Knight News Challenge Round 3

News Challenge on open gov launches Feb. 12

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 12:01:00 -0500

Photo credit: Flickr user Ed Schipul

The Knight News Challenge on open government will run from Feb. 12 to March 18. It’s an opportunity to win part of the $5 million we’ll use this year to support innovative projects.

We expect the News Challenge to generate proposals to improve the way citizens and governments interact. Projects could help parents evaluate schools, make weather data more usable, identify best routes from one town to another, or identify pork in the federal budget.

Just as we do with “news,” we’re defining “open government” broadly. Wikipedia says it “holds that citizens have the right to access the documents and proceedings of the government to allow for effective public oversight.” The OpenGov Foundation says it’s about “making it easier for people to access and use as much government information as possible.” In their book Open Government, Daniel Lathrop and Laurel Ruma describe it even more broadly as “transparency, collaboration and participation.”

One of our goals for the News Challenge is to involve more people in the use of technology to solve community problems. “Dozens of developers looking at each other in conference rooms over pizza is never going to lead to making lives better…without the active involvement of real residents expressing real needs and advocating for software that makes sense to them,” wrote Daniel O’Neil of the Smart Chicago Collaborative recently. We hope to help extend the spirit of open gov beyond those conference rooms, and to catalyze partnerships between hackers, civic innovators, governments, journalists and others. As a social investor, we feel the time is right to help advance the field.

We are looking for more than just applicants for this challenge; we’re looking for participants. The challenge will open on Feb. 12 with an “inspiration” phase where anyone - journalists, state and local officials, citizens, community foundations, schools, others - can share problems they’d like to see solved and success stories they’d like to see accelerated. We hope they’ll continue to participate with their comments as applicants start submitting project entries on Feb. 19. We’ll announce the winners in June.

With this News Challenge, we’re building on a number of existing and past Knight Foundation investments in the field — leaders like Sunlight Foundation, Code for America, Open Knowledge Foundation; information and data projects like TurboVote, EveryBlock, The State Decoded, Poderopedia; and projects working to make it easier for citizens to engage with government, like Recovers.org, Textizen and Local Data. And projects built on open data are among the most popular at leading news organizations like the Texas Tribune and ProPublica.

Catherine Bracy (who worked with us on the News Challenge in 2011) recently described why she’s decided to work on open gov at Code for America:

“…government is us. We get out of it what we put in and, as citizens, we don’t have the luxury of being able to write government off. The only way for us to make it better is to engage with it. Technologists have so much potential to fix what’s broken about democracy and it’s vitally important that we do.”

We’ll have more details when we launch on Feb. 12 and will also hold open office hours at 1:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, Feb. 7. Stay tuned to @knightfdn and #newschallenge for more details.

In the meantime, if you have any questions, leave them here in the comment field, or hit me up at bracken@knightfoundation.org.

By John Bracken, director/journalism and media innovation at Knight Foundation

Eight mobile ventures win $2.4 million in funding via Knight News Challenge

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 09:57:00 -0500

Wikipedia to be more mobile and global with Knight Foundation funding

Winners present projects via Web stream Friday, Jan. 18 at knightfoundation.org/live

PHOENIX – (Jan. 17, 2013) – Ranging from projects that turn no-frills mobile phones into radio stations to applications that help newsrooms manage a deluge of incoming mobile content, eight media innovation ventures received a total of $2.4 million today as winners of the Knight News Challenge: Mobile.

Many of the projects focus on using mobile to get news and information in developing countries. Among them: Wikipedia, which will develop new tools to allow people to access articles and knowledge via text message in multiple languages. The project is part of the Wikimedia Foundation’s efforts to offer access in the developing world to its site without prohibitive data charges.

“In 2013 the number of Internet-enabled mobile devices is expected to be greater than the number of computers for the first time. These eight Knight News Challenge projects, and the innovators behind them, are helping to stretch the ways people around the world are engaging with information and using it to shape their communities,” Michael Maness, VP for journalism and media innovation at Knight Foundation.

The challenge, one of three launched in 2012 by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, accelerates projects with funding and advice from Knight’s network of media innovators. For the third round, Knight Foundation sought ideas that harness mobile technology to inform and engage communities.

The winners of the challenge will present their projects via live Web stream at 12:30 p.m. ET/ 10:30 a.m. MT Friday, Jan. 18, live from a gathering on the future of mobile media at Arizona State University. (Follow #newschallenge on Twitter.)

In addition to Wikipedia, the winners include:

WITNESS: Helping newsrooms authenticate the deluge of photos and videos emerging from news events by creating an app that automatically stamps the content with identifying information, including the location where it was taken. The project is lead by the human rights organization WITNESS in partnership with The Guardian Project.

Digital Democracy: Enabling residents of the Peruvian Amazon to document the effects of mining and oil drilling by creating a mobile tool kit they can use to collect and share data.

RootIO: Piloting software that will connect basic mobile phones with a transmitter to turn them into micro community radio stations. The effort is being tested in Uganda.

Abayima: Creating an app that turns a SIM card into a storage device for news and information. The app will be particularly useful in crisis situations, allowing journalists and others to safely transfer information when communication networks are compromised or disabled.

Textizen: Expanding the ways governments can collect citizen input by enabling it through text. Piloted through Code for America, Textizen works by placing survey questions in physical places like parks and bus stops where residents will encounter them and can text in their opinion.

TKOH: Creating a more natural tool for recording oral histories with an app that prompts people to tell stories when they see pre-selected photos or videos.

Cafédirect Producers’ Foundation: Connecting small farmers in developing countries with advice and feedback via a platform through which they can ask questions and have them quickly answered by farmers in other communities. In the pilot, a Kenyan farmer received advice on frost control and tips on raising rabbits.

Full project descriptions and winner bios follow.

Knight Foundation, the nation’s leading funder of journalism and media innovation, is committed to promoting democracy by supporting informed and engaged communities. Founded by newsmen John S. and James L. Knight, the foundation launched the Knight News Challenge in 2007 to find the next generation of innovations that help communities get the information they need.

The News Challenge took place three times in 2012, with the first two rounds announcing projects that focused on the topics of networks and data. In 2013, Knight Foundation will hold two challenges. The first, on tools for open government, will open in February.

Over the challenge’s six years, Knight Foundation has reviewed more than 13,000 applications and funded 88 projects for more than $32 million. Winners include leading Internet entrepreneurs, emerging media innovators and traditional newsrooms.

Their projects have been adopted by large media organizations and are having an impact. DocumentCloud, which helps journalists analyze, annotate and publish original-source documents, is being used by more than 650 news organizations nationwide, and its open source code is among the most-watched on GitHub, a recent report found.

Find out more about the winning mobile projects during the 12:30 p.m. ET/ 10:30 a.m. MT Web stream on Friday, Jan. 18 at knightfoundation.org/live,

Knight News Challenge: Mobile Winners

Winner: Abayima

Award: $150,000
Project Lead: Jon Gosier, Philadelphia, Pa.
Twitter: @jongos, @abayima

Video: http://kng.ht/UjXMIB

The majority of mobile phone users around the world use simple feature phones which, unlike smartphones, do not have advanced storage or secondary communication options like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Abayima wants to build an open source application that people can use to store information to SIM cards – effectively turning the cards into storage devices and their mobile phones into e-readers. This app is particularly useful for sharing news and information in countries where communication networks are unsafe to use due to surveillance or where authorities or other circumstances have shut off access to the Internet altogether. The team has successfully piloted a program with Ugandan activists during the country’s 2011 elections, while all SMS traffic in the country was monitored for voices of dissent. With challenge funding, Abayima plans to build the kit as an open source, full service, easy-to-use platform which enables publishing to SIM cards.

Bio: Gosier is a software developer and technologist working at the intersection of open data and global development. In 2008 he founded Appfrica, a company focused on building Africa’s tech ecosystem. In 2011, in response to repeat attempts by oppressive governments to use electronic communication channels against citizens and activists, he established Abayima to help protect human rights and free speech around the globe.

Winner: Cafédirect Producers’ Foundation (CPF)

Award:$260,000
Project Leads: Kady Murphy, Claire Rhodes and Kenny Ewan, London, UK
Twitter: @we_farm; @TheCPFoundation

Video: http://kng.ht/V9PbsX

Smallholder farmers in developing countries have limited access to support and best practices. The Cafédirect Producers’ Foundation, which designs projects to support small-scale farmers, will use mobile to address this need by building a platform allowing farmers to ask questions and share knowledge about any farming topic, have it translated by volunteers, answered by farmers in other communities and returned to them via basic SMS messages. Knight funds will enable the project, called WeFarm, to expand on successful pilots in Kenya, Peru and Tanzania, where farmers exchanged more than 4,600 SMS messages, an average of more than 70 per user, on topics such as frost control and animal husbandry.

Bios: Rhodes is the foundation’s general manager. She joined in 2009, attracted by the foundation’s goal to be an organization led by smallholder farmers for smallholder farmers. Previously, Rhodes worked with a number of international organizations to promote the leadership of smallholder farmers and grassroots communities within rural development processes. This has included seven years with the US-based nonprofit Ecoagriculture Partners, coordinating a program to enable smallholder farming communities across the world to share knowledge with each other, as well as consultancies with the United Nations Development Program, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and UK Department for International Development. Rhodes holds a Masters in Environmental Technology (2001).

Murphy is the foundation’s fundraising coordinator. She graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a master’s in Spanish and Business Studies before moving into international development fundraising. She has worked for African street children’s charity Retrak and humanitarian agency CARE International UK before joining CPF in 2011. When she isn’t writing funding proposals, she volunteers with Crossworld, a charity for refugees in South London and is trying to get to grips with Swahili noun classes.

Ewan is the foundation’s program manager, which includes managing this project. He obtained a degree in architecture in his native Scotland, before moving to Peru to work with ProWorld Service Corps, an international development NGO, as regional director for Latin America, working with isolated, indigenous communities across the region, and supporting local people to design and implement sustainable and practical development projects. These ranged from constructing schools and fish farms to facilitating enterprise development and training for grassroots youth and women’s groups. Ewan returned to the UK in 2009 to take up his role as program manager as part of the CPF start-up team.

Winner: Digital Democracy

Award: $200,000
Project Lead: Emily Jacobi and Gregor MacLennan, New York, N.Y.
Twitter: @emjacobi & @digidem

In remote parts of the Peruvian Amazon, where mining and oil drilling are impacting the environment, health and economies of indigenous communities, residents lack the tools to collect and report these events to the outside world. Digital Democracy, a nonprofit that builds community technology capacity in marginalized communities, will create and combine existing open software to produce a tool kit communities can use to share their stories and make informed choices. The team will work with local partners in the Peruvian Amazon to deploy and test the tool kit and train residents in its use.

Bios: Jacobi is co-founder and executive director of Digital Democracy, a New York-based nonprofit that works globally to empower marginalized communities addressing human and environmental rights. Beginning her career as a youth journalist at 13, Jacobi reported from Havana, Cuba. She has since worked media and technology projects with marginalized communities around the globe, including migrant workers, women’s groups, refugee youth and indigenous people. Jacobi has written extensively on the use of technology for civic engagement, and has presented on the intersection of technology and human rights to the U.S. Congress, the State Department, the United Nations, and numerous universities and technology conferences.

MacLennan has worked on indigenous rights and environmental issues in the Peruvian Amazon for more than 10 years. Co-founder and advisor to the nonprofit indigenous rights group Shinai, he spent seven years living in Peru working with indigenous communities to defend their territory from incursions by illegal loggers and petroleum companies. MacLennan has extensive experience in participative territory mapping, facilitating communities to draw maps of their territory and use GPS and satellite technologies to turn hand maps into detailed geographic representations of indigenous land use. Prior to joining Digital Democracy to lead the Remote Access initiative, MacLennan worked for the US-based campaign organization Amazon Watch as Peru Program Coordinator.

Winner: RootIO

Award: $200,000
Project Lead: Chris Csikszentmihalyi and Jude Mukundane, Los Angeles, Calif.
Twitter: @RootioRadio, @csik

Radio continues to be a powerful tool for community information, and the RootIO project amplifies it by mixing its power with new mobile and Internet technologies. RootIO is an open-source toolkit that allows communities to create their own micro radio stations with an inexpensive smartphone and transmitter, and to share, promote and collaborate on dynamic content. The project will be piloted in Uganda in partnership with the Uganda Radio Network, UNICEF Uganda and UNICEF Innovation Unit.

Bio: Csikszentmihalyi is a technologist, humanist, designer, and artist. His work is focused around designing information and communications technologies for communities to mitigate the negative aspects of globalism. He is currently helping to start a new program around design for social change at the Art Center College of Design, where he is a professor of media design. Prior to that, he co-founded and directed the MIT Center for Future Civic Media, dedicated to developing technologies that strengthen communities. He also founded the MIT Media Lab’s Computing Culture group, which worked to create unique media technologies for socio-cultural and political applications.

Mukundane is a software developer and technology enthusiast. His work mostly involves development of distributed applications communicating over IP networks. He is currently working with Uganda Telecom as head of VAS and Technology Innovations to devise innovative ways of harnessing telecommunication technologies for service delivery.

Winner: Textizen

Award: $350,000
Project Leads: Michelle Lee, Serena Wales, Alex Yule, San Francisco, Calif. and Philadelphia, Pa.
Twitter: @textizen, @mishmosh, @gangleton, @yuletide

Video http://kng.ht/UjYjKt

Textizen is building software to transform the citizen feedback loop. Across the country, a growing number of civic leaders are looking for new ways to connect with constituents. Neighborhood meetings are costly to run, and attendance isn’t always representative. By placing questions in physical places and inviting residents to respond from their mobile phones, Textizen creates new ways for meaningful civic participation. Started as a Code for America pilot project in Philadelphia, Textizen identified early best practices by experimenting with several types of campaigns. One, for example, asked for feedback on public transit changes by posing a text-to-vote question at a bus stop. Building on these pilots, the team will license the software to cities seeking to create new open, engaging channels for civic participation.

Bios: Lee is the chief executive officer of Textizen. She brings eight years of experience in user-centered design and research, most recently at Google where she created Google Forms and worked on Google Maps. Previously, she designed online trust and safety tools for eBay, cars for baby boomers, and studied human-computer interaction at Stanford University’s Symbolic Systems Program.

Wales is the technology officer for Textizen. As a 2012 Code for America fellow, Wales worked with the City of New Orleans to build Blightstatus, giving residents accurate and up-to-date information about their neighborhood. Previously, Serena worked at Purpose, Inc., building online campaign tools and web applications for nonprofits and corporations, and developed interactive projects for the High Museum of Art and the Davis Museum. Serena graduated from Wellesley College in 2009 with degrees in Media Arts & Sciences and History.

Yule is the chief operating officer for Textizen. Previously, Yule built interactive web mapping experiences on the Mapping Center team at Esri, an industry leader in Geographic Information System (GIS) software. Alex graduated cum laude from Middlebury College with a degree in Geography. An avid writer and photographer, his technical skills include application planning and design, web development, data analysis, and visualization.

Winner: TKOH

Award: $330,000
Project Leads: Kacie Kinzer, Tom Gerhardt, Caroline Oh, New York, N.Y.
Twitter: @kaciekinzer, @tomgerhardt, @carolineyoh

Current tools for recording oral history, such as video cameras and professional audio equipment, can be difficult to use and hamper the social nature of a conversation. This project will ease the process by building a simple application that enables users of all experience levels to create rich audio/visual stories that can be archived and shared easily with groups of people, ranging from immediate family members to the extended user community, depending on the user’s preference. By making it easy to record and share stories amongst generations and communities, it will make it possible to preserve the stories of target groups, including rural ranchers in New Mexico whose lives reflect a disappearing culture of endurance and gifted storytelling, before the app launches more broadly.

Bios: Oh, project co-founder, is a graphic and interaction designer working at the forefront of innovation in the digital humanities. She has acted as Lead Designer of award-winning installations and apps for clients including the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Smithsonian Channel and New York Public Library for the studio Potion. Oh is a Design Fellow for the Center for Urban Pedagogy, creating tools to empower local communities, and is also working to develop the Global Action Project’s first digital curriculum in partnership with Mozilla’s Hive Learning initiative. Oh holds a Graphic Design MFA from CalArts and a Film BA from the University of Michigan.

Gerhardt, project co-founder, has worked as a software engineer developing interactive tools and experiences for clients including the National History Museum, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and the Museum of Science and Industry. Currently, Tom is a co-founder of Studio Neat, a consumer product company that has launched numerous successful products including hardware and software tools for mobile devices, and recently co-wrote a book on independent capitalism and design entrepreneurship in the 21st century. Tom is an adjunct professor at ITP, where he teaches hardware and software design and usability. Tom holds a master’s degree from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP).

Kinzer, project co-founder, works to create rich and playful technologically mediated experiences that change our relationships with everyday contexts and each other. Her project, the Tweenbots, is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Kinzer has taught as an adjunct professor for the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU, and as a teaching artist at the MoMA. As a producer and interaction designer at Potion Design, Kinzer helped create interactive projects for clients including the New York Public Library, the Smithsonian, and Bell Labs. Kinzer is currently a doctoral student at NYU where her work focuses on narrative and informal learning.

Winner: Wikimedia Foundation

Award: $600,000
Project Lead: Kul Takanao Wadhwa, San Francisco, Calif.
Twitter: @wikimedia, @wikipedia

As mobile technology is increasingly the primary opportunity for billions of people around the world to access the Internet, the Wikimedia Foundation is working to remove the two biggest hurdles to access free knowledge: cost and accessibility. News Challenge funding will help create software to bring Wikipedia to lower-end, more basic phones - the kinds the majority of people use to access data outside of the West. Specifically, efforts will be focused in three areas: developing features to improve the mobile experience regardless of how feature-rich the device is – including new ways to access Wikipedia via text; increasing the number of languages that can access Wikipedia on mobile; and improving the way feature phones access the platform.

Bio: Takanao Wadhwa, head of mobile and business development, joined the Wikimedia Foundation when it launched in 2007. He leads the foundation’s efforts to increase access to Wikipedia, with a focus on developing countries.

Winner: WITNESS

Award: $320,000
Project Lead: Sam Gregory and Bryan Nunez (at WITNESS) and Nathan Freitas and Harlo Holmes (at Guardian Project), New York, N.Y.
Twitter: @SamGregory, @Tech_wit, @N8FR8, @Harlo

In situations of conflict or civil unrest, where ordinary people are using their mobile phones to create and share media, news organizations and others have trouble authenticating the origins of photos, videos or audio. In collaboration with The Guardian Project, the international human rights organization WITNESS seeks to solve this problem by launching the InformaCam app. The mobile app allows users to incorporate key metadata in their video (who, what, where, corroborating identifiers), watermark it as coming from a particular camera, and share it in an encrypted format with someone the user trusts. News outlets, human rights organizations and everyday people could use the app in a variety of ways - for a breaking news story using first-hand video from a citizen journalist, sharing evidence of war crimes from a conflict zone, or to verify the images of a fender bender that someone could take to small claims court. Alongside this, WITNESS is advocating for the incorporation of a “citizen witness” functionality based on InformaCam into other platforms and apps.

Bios: Freitas is a long-time mobile technology innovator and global human rights activist and trainer. Through his work in support of the Tibetan independence movement over the last 13 years, Nathan came to understand the promise and peril of applying new technology to activists in high-risk situations, and in response founded the Guardian Project in 2009. Freitas also teaches “Social Activism using Mobile Technology” at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program. He is currently on a six-month research trip in India, Nepal, Thailand and Burma, tracking adoption of low cost smartphones and 3G networks throughout the region.

Gregory is the program director for WITNESS. He is an internationally recognized human rights advocate, trainer and video producer who helps people use the power of the moving image and participatory technologies to create human rights change. As program director he focuses on empowering millions of people to use video effectively, safely and ethically. In 2010, he was a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Resident on the future of video-based advocacy, and in 2012 he was named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. He teaches on human rights and participatory media as an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Holmes is a media scholar, software programmer, and activist. As research fellow with The Guardian Project, she primarily investigates topics in digital media steganography, metadata, and the standards surrounding technology in the social sciences. She harnesses her multifaceted background in service of responding to the growing technological needs of human rights workers, journalists, and other do-gooders around the world. Holmes is currently based in New York City.

Nunez is the technology manager at WITNESS where he oversees the development of projects like the Hub, the first website dedicated to citizen human rights media, and the Secure Smart Cam, a suite of camera-phone apps for human rights activists. Prior to WITNESS, he was a technology strategist and consultant on a variety of projects ranging from online banking to interactive television. He is an alumnus of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU and has a BA in anthropology from UC Berkeley.

About Knight Foundation

Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. We believe that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.

Photos: http://kng.ht/13EqXLm

Contact

Andrew Sherry, Vice President/Communications, (305) 908-2677, media@knightfoundation.org

Releated Links

“#newschallenge mobile winners exemplify the rate of innovation globally” by Chris Sopher on Knight Blog

Watch live video stream of winners ‘lightning-style’ presentations on Friday Jan. 18, 12:30 pm ET at Knightfoundation.org/live

Download photos of winners here:
http://flic.kr/s/aHsjDyjDdv

#newschallenge mobile winners exemplify the rate of innovation globally

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 09:45:00 -0500

Wikipedia to be more mobile and global with Knight Foundation funding

Winners present projects via Web stream Friday, Jan. 18 at knightfoundation.org/live

Releated Links

“#newschallenge mobile winners exemplify the rate of innovation globally” by Chris Sopher on Knight Blog

Watch live video stream of winners ‘lightning-style’ presentations on Friday Jan. 18, 12:30 pm ET at Knightfoundation.org/live

Download photos of winners here:
http://flic.kr/s/aHsjDyjDdv

In addition to Wikipedia, the winners include:

Digital Democracy: Enabling residents of the Peruvian Amazon to document the effects of mining and oil drilling by creating a mobile tool kit they can use to collect and share data.

RootIO: Piloting software that will connect basic mobile phones with a transmitter to turn them into micro community radio stations. The effort is being tested in Uganda.

TKOH: Creating a more natural tool for recording oral histories with an app that prompts people to tell stories when they see pre-selected photos or videos.

Full project descriptions and winner bios follow.

Find out more about the winning mobile projects during the 12:30 p.m. ET/ 10:30 a.m. MT Web stream on Friday, Jan. 18 at knightfoundation.org/live,

Knight News Challenge: Mobile Winners

Winner: Abayima

Award: $150,000
Project Lead: Jon Gosier, Philadelphia, Pa.
Twitter: @jongos, @abayima

Video: http://kng.ht/UjXMIB

Winner: Cafédirect Producers’ Foundation (CPF)

Award:$260,000
Project Leads: Kady Murphy, Claire Rhodes and Kenny Ewan, London, UK
Twitter: @we_farm; @TheCPFoundation

Video: http://kng.ht/V9PbsX

Winner: Digital Democracy

Award: $200,000
Project Lead: Emily Jacobi and Gregor MacLennan, New York, N.Y.
Twitter: @emjacobi & @digidem

Winner: RootIO

Award: $200,000
Project Lead: Chris Csikszentmihalyi and Jude Mukundane, Los Angeles, Calif.
Twitter: @RootioRadio, @csik

Winner: Textizen

Award: $350,000
Project Leads: Michelle Lee, Serena Wales, Alex Yule, San Francisco, Calif. and Philadelphia, Pa.
Twitter: @textizen, @mishmosh, @gangleton, @yuletide

Video http://kng.ht/UjYjKt

Winner: TKOH

Award: $330,000
Project Leads: Kacie Kinzer, Tom Gerhardt, Caroline Oh, New York, N.Y.
Twitter: @kaciekinzer, @tomgerhardt, @carolineyoh

Current tools for recording oral history, such as video cameras and professional audio equipment, can be difficult to use and hamper the social nature of a conversation. This project will ease the process by building a simple application that enables users of all experience levels to create rich audio/visual stories that can be archived and shared easily with groups of people, ranging from immediate family members to the extended user community, depending on the user’s preference. By making it easy to record and share stories amongst generations and communities, the project will make it possible to preserve the stories of target groups, including rural ranchers in New Mexico whose lives reflect a disappearing culture of endurance and gifted storytelling, before the app launches more broadly.

Winner: Wikimedia Foundation

Award: $600,000
Project Lead: Kul Takanao Wadhwa, San Francisco, Calif.
Twitter: @wikimedia, @wikipedia

Winner: WITNESS

Award: $320,000
Project Lead: Sam Gregory and Bryan Nunez (at WITNESS) and Nathan Freitas and Harlo Holmes (at Guardian Project), New York, N.Y.
Twitter: @SamGregory, @Tech_wit, @N8FR8, @Harlo

About Knight Foundation

Photos: http://kng.ht/13EqXLm

Contact

Andrew Sherry, Vice President/Communications, (305) 908-2677, media@knightfoundation.org

Knight News Challenge: looking forward to 2013, and back on 2012

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 15:54:00 -0500

As 2012 ends, we want to give you an update on the Knight News Challenge.

For 2013, we’re planning two News Challenges. The first will focus on tools for open government and will open in February. The second will open in the fall, on a topic we’ll announce early next year.

We ran three contests this year, on Networks, Data and Mobile. We’ll be unveiling the third set of winners Jan. 17 at the Cronkite School at Arizona State University.

Here are updates on what some recent News Challenge winners have been up to over the last month:

Anu Sridharan, founder NextDrop, was named this week to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 List. (Here’s Anu at TEDxGateway in Mumbai.)
TEDxWomen highlighted the work of Recovers.org.
Watchup, the startup iPad video news app, announced it had raised additional $500,000 in funding. Its founder Adriano Farano gave an Ignite Talk on lasagna design at NewsFoo.
Waldo Jaquith, founder of the State Decoded, ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to “Liberate Virginia’s Legislative Video.”
Poderopedia launched the beta version of its power relationship map, based on Chile, last week.

In the first half of next year, we’ll also be releasing an assessment of the 2010 Knight News Challenge winners (following reviews of 09 and 07-08 winners.)

We’ll have more details on the 2013 challenges early next year. To stay in the loop, follow @knightfdn.

By Knight Foundation’s Chris Sopher, journalism program associate

Semi-finalists advance in News Challenge: Mobile

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:22:04 -0400

Today in Miami, we’re gathering 16 journalists, engineers, and entrepreneurs to help us review the semi-finalists in the latest Knight News Challenge, on mobile.

By the end of the day, we hope to have 10-12 finalists that we’ll examine more deeply over the next few weeks. (If you are one of those finalists, you can expect to hear from us by next week.) We expect to bring about five to seven of those forward for consideration by Knight Foundation’s trustees at its December board meeting and to publicly announce the winners in January of 2013.

The semi-finalists projects are:

A Mobile Good Health Community
Abayima
Amongst
Apps for Good
Augmented Reality & Geolocation Toolkit
Backyard Budget Mobile
Boomerang Mojo News
Byzantium
Carbon Creditor
CityStatus
Commons
DialFly
documentaryMapper
Elva
Escape Velocity
FINtegrate
Human.io
Is this for real?
Live field reporting narratives
LocalWiki Mobile
Louisiana Smart Grid
mActivist in a Box
Mobilizing Psychology
n0tice Customizable citizen reporting
National Council on Aging
Navajo InfoWire
NC Mobile Voter Guide
Open 311 Mobile Dashboard
Open mHealth
Project Mobile Connections
Remote Access: Connecting threatened communities with the outside world
ReSystem: Rethinking media in developing countries
scalable networked community radio
Secure Mobile Communications Tool for Journalists
StormCrowd
Textizen: Citizen feedback for the digital age
Thread
Virtual town meeting
WeFarm: Reaching the 75%
Wikipedia mobile

In addition to those listed above, we are also reviewing 13 closed applications.

We’d like to thank the following people who have taken the time to join us in reviewing these projects:

Mark Armstrong, Pocket; Krishna Bharat, Google; Blaine Cooke; Erika Fowler, Wesleyan University; Aziz Gilani, DFJ Mercury; Dan Green, Gates Foundation; Reyhan Harmanci, Buzzfeed; Hilary Hoeber, IDEO; Jaime Holguin, Associated Press; Sue Kronick; Omar Lee; Andrew MacLaughlin; Aron Pilhofer, New York Times; Dan Sinker, Mozilla; Kio Stark, NYU ITP; Ethan Zuckerman, MIT Center for Civic Media;

We closed the Knight News Challenge: Mobile in September with over 525 applications. Winners of the two earlier News Challenge rounds of year, on networks and data have already been announced. We also recently announced that the first theme of Knight’s 2013 News Challenge will focus on tools for open government.

By Knight’s John Bracken, director/journalism and media innovation and Chris Sopher, journalism program associate.

Highlighting the 2%: the Knight News Challenge: Data finalists

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 15:28:59 -0400

This morning, we announced the winners of the Knight News Challenge: Data.

We’d also like to share the 15 finalists. While we weren’t able to fund all of them, we enjoyed getting to know more about the people and ideas behind them, and hope to see them come to life in the months ahead.

We’ve heard that it’s valuable for people to see the original applications for the projects that rose to the top, so gathered them them all in one place. If you want to learn more about each of the finalists and the winners, check out the links to each of their original submissions (an asterisk notes a News Challenge: Data winner).

Census.IRE.org (*)
Joe Germuska, John Keefe, Ryan Pitts, Investigative Reporters & Editors

Community Health Analytics: Making Community Health Data Useful
Scott Lee, Harvard University

Computer Assisted Text Analysis for Journalism
Gary King, Harvard University

Data Toys
Heather Chaplin, Colleen Macklin, John Sharp, The New School

The Internet of News Things
Matt Waite, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Hyperaudio Pad
Mark Boas, Happyworm

LocalData (*)
Alicia Rouault, Prashant Singh and Matt Hampel, Amplify Labs

Mapping LA API
Ben Welsh, The Los Angeles Times

New tools for OpenStreetMap (*)
Eric Gundersen, Development Seed Inc.

Open Elections (*)
Derek Willis, The New York Times;
Serdar Tumgoren, The Washington Post

OpenIR: Mapping Your Environment in a New Light
Arlene Ducao, MIT Media Lab

Pop Up Archive (*)
Bailey Smith and Anne Wootton

Safecast Radiation & Air Quality (*)
Sean Bonner, Safecast

Sentiment Analysis Engine for Chinese Social Media
David Wertime, Tea Leaf Nation

Social Bots
Nicolas Della Penna

By Knight’s John Bracken, director/journalism and media innovation and Chris Sopher, journalism program associate.

Winners of News Challenge: Data

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 10:25:00 -0400

Knight News Challenge: Data Winners from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.

Today we’re excited to share with you the winners of the Knight News Challenge: Data.

First, some background: We ran the contest for three weeks, ending June 20. And we sought ideas to help make the large amounts of data we’re creating more useful and informative. We received 881 applications, which we reviewed with the help of a group of advisers. We identified 50 proposals to discuss further, and in July we brought to Miami a group of reviewers to advise us. We listened to their advice, had internal conversations, and conducted interviews and due diligence with 15 applicants.

As we announce the below winners, we’re in the midst of reviewing applications for the News Challenge: Mobile, and later this fall we’ll begin planning our first News Challenge of 2013, on tools for open government.

Knight News Challenge: Data Winners (Full project lead bios are here)

Census.IRE.org
Award: $450,000
Winner: Joe Germuska, Chicago; John Keefe, New York; Ryan Pitts, Spokane, Wash.

Despite the high value of Census data, the U.S. Census Bureau’s tools for exploring the data are difficult to use. A group of news developers built Census.IRE.org for the 2010 Census to help journalists more easily access Census data. Following early positive feedback, the team will expand and simplify the tool, and add new data sets including the annual American Community Survey, which informs decisions on how more than $400 billion in government funding is distributed.

LocalData
Award: $300,000
Winners: Amplify Labs, Alicia Rouault, Prashant Singh and Matt Hampel, Detroit, Mich.

Whether tracking crime trends, cataloging real estate development or assessing parks and play spaces, communities gather millions of pieces of data each year. Such data are often collected haphazardly on paper forms or with hard-to-use digital tools, limiting their value. LocalData is a set of tools that helps community groups and city residents gather and organize information by designing simple surveys, seamlessly collecting it on paper or smartphone and exporting or visualizing it through an easy-to-use dashboard. Founded by Code for America fellows, the tools have already been tested in Detroit, where they helped document urban blight by tracking the condition of thousands of lots.

New contributor tools for OpenStreetMap
Award: $575,000
Winners: Development Seed Inc. / Eric Gundersen, Washington, D.C.

OpenStreetMap, a community mapping project, is quickly becoming a leading source for open street-level data, with foursquare, Wikimedia and other major projects signing on as users. However, there is a significant learning curve to joining the growing contributor community. With Knight News Challenge funds, Development Seed will build a suite of easy-to-use tools allowing anyone to contribute data such as building locations, street names and points of interest. The team will promote the tools worldwide and help contribute to the growth of OpenStreetMap.

Pop Up Archive
Award: $300,000
Winners: Bailey Smith and Anne Wootton, Oakland, Calif.

Today, media is created with greater ease, and by more people, than ever before. But multimedia content – including interviews, pictures and more – cannot survive online unless it is organized. Pop Up Archive takes media from the shelf to the Web – making content searchable, reusable and shareable, without requiring technical expertise or substantial resources from producers. A beta version was built around the needs of The Kitchen Sisters, Peabody award-winning journalists and independent producers who have collected stories of people’s lives for more than 30 years. Pop Up Archive will use News Challenge funds to further develop its platform and to do outreach to potential users.

Open Elections
Award: $200,000
Winners: Derek Willis and Serdar Tumgoren, Washington, D.C.

Elections are fundamental to democracy, yet the ability to easily analyze the results are out of reach for most journalists and civic hackers. No freely available, comprehensive source of official election results exists. Open Elections will create the first, with a standardized, linked set of certified election results for U.S. federal and statewide offices. The database will allow the people who work with election data to be able to get what they need, whether that’s a CSV file for stories and data analysis or a JSON usable for Web applications and interactive graphics. The project also will allow for linking election data to other critical data sets. The hope is that one day, journalists and researchers will be able much more easily to analyze elections in ways that account for campaign spending, demographic changes and legislative track records.

Safecast Radiation & Air Quality
Award: $400,000
Winners: Safecast / Sean Bonner, Los Angeles

Safecast, a trusted provider of radiation data in post-quake Japan, is now expanding with challenge funding to create a real-time map of air quality in U.S. cities. A team of volunteers, scientists and developers quickly formed Safecast in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, when demand for radiation monitoring devices and data far surpassed the supply. The project has collected more than 4 million records and become the leading provider of radiation data. With News Challenge funding, Safecast will measure air quality in Los Angeles and expand to other U.S. cities. Disclosure: Knight Foundation Trustee Joi Ito is an officer of the Momoko Ito Foundation, which is receiving the funds on behalf of Safecast.

This was the first News Challenge we’ve run with our new prototype fund in place. In the coming weeks, we’re likely to support as prototypes several projects that came to us through the News Challenge. We also found projects that we liked a lot but that fell outside our focus on data. We’re still exploring those projects and may fund some of them through other means. I expect we’ll see more of that in the future; the News Challenge is a means to get your project funded, but for us it’s also a way to uncover ideas, innovators and projects.

By Knight’s John Bracken, director/journalism and media innovation and Chris Sopher, journalism program associate.

Mobile Tablets for Information cure

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 15:03:26 -0400

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

My project Mobile Tablets for Information cure uses mobile application

to enhance the right to information and the freedom of information.

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

My project will use mobile tools and applications to share information

and to enhance a good system of checks and balances that is required

for a well functioning democracy. This will inspire freedom of

information and augurs well for good governance, create transparency

and free access to public information.

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

The product of this project will be used by journalist, media, youth

leaders, civil society, NGO, INGO, CBO, Government, Scholars

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.

1) Social Media- Facebook/Twitter, Peace and collaborative development

Network (PCDN), Xain, Linkedin. Through maintaining a presence on

social media and through interactive pages on these social medium,

people will learn about and obtain valuable ideas and discuss about

shared experiences and advance resources.

2. Through a network of civil society activist, scholars, people in

the media and journalism around the world who will be invited to that

platform to share best practices and ideas

3) Through not for profit organizations that can also identify with

the project in their communities and join the network

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others

[communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2

sentences]

I have made connections with the International Telecommunication Union

(ITU) and Fellows and alumni, The International Young Professionals

Foundation

(IYPF), The Jeanne Sauve Scholars Foundation in Montreal Canada, The

Coady International –Africa-Canada Youth Leadership Symposium Alumni,

The Youth Leadership In Sierra Leone, The Inaugural Oxford World

Ethics Forum Youth Leaders Alumni, and the World Innovation Summit for

Education, The Anti Corruption Commissions, Society for Democratic

Initiatives, the Open Society Initiative for West Africa, the National

Telecommunications Company in Sierra Leone.

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences,

feel free to include links]

The project is in the idea stages and we have already floated the idea

across to our network and identified a mobile application developer to

be part of the team and shared the idea to develop the mobile platform

which will provide a great leverage that can be used to enforce the

right to information via mobile application and tools

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]

The success of my project will mean, providing up-to date mobile

application tools that enhances the access to and freedom of

information to the public, and raise the quality of democracy and

strengthens civic participation. Bringing information at a lightening

speed and on the tip of myriad fingers through the mobile platform,

that synchronizes with social media in a way that strengthens people’s

ability to get open access to information, participate in governance

process and democracy, and which creates a sound investment in better

policy making and contribute to public trust and confidence in

government.

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

My project will require an mobile application developer, consultants

in media, free speech and democracy to create the product, as well as

the technical and financial resources to take the work to the next

level.

Additional details:

Please list who is on your team:

1.Andrew Benson Greene (Founder and CEO of B-Gifted Foundation (ITU Fellow)

2. Bipin B. Agravat, Willager, Entrepreneurial Innovator, CEO

www.willager.com: Web, Mobile, Space Technology+Startup Strategist

Consultant.

3. Sarika Jain (Consultant). Bain And Company

4. Archel Francisco (Web Consultant)

5. Abass victor Osman Kamara (Human Rights Director)

6.Ashie S. Hirji (Gem of Life).

Expected number of months to complete project: 24 months

Estimated Project Cost: $580,000

Name: Andrew Benson Greene,

Twitter: @bgifted

Email address: b.giftedfoundation@gmail.com

Organization [if applicable]: B-Gifted Foundation

City: Freetown

Country: Sierra Leone

How did you learn about the contest? Through the PCDN email alert

DeliberationVille: a mobile app to promote citizen participation for the design of public spaces

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 15:02:59 -0400

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

We look forward to allow any citizen to take a picture of a public space, street, building, etc and using a game-like interface, build up their own, so the public authority will gather thousand of sought scenarios in order to help them for the decision-making process.

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

We will build an app for the main mobile OS which will allow, in the one hand, users to easily find a urban deliberatory process nearby. And in the other, pubic authorities will access a backoffice where to set up a deliberatory process and collect data for the decision-making.

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

It is addressed to the general public as final user, and to public government (mainly local) as the promoter of deliberation processes.

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.

-We have tight links with Spanish, European (EIPA) and international (UN-Habitat) local-authorities organizations, who in turn can access final users.

-We will market the app to non-governamental organizations (think tanks, lobbies, etc.) that influence and promote local participation and bottom-up deliberation process.

-We will carry trials in those cities we have executed web-based participation project in order to test the app and build best-practices rapports for its dissemination.

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]

We are a non-governamental organization with permanent links with other community organizations and local authorities.

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links]

We have all the logical-architecture of the deliberation process (http://participacio.vegga.net/einesparticipaciociutadana). So, we need to build the user interface, the app, as well as, simplify the logical-architecture to fit the mobile enviroment without loosing quality.

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]

The execution of 100 deliberation process during the first year.

A 90% satisfaction rating average by final users

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

We need to invest time and human resources on conceptualization, design, software development and marketing.

Additional details:
Please list who is on your team: Francesc Camps (CEO), Bernat Quingles (CTO), Josep Alías (Social Innovation Manager), Marc Salmurri (developer),
Expected number of months to complete project: 8 months
Estimated Project Cost: USD 70.000
Name: Josep Alías
Twitter: -
Email address: jalias@vegga.cat
Organization [if applicable]: Vegga
City: Spain
Country: Barcelona
How did you learn about the contest? Alberto Ibargüen Twitter

What’s next for News Challenge: Mobile

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 15:16:00 -0400

Photo Credit: Flickr user girl_onthe_les

We closed the Knight News Challenge on mobile yesterday. Thank you to everyone who applied - we received about 525 applications.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be carefully reviewing them. With the help of advisors, we’ll read each application at least three times. On Oct. 5 we will bring about 18 advisors to review the top 40-50 applications. The following week we’ll begin interviewing and conducting due diligence on a final dozen or so. At that point, we’ll let the other 513 or so applicants know that we will not be funding them.

We’ll recommend a list of winners to Knight’s Board of Trustees in December and announce the winners in early January.

This week, we’re training the readers how to rate the proposals. One thing we’re emphasizing to them is that the News Challenge is about a lot more than just the winners. Through the contest, we are able to learn about the field. We ask the advisors to keep an eye out for ideas and people not otherwise on our radar. This year, we have also have the Prototype Fund, which is designed to fund projects so that we can learn from them quickly. I suspect that we will end up funding a few of the 525 applicants to the News Challenge through that fund.

Lastly we’ve begun work on 2013. We plan to run three contests next year. The first will be designed around applications for open government. We first started exploring the theme in depth at a convening by the Aspen Institute in August. We plan to have more, smaller conversations this fall to help us refine the topic. We look forward to engaging you, too.

Be sure to join us next week when we announce the winners of the News Challenge: Data. The winners will be announced Sept. 20 at the 2012 Online News Association Conference in San Francisco and will give lightning round talks on Saturday, Sept. 22 which will be livestreamed. You can also follow @knightfdn and use #newschallenge.

By John Bracken, director journalism/media innovation at Knight Foundation

National Flood Information System

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 12:54:28 -0400

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

We want to develop mobile web platform and applications for a National Flood Information System (NFIS) initially for United States to share community-based flood warnings, information, maps and visualization in real-time.

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

The NFIS will integrate public data from several sources (USGS, NWS, Core of Engineers, etc.) to provide a rich and consistent user experience for general public, organize data around communities, and provide interactive visualizations and interfaces to improve awareness and action about floods with real-time flood warnings, forecast, and maps. The NFIS will utilize GPS and location capabilities of the smart phones to provide customized notifications and information, and use camera capabilities and orientation of the smartphone to overlay information using augmented reality.

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

The NFIS will be used by general public to check hourly high-resolution rainfall information, and flood warnings after a rainfall event.

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.

The NFIS will be a unique product that focuses on flood related data, information and visualizations. The NFIS will attract media outlets, technology blogs, and social media with its novel forecast and visualization capabilities, which helps reach general public.

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]

We already developed a small part of NFIS for Iowa, called Iowa Flood Information System. We already reached many organizations and general public in Iowa through academic conferences, state fair, exhibitions, and public meetings.

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links]

The Iowa Flood Information System (freely available at http://ifis.iowafloodcenter.org) is developed by our group at the Iowa Flood Center to became a one-stop web-platform to access community-based flood conditions, forecasts, visualizations, inundation maps and flood-related data, information, and applications. Although IFIS provides services for Iowa, it has been visited by users from 144 countries, and 3451 cities around the world, which shows the interest and need in the flood related platform.

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]

The NFIS will help communities make better-informed decisions on floods, and alert communities in advance to help minimize damage of floods.

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

We need financial resources to develop the project, and marketing resources for reaching general public.

Additional details:
Please list who is on your team: Ibrahim Demir and Witold Krajewski
Expected number of months to complete project: 12 months
Estimated Project Cost: $275,000
Name: Ibrahim Demir
Twitter: @demiribr
Email address: ibrahim-demir@uiowa.edu
Organization [if applicable]: Iowa Flood Center
City: Iowa City
Country: United States
How did you learn about the contest? Email newsletter from Knight Foundation

Sub-Saharan Blue God

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 12:15:02 -0400

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

We aim to partner with grassroots level NGO’s in Sub-Saharan Africa that work with water related issues to crowd source information and stories to create a bottom-up editorial approach to develop content by professional visual storytellers into an mobile application for phones and tablets containing a closed social network and multifaceted stories.

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]Crowd sourced content will be in gathered via cellphones in various mediums (text, audio, photography and video) and live discussion promoted via a network on the topic across countries. In the long run we aim to develop an iPad application that hosts multiple layers of interactive content on water that is prominently aimed at European and American audiences and incorporates a utility function that allows them to donate directly to selected grassroots level NGOs in Sub-Saharan Africa.

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence] Local and international developmental organizations as well as those affected by water issues as a information resource, communication tool and data collector.

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project. Website, local community networks via NGO’s and social media incorporation.

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]

We believe that forming multiple partnerships and strong inter continental relationships enables us to utilize the power of the web and mobile devices in Sub-Saharan Africa to further journalism and development action and are three experienced content producers in the DRC (Felix Masi), South Africa (Simone Scholtz) and Davina Jogi (Zimbabwe). We have partner together with Mo’Ana Multimedia in London who consists of a Photographer, Filmmaker, Coder and Designer to produce innovative and dynamic image content for a variety of organizations and clients.

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links] None

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences] Within the first phase we would like a functioning application with a closed social network on water issues based on a pilot project in South Africa, Zimbabwe and the DRC.

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

Seed money to develop the pilot project in terms of the time and travel expenses of content creators to create the content and build relationships to develop the pilot study. Funding to create the technology neccesiry for the website as well as the mobile application that functions across mobile platforms.

Additional details:
Please list who is on your team:

Simone Scholtz, is a South African freelance multimedia and photojournalist based in Cape Town.

Felix Masi is a Kenyan-born independent Multimedia photojournalist/filmmaker, founder of Voiceless Children.

Davina Jogi, is a photojournalist from Harare, Zimbabwe.

Andrew Aitchison (director Mo’Ana Multimedia) is an award winning independent documentary photographer working on social, environmental, cultural and political issues as both commissioned & personal projects.

Jason P Evans (director and co-founder) has worked in the broadcast media industry in the UK for over 10 years as a Director, Producer and Cameraman.

Expected number of months to complete project: 12
Estimated Project Cost:
Name: Simone Scholtz
Twitter:
Email address: scholtz.simone@gmail.com
Organization [if applicable]: http://www.simonescholtz.photoshelter.com/
City: Cape Town
Country: South Africa
How did you learn about the contest? Google

MEGAPHONE | Giving a voice to the voiceless

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 12:14:58 -0400

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

Megaphone is a low-bandwidth, anonymous or pseudonymous, private and public group mobile messaging platform that helps people raise their voice.

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

Megaphone will use simple text-driven menus and voice messaging in conjunction with mobile encryption and the open Web to help people privately share discussions, and broadcast to the Web if they choose.

The system lets people leave voice messages that can be publicly or privately shared, and geo-mapped as indicated in the video indexed here: http://vimeo.com/12567943#comment_7816752

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

Journalists trying to spread news or find stories that would otherwise not come to light, and ordinary citizens building a culture of openness.

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.

Journalists will learn about Megaphone through:

- established journalist networks, such as the Forum for African Investigative Reporters, Global Investigative Journalism Network, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Online News Association, WJChat , journalism schools and alumni associations; digital/social media such as Twitter and Facebook

The public would learn about it from journalists, peers, NGOs and any news channels available to them, online or off.

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]

I have worked with the Social Innovation Group at the MaRS Centre in Toronto, MaRS FutureLab and colleagues from the Canadian Film Centre MediaLab on this project. The SIG has offered consulting and research support, but further outreach is necessary to journalist groups identified above.

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links]

We have completed the prototype design and are seeking avenues to move to the system development phase.

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]

Success would be enabling journalists to find and share stories that may be difficult, dangerous or impossible to surface and share with the world, and to help people in repressive regimes practise using their voice and fostering a culture of openness.

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

We need digital security, mobile software and distributed network expertise, especially for developing countries.

Additional details:
Please list who is on your team:

Saleem Khan: Project leader, journalist [editor and reporter, ex- CBC, Metro International, Toronto Star newspapers; chairman/director, Canadian Association of Journalists]; advisor, University of Toronto ThingTank Lab [Faculty of Information]; program director, Innovate News.

Advisors:

D. Buie, digital strategist; resident, Canadian Film Centre Media Lab

B. Chmielewski, co-founder, Sweet Caesar; Android, iOS, BlackBerry developer for clients and projects such as U2, Toronto International Film Festival, IDEO, RIM.

K. Khan: User experience strategist and designer for Global 1000, telecom, consumer technology, finance, governments; OCAD University sLab advisor; leader of UXI, Canada’s largest UX professional group.

H. Leson: Director of community engagement, Ushahidi; open source community developer, library and information technician.

M. Saniga, CA: Co-founder, near-realtime business intelligence/data insight generation software firm Quant Inc.; former finance director and manager at Cara, Dell.

Expected number of months to complete project: 9
Estimated Project Cost: $197,000
Name: Saleem Khan
Twitter: @saleemkhan
Email address: saleem.khan@invstg8.net
Organization [if applicable]: invstg8.net / Technovica
City: Toronto
Country: Canada
How did you learn about the contest?

I follow the News Challenge and have submitted proposals for years.

Kulilo App

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 12:09:28 -0400

(Submited twice because of time, pleasse use this one as my entry)

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

It’s social crowd sourcing news and current affairs mobile app.

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

My app runs on mobile platforms to turn the user into their own local reporter. The app has a quick launch mechanism that makes it easier to whip out and make record of what’s going on either in the form of a video, an image, plain text or all three.

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

The target group is, but not limited to, those in their early 20’s and early 30’s mainly.

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.

1) My main objective is to have writers and publishers publish quality content during the initial stage of the app, and have that content featured on news websites or news channels, similar to how twitter has been used for that lately, but on a dedicated platform. This was it can be viewed as a free alternative source of current affairs within communities that’s constantly being updated.

2) Paid ads online, in app stores and other apps.

3) Word of mouth is always a great way to gain substantial growth, we want to engage our target group enough to have them refer the app to others so they can read their content.

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]

I met Ory (Founder of Ushahidi) at a hackathon I took part in recently in Zimbabwe and we exchanged contacts. I have made a number of other strategic connections locally with people who work at media houses and newspapers.

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links]

I have already built the fully fledged app and its fully functional on iOS. I have been working on building it for Android before launching it as to not have my idea stolen because of a lack of early funding and penetration.

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]

Being able to pivot in the near future and turning it into a social reporting platform for any kind of personal, social or community news to be posted and shared. I plan to have this app cater to a broader scale of users and not just a niche in the future. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube. These all provide a platform for reporting but they are scattered, I see this app combining all of these platforms into one, ambiguous but sective platform in future.

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

I would need to build a team firstly, find skilled developers and be strategically located in a healthy market so we can monetize and get funding quicker. We would also need the ability to form strategic alliances with influential people.

Additional details:
Please list who is on your team:Shaun Benjamin
Expected number of months to complete project: 2 months
Estimated Project Cost: $800,000
Name: Shaun benjamin
Twitter: @beervent
Email address: shaun@n-sho.com
Organization [if applicable]: N-Sho technologies
City: Harare
Country: Zimbabwe
How did you learn about the contest?

From a friend who is a news reporter.

2pm/ Twopm

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 12:09:27 -0400

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

An application to engage the public and create a community that monitors the implementation of publicly funded projects by providing information on each project’s timeliness, quality, cost-efficiency and completion rates, i.e. a public projects information and monitoring tool.

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

a) Receive information on projects from the public through sms, tweets and call on any project as they see and experience it, like, contractor for x road-works has not been on site for the last two weeks or why is he/she not providing protective gear for the workers on site A?

b) Create feedback mechanism through engagement with the project consultants, contractors, and the project implementing authority and professional groups and individuals

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

The general public, who need to know how “ their” project is progressing as opposed to the current situation where hardly any information is available, the project contractors to give and receive feedback on the project they are implementing and professional groups and individuals, e.g. engineers, for active advice and involvement.

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.

2pm will be marketed through:

· Initial marketing campaign through local press and advertisements

· 2^nd level marketing through social media.

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]

(i) Connections already made with the Institute of Engineers of Kenya, Institute of Construction Project Managers of Kenya, Public Procurement Oversight Authority and two Class “A” contractors (highest level of ranking in Kenya) and many of my peers and friends are willing to use the application when ready.

(ii) Connections with the Ministry of Public Works (regulatory authority)

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links]

Project concept notes already written and one developer has started writing code on the project.

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]

(i) Informed public on the many projects the Government of Kenya is implementing using their taxes;

(ii) Changed project delivery culture in Kenya through using the contractors’ performance database to lobby the Authorities in making decisions on who should and should not undertake or participate in, public projects.

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

(i) Initial project development expenses, like design and coding, hardware and other infrastructure, software, internet connection and office space

(ii) Marketingeffort and implementation.

Additional details:

Please list who is on your team:

1. Eng. Charles Kabubo – Member, Institute of Construction Project Managers of Kenya (advisory role)

2. Mr. Paul Kareru – Developer/Coder

3. Mr. Joseph Mwangi – Designer/Coder

Expected number of months to complete project:
Project to complete four months (for version 1)

Estimated Project Cost:
US Dollars 140,000

Name: Andrew Muriuki

Twitter: @Amuriuki

Email address: addrew.muriuki@gmail.com

Organization [if applicable]: Not Applicable

City: Nairobi

Country: Kenya

How did you learn about the contest? Through Hacker News

Whisper - A platform to enable on-the ground intelligence gathering

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 12:09:25 -0400

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

Whisper enables collection of accurate, ground-level information by reporters and researchers by creating communication channels via mobile phones with people who would otherwise be inaccessible.

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

Whisper enables journalists and researchers to listen at scale by giving them the tools to efficiently build panels of informants based on demographics, geography, or experience; send out simple surveys to collect data about experiences and needs; visualize patterns of needs and experiences using maps and filtering tools; and follow up with small, targeted groups of informants for interviews, to gather further information.

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

Journalists and design researchers have a need for easy-to-use, DIY engagement tools that connect them to people via mobile phones to gather ground-level information that can provide a more accurate and empathetic understanding of issues and experiences.

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.

Via partnerships with international journalistic consortia
Via Human Centered Design Connect, IDEO.org’s global network of human-centered designers
Via partnerships with Ashoka, Ushahidi and Voice of America

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]
I have received early support and buy-in from IDEO.org, Ushahidi, Ashoka, Voice of America and the Mail & Guardian. I have also enlisted the founders of SeeClickFix and Motribe, and the technical lead at Ashoka, as technical advisors.

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links]

The project will initially use open source software developed by Ushahidi and Frontline SMS to create the communications platform and visualization framework.

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]

I would expect a successful platform to have, within a year, at least 1,000 paying users engaging hundreds of thousands of on-the-ground sources on an ongoing basis. I also expect the platform to put simple customer research tools into the hands of many professionals who could otherwise not afford it.

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

More than anything, we need to determine the most effective mix of incentives that will motivate citizens around the world to use their mobile phones to share information with journalists and design researchers. This will take a great deal of experimentation, and we a small group of fervent “earlyvangelists” to help us refine our understanding of what motivates people to share via mobile.

Additional details:
Please list who is on your team:

Andrew Haeg - Veteran journalist, former Knight Fellow, co-founded and led product development for PIN, a crowdsourcing platform used by 70 U.S. newsrooms and the Mail and Guardian.

Dale Zak - Developed iOS and Windows Mobile app for Ushahidi, open-source plugins for the FrontlineSMS messaging system, and coordinated many technology for social good projects.

PJ Onori - Former director of user experience at SeaBright, and former Adaptive Path designer. Worked with the United Nations on the Global Pulse project which uses data and analytics to arrive at a “better understanding of changes in human well-being.”

Expected number of months to complete project:
Estimated Project Cost: $250k
Name: Andrew Haeg
Twitter: @andrewhaeg
Email address: aohaeg@gmail.com
Organization [if applicable]:
City: St. Paul, MN
Country: USA
How did you learn about the contest? I’ve entered it before and am up-to-speed on all of Knight’s funding opportunities.

Rumble News - NIE

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 12:06:23 -0400

Application for KF Mobile Challenge

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

Advancing the News In Education (NIE) program to the future of mobile devices.

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

Providing a complete mobile platform for newspapers to produce and manage their NIE program. The platform includes advance mobile user experience and a line of dynamic features to engage with student, leveraging mobile capabilities such as Geo-Location and instant content pushing.

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

The NIE program provides newspapers content to students and enables teachers to follow the Student’s reading skills. Newspapers, students and teachers will use the fruits of the project.

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.

· Newspapers will learn about our mobile NIE platform through a direct marketing

· Teachers will learn about it thorough by training classes.

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]

Our Company is a member of the Project Liberty Digital Incubator – A joint initiative of the Interstate Media Group and the Knight Foundation. We are working with the Philadelphia Inquirer’s NIE program.

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links]

We established the platform that includes a dynamic frontend with line of engagement features (Mobile application) and an intelligent backend system to manage and follow the performances of students.

www.Rumble.me

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]

Getting students more involve with news, improving students reading skills and giving teachers tools to follow the performances of the individual.

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

The resources that we will need are software developers, Graphic designers, hosting services, account managers and access to NIE programs for implementation.

Additional details:
Please list who is on your team:

Al. E. Azoulay - Co-founder & CEO

Al is a news addict with many years of business-development experience and a history in startup executions.

Uyen Tieu - Co-founder & CMO

Uyen was the Head of Global Strategy at Microsoft and the VP of Marketing Partnerships and the VP for MTV Networks/Viacom.

Kostya Volkov - Vice President, R&D.

Kostya has spent over 20 years creating technology solutions for many types of businesses. A passionate technologist with a deep interest in software.

Avi Neeman -Chief Design Officer

Avi has an outstanding commitment and understanding when it comes to design. Among his works you can find the branding and design of McCann Ericsson.

Expected number of months to complete project: 6-9 months
Estimated Project Cost: $500,000
Name: Rumble News
Twitter:
Email address: al@rumble.me
Organization: Rumble News Ltd
City: Philadelphia
Country: USA
How did you learn about the contest?

We have been following the different News Challenges of the Knight Foundation and waited for mobile related challenge.

I need an interpreter

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 12:05:28 -0400

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

This project will create an app that will allow the Deaf Community to communicate by mobile technology and request a sign language interpreter in a hospital or other medical situation.

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

The project will create an app that can be used on a mobile device that will allow a Deaf person to 1) request an interpreter from a hearing person; (2) provide Department of Justice, HHS and Joint Commission information for the medical professional if needed, (3) find a nearby interpreter; and (4) timestamp and log interactions when the app is used. As most persons who are Deaf and communicate in ASL have mobile devices and use video for communication, this app will be a tool to ensure effective communication between the Deaf and hearing populations.

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

This app will be used by the Deaf Community that needs a sign language interpreter in order to communicate and understand important, long or complicated medical information in a hospital or medical setting.

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.

Persons who are Deaf are a nationwide, but insular community of about 300,000 to 500,000 persons. They would learn about the project through (1) Our website, DEAF ALICE.com and other websites that cater to the Deaf population, (2), at Deaf Nation Expo’s throughout the country; and (3) through the network of Centers for Independent Living and Deaf Service Centers throughout the Country.

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]

Our co-founder currently works with the National Association of the Deaf, and Centers for Independent Living in Florida, the National Disability Rights Network and is well known within the Deaf community as an advocate for Deaf rights. DEAF ALICE will work in conjunction with these entities to develop and promote this app.

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links]

We are familiar with all of this information and the location of all of this information. However, the application has not been built.

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]

Currently, people who are Deaf are not provided with an opportunity to make medical choices and decisions for themselves and their families because of the lack of knowledge of both the medical community and the Deaf community of their rights to have an equal opportunity to understand and communicate. Success for this project is to provide Deaf persons the opportunity to effectively advocate and empower themselves, control their healthcare choice, and to have full access to medical treatment.

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

We will need to hire a company to develop the app. We will need to promote and market the app.

Additional details:
Please list who is on your team: Deborah Dietz, Matthew Dietz
Expected number of months to complete project: 12 months
Estimated Project Cost: $85,000.00
Name: DEAF ALICE
Twitter:
Email address: debbie@justdigit.org
Organization [if applicable]: DEAF ALICE
City: miami
Country: USA
How did you learn about the contest? email

Kisan Samachaar: A Phone-based Voice News Service for Small Farmers in India

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 12:05:27 -0400

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

Our project is called Khedut Samachaar and it is a phone-based Voice News service for small farmers across India.

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

We will use mobile phones to allow farmers to post and consume news stories with their peers. We will also provide web and smartphone interfaces for farmers with more advanced phones and data plans.

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

Our service will be used by farmers across India, who have unique news needs related to weather, agriculture and market prices.

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.

We will inform farmers through

1) notices placed in local newspapers and through local radio programs

2) outreach through NGOs, universities and government agencies

3) automated SMS messages and phone calls allowing farmers to opt in to the news service

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]

We are already working closely with agricultural NGOs and government extension agencies in several states of India. We also have an existing network of farmers who are using our phone question and answer service, Avaaj Otalo.

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links]

We have already built a phone-based voice message broadcasting and subscription system at http://awaaz.de. We will use the additional funding to develop web and smartphone versions, and to roll out a new service focused on news information.

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]

Success for our project entails providing farmers with the information they need, and also allowing them to share what they know. We aim to become the most popular information source for small farmers across each local language in India.

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

We need funding for software and content development, and also for advertising and marketing the news service. We also need human resources in the form of farmers and farmer organizations to step up and share their knowledge.

Additional details:
Please list who is on your team:

Neil Patel, CEO, Awaaz.De

Bhaumik Shah, Awaaz.De

Tapan Parikh, Awaaz.De

Expected number of months to complete project: 18 months

Estimated Project Cost: $85,000

Name: Tapan Parikh

Twitter: @awaazde @tap2k

Email address: tapan@awaaz.de

Organization [if applicable]: Awaaz.De

City: Ahmedabad

Country: India

How did you learn about the contest? Twitter

MARK OF THE BEAST | Mobile data newsgame

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 12:02:56 -0400

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

Mark of the Beast is a mobile newsgame that uses bar codes and RFID to teach data literacy skills to journalists and citizens.

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

Mark of the Beast will use draw upon mobile phone features and sensor data, including geolocation, camera images, near-field communication, text, e-mail, and Web to engage users in a quantified-self type of game. They then manipulate that data as in-game tasks that also teach them data handling skills useful in journalism.

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

Journalists and others who want to learn data literacy skills will use it, as well as people seeking a fun, rich gaming experience.

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.

Journalists and the public will learn about invstg8.net through:

- established journalist networks, such as Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Online News Association, Global Investigative Journalism Network, Forum for African Investigative Reporters, WJChat , journalism schools and alumni associations;

- digital/social media such as Twitter, Facebook, serious games sites such as Gameful, professional trade sites like Gamasutra and the International Game Developers Association, consumer gaming news sites like IGN.com and Gamespot.com, game distribution channels like the Apple App store, Google Play, Valve’s Steam store, and so on.

- journalists, friends and peers who play the game.

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]

I am currently set to participate in Techraking with the Center for Investigative Reporting and IGN later in September, planning a newsgame hack day as an Innovate News event in association with the UXI design community, and potentially TIFFNet (Toronto International Film Festival’s year-round body), the International Game Developers Association, Interactive Ontario and Entertainment Software Association of Canada trade groups, and Toronto’s DigiFest festival [discussions in progress]. I also moderate a newsgaming forum on Gameful.

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links]

I have already completed the first phase of consultations with domain experts and am working on designing the key interactions and behavior mechanisms that will form the basis of the game. The game is in the middle of the principal design stage.

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]

Success would be first seeing people enjoying the game and learning from it, even if they don’t realize that’s what they are doing. Second, making a game that is compelling enough that it can include a sustainable business model in industry or consumer markets would be ideal.

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

Mark of the Beast will need technical expertise in game design and programming, and physical/electronic mobile media. This game is an experimental prototype that we hope to build upon.

Additional details:
Please list who is on your team:

Advisors:

B. Chmielewski, co-founder, Sweet Caesar; Android, iOS, BlackBerry developer for clients and projects such as U2, Toronto International Film Festival, IDEO, RIM.

K. Khan: User experience strategist and designer, OCAD University sLab advisor; leader of UXI, Canada’s largest UX professionals group

M. Saniga, CA: President and co-founder, near-realtime business intelligence/data insight generation software firm Quant Inc.; former finance director and manager at Cara, Dell.

K. Seto: Founder of Massive Damage game studio and Endloop Mobile. Built @PleaseStayCalm, a popular location based game.

Expected number of months to complete project: 12
Estimated Project Cost: $180,000 [Experienced mobile game coder, designer, hardware expert]
Name: Saleem Khan
Twitter: @saleemkhan
Email address: saleem.khan@invstg8.net
Organization [if applicable]: invstg8.net / Technovica

City: Toronto
Country: Canada
How did you learn about the contest?

I follow the News Challenge and have submitted proposals for years.

Knight News Challenge Round 3

News Challenge on open gov launches Feb. 12

Eight mobile ventures win $2.4 million in funding via Knight News Challenge

Knight News Challenge: Mobile Winners

Releated Links

#newschallenge mobile winners exemplify the rate of innovation globally

Releated Links

Knight News Challenge: Mobile Winners

Knight News Challenge: looking forward to 2013, and back on 2012

Semi-finalists advance in News Challenge: Mobile

Highlighting the 2%: the Knight News Challenge: Data finalists

Winners of News Challenge: Data

Mobile Tablets for Information cure

DeliberationVille: a mobile app to promote citizen participation for the design of public spaces

What’s next for News Challenge: Mobile

National Flood Information System

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links]

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

Sub-Saharan Blue God

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence] Local and international developmental organizations as well as those affected by water issues as a information resource, communication tool and data collector.

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project. Website, local community networks via NGO’s and social media incorporation.

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links] None

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences] Within the first phase we would like a functioning application with a closed social network on water issues based on a pilot project in South Africa, Zimbabwe and the DRC.

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

MEGAPHONE | Giving a voice to the voiceless

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links]

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

Kulilo App

(Submited twice because of time, pleasse use this one as my entry)

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links]

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

2pm/ Twopm

Whisper - A platform to enable on-the ground intelligence gathering

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

Whisper enables collection of accurate, ground-level information by reporters and researchers by creating communication channels via mobile phones with people who would otherwise be inaccessible.

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

Journalists and design researchers have a need for easy-to-use, DIY engagement tools that connect them to people via mobile phones to gather ground-level information that can provide a more accurate and empathetic understanding of issues and experiences.

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.

Via partnerships with international journalistic consortia Via Human Centered Design Connect, IDEO.org’s global network of human-centered designers Via partnerships with Ashoka, Ushahidi and Voice of America

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links]

The project will initially use open source software developed by Ushahidi and Frontline SMS to create the communications platform and visualization framework.

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

Andrew Haeg - Veteran journalist, former Knight Fellow, co-founded and led product development for PIN, a crowdsourcing platform used by 70 U.S. newsrooms and the Mail and Guardian.

Dale Zak - Developed iOS and Windows Mobile app for Ushahidi, open-source plugins for the FrontlineSMS messaging system, and coordinated many technology for social good projects.

Rumble News - NIE

I need an interpreter

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links]

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

Kisan Samachaar: A Phone-based Voice News Service for Small Farmers in India

1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

Via partnerships with international journalistic consortia
Via Human Centered Design Connect, IDEO.org’s global network of human-centered designers
Via partnerships with Ashoka, Ushahidi and Voice of America