Six new Drupal projects will make it easier for anyone to join the digital conversation by lowering the barriers to online publishing. These projects have received a portion of the $485,380 in funding provided by John S. and James L. Knight Foundation through the Knight Drupal Initiative (KDI). The winners of the Knight Drupal Initiative were announced at the DrupalCon conference in Washington, DC.

These powerful tools will help people exchange information and ideas about their communities – which we hope will make them more engaged and vibrant places to live,

said Jose Zamora, Knight Foundation’s Journalism Program Associate.

The KDI award winners are as follows:

  • Addison Berry (Documentation Team lead) will create concise, up-to-date instructions for Drupal software packages so that tech novices can use the tools.
  • funnymonkey.com will create a free publishing system to make it easier for several geographic communities to share local news with each other.
  • Dave Cohen will create a system that allows anyone, anywhere to easily create a Drupal online news site whose content can be published on Facebook in order to reach an extended social network.
  • Instant Syndicating Standards will develop software that allows people to create and share a personalized stream of information within their social network, helping them to filter and recommend articles to others interested in the same issues.
  • Rob Loach will add a micro-blogging function to Drupal that will allow users to transmit brief text updates on their Web sites.
  • Development Seed will create a tool that will help residents better communicate and understand information about their community by allowing them to geo-tag – or add a geographical identification – to stories so they can be displayed on a map.

The Drupal community established the application process, vetted the projects and recommended the top choices to Knight Foundation. Five of the six applications were successfully vetted by the Drupal community and an additional application worked directly with Knight.

From June 2008 to November 2008 community members were encouraged to apply to the KDI using the following process:

  1. Create a proposal on groups.drupal.org.
  2. Solicit comments and votes from Drupal community members.
  3. Monthly IRC meetings were held to discuss and vote on these proposals. Those which had 20 votes with a rating of 4.5 or better were automatically nominated for consideration by Knight Foundation.
  4. Proposals that had not received sufficient votes were also discussed and had the opportunity to present their case in IRC to the KDI coordinators on two occassions (with the opportunity to improve the proposal between meetings).

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation invests in journalism excellence worldwide and in the vitality of 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. Knight Foundation focuses on projects with the potential to create transformational change. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.

The Drupal community wishes to thank the Knight Foundation for their generous support of these six projects.

Comments

dipen chaudhary’s picture

I would specially like to thank Addison berry for her tireless efforts with documentation, her e mails on the documentation list taking every one along. Its so nice to see the fund going into documentation and not just code.

Congratulations to all winners :)

I'll be personally following drupal for fb, open microblogging standards to be implemented in drupal. Very nice projects, exciting stuff.

Cheers

--------------------------------------------------------
Dipen Chaudhary
www.qed42.com ( Drupal development services specialize in social networks and other user generated content platforms )
www.dipenchaudhary.com

Omar Khan’s picture

I second applauding the documentation award, it is the major need of the hour for Drupal.

alexanderceb’s picture

Excelent news, this is a a great reconigtion for the Drupal community and all the great ideas for those efforts to go ahead and go with a high quality CMS.

PepeMty’s picture

+1 the documentation award.

I, a non coder, could have built nothing if it weren't for documentation. ;-)

Warmest regards from sunny México!
:-)
José

Warm regards from sunny México!
Pepe
:-)

nirvanajyothi’s picture

Kudos to all in the community.N tats y Drupal rocks.

aac’s picture

Congratulations to all the winners and to all the Drupal community members.
These awards will provide 6 new projects in Drupal which will ultimately be beneficial for Drupal community.
Thanks knightfoundation for supporting Drupal development activities, especially the documentation award which will further enhance the documentation and which will in turn make more and more users to contribute back to Drupal community after fast learning from the good documentation.

---~~~***~~~---
aac

mlncn’s picture

Huge congratulations to Addison Berry, Bill Fitzgerald, Dave Cohen, Rob Loach, Development Seed, and to ISS, though I don't know these last folks, given the lineup they are in they are surely great too!

One proposal, the Decisionmaking API & Consensus Module, happened to not get the nod from the Knight Foundation at this time, but the community fully vetted and approved it.

The Knight Drupal Initiative (KDI) doesn't just get money to Drupal contributors, as great as that is. It got us to self-organize. We can take advantage of this, a greater gift than money. We don't have to wait for foundations.

Up to $80,000 needs to be raised to make this set of modules, which can be hugely useful for ... further self-organizing as a community! I am not the original proposer or involved with the organization, but I am part of a 501c3 organization (PWGD/Visions Unite) that has offered to take contributions for this project as tax deductible donations. Anyone in for donations, large, small, matching grants?

We can do this. Looking now for the first people to step up, and turn a disappointment int a huge opportunity!

Donations of any form welcome to introduce mass community funding to the Drupal ecosystem, checks can be made to:

People Who Give a Damn, Inc.
P.O. Box 241
Natick, MA 01760

DecisionsAPI in the memo!

Read about the proposal and think: do we need to wait for foundations and corps to fund all great things in Drupal?

benjamin, Agaric Design Collective

benjamin, Agaric

BioALIEN’s picture

This is a good list of projects. Congratulations to the winners and also a big thanks to the KDI!

---
Dee
iScene.eu :: UK Drupal Consultancy

skor’s picture

to the Knight Foundation!!

Tom Ash’s picture

...sound like just what we're after for our rebuild of opendemocracy.net (happening throughout this year). Is there any way to get updates on their status? If I find time betweent he rebuild and my other responsibilities there, I might be able to contribute to the Development seed project...

helloari’s picture

Congrats to Dave Cohen and all the other grant recipients. Looking forward to following your progress.

ricardo100’s picture

Congratulations Drupal and thanks to the Knight Foundation!

Davidis’s picture

Cheers to the Knight Foundation.
I've been looking for the 6 projects and couldn't find them, does someone have a clue where to find them?
Is there a way to follow-up on them?

Thanks