When I started at Palantir back in May, I left the newspaper industry for the greener fields of open source development. Part of the appeal of the Drupal project and open source is that by opening yourself up to the wider community, opportunities you could never predict might come your way.

One of the projects that I work on is the Knight Drupal Initiative, which is an ongoing grant process for funding Drupal-based community publishing. I have had a chance to get to know the team at Knight Foundation and work towards some common goals.

As a result, I also get to meet some of the winners of the Knight News Challenge and talk about their projects -- especially the Drupal-related ones.

So it was that I was introduced to Jayme Swain at the PBS Engage* project.

The PBS Engage Web site is a laboratory for experiments with new kinds of media. We hope it helps you connect with us better. It's part of a bigger program, funded by the Knight Foundation, to help PBS, member stations and programs use new technologies to serve the public better.

And, yes, they use Drupal as a piece of core technology.

Well, as of today, I am now a member of the PBS Engage Social Media Advisory Board. I am very excited to be part of the board and to see where this might lead.

* Note for those of you outside the U.S. PBS is the Public Broadcasting Service, a national network of non-profit community- and government-funded television stations.