E-Democracy.Org is into round two for the Knight News Challenge - http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/127 . With our round two "Specify. Then Build." proposal we are looking for universities interested in partnering to host (in-kind) citizen media and engagement open source programming sprints. The partner would agree to provide space, bandwidth, and use of high speed (Internet 2) IP video conferencing equipment on a in-kind basis likely over a long weekend. We will likely be connecting a site in the U.S. to a U.K. site for virtual developer teams (typically 4 to 6 teams with 4 or 5 programmers at each site). We would also need discounted or in-kind on-campus lodging within reason for up to 20 to 30 people. We will be providing transportation to the site for the selected participants. If we win the grant, we expect to hold at least four programming sprints - two in 2009 and two in 2010. I want be up front and note that the tight $500,000 US proposal does not allow us to share funding to cover the physical space for hosting the sprints assuming we find appropriate in-kind offers. Also, we are interested in learning about existing or proposed research that might be connected to this initiative. Prior to the programming, sprints, we will be hosting very public citizen media and engagement module/plug-in software specification efforts. Instead of developing stand alone modules or modules/plug-ins for one open source tools used for locally-oriented citizen media/online engagement efforts, we are proposing an open specification process that will lead to the competitive build out of modules for key open source content management platforms (Drupal, Plone, etc.). Finally, we may be able to leverage our evaluation budget to support some research based on this rather experimental initiative. If this effort matches your project's existing mission or goals we might have a match and your endorsement will increase our chances of winning the News Challenge. For a copy the draft application, drop me an e-mail ASAP - clift@publicus.net - because the final deadline for submission is Nov. 30. Cheers, Steven Clift E-Democracy.Org P.S. For a short description of our round one proposal see - http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/127 and below is information about the scope of the Knight News Challenge: THE KNIGHT NEWS CHALLENGE INITIATIVE SEEKS • New ways for people to communicate interactively to help people better understand one another in geographic communities, share know-how and generate passion in solving local problems; • New ways for people to use information, news and journalism in geographic communities to imagine their collective possibilities as communities, and to set and reach common community goals; • New ways to dig for news and act on it in geographic communities, including new ways to collect, prepare and distribute information, news and journalism that reveals hard-to-know facts, identifies common problems, clarifies community issues or points out practical courses of action. Keep in mind the purpose of the contest is to develop digital communication projects that will help better connect people in physical space, in the communities in which they work, live and vote. In the words of Jack Knight: Thus we seek to bestir the people into an awareness of their own condition, provide inspiration for their thoughts and rouse them to pursue their true interests.