Saturday, March 14, 2009

Knight Center of Digital Excellence


The Knight Center of Digital Excellence is dedicated to facilitating development of sustainable technology strategies to benefit communities and enable citizens to connect with each other and the world. The Knight Center of Digital Excellence will collect and share research and best practices, nurture collaboration and provide on-the-ground support for the Knight communities.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's funding of the Knight Center of Digital Excellence creates the first national, nonprofit resource center, initially dedicated to addressing the needs of Knight's 26 communities across the country and then expanding to help advance the vision of creating universal access across the United States. Knight has pledged up to $25 million over the next five years to accelerate digital access projects in the 26 U.S. communities where the Knight Brothers owned newspapers.

The Knight Foundation has partnered with OneCommunity, an internationally recognized leader in creating connected communities, to bring the Knight Center of Digital Excellence to life and make universal access an obtainable reality. The Knight Foundation and OneCommunity announced the creation of the Knight Center of Digital Excellence in April 2008.

The Knight Center staff will work the Knight communities to identify specific objectives; develop opportunities; and promote universal access, local partnerships and transformative applications. Teams will explore programs for economic development, workforce development, community building, education, health care, social services delivery, e-government, public safety, democracy and journalism and any other community priority that can be positively accelerated through an expanded broadband infrastructure.

The Knight Center of Digital Excellence is headquartered in the original Knight community of Akron, Ohio.

The Knight communities are: Aberdeen SD; Akron OH; Biloxi MS; Boulder CO; Bradenton FL; Charlotte NC; Columbia SC; Columbus GA; Detroit MI; Duluth MN; Fort Wayne IN; Gary IN; Grand Forks ND; Lexington KY; Long Beach CA; Macon GA; Miami-Dade/Broward FL; Milledgeville GA; Myrtle Beach SC; Palm Beach County FL; Philadelphia PA; San Jose CA; St. Paul MN; State College PA; Tallahassee FL; and Wichita KN.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I envy you for having such a great center who helps the community for such technological advancement. Here in my country, we also have some but sad to say that the government lacks the effort to have them available for people to benefit from such programs.
tnomeralc web

Unknown said...

All - I just spoke with Todd Q. Adams. He works with the Knight Center. It appears that they may be looking for any BDPA chapters that have interest in community technology centers. Is your chapter interested?

Tnomeralc Web Design Toys said...

@Villager its really nice to read you comment that you spoke with Todd