The Knight News Challenge accelerates media innovation by funding breakthrough ideas in news and information. Winners receive a share of $5 million in funding and support from Knight’s network of influential peers and advisors to help advance their ideas. The first round of 2013, which opens in February, will invite innovators from all disciplines to focus on tools for open government. In 2012, three challenge rounds, each focused on an emerging trend, drew more than 2,500 entries.
Challenge 1 - on NETWORKS: Winners were announced June 18.
Challenge 2 - on DATA: Winners were announced Sept. 20.
Challenge 3 – on MOBILE: Winners were announced Jan. 17.
Anyone, anywhere can apply for the challenge - whether for-profit start-ups or non-profit ventures. For more information on a variety of topics - from guidelines for for-profits, on intellectual property licensing, open source software and more - visit our FAQ.
Localisto is a civic-engagement mobile application that facilitates better communication between communities and government; much like a public meeting or charrette, Localisto connects people’s ideas to decision makers and in turn publishes the results to an open data platform.
2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]
Localisto is a geo-aware application that enables community members to find public projects near where they live, work and play and easily contribute feedback remotely or live at a community meeting. We believe mobile = accessible, recent statistics show that smartphone adoption is increasing at a phenomenal rate and a good portion of these new adopters are citizens that were technologically underrepresented during the heyday of the desktop computer.
3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]
When a community member uses Localisto to contribute feedback to local government it completes a feedback loop between government outreach, the publishing of open data, and the ideas of the community.
4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.
*Governments will learn about the app through partnerships with open data providers already offering their service to the governments
*Community groups will be able to access open data collected by Localisto and use it for their own purposes closing the feedback loop and providing positive reinforcement for citizen input.
*Citizens will learn about the app through existing local gov channels: social media campaigns, emails blasts, fliers, and postcards in the mail.
5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]
We are excited to have established a partnership with the City of Seattle and connections with a major open data software service provider and Feet First, a local Pedestrian advocacy organization . These collaborators are standing by for a finished mobile app in order to begin testing and iterating on the design with the goal of helping us bring our product from prototype to market.
6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links]
Localisto is currently in development and so close to having a beta release that we can barely sleep at night:) (this short video shows our current progress). In subsequent releases we have even bigger plans for its functionality, including open data plug-ins, automated infographics produced from survey results and more social media integration like the ability to launch open data Twitter campaigns about civic events.
7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]
Success for Localisto is completing the feedback loop between government and community. In order to accomplish this we must find longevity through growing a profitable, therefore sustainable business supported by partnerships with local governments nationwide.
8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]
Localisto needs funding to bring an awesome beta product to a full scale national-market force. With support from the Knight Foundation our team could hire 2 additional technical members, fund our current expenses and ultimately realize our goal to revolutionize communication between government and citizens.
Additional details:
Please list who is on your team: Barrett McBride (Product Designer) Jacqueline Gow (Business Development) Dustin McBride (Product Engineer)
Expected number of months to complete project: 8-12 months
Estimated Project Cost: $650,000
Name: Localisto
Twitter: @localisto
Email address: hello@localisto.org
Organization [if applicable]: www.localisto.org
City: Seattle
Country: USA
How did you learn about the contest? Knight Foundation tweets
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