Hackers took over New Westminster city council chamber as part of Innovation Week.
Mayor Jonathan Cote was a member of the panel that listened to presentations from nine teams taking part in the weekend’s hackathon and judged apps developed by those teams.
“Basically, these teams worked all weekend on using the city’s open data to develop an app that they thought was useful to the city, or maybe even potentially useful commercially,” he said. “It was really interesting to see what they came up with.”
Teams developed a range of apps, including one that let people know where electric charging stations were located in in the city and another that connected people who needed help shoveling snow from their sidewalks, including seniors or people away on vacation, with residents who wanted to help out.
“It was really great to see how the teams connected with the information they were able to get from the city’s open data and take their own initiative to develop some applications that were really quite creative and potentially very useful,” Cote said.
The judges’ top choice went to a team that created an app that’ both fun and functional. The app was for a game that allows residents or visitors to visit different places in the city, collecting data or images and sending them back to the city.
“The city would then have a better database of what’s actually happening in the city. It was a really unique idea. It was the only application that had a feedback to the city in terms of getting better data collection,” Cote said. “It remains to be seen if people would actually play this game, but I wouldn’t have expected people to be wandering around cities chasing Pokémons either.”
In addition to open-data hacking, the two-day Hack Your City event featured Lego robotics, free workshops on topics like stop-motion animation and coding, a pop-up playground in front of city hall where and more.
“It was incredibly successful and something we will certainly look at doing again. It was really wonderful to open up the doors to city hall and have people of all ages come in and interact with the city in a way that people don’t normally interact with cities,” Cote said. “It was really wonderful to see all that energy in there.”
Because Innovation Week connects well with some of the city’s larger objectives such as its economic development strategy and a knowledge-based economy, Cote thinks it has the potential of becoming an annual event in New Westminster.
When the city was selected as the host city for the Innovation Forum on Feb. 28 at Anvil Centre, it began planning a series of events to be held during Innovation Week. The week wraps up with a leadership dinner on March 2.
“I think that’s going to be a really good discussion,” Cote said. “For New Westminster to be able to host a good collection of the region’s mayors, all to talk about innovation and economic development across the region, I think will be great. Each municipality is busy doing their own work but I’m looking forward to that session to hear about some of the interesting work that’s happening in other cities that I may not be aware of.”
