Knight Community Information Challenge 2010 Announced

The Knight Community Information Challenge for 2010 has been announced, and since it is one of the more interesting (and well-funded) challenges out there, and since the aims of the challenge intersect with our desire to build meaningful partnerships with our local community I thought I'd mention it here.

Briefly, here is what the challenge is about:

Getting the news and information we need to improve our communities is more important than ever. Send us your project. We seek innovations that use new or available technology to distribute content in local communities. Take part in the $5 million annual Knight News Challenge contest. Anybody worldwide can apply.

There are three rules to follow to apply to the 2010 Knight News Challenge:

• Use digital, open-source technology.
• Distribute news in the public interest.
• Test your project in a local community.

The most obvious candidates for projects might be from journalism and new media, but it is possible to imagine a whole range of things under the general heading of public information. A system that gets a community information about current levels of contaminants in city water or the current pollen count in a city has a public safety angle, but would certainly qualify for the challenge. Citizen Science, when envisioned as having a news end product, might also be covered.

If you are interested in this project, stop by. I've followed this challenge a couple of years, and would be happy to give anyone a tour of the projects of past recipients. We can even show you some of the interesting areas in public data that remain to be addressed.