Things have really been chugging along here at the Knight News Challenge 2008, with lots of innovative new outreach coinciding with the contest’s official start. The worldwide contest reopened on September 2nd with another $5 million in funding available for digital media experiments to innovate news and communication before applications close on November 1st.

You Invent It. We Fund It!

The contest is open to community-minded innovators worldwide, from software designers to journalists to citizens and students of any age. Do you have a big idea for informing and inspiring a geographic community using social media, Web 2.0 tools or OpenID? How about exchanging information via video, photos or text messaging? A way to integrate game theory with web browsing to support local community engagement? Come on, push the edge – we’re seeking true innovation!

Winning entries must have three elements:

1) use of a digital media
2) delivery of news or information on a shared basis to
3) a geographically defined community

Entries must be open-source and share the software and knowledge created.

New in 2008: The News Challenge Garage

To support applications this year, Knight has created a new incubator — the News Challenge Garage — where prospective applicants can receive peer reviews and mentoring from screeners and awardees from previous years. To date, over 40 applications are already incubating in the Drupal-based Garage site. A diverse group of developers, online journalists, nonprofit evangelists, video bloggers and social media experts are on hand to coach at garage.newschallenge.org. The 50 mentors are available to coach and guide everyone who enters a project in the Garage. They include Vidoop’s Chris Messina, Spot.us’ David Cohn, Contentious editor Amy Gahran, Placeblogger’s Lisa Williams, Beth Kanter, J.D. Lasica and many other digital media specialists. For a postable video introducing the Garage in a variety of languages, visit DotSub to find out more.

Want to get more involved?
Apply!

Want more info?
The Knight News Challenge is incorporating new media tools to reach out to more diverse communities to spread the word about this year’s Challenge. You can follow us on Twitter, converse on video via Seesmic or chat about application ideas in our FriendFeed room.

Upcoming events: September 9th Webcast
If you’d like to ask questions and learn how to create an application in a more interactive space, Knight will host an online webcast hosted by Gary Kebbel, Journalism Program director for the Knight Foundation with Amy Gahran and Nora Paul, past Knight News Challenge winners, on September 9th, 11:00 a.m. Eastern.

September 9th will also feature a Knight News Challenge meet up in New York City at CUNY School of Journalism from 7-9 pm. For more info see this link: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/event.php?eid=41757320632

Background

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation invests in journalism excellence worldwide and in the vitality of 26 U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950, the foundation has granted more than $400 million to advance quality journalism and freedom of expression. The foundation focuses on projects with the potential to create transformational change. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.

Communicating with your customer base online through social media seems like a slam-dunk, but it’s a lot more than just “pushing content at them and hoping they’ll be interested. Without a strategy, you could be missing an opportunity to really engage your audience and create a lasting relationship.

Take part in the Webinar “Putting Social Media to Work for You.” and get the information you need on using social media to engage your customers, beneficiaries, and donors.

We’ll cover:

• What is Social Media?
• How can it help my business?
• Overview of social media tools.
• Examples of social media use - the good, the bad, the unfortunate.
• Where to find data on growth and social media usage.
• Creating an effective  social media strategy.
• 5 steps to get started.

Date: Sept 10, 2008
Time: 1 PM PST
Length: 30 Minutes

Led by Janet Fouts, Social Media Enabler.   Sign up today!

IISC is launching a new skill-building offering: Collaborative Social Change: Designing for Impact in a Networked World which will be offered in September at our learning centers in two locations:

San Francisco, California: September 16-18, 2008
Cambridge, Massachusetts: September 23-25, 2008
 
Story after story has been coming our way here at IISC illustrating the exciting ways in which new collaborative tools and technologies are allowing social change agents “to do old things in new ways and new things that we never dreamed possible.” These tools – along with network-centric ways of thinking and acting – are heightening awareness of the potential and need for collaboration in our complex and changing world. All of this comes as our understanding of the adaptive nature of social and environmental problems deepens, as our world continues to flatten and shrink, and as the very rates of change accelerate. As Clay Shirky writes in Here Comes Everyone, “We are living in the middle of a remarkable increase in our ability to share, to cooperate with one another, and to take collective action…Most of the barriers to group action have collapsed and without those barriers we are free to explore new ways of gathering together and getting things done.”

With this potential comes some anxiety and uncertainty. When everything seems possible, where and how do we begin? What are the right tools to use and in which situations? IISC’s challenge has been to figure out how to combine our deep experience in collaborative methodology, our understanding of network theory, and that growing potential of the power of Web 2.0 into our large-scale, multi-stakeholder consulting practice. In our experience, the tools for collaboration – whether we’re talking about Web 2.0 or person-to-person interactions – aid us in developing truly innovative and broadly embraced strategies. These strategies, when grounded in “the love that does justice” and new thinking, will result in much greater social impact.

And that’s what brings us to the launch of our newest offering: Collaborative Social Change: Designing for Impact in a Networked World. CSC – as we are calling it – offers you the opportunity to explore the implications of working in a world where barriers have collapsed and where people have extraordinary potential to connect in new ways. You will develop the skills to design collaborative multistakeholder processes and build networks for social change including:

•  IISC’s Collaborative Change Framework and its applications.
•  The fundamentals of network theory as applied to networks for social change and the potential power of network mapping.
•  The power of thoughtful design to cultivate and nurture networks for social change and an array of collaborative process design skills including building relationships in support of networks for social change, stakeholder analysis and engagement strategies, planning frameworks and change methods, process mapping, technical tools to support collaboration, and roles to support each phase of the change process.
•  An awareness of the impact of your deepest aspirations, sense of purpose, and sources of power and motivation on your work. 

We’re becoming increasingly and acutely aware that the global challenges we face call for something more than the focused and passionate efforts of individuals or single organizations. We must develop our capacity to collaborate and build networks in order to have the broad-based and sustained impact called for by these challenging times.

This learning experience will be most powerful if you come with a project in mind – one you’re currently working on or one you’re considering launching. And to maximize your capacity to put the learning into action, we encourage you to come with a colleague.

Our nonprofit rate for the three-day workshop is $650; the foundation rate is $1,000. For more information, or to register for the workshop, visit us at www.interactioninstitute.org or call Chris Toppin at 617.234.2750. We hope you will consider joining us.
And as always, we are interested in hearing about your successes, challenges, and thoughts on the front lines of collaboration for social change.

You are changing the world. We want to help.

Visit Google for Non-profits to learn how to use free Google tools to promote your work, raise money, and operate more efficiently.
Includes information on:

Gmail
Save time and resources with free Google-hosted email, customized for your domain

Checkout
Collect donations online and process them for free, with no monthly, setup, or gateway fees

Docs
Create and edit documents online and collaborate in real time with staff and volunteers

Calendar
Organize schedules and publicize events with shared calendars

Analytics
Understand how people find and interact with information on your website

Google Grants
Reach and engage your supporters through free online advertising

YouTube
Broadcast your cause to the world's largest online video community

Blogger
Publish instantly and keep your supporters informed and engaged

Maps & Earth
Give life to your cause by illustrating its global context

Gadgets
Drive traffic to your website and interact with your supporters more often

Groups
Communicate easily to staff or volunteers and encourage discussions among supporters

The International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee (IW3C2) and Beihang University cordially invite you to participate in the 17th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2008), to be held at Beijing International Convention Center in the historical and charming city of Beijing, host to the 2008 Olympics games.

The World Wide Web Conference is a global event bringing together key researchers, innovators, decision-makers, technologists, businesses, and standards bodies working to shape the Web. Since its inception in 1994, the WWW conference has become the annual venue for international discussions and debate on the future evolution of the Web.

Beijing Tianhua Company, a Beijing event management company, is serving as the professional conference organizer for WWW2008. In addition, Microsoft Research Asia, Peking University, Tsinghua University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), and several other Chinese universities are all members of the local organizing committee.

The main theme of the conference is "One World, One Web". The conference will explore how Web access is moving from the desktop to cell phones and TV screens, and how most users are moving from passive browsing experiences on the Internet to active participation in building Web communities.