Getting down to the job... The start of the Knight-Mozilla learning lab

Published 2011-07-11

Through some fortunate confluence of events I was one of 60 people selected to participate in this year's Knight-Mozilla Learning Lab, a four-week lecture series designed give people a chance to take an idea from inception to application ... one that just might shape the future of online news.

As regular blogging about the lectures is a requirement you should see a bit more from me in the space in the weeks to come...

First, about the learning lab. We were asked the following questions:

• What would you build on the web that actually makes news better for the people who create and read it?
• How would you involve the public in the news making, editing or sharing process?
• How do we get data, reporting and local knowledge into the hands of users, wherever they are, no matter what devices and platforms they're using?

After four weeks of lectures from thinkers and doers like Christian Heilmann, Burt Herman, Aza Raskin, John Resig, and many more, the 60 participants will present a final project. That final project will be judged and 20 people will head to Berlin where you will build a prototype alongside some really accomplished developers.

From there, five people will be selected to spend a year seeing their idea evolve from a newsroom as a Knight-Mozilla news innovation fellow.

If you are interested, here is "my idea" -- a Topic-based, "DRY" approach to gathering and presenting the news -- as it stands now.

Later this week I'll think a bit -- in the open -- about where things might go from here, and present some thoughts about the first couple lectures and how they shaped "my idea" thus far.