Roland Tanglao's Weblog

Here's the Knight News Challenge Question and Answer with Susan Mernit portion of the video (i missed the last few questions because I ran out of disk space, this video was 800MB!). I think it answers a lot of the common questions and shows how Susan is an engaging, articulate and savvy person.

Read the whole thing from Richard to explore some possible Vancouver applications to the Knight News Challenge. And if you couldn't make last night's meetup last night, after the jump I have embedded a cameraphone video recording of Susan's Knight News Challenge presentation below. Susan's a really great speaker (so my video doesn't do her justice) and really articulated the program well and made me want to apply or at least jot some ideas on the Knight Vancouver wiki page.

QUOTE [From Just a Gwai Lo | Knight Foundation's News Challenge: What Project Would You Like to See About Vancouver? ]

Last night I attended a presentation by Susan Mernit (Twitter) about the Knight News Challenge, an initiative by the Knight Foundation to promote democracy and discourse through innovative digital (and social) media projects.

END QUOTE

Speaking of "Newspaper 2.0" and "Media 2.0" (whatever those terms mean :-) !), my friend Susan Mernit who I met way back in Boston at BloggerCon I in 2004 (was it 2004? update it was late 2003! I remember great discussion with Susan and Scott Johnson and others over dinner one night, where is Scott a now? ) and who besides having her own startup, People's Software Company, with another friend, Lisa Williams, is also a program evangelist and manager of Knight News Challenge at the Knight Foundation which is giving away money to web media related projects. See you all tomorrow at 7p.m. at Raincity at the Vancouver NewsChallenge event! Bring your projects, questions and enthusiasm!

QUOTE [From Knight Foundation's NewsChallenge offers funding fo innovative projects | Raincity Studios]

Raincity Studios is hosting the Vancouver stop for NewsChallenge - a project by the Knight Foundation. The event is at the RCS HQ at 1 Alexander St. in Gastown on Monday, October 6th from 7-9PM.

The event features web veteran Susan Mernit who is driving the NewsChallenge project for Knight. Follow knc08 on Twitter to get micro-updates on their tour.

To attend, you must RSVP so check out the NewsChallenge Meetup Facebook event and/or Upcoming listing for NewsChallenge to express your attendance.

END QUOTE

This is very interesting, now if it would tie into the New York Times iPhone app in a 2 way style, that would be great. Globe and Mail: please do something like this (or at least show that you are thinking about things like this!

QUOTE [From AVC:The Power of Profiles]

Talk about the feedization of the web user interface, we've got one now running at the New York Times. I think it's great to see the Times embracing social software concepts like profiles and feeds. I hope they take it a step further and connect all of this to the social web, beyond Facebook, to blogs, comments, tweets, and so on and so forth.

END QUOTE

Blogging them since otherwise they will get lost in the non transparent Globe and Mail dustbin of history :-)! And by the way, I *do* like the Globe and Mail and can't see myself stopping my print subscription, just think of these as constructive criticisms.

• I don't like Leah McLaren's writing
• I don't like partial text RSS - the teasers in the current Globe RSS feeds aren't that great.
• I don't like the fact that print subscribers don't have full text access to the archive and advance access to future issues.
• A long as I am a print subscriber I should have access to full text RSS feeds (with tasteful, relevant ads if you must!) and the entire archive of the Globe and Mail (or at the very least since I have been a print subscriber since 1998, I should get a 75% discount for access to the archive - the Globe doesn't reward loyal subscribers in any way which is not a way to nurture a community of lifelong subscribers.)
• Please stop your telemarketers from calling me every four months and asking me if I am interested in a New York Times subscription; I love the NYT but I am not interested ! If I was, I'd contact them directly.
• Please get rid of all content from The Economist, NYT, etc and minimize the wire service stuff. I am interested in content from the Globe's writers not re-purposed stuff from other publications.
• Please implement Dave Winer's Checkbox News. Wouldn't it be great if I could click a checkbox that says "No more from Leah McLaren" or no more about Rush :-) ? Seriously it would be great and would drive adoption of your online service.