Website: http://opl.rit.edu/inews

Collaborators: John Karahalis, Mark Newell, Matthew Bernius, Michael Riordan, Robert J Whitney, Sean Conklin

About the Project

A virtually instantaneous, cross media newspaper platform, built on Drupal, to live document events. The iNews allows reporters and photographers to easilly submit content (pictures and stories) from the field. Editors can quickly edit and approve the content for the web content and it also can quickly flow to XML based, print PDF Layouts in programs like Adobe InDesign.

The technologies

• Digital Printing
• Drupal content management system
• Wireless Digital Cameras
• 2 Dimensional Barcodes
• Xinet Prepress System
• XML and GoogleEarth
• Adobe PDF and Creative Suite

Drupal Software (with Source Code)

• Innovation News Installation Profile

Platform in use

• RIT Innovation News

Project History

Imagine RIT 2008
On May 3rd 2008, the Rochester Institute of Technology hosted Imagine RIT, its first annual innovation festival. The event, which lasted only 6 hours, showcased several hundred innovative projects and events all across RIT's campus. In order to document this event, a new form of content creation was necessary. With Innovation News, the Open Publishing Lab was able to collect stories, interviews, and photographs from the festival and distribute the news to visitors as it happened.

Innovation News utilized the Drupal content management system to build a website which would allow for rapid collection and editing of stories. On the day of the festival, backpack journalists were able to use the system to submit their stories via wireless laptops and smartphones. Photographs were taken by RIT photography students and collected with Xinet software.

Once all of the content was collected and edited, it was handed off as an XML document to printing students and faculty. These individuals then used Adobe InDesign software to lay the coutent out in a newspaper format and export the newspaper as a PDF document. Thousands of copies of the paper were then printed at RIT's PAL and HUB and distributed to visitors all across campus. The stories and photographs were simultaneously available on the Innovation News website and, thanks to the Collabritorium, could even be visualized in Google Earth in real time according to the location of the story.

By the end of the day, the Open Publishing Lab published 4 printed editions of the newspaper. Innovation News covered everything from President Destler's opening remarks to innovations in medical imaging technology, from underwater robotics to a Kung Fu demonstration and more.

Brick City 2008
Following the success of the first run of Innovation News, the Open Publishing Lab decided to utilize the system to cover the events of Brick City 2008. Over the course of four days, six printed editions were generated. These editions contained coverage of guest speakers Bill Nye and Jimmy Fallon, stories from alumni events, and various other stories and photographs from the Brick City events.

Software
In its dedication to open source technology, the Open Publishing Lab has released its Innovation News software back to the Drupal community as a Drupal Installation Profile. All custom Innovation News modules and themes were refined, packaged, and distributed to the Drupal community under the terms of the GPL, a Free and Open Source software license.

The Open Publishing Lab has received much feedback from the Drupal community. In the lab's continuing dedication to Free and Open Source software, it hopes to learn from the Drupal community and work with it to improve the Innovation News software for future releases.