Cities are much more than a collection of centrally located residential and commercial buildings connected to essential infrastructure for human existence. Cities are an amalgamation of people, communities, experiences, creative and industrious energy as well as challenges and inequities. For good or for better, cities are here to stay, and they are growing at a rate that sometimes necessitates a bit more than the gentle touch of the invisible hand. At URBAN-X, we aim to improve cities and society through technology. A key tenet of this is building a passionate community around urban innovation and challenges, bringing to light some of the less than obvious opportunities, and using our resources to help scratch the surface of what might be possible.
On May 7th and 8th, we’ve partnered with TechCrunch Disrupt NYC to hold the URBAN-X City Data Hack inside of the Disrupt Hackathon. We welcome great designers, developers, engineers, and makers who care about urban life to participate and meet us in person at the event. We’ll be looking for the most innovative uses of open city data and will award cash prizes to the first, second and third place winners. And most importantly, you’ll have a chance to rub elbows with other innovators who care about city data and urban tech the way you do. And of course, there will be pizza.
Up for the challenge? Visit our event registration page right now and tell us who you are and what you want to work on. We have a few free tickets to give away so be creative! We’ll be using the data sets provided by NYC Open Data, and if you have a hardware component or specialized sensor data (using your own tools), we’d love to see that too.
We’ll also be at the main festival at Disrupt from May 9th to 11th so be sure to stop by our booth to get some good ol’ swag and say hi. We’d love to see you there.