Lots of newspapers (and maybe the state of Kentucky) are banning anonymous comments.

Perhaps this site is why.

For those who don’t know, Nexpo is a gigantic trade show put on by the Newspaper Association of America every year. Over at my day job, I’m a member of the NAA, and this interview was with the NAA monthly trade magazine.

As a result, I will be at Nexpo, invited by Rich Forsgren to appear on a panel to discuss “Content Management — A Technology Perspective.” I will be the open-source voice on the panel, which should include industry heavyweights SaxoTech, DTI, and other vendors of proprietary software.

I will, as usual, be taking the stance that open-source is good for business and that it aligns with the core goals of journalism: namely the free exchange of information in order to build better communities. This should be a lot of fun.

For those of you in the Washington, DC area, I will be in town for three nights [April 12 - 14], so make your dinner reservations now.

While we were all off having a good time at DrupalCON, there was a Knight Digital Media Center conference going on at the University of Southern California.

The initial topic of the day — setting the stage for the rest — was covered by Amy Gahran at Poynter. Michael Williams of the University of Maryland introduced some Zogby polling data about the trend towards digital news consumption — and its adverse effect on the traditional media industry. Go read Amy’s notes, I won’t rehash them here. But I will pull this quote from the Zogby report:

“Americans recognize the value of journalism for their communities, and they are unsatisfied with what they see. While the U.S. news industry sheds expenses and frets about its future, Americans are dismayed by its present. Meanwhile, we see clearly the generational shift of digital natives from traditional to online news - so the challenge for traditional news companies is complex. They need to invest in new products and services - and they have. But they’ve also got to invest in quality, influence and impact. They need to invest in journalism that makes a difference in people’s lives. That’s a moral and leadership challenge - and a business opportunity for whoever can meet it.” – Andrew Nachison, co-founder of iFOCOS

The Knight Foundation announcement at DrupalCON was about this: getting more people involved in re-creating the business of journalism, so that communities can be made stronger.

One of the challenges to Drupal, by the way, is to determine where (or if?) we fit into the larger ecosystem of digital news innovation.

Well, that week just flew by. This is the most time I’ve spent in front of my computer all week.

Aside from the three panels I participated in, I spent most of the week out in the hallway, trying to connect people. I spent most of the week asking WWBMD — What Would Boris Mann Do? Boris would introduce people to each other; so I did.

I also went to a hockey game on Thursday night — absolute disaster, that, Toronto 8, Bruins 2. After the game, I went up to one of the Drupalers and apologized. Andre said, “What do mean? I’m from Toronto; that was a great game!”

The sessions all went very well, especially the Knight Foundation Q&A and the following BoF discussion. There is some more work to do here, and I’ll talk about that in a separate post.

Big thanks to the following folks for hospitality, logistics, and generally making it a great week: Kieran Lal, Jeff Whatcott, Robert Douglas and Jay Batson from Acquia; Gary, Jose, Al, and Robertson from the Knight Foundation; Leslie Hawthorne — the source of all good Summer of Code things; Moshe, Jamie and the rest of the local volunteers; Matt Cheney and Neil Drumm; Tobby, Jonathan and Nik (MDW); Morten, the King of Denmark; D Mak; Christefano and Lee; Cary and the rest of the hockey posse; the Lucky’s Lounge mob; Mike Meyers; Eric Gunderson, Alex Barth and the absent Bonnie Bogle from Development Seed; Pierre from the World Bank (I don’t hate the bank); Lisa Williams and Ben Melançon; and, of course, the all-powerful Sooz.

There are many more names that should be on this list. Including Bob, for approving the whole trip.

So the session is over, and I think it went well. Neil Drumm and Matt Cheney showed me that I’m a little behind, actually. They’ve been doing more active work on data import. Kieran was smart to put us all together, and the panel was stronger than an individual presentation.

There is video — link to come — of the session. And I am posting the slides that I used. These slides are, as usual, just talking points. You should really take a look at the sample modules in the API.

Download the presentation [2.4 MB pdf].

[Update: the corrupted PDF file should be working now.]

We had a very successful BoF on Wednesday. The goal was to discusss how the Drupal community would manage our relationship with the Knight Foundation.

For those who were not at DrupalCON, here are the basics:

– The Knight Foundation (KF) provides funding for open-source development, products and innovations that are in line with their core goal: improving communities through the free exchange of news and information.
– KF needs help from the community to review proposals that are specific to Drupal.
– The program will be ongoing, with the deadlines and length of projects to vary on a case-by-case basis.
– KF handles all the project management and grant management issues for accepted proposals.
– The Drupal community will try a two-step process for applications.

1) Submit an idea for community consideration.
2) Ideas that get community support will become project issues in a special project queue. These proposals will get serious review from the community in preparation for passing to the KF for final evaluation.

Let me stress that this is not a contest; it is an ongoing program that is an extension of work that KF is already doing. They are looking to the community to help, since we agree that Drupal and KF share some common goals, particularly about the purpose of open-source software and the desire to enable open communications.

There will be some additional detail forthcoming over on g.d.o in the KF group. For now, you can see the meeting minutes from the BoF.

In summary, here is where we stand on the process:

– Moshe and Josh are working on some CCK and voting widgets for use in submitting proposals via g.d.o.
– Gary Kebbel and his team are working on some language so that we all know exactly what types of projects they wish to fund.
– I will be creating a project page on drupal.org.

We are going to have a check-in on or about March 21st, to make sure that we are on track with the work to be done. At that checkpoint, we will create the next round of tasks — which will be focused on three aspects:

– Defining and communicating the goals of the program.
– Marketing the program to the community.
– Lining up volunteers to help manage the process.

I have to say that I am very excited about the potential here. And I think that the members of the KF who participated in the BoF were equally excited to see how the community responded and began to self-organize.

As a final note, let me stress that this will be an open process. We are striving for complete transparency regarding the proposals and the process for recommending them to the KF. If you were not at DrupalCON and want to participate, come on over and join the KF group. Everyone is welcome.