• Article

    Prototype winner using ‘natural language processing’ to solve journalism’s commenting problem

    Published February 16, 2015 by

    Photo of Francis Tseng courtesy of Liya Safina.  In November, Reuters was among the largest news organizations to announce that it will close online user comments on news stories. It wasn’t a huge surprise in our contemporary digital environment where the comments section can often disintegrate into the depths of politically misguided, racially insensitive and profanity-laced conversation. Knight Prototype Fund winner Francis Tseng wants to change that with machine learning and artificial intelligence. Tseng, a Knight-Mozilla OpenNews Fellow, received $35,000 in support last year from Knight Foundation to build a prototype for his news aggregation application, Argos. Argos seeks to automate the creation of timelines out of news events and news stories. So instead of a person manually curating how content fits together, the right kind of automation could allow a computer to recognize articles from the same event and organize them.
  • Article

    An inside look at “Eat, Drink & Be Married”

    Published February 14, 2015 by

    By Shelby Thomason, One Voice Mixed Chorus Last month our two new staff members, Josh Wise, executive director, and Shelby Thomason, operations manager, managed their first season-concert. Eat, Drink & Be Married was as much a performance as it was a celebration to honor individuals and organizations who have worked...
  • Article

    Mural art for all types of walls

    Published February 13, 2015 by

    Rey Jaffet starts painting the Douglas Gardens walls. Art, and especially outdoor street art, has become entwined with everyday life in Miami. Those of us living here may have recognized this, but maybe it’s the tons of visitors who have descended for this holiday weekend who...
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    Knight Arts Challenge winner EXILE Books thrives on community collaboration

    Published February 13, 2015 by

    Photo courtesy EXILE Books. At one point, as Amanda Keeley retraces her steps the past few months and her list goes on and on and on, the classic image of a dozen clowns stepping out of a Volkswagen Beetle comes to mind. She pauses and chuckles almost apologetically. “Well, yes, I've been busy.” A visual artist, writer and curator, Keeley is the mastermind behind itinerant artists’ bookstore EXILE Books.  A 2014 Knight Arts Challenge winner, the project has had a remarkably active life, rolling from art galleries to fairs and morphing from art/practical installation to books-and-fruit cart. In March, EXILE Books takes up temporary residence at the De La Cruz Collection, in Miami’s Design District. “It will include a small component of EXILE Books and, basically, a temporary screen printing studio in the space,” she explains. “EXILE Books is about dedicating a space to print culture, celebrating print culture and raising awareness about artists’ publications and how artists utilize publishing.”
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    Five foundations collaborate on building better digital society

    Published February 13, 2015 by

    Photo by John Bracken. How well individuals and communities fare educationally, in the job market and other key spheres that increasingly are digitally driven partly depends on how easily they can access and navigate the Internet. With that belief in mind, Knight Foundation and four other international philanthropies are collaborating on how to expand Internet capacity and literacy. Access to an open Internet, foundation leaders say, is fundamental to our economic, civic and personal lives. “I’m not talking about the shiny new technology, the hot new wearable, the Internet of things … I’m talking about ensuring that the privacy and protections that were afforded in the analog world are equally distributed and protected in the digital world … Internet rights as civil rights,” said Darren Walker, Ford Foundation president.
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    Exhibit brings Miami’s fashion history to life

    Published February 13, 2015 by

    Photo by Amy San Pedro. Amy San Pedro is a guest film curator for the Museum of Fashion, a 2014 Knight Arts Challenge winner. Not that long ago the entire country looked to Miami for its style. This history lingers in the signs that read “Fashion District” marking the perimeter of Wynwood. Winter styles in Miami set the summer styles for everywhere else, and because Miami was known as America’s Riviera, there was a sense of liberty to play with the rules. Fashion was at once self-indulgent, exotic and sophisticated. It was “Made in Miami.” In 2012, Keni Valenti, a designer and collector with 40 years of fashion experience, chose to relocate his collection of over 20,000 pieces of vintage couture from New York to Miami. He was well aware of the importance of the apparel and fashion industries to Miami’s history. As his collection grew, so did his dream to preserve the clothing and the stories behind them. He knew that there was no better place than Miami to open the Museum of Fashion; in many ways Miami and Western fashion came of age at the same time, inextricably linking their histories.
  • Article

    Media Party Miami one of a dozen Knight-backed events packed into February 


    Published February 12, 2015 by

    Photo of downtown Miami by Flickr user Xynn Tii. Several new Knight-supported events have landed on the February calendar, so we’re sending an update. Whether you’re connecting with Latin American and U.S. media innovators at Media Party Miami  or hacking for civic change at Code Across 2015, there are plenty of opportunities to learn and get involved in the community. Feb. 13-14: Media Party Miami presents two days of panels and speakers and media innovation and hands-on learning with leaders in U.S. and Latin American media. Feb. 13: The Idea Center presents Pioneers @ MDC with education entrepreneur John Katzman.    Feb. 18: Jose Estabil, Director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, MIT Skoltech Intiative, gives a talk "Innovation Happens Everywhere” at The Idea Center. 
  • Article

    Prototype Fund winner aims to break ‘cycle of poverty’ with social services information platform

    Published February 12, 2015 by

    CTO Eric Lukoff and CEO Rey Faustino. Photo by Vignesh Ramachandran. Rey Faustino wishes there had been something like One Degree when he was a kid. The San Francisco Bay Area-based founder of One Degree – a nonprofit working to help low-income families access nonprofit and social services – grew up as a low-income undocumented Filipino immigrant in Southern California. “My family struggled to find resources that we needed – things like health resources, immigration services, even things like after-school programs and summer programs,” Faustino said. “We just didn’t know who to talk to or who to trust or what we were eligible for.” Faustino, who has worked in the nonprofit sector for the last decade, decided to tackle this problem head on. While attending the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, he studied public policy and wrote the initial business plan for what would become One Degree.
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    Opa-locka and the art of renewal

    Published February 12, 2015 by

    By Fernando González, Miami-based arts and culture writer Artists and urban planners collaborate on an ambitious public art master plan for Opa-locka, Fla. Photo coutresy of the Opa-locka Community Development Corporation. The images of Opa-locka, a small, blue-collar city 10 miles north of downtown Miami, speak...