[kFW] Assist: Writing next Kendra newsletter...

[Daniel Harris <daniel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello All,

Please could you assist me in writing the next newsletter. It's the  
first one in 2008. Please could you give me your thoughts on the  
following text ASAP. I'd like to send it out on Wednesday or Thursday  
this week.

I truth we have already booked out this years budget allocation. Cash  
is very tight so we need to raise further funding.

Is there any more info that should go in the newsletter?

You can also edit it directly on the wiki here:
http://www.kendra.org.uk/wiki/wiki.pl?KendraNewsLetters

Your assistance is appreciated...

Cheers Daniel

-------------o-o-o-o---------------

Kendra gets funding from EU...

Well, we did it. Kendra Foundation has received seedling EU funding  
for 4 years as a partner in P2P-Next [1] along with the BBC, Pioneer,  
STMicroelectronics, the EBU and many others.

This is a really great opportunity for Kendra Initiative. The grant  
brings the project stability and solidity. It's a recognition and  
validation of the goal of an open distributed marketplace for digital  
media. Many thanks to Mark Stuart of Pioneer for inviting us in.

NEED MORE CASH

However, we need to raise 25% of the budget [2]. That's 61397.50 EUR  
over 4 years. That's a really doable amount. At less than 16K EUR a  
year [3] it's a small amount to pay if we can get 20 Kendra  
Initiative members a year donating a few hundred Euros. Please  
contact me if you are interested.

The current grant means that Kendra Foundation can employ myself and  
Neil Harris (no relation) to really dig deep into content value chain  
interoperability issues. Specifically we will be working on Kendra  
Signposts [4] cross media metadata tools. We'll be liaising with  
content owners and service providers. And running trials and  
demonstrations throughout the period.

WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT

We are also looking to raise funds for to develop the Kendra website  
using Drupal [5] CMS. We can legitimately syphon off a small part of  
the EU grant for website development but, in order to really maximise  
on functionality (for the users: you!), we really need to bring extra  
people on board with Drupal skills. And that means having a dedicated  
website budget. Again, contact me if you can support financially or  
with Drupal skills.

P2P-NEXT MEETINGS IN MILAN AND LONDON

I will be in Milan (April 14 and 15) and London (June 9 and 10) for  
P2P-Next meetings with a few days either side. So, please get in  
touch if you want to meet up and talk about the next 4 years and beyond.

[1] http://www.p2p-next.org
[2] http://www.kendra.org.uk/wiki/wiki.pl?P2P-NextFinances
[3] 15349.38 EUR = 12213.10 GBP = 24225.90 USD
[4] http://www.kendra.org.uk/wiki/wiki.pl?KendraSignposts
[5] http://drupal.org