Knight News Challenge Open Gov: apply by 5pm Monday

Following Saturday’s Philadelphia Civic Idea Meetup before Monday’s close to another annual Knight News Challenge, the Knight Foundation’s Chris Sopher – 90 minutes from a flight home to Miami – slung a satchel over his shoulder and paused to reflect on his past six weeks spent barnstorming 11 cities, where he’s hosted group brainstorming sessions to provoke conversation around civic hacking and this $5 million challenge for ideas on open government.

Today at 5 pm marks the deadline to submit a brief, concisely explained, idea for improving the city, to the News Challenge for a chance at a share of the $5 million pool. It’s a focus that is keen to include technology ideas, as has the Knight Arts Challenge and others before. Two local projects won $500,000 in last year’s mobile focused Knight News Challenge.

Apply for the Open Gov News Challenge here.

“When we started (the tour) in Miami, we asked people to come up with ideas for hacks around open government,” Sopher said. “Then we began asking, simply, ‘what will make your city better?’”

By focusing first on city problems and a broader vision for Philadelphia – calling for more intimate collaboration between citizens and city government, STEM education for children, and a populace better informed on the activity of officials – a mix of roughly 30 developers, journalists and city officials in attendance traced back their steps to propose civic hacking initiatives as means to loftier ends.

Sopher, along with the Knight Foundation’s Philadelphia Program Director Donna Frisby-Greenwood, kicked off the event by asking attendees to post sticky notes to a blackboard featuring assets “Philly Has” – ‘makers, hackers, designers’ and ‘many great but disconnected organizations’ – along with solutions “Philly Needs” – ‘community learning centers’, ‘clean processes’ and ‘trash cleanup’, to name a few.

These leads were distilled to create cohesive pitches – some based on actual competition entries, and others impromptu collaborations. Some ideas that came out of the session included:

• 1000 Civic Potlucks, inspired by online meal coordinator Perfect Potluck, would provide a platform for members of Philadelphia neighborhoods and city officials to come together to plan potlucks, where they would discuss community issues.
• PHL Commons, loosely based on the technology behind local hackathon project StateRep.Me, would aggregate information on city events and decisions, and then filter it by location and other presets to deliver relevant information to residents on their medium of choice, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• In-Transit would also aggregate local news, and enable convenient public consumption by setting up digital signage in subways to provide updates.
• Embrace the Future would help media and thought leaders get involved in local communities to spread the importance of STEM education.
• Network Access would complement Embrace the Future by storing educational content related to health & wellness, financial security and technology in the cloud for access at churches and community centers.

With one day until the close of admissions, there have been more than 450 submissions. On April 1, the Knight Foundation will announce semifinalists and give them a chance to refine their ideas based on the feedback of the community, before entering a final round.

The admission platform is built on OpenIDEO, a self-proclaimed ‘open innovation platform’, which has allowed applicants to view each other’s entries and provide feedback. According to Sopher, it’s had unintended positive consequences.

“People are opening each other’s applications and saying ‘I like that. Let’s collaborate. Let’s work together,” he said. But that doesn’t mean he regrets the 6-week tour.

“There’s no replacement for getting people together in a room,” Sopher said.