Fellowship chance for Neil as he's off to Berlin
Ashleigh Burns • Published 22 Sep 2011 08:00
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Neil Dawson from Kincardine will travel to Berlin to take part in the competition.
KINCARDINE'S Neil Dawson is in with a chance of winning a year-long fellowship with one of the world's leading media organisations.
Neil (22) is a graduate of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design and has now entered the final of the Knight-Mozilla Innovation Challenge 2011.
He will be alongside 19 participants hoping to win one of five fellowships available from the likes of the BBC, Guardian, Al-Jazeera, Boston Globe and Zeit Online.
He will travel to Berlin next week to take part in the competition.
Mozilla and their partners, the Knight Foundation, have embarked upon a worldwide search for tech-savvy artists and designers with the desire and ability to change the world of news and journalism.
A workshop for 60 participants was held in Dundee - one of several across the world - and Neil impressed with his project The News Tree which is designed to bring efficiency to a newsroom by simplifying the process of tracking and checking sources of information.
He and team mate Shaun McWhinnie were identified as two of the most promising participants from the original ideas jam events and were selected to go through to the next round.
And following that round Neil was chosen to travel to Berlin for the 'Hacktoberfest' event beginning on September 26 and lasting for five days.
He said he had not expected to get this far, but was really looking forward to it.
"The reason I got involved was because I saw the opportunity to work with some creative people, which would help me develop as a designer.
"The original challenge was great fun and there were some fantastic ideas being created by the teams but I never thought beyond the fact it was a good experience so I was surprised to receive an email saying I'd been selected to go forward to the next round."
He added, "A lot of people who took part in the challenge were journalists or hackers, but as a designer I was coming at things from a different perspective.
"In Berlin, I hope to move between different groups and join in their conversations. Some of the others in this round were tackling the same issues as me from different angles, and the thing I'm most looking forward to is putting my head together with them to see where our collected thoughts will take us."
The Dundee workshop was hosted by the Product Design programme at DJCAD, which is part of The University of Dundee.
Programme director Dr Jon Rogers said thousands of designers from around the world were desperate for an opportunity such as this, and congratulated Neil for getting this far.
"Ideas are what define the world, and Neil has shown he has the ideas to impress some of the world's biggest companies and make a real difference," he said.
Information about Neil's project is available at www.neildawson.org/blog
This article appeared in Alloa & Hillfoots Advertiser 21 Sep 11
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