CITY OF NEW YORK ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF FIRST HACKATHON, REINVENT NYC.GOV

Winning Teams Meet with Mayor; Prototypes Will Guide Redesign of NYC.GOV

On July 30 and July 31, 2011, the City of New York in partnership with General Assembly hosted its first hackathon, titled Reinvent NYC.Gov, welcoming over 100 participants to collaboratively build prototypes that will guide the future development of NYC.gov, the public’s primary digital gateway to City government.  Equipped with support from leading technology APIs and access to City data platforms, participants generated 14 proposals for the upcoming redesign of NYC.gov and a panel of judges from the public and private sectors selected five winners based on innovation, usability, social integration, location technology and ingenuity.

The judging panel consisted of the City’s Chief Digital Officer, Rachel Sterne, as well as Girish Chhugani (DoITT), Stephen Strauss (NYCEDC), Willy Wong (NYC & Company), Dave Tisch (TechStars), Scott Heiferman (Meetup), and Mimi O Chun from General Assembly. Participants came from varied backgrounds including Citi, Etsy, Google, IDEO, Uber, Mozilla, O Magazine, OpenPlans, and World Economic Forum. The event took place at partner General Assembly’s technology, design and entrepreneurship campus in the flatiron district.

The Reinvent NYC.Gov hackathon, one of the first of its kind in government, established an effective template for sparking innovation, accelerating development and encouraging greater civic engagement. Participants devoted over 2,000 man hours to Reinvent NYC.Gov. As Judge Scott Heiferman tweeted “#reinventnycgov was fun, well organized by @rachelsterne! good stuff...”

Winning proposals demonstrated innovative approaches to civic engagement and communication. The five themes consistently demonstrated were search, crowdsourced question and answer platforms, location-based customization, social media integration, and gaming mechanics.

Winners were invited to demonstrate their prototypes to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg over a breakfast at which he personally thanked the winners and discussed the future of NYC.gov. The winning designs will help set the stage for the direction of NYC.gov and NYC Digital will pursue future opportunities for civic collaboration with the participants of the hackathon.

“This is civic participation in the digital age…It was impressive to see the collective effort of a passionate group of digital creators coming together for the good of their city and their community” said Matthew Brimer, co-founder of General Assembly.

“We are deeply grateful to the over one hundred individuals who devoted their skill and creativity to serving the public through technology. Our goal was to bridge the worlds of government and technology and start a dialogue,” said Rachel Sterne. “This really showed what people want.”

The City plans to organize future hackathons centered on targeted themes.

The five winning prototypes were chosen in different categories of Best User Interface, Best Use of Social, Best Use of Local, Most Innovative and Judges’ Pick.

Best User Interface:
Noel Hidalgo (Open NY Forum; Civic Commons), David Huerta (Brooklyn Museum), Philip Ashlock (OpenPlans; Civic Commons; Open NY Forum), Lara Torvi (Luminary Labs), Andrea Mignolo (EastMedia & Interaction Design Association), Annie Lee (O, The Oprah Magazine; NYU GCMT), Arnaud Sahuguet (Google.org), Jenny Ye (Google Public Sector), Hilary Worden (Google.org), Sabrina Wang and Fabian Garzon (Zemoga).

Best Use of Social:
Alastair Coote, Ashwin Ramesh, Arunram Kalaiselvan (LeadPlace), Cristian Fleming (The Public Society), Marine Boudeau (New York Public Radio), Valentina Camacho (ITP- NYU), Anand Chandrasekaran (LeadPlace), Steve Ramirez (NYCHA) and Mason Du (Benbria).

Best Use of Local:
Raven Keller, Luis Mendoza (Sanborn Media Factory), Lestan D’Souza (Citi), Scott Rogener (Citi), Suresh Annamalai (Citi), Vaidyanath Sethuramen (Citi) and Kapil Arora (Citi).

Most Innovative:
Kristy Tillman (IDEO), Colin Raney (IDEO), Burton Rast (IDEO), Jon Wettersten (IDEO), Jacqueline Steck (IDEO), Geoffrey Brown (IDEO), Albert Lee (IDEO) and Michael Yap (IDEO; School of Visual Arts, MFA Interaction Design).

Judges’ Choice:
Casson Rosenblatt, Matthew Howell and Tom Gibbons.