Idea Lab

The Includer is the voting machine for ones dreams.

(There are no apostrophes on this Bosnian keyboard.)

I am blogging thanks to last years Knight News Challenge.  November 1 is the last day to apply this year.

What I really like about this contest is that everybody can see your entry.  Here is mine: Help Room.  Please rate my entry and add your comments!

Paul Bradshaw (Birmingham City University), Stefan Lewandowski (3form media) and Nick Booth (former BBC journalist) have teamed together to propose Help Me Investigate. Com, an online iterative open-source investigatory community.

I was hoping to draw attention to more entries, but right now the News Challenge website is impossibly slow.  All those electrons waiting in line.

I hope the entries arent all taken down after November 1.  That is what happened last year.

Its also unfortunate (antiviral - antiseptic) that they use such long urls.

And when I uploaded my picture file with Firefox, it didnt show.  I tried five times and then I was told I could not upload more files.  So I have uploaded the same file five times. There is no way to delete files. Thank you to Jose Zamora for explaining.

Grumble, grumble, grumble...

I am glad that this year there was the Knight News Challenge garage.  I wasnt able to participate because I flew to Bosnia to start a full time job as a math professor. (Thank you to Stanko Blatnik for recommending me!)

I suggest an ongoing campaign (or garage) to support projects.  I think thats the spirit of Help Me Investigate . Com  Its certainly the spirit of my Minciu Sodas laboratory.  If you would like help to make your dreams come true, please join one of our groups.  We work for free, publicly, in the Public Domain, and as we help each other we organize teams and seek opportunities to work for pay.

I think some day well discover that campaigns can change the world themselves, without political power.  Imagine a candidate who doesnt have all the answers, but rather has a few great questions, and invites our help as they look for answers.  Hillary Clinton took such steps, at least she did at her website, a year ago.

The Includer is for those "candidates" who work for change and get things done even without power or office.  Im not allowed to impact the outcome of any election.  But if you are voting in a state or country where the outcome is already decided - if you are not in a swing state or a battleground state - then consider voting for a loser:  I know you wont win today, but I hope you win some day!

Ethan Zuckerman once told me that thousands applied for Geek Corps, but only dozens were accepted.  I told him, give me your losers!  And so I ask for your vote, your comment, your rating for myself and many other losers!