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    Disrupt Bay Area transportation at Saturday’s ‘Hack My Ride’ event

    Published June 5, 2015 by

    In a region where technologists at companies such as Uber, Lyft, Tesla and Google are trying to disrupt transportation, a growing community of civic hackers is working on innovating Silicon Valley’s existing public transportation system. On Saturday, as part of National Day of Civic Hacking, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority – known as VTA – is hosting “Hack My Ride 2.0,” a hackathon that brings together both techies and non-techies to create tools and apps to enrich the public transit experience. The idea is to see how technology could be used to increase transit ridership and help people make the switch from driving to another form of transit, according to Cody Kraatz, VTA’s administrator of digital communications. VTA provides bus, light rail and paratransit services across Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara County, which is home to more than 1.8 million people. The June 6 event kicks of a three-month challenge to form teams and create a working software application that uses a VTA data set. Projects will be judged for quality, implementation and potential impact. Knight Foundation is supporting this year’s “Hack My Ride 2.0” initiative with $15,000. A total of $30,000 in prizes will be awarded, including a $10,000 grand prize.
  • Article

    Join Code for Miami for National Day of Civic Hacking

    Published June 5, 2015 by

    Danielle Ungermann is the events coordinator of Code for Miami, which Knight Foundation supports to help attract and keep talented people and expand opportunity in South Florida by connecting innovators and entrepreneurs. When you look around Miami, it’s not at first apparent just how many opportunities there are to help make a difference. Drawing together developers, designers, data geeks, leaders, government folks and idea-makers, Code for Miami has spent the last two years helping pave the way for civic engagement in Miami-Dade County. To get an idea, here are some of the projects we’ve completed just within the last year: GIS Bus Tracking system Miami Open 211 Miami Wiki Developed a twitterbot titled Cute Pets to help Miami-Dade County Animal Services send foster pets to great homes. Miami Answers, which sources answers to commonly asked questions about Miami. Contributed to Eyes on the Rise’s sea level rise visualization. 
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    LiveNinja connects entrepreneurs and innovators with waffles and conversation

    Published June 5, 2015 by

    Above: The team behind the social media outlet Booksie, focused on controlling parent oversharing, begins its presentation. Photos by Alec Schwartzman. A little over a year ago, LiveNinja, a software company that connects people with experts through video chat, started serving waffles to its team every Wednesday to keep up office morale. Since then, the casual breakfast has become a major weekly event for Wynwood and beyond. “There were only eight or nine of us, and every time we would always have way more waffles than we needed,” said Danielle Ungermann, LiveNinja’s community manager. “We started inviting friends, and eventually decided this was something we wanted to make an event out of. We realized we already had some of the community coming in, so why not invite more of the Miami tech startup community to join in.” The gatherings, sponsored by Knight Foundation to help talented people connect, have expanded to include an eclectic crowd, drawing from South Florida’s growing pool of creative, innovators and entrepreneurs. “I read about [Waffle Wednesdays] first in the Miami New Times,” said Ari Good, a local international tax attorney. “I only realized once I started coming that it was a technology-based event. It is an absolutely great place to find out about upcoming tech startups.”
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    14 contemporary artists create new public art for and with Philadelphia

    Published June 4, 2015 by

    Photo: Open Source curator Pedro Alonzo, City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program staff, and NextFab representatives discuss the fabrication and specifications of Jonathan Monk's skateable sculptures, Steps and Pyramid, now on view through November 2015 at Paine's Park, Philadelphia. Credit: Steve Weinik.  This week, the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program kicks off Open Source, a citywide public art project that promises to be the most exciting and innovative art initiative in Philadelphia this year. Open Source is one of the biggest initiatives we’ve ever taken on. Under the direction of curator Pedro Alonzo, 14 trailblazing artists from Philadelphia and around the world are working with Mural Arts on a wide range of public art projects. From now through the fall, Open Source will continue to grow, and in October 2015, the project will culminate as a citywide exhibition of temporary public artworks. The artists in Open Source make up an unusually diverse bunch, culled from many different art world silos. It’s a massive project that has brought together brilliant contemporary artists from around the globe, like street artist Swoon, Philly favorites Billy and Steven Dufala, and internationally recognized sculptor and painter Sterling Ruby. Working with Mural Arts, and benefitting from our 30-plus years of community-based, collaborative work, these artists have a distinct opportunity to reach new audiences and to execute projects in Philadelphia that other organizations can’t help them pull off.
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    Mayoral elections and millennials

    Published June 4, 2015 by

    There was significant fanfare about how turnout for the 2014 midterm elections was the lowest it’s been in 72 years. Look beyond the dramatic headlines and you’ll discover that turnout for national elections has actually been relatively flat over the past half century. What’s been less discussed though is the anemic and declining turnout for local elections. A recent study of turnout for mayoral elections in large cities showed steady declines over the past decade and only 1 in 5 eligible residents showing up to the polls for local elections. Today, Knight Foundation released research about the barriers and motivators for local voting. The research specifically focused on “drop-off millennial voters,” meaning millennials (ages 20 to 34) who voted in the last national election but not in their recent local elections. We know that young adults vote at lower rates than others; through focus groups with millennial drop-off voters in Akron, Ohio, Miami and Philadelphia, this research offers a window into attitudes of millions of millennials voting in national elections but not locally, asking why.
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    Digital Grass focuses on growing diversity in South Florida tech

    Published June 4, 2015 by

    Michael Hall is CEO and chairman of Digital Grass Innovation and Technology (Digital Grass), a social impact group and diversity accelerator, which Knight Foundation supports as part of its efforts to invest in Miami’s emerging innovators and entrepreneurs to build community, while fostering talent and expanding economic opportunity. Despite the well-known benefits that different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives bring to corporate success, the technology and innovation ecosystem is visibly homogeneous, leaving minorities, women and LGBT people on the fringes. Bringing these groups to the center of the South Florida tech and entrepreneurial community is a primary focus of Digital Grass. We want to show the power and benefits of diversity in technology and innovation. Miami is a melting pot; this is one of our strengths, and we can show the world its power, whether it is through the lens of collaboration to fill tech positions, build tech companies or influence investors. With the support of Knight Foundation, we’ll now expand our efforts to broaden this message about the power of diversity.
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    Second Knight News Challenge of 2015 will focus on data

    Published June 3, 2015 by

    At the Eyeo Festival in Minneapolis today, Knight Foundation Director of Journalism Shazna Nessa announced that the next Knight News Challenge will explore how data can offer a deeper understanding of the world. We’ve selected that theme to address the need for individuals to be able to navigate an increasingly complex and data-rich environment. For this, our 14th Knight News Challenge, we will focus on surfacing projects that build an understanding of the role of data in people’s lives. This is our second challenge specifically focused on data. Since the first one in 2012 we have seen data become even more entwined in our everyday lives, and we want to accelerate exploration of this area with data projects that create a more informed citizenry and demystify the collection and use of data.
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    Major museums take art into the streets with Inside|Out

    Published June 3, 2015 by

    There’s something very powerful about seeing an iconic work of art in person. If you’ve ever watched people looking at art in a museum, you know this is true. For a moment, the viewer is completely immersed in the work. That’s what makes visiting a museum so memorable. But what would happen if you bring those pieces out of the museum and took them into the streets? That’s what the Detroit Institute of Arts asked in 2010 when it first launched Inside|Out. The program brings ornately-framed, high-quality reproductions of masterworks from the museums iconic collection into the streets and parks of Detroit. To date, the DIA has installed more than 800 Inside|Out reproductions in 100 neighborhoods in and around Detroit. Six years later, there is still a waiting list for the program.
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    One year later, award-winning series saves newborn lives

    Published June 2, 2015 by

    Ellen Gabler is an investigative reporter and assistant editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Allan James Vestal is a news applications developer at the Journal Sentinel. In 2014, Gabler and Vestal won a Livingston Award for their series “Deadly Delays,” an investigation on life-threatening delays in newborn blood testing. The series spurred dozens of states to make significant changes to address delays from keeping labs open on weekends to identifying problem hospitals and providing them with regular performance reports. The Livingston Awards are supported by Knight Foundation. Below, Gabler writes about their series. This story is cross-posted from The Huffington Post. It took $7 and a tweak in hospital procedure to save Juniper Horrocks’ life. Had the baby been born just four days earlier, she likely would not have survived. Juniper was born in October 2014 at a hospital in rural Utah. Just three days earlier, the hospital had started using FedEx to ship newborn screening samples overnight to Utah’s state lab. Previously, they used regular mail, which meant some babies blood samples took more than five days to get to the lab. A wait like that could have killed Juniper. The baby has a genetic disorder that can be deadly if left untreated in the first few days of life.
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    How a reporter’s persistence unveiled the misuse of public funds in New Jersey

    Published June 2, 2015 by

    I almost threw out the letter. It was June 2013, and I had just published a major expose in The Star-Ledger about how one of New Jersey’s most politically connected engineering firms parlayed secret – and illegal – campaign donations into millions of dollars in government contracts. With a trove of internal documents I had obtained, the report for the first time named the politicians in all corners who had profited from the firm’s crimes. The story was a bombshell, and letters and emails poured in from all corners. One in particular asked me to shift my focus to political contributions and questionable conduct by the owners and top officials of one of New Jersey’s private schools for students with disabilities. I had no idea what these schools did, who paid for them, or that they even existed. And that’s when the letter almost went into the trash.
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    Palfrey: Libraries matter more than ever in the age of Google

    Published June 2, 2015 by

    At 6 p.m. June 8, Author John Palfrey will be talking about his new book, Bibliotech: Why Libraries Matter More than Ever in the Age of Google, in Miami and via Livestream.  His book is a call to arms for communities to fight for libraries and their digital transition, or risk losing an important piece of American democracy. Below is an excerpt from his book. RSVP to attend the discussion at Miami Dade College’s Idea Center, or watch the stream June 8 at  knightfoundation.org/live. John Palfrey  Libraries are at risk because we have forgotten how essential they are. In the era of Google and Amazon, those with means can access information with greater ease and speed than ever before. As a consequence, in cities and towns across the world the same debate rages each year when budget time rolls around: What’s the purpose of a library in a digital age? Put more harshly, why should we spend tax dollars, in tough economic times, on a library when our readers can instantly get so much of what they need and want from the Internet? As the bulk of funding for police, fire departments, and schools – all necessary services – has become the responsibility of state and local governments, municipal leaders have been forced to ask a question that library supporters aren’t prepared to answer: are libraries necessary? We keep having this debate because we have a very simplistic and skewed idea of why libraries matter. For most of us, libraries are good for one thing: getting information.
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    Guccivuitton at ICA: Inventory of art

    Published June 1, 2015 by

    Above: A view of the Guccivuitton installation. Photo Studio LH00Q, courtesy of ICA, Miami Everything about the Guccivuitton exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami is disorienting, both physically and conceptually. That’s intentional, coming from the artist collaborative that runs an alternative space in Little Haiti, and whose name, Guccivuitton, is a take on the hyper-commercialism of art and the districts where art houses reside. ICA, whose exhibitions are all partially funded by the Knight Foundation, sits smack dab in the middle of the rapidly developing luxury center of the Design District, in an iconic old building called the Moore Space. It is a temporary home for ICA, and not ideally suited to showing art; the four-story Atrium space is tight, mixed in with offices. The museum and the gallery knew that, however, and made a point to work within these unique confines. They also decided to create a “show,” playing on the idea of showcases and storefronts, where fashion, jewelry and, yes, art, are sold as luxury items. The location and timing make a perfect fit. One needs only look at Christie’s New York auction earlier this month, when a Picasso broke the world record for the most expensive piece of art ever sold. Or walk around the ICA’s neighborhood, with its gleaming new Bulgari and Piaget outlets. And yet, the Guccivuitton museum exhibit contains artists whose market value is limited. The paradox is part of the conceptual underpinning. When you enter the Atrium Gallery on the ground floor, you are greeted by a spray-painted rock that precariously tops a thin steel rod. “Stolen Boulder” by Hugo Montoya resembles a chunk of one of Miami’s now famous street murals, or maybe a piece of the Berlin Wall. But if you step close, and even nudge it, it sways–meaning it couldn’t be as solid as it looks. A “faux” rock? The other works here are a white screen mesh with a neon Gucciviutton sign, and two benches, designed by architect Jonathan Gonzalez. You can look up from these and see the next three stories, which look like white cages and grids hung with artworks. The ground-floor Atrium Gallery. Photo by Studio LH00Q, courtesy of ICA, Miami.
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    Join us for these upcoming Miami events

    Published May 29, 2015 by

    We have a terrific lineup of events set for this month in Miami that are supported by Knight Foundation. They include: June 1: The Idea Center @ Miami Dade College hosts “Exponential Organizations – A Transformative Single Day Course with Salim Ismail”. June 1, 8, 15, 22, 29: Every Monday, Hacks/Hackers hosts OpenHack Miami at The LAB. June 1, 8, 15, 22, 29: Join Code for MIA for their weekly Civic Hack Night. June 1: Website Building in HTML5 & CSS3 at The LAB Miami. June 3: “Post-Investment”, the fifth installment of AGP’s Angel Education Series, will be held at the Kellogg School of Management.
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    ‘Knight Cities’ podcast: Educating communities on the value of repurposing vacant schools

    Published May 29, 2015 by

    As American cities fill with new and smaller households, school populations are shrinking. And that means a lot of closed schools in communities with no idea how to repurpose them. Enter Lindsey Scannapieco, principal with Scout, Ltd. and now the enthusiastic developer of the Edward Bok Technical School in South Philadelphia. It is a mammoth undertaking – an eight-story, 340,000-square-foot hulk of a building with two gyms, one of the city’s largest auditoriums, science labs, a commercial kitchen and more.