we plan on building out widgets for iGoogle as well as NetVibes to allow for portable tools to help engage our users beyond the site. Obviously the richness of the database and the catalog of rich interactive narratives will keep our users coming back for inspiration and engagement. The collaboration aspect will fill the need of exchanging ideas and projects throughout the site. Multimedia journalists, citizen journalists, students or anyone with an interactive story to share would be able to put up content or links to be reviewed by their peers and community. The community of interactive storytellers is relatively insular developing their packages often times alone or in a much smaller shop. Developing a true community where we can learn from each other would only make our stories even more compelling and engaging.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

ONA has given us a $10,000 supporting grant to help us do the initial redesign of the site. This will allow pay for a couple of developers to help with restructuring the user interface as well as enhance some of the user profiles and logins functionality. The proposal will cover the intended develop with social network hooks, staffing to ensure the quality of contributions and initial dialogue within the space. The Poynter Institute has expressed interest in using our IN2.0 API feed to display and interact within Poynter.org. NetVibes is prepared in helping us create a NetVibes Universe specially for Interactive Narratives.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

The initial development team is currently working on the visual design phase of the redesign of Interactive Narratives 2.0. This initial team includes a programmer, designer and developer. Our PHP/MySQL programmer, Ervic Aquino, has been with this project since the original concept in 2003. Ervic developed the original database and has since maintained the upkeep of the site through his servers, all in-kind. My brother and previous-business partner from DeVigal Design, is re-designing the visual look. And a CSS mark-up developer, Jason Speck, will be translating the visual mock-ups to web specifications. During the next phase of Interactive Narratives 2.0, or 2.1 to be exact, I've asked a few advising folks to come on board to help in the new direction of the interactivity. The advising board include Keith Jenkins of the Washington Post, Joe Weiss of SoundSlides and Regina McCombs of the Star Tribune. They will help determine the direction and useful of certain functionalities to the site. The site announced the redesign about a week and have already over 100 folks signed up as early beta-testers. The who's who on this list that will tremendously contribute to the guidance phase include Richard Koci Hernandez from The San Jose Mercury News, Seth Gitner from Roanoke Times, Mindy McAdams of University of Florida, John Poole of NPR and Rex Sorgatz of Fimoculous. Additional team members have yet to be named if this proposal goes through. But known requirements would include a quality assurance moderator, widget developers (facebook, netvibes, firefox extensions) and back-end developers that enhance the user experience and improve some of the functionality.

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

There are certainly several voices in this space "talking" about multimedia or other aspects of interactivity and photojournalism. Blog sites and blogging tools have certainly empowered several people to step on their soap-boxes and express their ideas and critiques. That's a good thing. Mindy, Koci and Angela have their blogs. Panoramist Gary O'Brien just launched his blog this week. (Links to these sites below). Other sites maintain a message boards of sorts that focus on photojournalism or the tools of video cameras. All of these voices are great for the conversation. And Interactive Narratives 2.0 by no means is to replace these. But rather, IN2.0, hopes to add their voices to the community of professional and citizen journalism who care about the democratic society and to help in the discussion of telling compelling stories and maintaining the high-standards of journalism. IN2.0 would be a gathering place for storytellers to find inspiration, resources and opportunities for collaboration. Interactive Narratives...where storytellers unite.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

I will guarantee that a team will be in place to develop and continue to maintain a site for continued engagement with the community. I will guarantee that the initial development team will take the site from a catalog of inspiring multimedia packages to a site for learning, engagement and collaboration. The initial team is made up of a visual web-designer, a CSS-markup interactive artist and a PHP/MySQL developer. This specific team is already in play. This proposal will help continue the initial team development as well secure the assistance of OpenSocial, widgets and 3rd-party applications development. The proposal will also include a moderator that will maintain the high level of quality to the site for the initial 18-month period. LAST NOTE: I submitted files in my initial proposal. I'm attaching three new files which are the current visual mockups to the redesign. If you need me to reattach the previous files, please do let me know. Thank you.

For the People

Primary Contact Name

Mr. david johnson

Describe your project

This project seeks to explore the use of Microsoft's accessible XNA framework to develop serious immersive experiences for PCs and the XBox360 that are factual, accurate and timely. The project will model the federal buildings of Washington D.C. and place in them avatars of elected and appointed officials. While a 'Second Life' potential for interactive community could exist within the model, rather than focus on the novelty of the interface, the goal will be to attach vast databases of public information to the virtual space allowing users to visualize complicated issues that generally obfuscate the workings of federal government for citizens in local districts nationwide. Interpersonal and financial relationships that underpin politics will be revealed in heretofore unseen ways. Avatars will be connected to the congressional record, speeches, public statements and news searches. Overlay maps will show current and pending budget allocations by buildings and departments. Daybooks will give users across the nation more access to the workings of the their government. While certain experiences will be built modeling point-of-view gaming experiences, others will incorporate feature-rich real-time-strategy elements. Real data will stream into the experience live over the Internet, creating links to current news sources and archives of information. All working press organizations will be invited to take part.

Primary Contact Email

davidj@american.edu

Organization or Business Name

American University School of Communication

Who would want to use it and why?

Popular wisdom targets the 18 - 34 year-old male demographic as the primary audience for gaming, however marketing research shows that console ownership and PC gaming are far more widespread across age groups and sexes. Any person in any district in the nation will be able to use the virtual interface to walk into their Senator or Representative's office building and see what is happening that day, or track the dollars in play for projects that concern them. Users will be connected to each other through their districts and have a full range of online community tools to interact with each other on multiple levels. Rather than compete with existing social networks, APIs will be developed to hook into popular communities and openly share databases from the warehouse of information.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

American University offers the perfect storm to incubate a next-generation news and government project that could impact every neighborhood in America. The School of Communication is deeply tied to national and local journalism outlets and features an excellent motion graphics department. A.U. also features strong programs in political science and international relations to offer more layers to the project. We have a strong history of forming strong strategic partnerships to create innovative communication products. If rooted in academia, this project can be a boon to all journalists, news companies and citizens nationwide. We will also be able to court technology partners to underwrite other portions of the project. Most importantly, it will be a product created by young minds to reach young minds on a platform built for the next generation. The A.U. student profile is highly engaged in politics and civics and will be the perfect ambassadors to bring credible journalism to an audience that is falling away from traditional channels in print and broadcast. We are using the online medium to replicate print and broadcast content at the same time as we shift personal communication patterns to it for various messaging activities. Yet, serious documentarians and journalists have yet to embrace and harness the power of immersive experiences that currently make up a more than $13 billion dollar entertainment industry. The technology that drives gaming may well be the most engaging communications platform ever developed. Recognizing the market, we are ready to bring serious messages to it and advance the news dialogue between government, citizens, and the fourth estate.

U.S. State

DC

Country

United States

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

The project has wide and diverse potential. With the core strategy based in open source development, media, government and citizens can all use the engine to add information and create new ways to interact and communicate in the platform. We hope people will build upon it and add more functions and modules. Once created, the platform and full documentation will be made available to create models for states and cities across the nation as well as internationally. This project will make a strong contribution to the emerging field of serious games. American University could become home to an institute dedicated to interactive documentaries and serious games, which in conjunction with the existing centers for social media and environmental film making will comprise a cluster of cutting edge incubators for thought leaders in communication. The Center for Social Media is already actively studying the game space under their present mandate. Additionally, we have an opportunity to engage journalists with the potential of using game technology to tell stories and provide information. In the educational setting, we will be able to train students in this production and open up even wider potential.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

Participation by citizens, journalists, and politicians will of course be the most primary measure of the project’s impact. Beyond gross traffic numbers, the true measure of success will be an increase in interest in the workings of the representative government and its impact on local communities. A higher level of engagement and a clearer understanding of the government is crucial as society grows and matures. While success could be measured in terms of hard numbers of registered users, or contributed data, or clients downloaded, the project will make a difference when citizens become more informed and become more engaged in the process. If more young people vote and see facts through talking points, the project will have made a difference.

Web site

http://soc.american.edu

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$3000000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

An increasing drift towards hyper-localization is the common trend as media outlets react to market pressures in this dynamic period of cultural and technological change. Cost-cutting and staff reductions are reducing the diversity of voices and coverage of government from local perspectives. Meanwhile, partisan politics, punditry and increasing sophisticated public relations tactics are obfuscating real issues that affect communities and citizens. People are losing their connection to their own government and failing to grasp the potential implications of the process on their communities and lives. This project seeks to use powerful visual organizational tools to communicate incredibly complicated data and reconnect people to in-depth journalism that concerns their community and its federal relationship. At the same time, it offers vast potential to access the broad realm of existing content at news sites online via the open API and other hooks built into the platform’s core. This is intended as an interactive aspect of the project, where those sites can use the data warehouse openly to create their own products as well as participate actively inside the virtual platform and online community.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$5000000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

The status quo is not adequately reaching audiences, particularly younger demographics, with responsible news and information about the government. Media literacy projects are clearly indicating that diversity and profusion of information is not leading to deeper and better awareness of current issues. The shrinking print news hole and quick format of continuous broadcast news do not provide adequate space or time to address complex issues. Facts become blurred by repeated punditry and obscured in narrative storytelling. The industry is confronting declining readership and fragmented viewership with their own online efforts, but with a divide in rate structures and revenue disparity between online and print, there is still a major focus on attracting younger viewers and subscribers to core products. Except for newswires and weather information shipped into the Nintendo Wii console as a service, there are no efforts being made to take the content to the gaming platform where millions of users who are not engaging with core journalism products are spending increasing hours. To discount the potential for serious uses of the platform would be similar to early filmmakers ignoring the potential to make documentaries and leave the medium in the hands of pure entertainment like the Keystone Cops.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

2years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

A portion of the budget is allocated to market the product in multiple ways. Viral and online marketing techniques will be employed, but only as one component in a strategy that also uses more traditional means. Engaging media partners at the outset provides a certain audience exposure. The software and documentation (including a documentary film) will be distributed freely at a large online community site dedicated to the project as well as on DVD. Kits will be sent to all newspapers and broadcasters around the country to engage them and get them into the project. The software will also be distributed on college and university campuses as part of a collaborative outreach program. We will speak at conferences and hold events to engage and involve producers and stakeholders as well as spread the word about the project. Other means of increasing awareness in the project are fundamental components of the service architecture, including widgets, feeds and APIs, that will draw more audience in a distributed, organic way as developers make use of them.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

We are in the process of developing a strategy to sustain the project after the initial funding round. Knight is the first granting source approached, but other foundations and endowments are likely contributors. The National Endowment for the Humanities, for example, has a digital initiative category that could fit this project. Financing will also be sought through potential sponsors and partnerships. As a public service, sponsorships will be structured and offered adopting similar guidelines as public broadcasting. We are exploring ways to provide revenue opportunities to participating media organizations to create incentives for their involvement. Users may also provide donations to continue the project once it is launched and running.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

A number of full-time faculty members will be involved in the project as well as the director, working across schools at American University to take advantage of the vast resources. In SOC, Amy Eisman and Wendell Cochran will be key in leading the journalism and database aspects of the course and faculty from the documentary film division will be core in guiding motion graphics and video components. Fellowships and post doctoral opportunities will be openly offered to attract the best minds in the field who may working at other universities. Some funds are reserved to hire dedicated staff as well as contractors for technical expertise. SOC is already partnered or working with the following major media organizations: Gannet USA Today Washington Post Newsweek NBC Scripps Howard News Service Center for Public Integrity National Public Radio Public Broadcasting System Congressional Quarterly C-SPAN The following companies comprise a short list of potential corporate partners. Relationships are in early stages: Microsoft Adobe Autodesk Sony Google Earth and Google News Firaxis Games (Baltimore) Electronic Arts (Arlington, Virginia) Bethesda Softworks (Bethesda, Maryland) Additionally, the following associations and institutes in the Washington area are also identified: Electronic Entertainment Association Institute for Serious Games National Association of Broadcasters National Newspaper Association

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

The closest comparison to this project is Google Earth; however, since the scope of Google Earth is so wide and open to any information, it is a poor comparison for the targeted journalistic application. This project is not intended to mirror alternate virtual reality experiences such as “Second Life” and create a social networking and communication platform, although some similar functionality will be inherent in the system. The development of serious games is a growing field. There is an institute for serious games in Washington, DC (www.seriousgames.org) and the Online News Association recently discussed the use of games in news and journalism at their annual meeting. The Web site, addictinggames.com has a channel dedicated to news games (http://www.addictinggames.com/newsgames.html). Games for news are in an early stage, focused more in novelty and commentary or ‘transparent interactivity.’ Yet, serious applications of interactive gaming technology are appearing, such as Discovery’s recent Everest project and the Oakland historical street reconstruction, funded by the Knight Challenge last year. Rather than focus on novelty or a single micro-community, this project seeks to use game techniques to display complicated issues, offer easier access to information and allow many communities to develop and deepen their understanding of their relationships with each other and the federal government.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

The users of the platform will have a deeper understanding of how the government relates to their communities and their daily lives. Taking a giant step forward in interactive storytelling and communication, this project will set an example for how the technology can be used by journalists to share information in new and compelling ways. The opportunity to place this work in an academic setting away from pressures of business exclusivity offers great potential to educate journalists in the theory and practice of this kind of work. The project seeks to build an alternative graphical user interface to access online news content in a completely new way, so an expected result is bringing greater exposure to Washington news and re-establishing local interest by focusing the attention on how that news relates to communities and individuals. Hopefully this will lead to renewed interest in local news operations keeping correspondents in Washington bureaus. Journalism and our democracy will benefit from healthy diversity in voices and alternatives in coverage.

Mapping Local News – Building the Virtual Model of a Local Community

Primary Contact Name

Aaron Presnall

Describe your project

We believe the future of local news will blend mobile communications with virtual worlds online: the simplest way to find out what is going on around you is to go to a community 4D virtual model, ‘drill-down’ to the micro level, the time span and the category of news (e.g. crime watch, local sales, calendar of events), and then expand headlines pinpointed across the 4D community map. We will create a platform capable of building such a 4D model as a joint effort by local community members. The 'Official' version of the model & news will be edited and 'owned' by local community editorial boards, elected through members' votes among the most prominent contributors. The latest, not-yet-approved 'Live version', as well as 'Un-official' versions will allow for alternative ideas and fun, designed by 'unofficial' groups or individuals. The 4D map itself will be fully updateable, restricted only by GPS coordinates and anchored prominent blocks/buildings. Members can use a simple set of tools to add/upgrade blocks, even individual buildings, as well as any content related to them. It will span across time, preserving past records and displaying plans for the future. News items are collected from multiple sources: incl. sms, mms, e-mail, blogs, etc.; classified in several dimensions by search-and-sort tools; and then assembled in the 'Live room' where they are commented and rated. They get a 'reliability tag' generated by a combination of factors, including the previous history of the source and consistency with other trusted sources. Those who 'pass' are directed to their location on the 'official' map. The system integrates professional journalism, focusing on precision, with citizen journalism, focusing on speed. Companies can purchase an official presence on the map (still allowing comments on their services), thus making the project sustainable. The platform will combine Drupal open source CMS with additional original open source modules: java 3D rendering, full mobile functionality, GPS, search-and-sort tools, voting.

Primary Contact Email

apresnall@jeffersoninst.org

Organization or Business Name

Jefferson Institute

Who would want to use it and why?

There is a special appeal to enabling a community to build its own virtual model, bound by the process of gathering news and data. Anyone who wants to know what is at the moment going on in the vicinity, using internet or mobile technology will be able to quickly act while on the move, either contributing a story or acquiring information. As Drupal cms is already established world wide and all additional modules will be built as open source around the Drupal core, the technology will be universally available. With relatively good mobile/internet penetration in selected areas and a large number of highly educated unemployed people, we expect our 4D models to grow quickly, and in time expand to most municipalities in Serbia, and beyond.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

The Jefferson Institute has a successful history of building and implementing novel technological solutions, ranging from networking Serbia’s military educational facilities, to building automated production lines for digital archives, to redesigning and restructuring the online presence of government institutions in Serbia. We are currently in a position to build all the necessary software for the 4D Local News Map at a high quality/cost ratio. Through our contacts with developers in Serbia, currently outsourcing for major US and Germany based software firms, we are able to gather a team of highly skilled programmers, with long experience in building virtual 3D worlds, mobile functionality, complex data structuring, and GIS and GPS tracking. By contracting these overseas programmers di