Technology companies with great ideas on how to improve the city of Phoenix are asked to attend the city’s second Smart City Hack competition on Saturday.
The civic tech initiative is an international challenge that uses local businesses with great ideas to help their city, said Dominic Papa, counsel aide for District 3 and co-organizer of the competition.
“All companies are invited to come, whether they’re a startup or an established company,” Papa told me. “We’re asking for any company that has an innovative tech solution to help the city and show up. This is a great platform to scale a business.”
The competition is seeking tech solutions in five categories: urban mobility, energy and sustainability, collaborative city, culture and tourism, and health and wellness.
Saturday’s Idea Hackathon will give the companies a chance to pitch their technology and the specific issue they’re trying to solve.
Developers, designers and entrepreneurs will then get five months to create functioning, marketable tech tools, using the one-on-one help of experts from the city of Phoenix, Grand Canyon University, Arizona State University and the University of Arizona.
“Whether the citizen is a novice or a pro, a coder or a content specialist building an app, a device, or another product altogether, the competition provides resources that make it easy to make a difference,” Papa said.
Mentors/judges include: Tim Kelley, assistant professor of entrepreneurship and economics at GCU and chairman of Canyon Angels: Colin Tetreault, senior sustainability scholar at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU; Jim Goulka, managing director of Arizona Tech Investors; and John Hamby, Phoenix operations manager at Uber.
Participating companies and entrepreneurs will also get access to free incubator resources at the Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation on the GateWay Community College campus in Phoenix. CEI will also offer a free six-month membership to one team competing in the hack, he said.
“This is geared to putting residents on the path to entrepreneurship and creating jobs and businesses within the greater Phoenix region,” Papa said. “We want to create a pipeline for entrepreneurs in Phoenix and make city leaders in entrepreneurship and innovation.”
Judges will then choose a winner during the final pitching event in late October at the Orpheum Theater. The winner will represent the city in the international Smart City World Expo in Barcelona in November.
There are over 100 people who have registered for Saturday’s hackathon, Papa said.
The Arizona Institute for Digital Progress, a nonprofit dedicated to building smarter cities, is also an organizer.
This year, Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton adopted the Smart City Hack as the city’s “official civic tech initiative,” making the competition more open, collaborative and tech-focused, Papa said.
The winner last year was ParkX, a Scottsdale-based customizable mobile payment solution for cities and parking providers that allows motorists to pay for their parking through an app.
ParkX competed in the international competition in Barcelona and ended up winning second place in urban mobility.
HumansFirst Technology’s HER app, which lets people shop, book travel and check out using voice or text, won second place in the Phoenix competition and also was invited to participate in the international hack challenge.
Phoenix was the first city to sign on with the international Smart City Hack last year in the U.S. So far this year, only Austin in the states have organized an event in the U.S.
If you go:
- What: Phoenix’s Smart City Hack competition
- When: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, June 11
- Where: Co+Hoots new midtown co-working space, 221 E. Indianola Ave., Phoenix
- Cost: Free to enter and attend
- Also: Participants are invited to a networking event with food and drinks after the idea hackathon.
- More info: www.azidp.com
