Shooting out of the collaborative minds or various students, faculty and staff of RIT the Innovation News set out to create an on demand, scalable, cross medium newspaper that displays the news as fast as it is created: “It was made possible by the collaboration of experts across a broad range of disciplines from computer science to systems engineering to visual and verbal story-telling, and demonstrates RIT’s leadership in enabling these kinds of collaborative efforts to solve the complex problems of the future,” Frank Cost, associate dean of the RIT College of Imaging Arts and Sciences. The entire project was developed in response to the call for innovations for the Imagine RIT Festival.

In a joint effort with RIT’s Open Publishing Lab, a cross-disciplinary center that focuses on researching new methods of content creation and developing innovative applications to publish across various media, the Innovation News brought together 25 student photographers and 12 student writers who sent content through open source applications created for news content management in Drupal. The content was sent through a custom made XML import feed that connected Drupal to an InDesign layout. With the help of RIT’s Print Application Lab, Digital Publishing Center, and HUB, using Cannon C1, Xerox 6060, Xerox 7000, Nextpress 2100, and Indigo 5000 printers the newspaper was created in print ready form, free of charge, and actively distributed through the Image RIT Festival. Printing four editions in total, the Innovation News was able, through the quick response of festival attendance, to scale the amount of newspaper being printed to correlate production with circulation.
The photographers in the field were given wireless cameras, generously provided by Nikon, to capture activates occurring in the Imagine RIT Festival. Located in the action was photo faculty member Doug Rea who managed the photos students working with the project; while in the pressroom Gunter Cartwright, an associate professor of photography, and Pulitzer Prize Winner William Snyder of the Dallas Morning News ran 350 images through imaging workflow to make them print and web accessible.
Circulating through the Imagine RIT festival, student journalists reported on activities occurring throughout the day. The students submitted their findings through RIT’s wireless network on personal laptops through a Drupal created account. One student even managed to successfully submitted two stories via an Apple iPhone to contribute to the spirit of the innovation of the festival and give expandability of technology to the Innovation News project spectrum. Overseeing newspaper project as Editor-in-Chief, assistant professor of color imaging and publishing, Michael Riordan along with the help of Myrtle Jones and Christine Adamo edited incoming article and prepared them to be distributed to web and print based production.
Found on the Innovation News website, the team created PDF copies of each printed edition made accessible to the public masses. Attached to the upper right corner of each printed edition, the Innovation News created a QR code that when scanned by a users cell phone would direct them to the Innovation News website, giving access to all reported stories. In keeping with the spirit of innovation presented at the Imagine RIT festival, the Innovation News in alliance with the CollaboRITorium created a GoogleEarth connection where individuals could locate direct story activities as they were being reported on with a virtual 3D map of RIT’s campus. To date this application has successfully only been applied by one other newspaper, the New York Times.

Upon completion, the Innovation News was found to be a remarkable success and RIT hopes to further extend its capabilities for the future endeavors.

The Open Publishing Lab (OPL) recently opened and is working on launching their first projects, The Social Networking Game and Innovation News at the Imagine RIT Festival (May 3rd). The lab is ran by student researchers and professors to create a center that focuses on researching new methods of content creation and developing innovative applications to publish across various media. They hope to establish an agenda within RIT’s school of print media, which would ultimately result in the creation of innovative publishing solutions that would help to connect and extend existing publishing solutions.

The lab has been working hard for the past weeks to prepare for the Imagine Festival, their ultimate project. This Thursday they are holding an Open House so students can explore the projects and works the lab is focusing on. Stop by and learn more about the students, professors and projects!

To learn more visit their website: Open Publishing Lab

The Open Publishing Lab (or OPL for short) is a new research group based out of the School of Print, where students and faculty from all over campus work together to create new publishing applications and tools.

And it finally has a physical home!

Over break OPL students and faculty worked to renovate the Kodak Approval space* located next to the SPM student lounge. In less than two days, they applied multiple coats of paint to the walls, and assembled and moved in all the furniture (with the help of a pickup truck and a Subaru Outback). The space was ready on the first day of classes, just in time to start working on projects for the RIT Innovation Festival coming up on May 3rd. More on that as we get closer to it — we promise that SPM will have a strong presence there!

* - the Approval’s still at the school, just in a new location