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Eoperio: My Knight News Challenge Grant

February 22, 2008 | Author: Travis | Filed under: College, Volunteering

The below is my Knight News Challenge Grant submission. I requested $60,000 and have made it through first three rounds of judging. I should receive an update about my status in March.

I am not overly optimistic about my chances of receiving money. I did not provide enough supporting documents and currently am the only one working on the project.

The name Eoperio comes from two Latin words: Eo- To Go and Aperio- To Reveal

Describe your project:

Eoperio will be an online community where college students from Mexico, Costa Rica and the United States can publish articles about the effects of CAFTA and NAFTA on their communities. There are many sites devoted towards news release through user submission and many more related to raising awareness about every imaginable issue, but there is a notable absence of youth journalism communities. Eoperio’s emphasis will be on interviews with farmers, community leaders, employees, employers in the industries that are being affected by the free trade agreements. This site will build the voice and strength of youth leaders in each country and will connect youth and the wider world with knowledge about the current trade policies and how they directly impact individual and community life. In addition to this, the site will be feature a user created and maintained database of major news and research articles related to the free trade agreements. Edits and comments will be tracked and optional views will show an interactive history changes through font colors, mashups and a timeline.

The environment of the site will be focused on understanding both the gains and losses that NAFTA has created in the lives of Mexicans and to understand how CAFTA is affecting Costa Rica through each step of its ratification and implementation. However it will not only be a place for Mexicans and Costa Ricans to have their problems heard by students from the United States, It will be a place to find out what is and is not working on a local level and give youth a pedestal to voice their own ideas about how to facilitate mutual economic growth and connect them with public and political avenues to change policy. This will be accomplished locally through an active online community and globally through an automated system that publishes each article to social news networks, a database of advocacy websites and emails politicians. Together these things will help to educate the larger population and incite them to participate in an effort for intelligent change.

Rather than just isolated personal accounts and studies, all of the content will be connected through an interactive tagging system where issues are grouped together based on categories. The tagging will provide a basis of organization for visitors to navigate through the database of past articles and also bring a customized news page to registered users with identified interests through AJAX.

Who would want to use it, and why?

The site will exist for youth who have an interest in any of the huge range of issues that CAFTA and NAFTA effect including: Economics, Environmental Studies, Journalism, Political Science, Law and Spanish. These treaties have incredible influence upon the economic futures of Latin-American youth. When this is combined with lack of information about CAFTA in the United States and the lingering confusion about what NAFTA actually accomplished, many people will join to share their own and their community’s feelings and experiences. Contributing articles and comments will be a streamlined process and the effect of each piece will be tracked. An open system with both a real-world and computerized “SDK” and API will allow journalists to understand both Eoperio’s goals and how to achieve them, in addition to creating a structure that will easily allow the evolution of site function.

The site will move youth participants past the simple wall posts and photo-tags of Facebook and instead focus on intellectual discussion, contact building, and future employment. Each person will have a profile page with a recorded history of their article submissions, comments and posts. Rather than having people dread the thought of a possible employer finding their page, it should read like a resume and chronicle of both intellectual curiosity and journalistic ability. This will build an interactive and growing community, interlinking all participants in an intellectual and social networking process.

Outside of intellectual curiosity, an additional incentive to invest the time to create and post articles will be cash bounties. For example, $100 will be awarded to someone from Costa Rica who does an interview with a telecommunications associate and the effect that they think CAFTA will have on their business. However if the article is poorly written or fails to achieve an appropriate user response, the bounty will not be given until the writer takes time to communicate with other writers and edit their work into something improved. While ideas may gain popularity on their merit alone, money is an almost guaranteed catalyst for motivation and participation.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

While the site will attract student journalists, they must first be aware of its existence. I already am working in Costa Rica and have contacts the University of San Jose through friends in the city.

My current work in Costa Rica is with an international volunteer placement called Volunteer Visions doing online marketing. Half of my job is to monitor the different trends of Web 2.0 and the elements that will differentiate a successful website from a failure. The other half of every day is spent on social network sites around the world talking to college-age students from around the world about why they should volunteer. There is an inspiring level of interest in directly making the world a better place, but what is often lost in the project is mutual growth. Instead of a single person paying to teach for two weeks in the beautiful beach town of Samara where I work, I want to promote international dialogue that emphasizes policy change over short-term solutions. Globalization is a product of multiple forces over decades of commerce exchange. The internet is the greatest tool for equalizing knowledge disparities and increasing opportunities for equalizing access to markets. I am firmly committed to the idea of a public that is educated about the true effects of policy. There are both injustices that are going unnoticed and misunderstanding about what true free trade actually means I believe that a cohesive network of first-hand accounts and economic studies will be the best way to directly inform the citizens of each country and eventually led to intelligent policy change. Building a world-wide network of involved, energized and interconnected youth exemplifies our growing global interdependence.

5. What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

The project will begin in The University of Costa Rica, The University of Hidalgo in Mexico and the tri-college consortium of Swarthmore-Haverford-Bryn Mawr. These campuses can be thought of the alpha-test of Eoperio. Expansion will begin by incorporating other Universities in the initial three countries depending on the amount of interest generated and success of the starting community. The project will then be opened to students in the other countries affected by CAFTA: El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. In the first levels of growth journalism will be limited to NAFTA and CAFTA, but will later embrace other unrepresented issues that matter in local life. Expansion will not be a free-for-all of individual interest, but a communal decision of where to focus next.

The growth and evolution of site contributors will remain limited to college students. Although the majority of the world does not fit into this demographic, I do not want to lose the youth appeal that comes with having a place of their own. However, mentoring will be encouraged from the beginning of the site for journalists who want to give advice to the aspiring, but as time goes on, the advice will be consolidated into an open-source handbook (”SDK”) that anyone can add to (a smaller version of the handbook will be available from the very beginning).

While the focus of the site is developing news that holds journalistic credibility, that news holds information about the effects of international policy that might not be generally known. I hope that the articles spur further research into what is and is not working from independent and governmental researchers. Ultimately, the journalists will move past writing for money, resumes and themselves. Instead they will work because they are invested in the ideal of what they are doing and the foreign friendships that they develop.

6. How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

The purpose of the site is to educate with the intent to reform policy. Success depends upon a multitude of factors, including:

  1. The number of registered journalists
  2. The number of articles submitted
  3. The number of mentors who step up to help develop journalistic ability
  4. The number of visitors each week
  5. The number of comments and amount of reader participation
  6. The number of inlinks to the site
  7. The number partnerships with other citizen news sites
  8. The amount of outside press that Eoperio receives

The size of the contributing community is important, but so is the visitor who only reads a single article. Tracking progress in the digital world can be difficult. Articles on most social news sites (like Digg and Reddit) receive hundreds of thousands of hits from users who do not have a registered profile. Tracking these users and making them interactive in discussion will be a defining aspect of Eoperio.

Initial success depends upon developing a well designed website and created a small dedicated community. While a certain level of web-buzz will exist before the site is up and running, true success begins when the many ideas are turned from theory to reality and content actually being produced. This means that success depends upon creating a community. Community building begins with a few dedicated members, the so called “thunderlizards” who will spread Eoperio’s name, sing its praises and get their friends involved. The more thunderlizards, the greater the site success.

Amidst all the marketing and evangelizing, we must remember that the goal of the site is not to just draw readers, but to create a constantly expanding interpretation of CAFTA and NAFTA. Success depends upon that collaboration coming to fruition.


7. What unmet need does your proposal answer? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

Many citizen journalism sites already exist, but their focus is either too broad or narrow for what Eoperio aims to do. The model for Eoperio will follow Assignment Zero, where the journalism was woven into a cohesive tapestry, rather than Now Public’s example where the posts are based upon whatever news the contributor may have stumbled across. It is the difference between organized communities based upon common inspiration versus an individual’s momentary reaction. While both immediate reaction and planned analysis are important aspects of news, they occupy separate spheres of reporting.

Eoperio is unique in the way that it will isolate a single issue for college students to report. It is part of a niche market that moves past the sensationalism and attention deficit tendencies of existing social news sites. The equivalent is channel-surfing is running rampant across the web, where a single opinionated article becomes the basis of authority on a double-sided issue. Eoperio will add another level of credibility and organization to the internet.

The rising generation of college students are paving new ground in how to protest political and social issues. Gone are the days of the thousand-strong marches across campus that verge on open rebellion and chaos. We are the internet generation, click-activists who attempt to change the world from computer groups and Facebook groups. However, few youth leaders have emerged on a national level to direct the anger and passion of a generation. The world needs new leaders and even if Eoperio doesn’t directly create change, it will create a network of individuals experienced in modern art of communication and collaboration. We need distinct voices and genuine personalities, the kind that reach the front page of Digg and leave traditional media outlets in the dust. The world needs new globally-linked communities that are able to maintain interest and attention on singular important issues.

8. What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general need? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

My project is unique. Few are trying to chronicle the effects of the recently passed CAFTA as the policy changes go into practice over the next few years. There are few youth communities focused on journalism. Eoperio will emerge as a bridge between these two realities. Eoperio will incorporate both the emerging kinds of technology-driven journalism and face to face communication.

Eoperio is designed to fit college student’s busy and social lives. By expanding the project campus by campus, participants will be able to work on stories with people they already know, in addition to strangers from thousands of miles away. While there are an increasing number of public commentaries about the amount of computer time college students spend online, most of their extra-curricular activities occur in the physical world. Following the model of Amnesty-International, Eoperio clubs and groups could have meetings to debate, discuss and collaborate on how to bring change where it is needed. Video-conferencing between the three campuses is a single example of what modern technology could make possible.

Creating a strong presence on-campus presence for Eoperio will be both a student and Professor driven endeavor. Professors in fields related to Spanish, Journalism and Economics can foster development by easily combining required students assignments into the Eoperio framework. Simplifying the already busy lives of students will increase the number of participants and carry discussion from internet chat to lecture-hall.

The youth of today are witnesses to a revolution of politics, news, discussion and activism. We are the internet generation and like all youth, are optimistic, idealistic and searching to make our mark upon the world. Unlike past generations, we do not have a revolution, a war, a wider sense of focused purpose. The world today needs more places that merge real-life tangible results and productivity with online community where opinions and ideas can be shared. Eoperio could be one such place.

9. How will people learn about what you are doing? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

The internet will be the main medium of advertisement, but will be coupled to in-person meetings and talks to traditional media venues. Online publicity will be focused on developing an interacting reader base and laying the groundwork for future expansion, but the college student participants will be recruited in person. This is necessary due to the limited scope of the initial project and the fact that it is easier to get excited about something when you can see the face of the person telling you about it. Direct recruitment will be fostered through professors, volunteers and myself.

I will send out personalized emails to attendees of the Networked News Summit telling them about Eoperio, asking them for their advice and to blog about the project. By talking with the developers already working at the edge of networked journalism, I will integrate myself into a community that has a deep inside perspective of contemporary journalism and links to report upcoming sites to the world.

The wider blogosphere is continuously expanding and I will focus on developing relationships with the blogs that are connected with international relations, social networking, journalism, and economics. A small group of dedicated participants raising awareness and voting up articles through social networking sites can reach an audience of millions within a few hours and it is not overly ambitious to imagine a few hundred thousand people coming to find out more information about the project. Paid advertising will also be explored through Google and Yahoo Adwords, but unless the viewers have a high conversion rate to publishing contributors, this service will be dropped.

I will create a blog, evangelize and chronicle each step of the web design and project process, allowing others to make suggestions and recommendations about what should be included in the site and how to best go about creating it. The key to success and expansion will be maintaining these connections and keeping discussion alive even after Eoperio launches.


10. Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project. * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

I have not looked for other funding for the project at this time. If I receive funding for Eoperio from News Challenge, I will begin to explore the possibility of other funders. Ideally future funders will be connected to youth markets or governmental organizations and aid in the expansion and influence of Eoperio, but I would like to secure funding from at least one source approaching others. If Eoperio shows developmental potential, I will approach a wide range of companies, from Google.org to MTV looking for funding to expand.

11. Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

The project will primarily be a product of the Eoperio community, but a few of my personal contacts will aid in the development. Perhaps the most influential person will be Greg Norris, a Harvard professor and energy life-cycle assessment consultant whose work has connected him with influential people around the world who are looking to create positive change. Greg was the one who suggested that I submit a proposal through News Challenge and has connected me with people in Veracruz, Mexico and the University of Hidalgo. He is also trying to secure funding to expand his New Earth initiative. Regardless of whether both, either, or neither of us are successful, we will continue to collaborate.

I also have an internship with Volunteer Visions, an international volunteer placement agency with projects in nine different countries. Their headquarters (and my office) are in Cost Rica and I have talked to the director about the possibility of opening a volunteer program for students from the United States. The programs would be offered in both Mexico and Costa Rica and Volunteer Visions would arrange from homestays and food for the participants who want to work within the local communities doing interviews and research into issues. Volunteering abroad with journalism would be both a strong addition to a resume and a chance to meet friends made through Eoperio in person.


12. Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

The guest list of the recently held CUNY Conference on Networked Journalism makes it clear that there are a growing number of citizen journalism sites, bearing names like The Northwest Voice, NewAssignment.Net, Assignment Zero: Myheimat.de, and Orato. The focus ranges from hyperlocal news in Texas to videoblogs on Presidential campaigns. Some are open-source, others are networked, some support stand-alone journalism of single contributors and others that are comment based collaborations.

I do not see these as competition. For example, I don’t believe that Brian Conley’s Small World News has a market advantage over what I want to do. His focus in Baghdad and Mexico is with video blogging, sharing content taken by those who live in each place. In his own words he is looking to use local content to have a global impact. I will work with the Conley’s of the world. They will not be partnerships for publicities sake, just to say you have other connections in the field. They will be mutually beneficial relationships that have defined objectives and a plan to achieve them. Today the world market of technology driven journalism is new and open and I am not alone when I say electronic synergy between projects is an admirable aspiration.

13. What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

I can guarantee that at least a microcosm of the modern world will be more informed about both sides of free trade agreements and the governmental politics that regulate them. I will have provided an easy platform for those who want their voices heard, a platform that is founded in a clearly defined model, where each person understands their place in the process and what their contribution brings to the larger picture.

Eoperio has a simple mission. It will create a credible story from both the emotional and concrete reports of Latin American development. It will be adaptive to the constructive criticism of the participants. The produced content will be collaborative, open-source and founded in a clearly defined model, where each person understands their place in the process and what their contribution brings to the larger picture. The community will be built on a platform of open-information, collective intelligence, emerging technological trends and global communication.

Lawmakers are finally beginning to understand the power that the internet could have in their campaigns and future. Pay-per-click campaigns, YouTube Debates, social networking profiles, blogs, and online donations are now seen as valuable marketing tools to be capitalized on. However, they need to learn that the internet is more than just another market. Politicians have to learn that when 100,000 young adults join a group on Facebook protesting an issue, it means something. Regardless of how successful Eoperio becomes, it will create a model that bridges the gap between real life action and online activism that can be referenced by others hoping to inform the world.

-Travis Taylor

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 and is filed under College, Volunteering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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