Last year I was a reviewer for the Knight News Challenge; this year I am helping to manage and evangelize the program. As you hopefully know by now, #KNC08 gives people around the world a chance to apply for and receive funding for projects that support local online news, community discourse and information-exchange in a specific geographic locale or community. The garage--an incubator and mentoring site for prospective applicants to get help--is open now; applications open Sept. 2nd and close Nov 1st.

So, we're planning a set of meet-up in different cities and an online Webinar to give people a chance to learn about the program and develop  innovative ideas to put into the Garage for mentoring and peer review, and then submit as applications.

The online webinar is September 9th at 11 am eastern time--its free, but you need to register here.  Two Knight winners, Nora Paul and Amy Gahran will join Program Director Gary Kebbel to talk about this program and who should apply (and how to get great ideas to apply with).