CityCircles

CityCircles is a stop-by-stop information platform for the Phoenix-area light rail community that leverages Google Maps and Twitter to offer news, events, classifieds, promotions and more within five blocks of every train stop. In 2009, the project won one of nine national Knight News Challenge grants, the only student project to do so.

The project was created by Cronkite graduate Adam Klawonn and Aleksandra Chojnacka, who graduated from ASU with a degree in business administration. The two received a $95,000 grant to complete their project, conceived while they were students in the center.

Service is operating live in Phoenix, building community, adding local merchants and partners and expanding its innovative mobile application.

Blimee

Blimee, conceived by junior film and media productions major Marius Ciocirlan in the Knight Center, utilizes digital signage to bring hyperlocal news and promotions to people when they are outside of their home environments.

The social network enables viewers to interact with the news and with other viewers using instant messaging means like Twitter, text and Webcams.

Awarded three funding grants; downtown Phoenix public pilot project planned for summer 2010, partnering with a local news organization.

The Watch Tree

With her hyperlocal, interactive online newspaper project TheWatchTree.com, Smith seeks to fill the gap in community coverage and connection created when the East Valley Tribune newspaper closed down its operations in Scottsdale.

Operating as of late 2009; continuing to build community and attract business partners.

BangSlate

BangSlate is an online community for video documentary and filmmakers where they can come together to share ideas, skills and their work. It was started as a Knight Center project originally called Boomstick. Emerson and Cronkite graduate Sprague have moved to San Francisco to pursue the project.

Emerson and Sprague are now working in the Silicon Valley area, attracting venture/angel financing for their initial launch.

Our Tribes

Conceived as “a virtual powwow,” Our Tribes is designed to help Native Americans making the often difficult transition from the reservation to city life. The online community connects Native Americans in Phoenix to each other and to their cultural heritage.

Featuring news and maps, health and employment resources and tribal information and connections, the project had its start in the Knight Center Digital Media Entrepreneurship course and was continued by Smith as a capstone project.

Smith is pursuing an Entrepreneurship fellowship to continue transforming her project into an ongoing business.

MediaCritic Phoenix

This project, an offshoot of a national media-criticism site now under development, is designed to help create a better environment for journalism of all kinds in the Phoenix region by creating a place for media lovers to congregate and critique local media.

In their mission statement, the students said, "What is covered in the press and how; what does the media cover unfairly or inadequately; what isn’t covered at all; and perhaps most important, why? MediaCritic Phoenix aims to create a community that will collectively consider these questions through civil, fair and knowledgeable discourse—and we want your help to start and continue the conversation. We hope you’ll join us in making media better." Early contributors include ASU professors and regional media professionals.

Project continues as a non-profit within ASU, and the students are working with the Knight Center and the editor of the national MediaCritic.com project to redesign and re-launch the Phoenix edition.

Biva Bikes

MBA student Yasmin Kassel and her team in the Knight Center set out to provide an affordable, environmentally friendly method of navigating urban environments.

The digital media entrepreneurship part of this venture was to make “commuter bike rental” something compelling, exciting and enjoyable. Kassel decided to focus mainly (but not exclusively) on the mobile media aspect—that is, creating applications that enhance the bike riding experience for commuters with smart phones.

Kassel conceived three categories of mobile applications:

1. Fitness/Health By tracking mileage, calories and heart rate while they are riding, the bike becomes more than just a commuter convenience, it becomes part of a fitness routine. Users can track their progress online, join fitness groups and get suggestions for more challenging bike routes.

2. Social/Community
BivaBikes' online system would assign people to teams based on their destination and other commonalities. This makes the biking/commuting part of the trip safer and fun and encourages stronger community ties.

3. Sustainability (environmental)
By using simple tracking and display, BivaBikes shows users their reduction in carbon footprint, creating competitions between groups and fostering community pride.

Kassel is continuing to build and pursue the business in Southern California.

BrokingNews.com

BrokingNews.com aspires to be the eBay of news and information, uniting content producers, such as local freelancers and publishers, in a unique reverse-auction marketplace. As opposed to a typical auction, a reverse auction is one in which the sellers—in this case, content producers—bid to compete and win the auction.

What makes the process at BrokingNews.com unique is that the content producer’s intangibles, or “value-adds,” play as important, if not greater, a role than the bid price. In this way, all content producers can participate, each bringing his or her own talents and insights to the table, regardless of age, gender or ethnicity.

BrokingNews’ revolutionary “value-added reverse auction” is being explored and developed for its broader business potential by team member Wolfe as he finishes his MBA at ASU’s W.P Carey School of Business.

EduExchange

EduExchange is a Web site that brings together like-minded individuals in local communities for the purpose of in-person learning. Community members can find experts and instructors in their area, form groups and set up spontaneous classes at local venues. The site facilitates the creation of course materials, validates credentials and allows users to select class sizes and schedule meeting times. Instructors get paid, and students have the opportunity to learn outside of a formal educational system.

Rudy, a digital journalism major at the Cronkite School, is the founder of a Web start-up that’s received three grants from ASU's entrepreneurship program.

Project is in development within ASU’s high technology incubator, SkySong, and is being co-developed with another educational technology venture started by Rudy that has received two rounds of initial funding and grants.

Food Conscience Network

The Food Conscience network developed by these three Cronkite students helps people to make culinary choices based on their convictions, such as a commitment to sustainability or adherence to a dietary regimen.

Food Conscience Network’s “credit rating” style of exposing the social, environmental and nutritional impact of food purchases is a breakthrough in that it is designed so that grocery shoppers can scan barcodes with their mobile phones and find out the rating of each product before they buy. It remains under development.

FoodJitsu

Murphey and Price are MBA students who took the advanced course at the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship. They were looking for mentoring to make this project a reality.

The concept tagline is “Making food fun”—which is also its mission: to make many of the day-to-day aspects of preparing food and eating more fun, by transforming cooking into a social activity online. Here, people collaborate on fun recipes, challenges and contests. They are matched up for meals or cooking events. There are subgroups for people with special dietary needs, such as diabetics, dieters and triathletes. There are even suggestions for feeding pets.

Murphey and Price applied for and won a seed funding grant from the Edson foundation.

In part as a result of their entrepreneurial work and project development, both students attained positions after graduation at ASU, driving aspects of the university’s entrepreneurship programs.

Game On Phoenix

Game On Phoenix was designed to be a community for people who play pick-up sports at various public facilities and who want to discuss the games later. The idea was to help people find games and other players and then encourage them to blog and create their own media coverage of their sports teams and events. This fills a gap in media coverage about the kinds of sports most people actually play but that get little attention from traditional media.

Project will be used for subsequent class projects as the team furthers development and focuses on marketing and distribution concepts.

If you are an interested investor, educator, customer, partner or student, send us an e-mail and we'd be happy to connect you with these student entrepreneurs or to introduce you to others whose work does not appear in this showcase.