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Proposal from knightcontest.com

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Nyou-Reporter : gets the news into, and out of, anywhere (and particularly e-excluded areas)

Primary Contact Name

Professor Frederic Baucher

Describe your project

While “online communities don’t need […] help”, what if key infrastructure (telecom, access to a computer) is missing? This project is to provide people living within e-excluded areas (whether rural or urban) with technologies for producing, broadcasting and reading digital content and news. The project reuses existing (open-source) techniques successfully applied in other contexts, and coordinates pilot projects in several identified/selected spots : * written web content in 1 village in Mali and 1 village in Burkina ; * radio and video content in Madagascar The project focuses on dissemination of Wikipedia : * for reading : to help civic journalists in e-excluded area get the latest information; * for contributing : to provide local communities access to contribute to the web, in their own language, and particularly with Wikipedia, one of the most visible part of the web. Dissemination of Wikipedia is a pilot project to check that the idea works. Once this is operating (in journalist HQ, schools, and/or local offline web café), people from e-excluded regions will be able to use the web to develop their communities as they see fit. To meet this goal the project will : * provide technical means for accessing web content in e-excluded area (by e-excluded is meant regions that do not have access to broadband or dial-up Internet) : use of satellite for receiving large amount of data (with a business-model that prevents from asking fee to subscriber), and USB key to transport content and local contributions (as a complement to satellite) to the nearest connected point (online cyber-café, university, etc.). * disseminate know-how to let local citizens and/or professionals (entrepreneur, teacher) operate and maintain the technical means. The dissemination will be orchestrated by local educational institution and/or NGO involved locally.

Primary Contact Email

frederic.baucher@insa-rouen.fr

Organization or Business Name

INSA-ROUEN

Who would want to use it and why?

The system and accompanying pilot sites targeted by this project are of interest to local associations, and to universities for didactic reasons. Even if the project remains very small, we hope that the results of this experiment would be of value for other locations to help civic journalists, radio and video amateurs, to reuse the technical means disseminated under open licences (Creative Commons for documentation, manual, getting started; and open source licenses for software). That is the reason why the budget includes a great part dedicated to communication and participation in exhibitions (with great emphasis on colloquia that take place in e-excluded area).

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

The project is hosted by INSA-Rouen, an engineering school based in France (similar to an American university), an organisation accustomed to the management of significant international projects. For instance, it has led for 3 years a project (UEFP) funded by the Tempus-Meda programme of the European Union, with an equivalent budget, involving 100 experts from the Mediterranean region. Pr. Frédéric BAUCHER, who is responsible for the Nyou-Reporter proposal, involved his students on numerous authenticable (real) projects in the framework of a Problem-Based Learning pedagogy (cf [1]). He is also working with engineering schools from other cultures (particularly in Morocco, during the last 5 years) to analyse how to improve global cooperation in geodistributed software projects. The Nyou-Reporter project is under the auspices of the NyouDihl initiative (hosted by INSA-Rouen) that gathers numerous organisations (associations, educational institutions and companies), a number of which will be involved in the Nyou-Reporter project for the following competencies * communities of open-source software : Moulinwiki (asso), Framasoft (asso), Wizzy Digital (asso) * educational institutions : ENSA-Safi (Morocco), ENSA-Safi (Morocco), University of Nouakchott (Mauritania), Lycée Eiffel (France) * provider of digital content : Wikipedia (through Moulinwiki), Videontv, Jamendo * network facilities provider : Telespazio (company), FON France (company) * accompany local dissemination of technical means (computers, network devices, …) and know-how : MDA (Madagascar), Kunnafoni (Mali), BiblioBrousse (Burkina)

U.S. State

Country

France

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

The project Nyou-Reporter depicted in this proposal uses :

* a network technology, named NyouDihl, to implement the exchange of information between local journalists and the Internet (NyouDihl broadcasts content like web pages to proxies that accumulate the pages from reception to reception to simulate the web on selected sites)
* and a tool (MediaWiki) to display some resources (Wikipedia for instance) and create news locally.

This technology is an alternative solution to online Internet access, to rapidly and easily disseminate news all around a region. The key functionality of Internet for local journalism comes from the ease and the low cost of publishing on the Web. The goal of Nyou-Reporter is to provide this ease and affordability to millions of people that do not have direct online access to the Internet (to date, according to http://www.internetworldstats.com, only 5% of Africans have access to Internet and therefore to the information published there and to the services that allow to contribute to the Internet ecosystem). With this it will be easy to make physical communities of writers and readers of news where Internet is not easily accessible. Conversely, the lack of liaison is a good opportunity to create physical communities since people have to move physically to make the information go round: go to a ProxySpot (that is, any place, like cyber café, schools, etc ... that hosts a NyouDihl proxy) to access the local web site of information, carry out the USB key to transfer local information to central servers (that will broadcast by satellite this data to all NyouDihl proxies) tuned to the channel (accessible without a fee).

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

Several indicators (that can be easily recorded) will help us to monitor the activity of the project and evaluate the achievement of our goals. It will also control the level of relationship between users from Southern countries :

* Number of proxies (relays) operating
* Number of Wikipedia pages visited in ProxySpot (from web browser computers connected via the LAN to local web server)
* Number of news web site created in ProxySpot
* Number of pages produced in each news web site
* Number of pages of the news web site read locally
* Number of pages of the news web site read remotely (in other )
* Percentage of pages written in local languages on the Internet coming from ProxySpot (for instance, how many web pages written in Safi, local language in Burkina and how many will be available in a few month, after , and out of that total, how many have been written in ProxySpot)
* Number of days between the writing of a news and its upload to the online replication of this website
* Ranking (number of references to) web pages written in ProxySpot from other pages available on Internet
* number of references from web pages written in ProxySpot to other pages written in other ProxySpot
* Number of days between the writing of a news in a ProxySpot and its availability in another ProxySpot (wether transferred from one to the other by satellite or by USB key)

web to an online replication of this website All the information related to the store of disseminated information (using the Relais cache open source software) will be uploaded to a central server by means of the USB keys that will carry logs of usage (for technical and statistical usage only).

Web site

http://blog.nyoudihl.org

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$750000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

The Nyou-Reporter solution will provide technical means for local journalism, with applications that can be installed and maintained by local technical workers, at cost adapted to the local markets. The project focus is on local constraints :

* energy : in the area where Internet liaisons are not accessible, the power (electrical) network is generally not very stable. A solution based on solar energy (photovoltaic, etc ...) will be provided as needed ;
* robustness : the solution must be able to cope with all the instability due to energy sources and to the asynchronous transfers of data (satellite, USB key). The current liaison and network protocol commonly used in Northern countries nowadays are mainly dedicated for synchronous transfer, that is, with live online Internet access.
* light weight : the software solution will be able to run on second-hand computer hardware (a lot of initiatives are now working to transfer used computers to Southern countries). The software solution will be adapted to these computer architectures or to small computers that are not heavy energy consumer (small form factors, embedded solutions, ...).

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$1100000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

The Nyou-Reporter project is focused on areas where deployment of landline connectivity (DSL over copper wire, optic fiber, etc …) is not expected within the next 5-10 years. For these areas, Internet access has been with bi-directional satellite : it has been tried for the past 3 years (VSAT, etc …) but the solutions are too expensive to be maintained once the fund raiser retires. NyouDihl uses one-way satellite broadcasting that can be received freely (to cope with the financial difficulties encountered with two-way sat.). Addition of USB key capabilities will extend the reach at very low cost. Another key feature of NyouDihl is that it involves local people by using technologies that are accessible both financially and humanly: Financially because all the elements of the NyouDihl are open-source software that work on second-hand computers and/or devices like satellite dish. Humanly because Nyou-Reporter offers a role to many players : journalists (amateur or professional), technologists, and other people like taxi-drivers that can carry the USB key.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

2years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

Contributors (journalists) and readers should be the first people to learn about the project. A local adverstisement will be done in each village where a ProxySpot (like an offline cybercafé) offers a NyouReporter web site. NyouReporter will be fuelled and consumed by people that visit the offline cybercafé => this is the primary place where NyouReported will be promoted. Schools : the news produced in ProxySpot will be made available to teachers as a medium of choice for schools to let pupils know how to access digital information. The online Nyou-Reporter web sites (a replication of any local site fuelled by local contributors and duplicated on the web) will be advertised to online communities that gather people from diaspora of the countries covered by Nyou-Reporter. For dissemination of Nyou-Reporter best practices, the project will be represented in colloquia of international programs : OLPC, UN WSIS, UN GAID, UNESCO IPDC, NEPAD eAfrica, ITU Connect Africa, TED, Europe with EuroAfrica partnerships, ...

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

To date, the work has been supported by academic funds to develop common projects between Europe and Southern countries. This has been particularly in the area of geodistributed software development that is a key platform for transfer and appropriation of technologies used in Nyou-Reporter, and which is installed and maintained by local technical skills.

* SCAC (french embassy in Morocco) about 10 000 Euro since 5 years (mainly for travel expenses) ;
* UEFP (european community) : 500 000 Euro since 3 years ; Key other fundings have been submitted for the next two years at OIF (french speaking countries organisation, 200 000 Euro) and at AUF (french-speaking universities agency 20 000 Euro).

These two proposals are now under evaluation and results will be published in 2008.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

The NyouReporter project involves several kinds of actors : Journalist (citizens, professionals) : local people or communities that write (or record) information for local wider audiences. To date, two radios (RESO in Burkina and VAHINIALA in Madagascar) play this role. A journalist (under recruitment) will travel in Mali to play this role in several towns. Multimedia Content Production Training : organisations with long experience of ICT and/or multimedia that can help new journalists to appropriate the tools. This role will be played by organisations already actively involved locally (BiblioBrousse, VideonTV) Offline Cyber-café (ProxySpot) : if not hosted in the radio HQ, organisation that will host and maintain the proxy (Cybertigi) Local technical operator : organisations that provide and maintain the local technical resources (BiblioBrousse, Zirasun, VideonTV) Central operator : organisations that provide a central server for data consolidation and satellite operations, and operate helpdesks (ENSA-Agadir, ENSA-Safi, INSA-ROUEN) Open-source (technical) developer : communities that develop the software run by local and central operators and used by journalists (WizzyDigital, Kunnafoni, Kiwix) Technical learning organisation : local organisations that can train technicians to install and maintain technical infrastructure locally (partnerships are under way with engineering schools in Mali, Burkina and Madagascar). Research center : organizations that provide prototypes and technical breakthroughs to be implemented by developers People responsible of the Nyou-Reporter project in organisations listed above : Cybertigi : Mr. COULIBALY (+223 6165653), RESO : Mr Kambou (+226 20 90 02 89), Vahiniala : Mr Mamy (+ 261 33 14 06 836), VideonTV : Mrs Randria (patounerandria@free.fr), Zirasun : Mr Keita (moussa@zirasun.com), WizzyDigital : M. Wood (dbwood@acm.org), ENSA-Agadir : Mr. Modar (modar@ensa-agadir.ac.ma), ENSA-Safi : Pr. Echchadi (saidech@gmail.com), Kunnafoni : Mr Gaudin (rgaudin@gmail.com), Kiwix : Mr Engelhart (kelson42@gmail.com)

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

Other organisation are working in providing contents to be reused by local journalists : • RFI: radio programs (fr) • GlobalVoicesOnline (en, fr), openDemocracy (en) : written content At this stage of the project, we do provide for : • general content (with Wikipedia) • tools, services and network The goal is mutualise the cost of the development/maintenance of software and satellite broadcasting, with other domains such as education and healthcare. The NyouDihl technologies will be reused by local universities to exchange learning resources, by local hospitals for collecting local data and to provide information from distant medical centers. Micro-finance is another area that will be particularly studied and implemented to help local entrepreneur to have a sustainable business activity (like cyber-café manager or local technical support companies). A partnership with Adapted Consulting is under study. It should be noted that the central services will be operated under the auspices of the teaching organisation.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

The project will : * provide a network of journalists from different countries of Africa with experience and skills in digital news creation ; * demystify the use of ICT for local journalists, to provide successful services and content beyond what we can predict today, as happens daily on the Internet with virtual communities ; * facilitate the creation of new business activities based on the creation of content designed and produced within Southern countries, particularly in e-excluded area at the time of writing.