SoNewy urban-iot-hack sees local talent shine bright

a Time to shine

Eighteen04 and the City of Newcastle worked with Laughing Mind to host #SoNewy - an #UrbanIOTHack from 25-27 October 2018, for teams to Connect, Build + Inspire. This tech-infused open hackathon event saw teams get hands on with emerging technology to create foundation elements for a vibrant, liveable city.

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow, you Code.

Attendees gathered on Thursday evening in the Eighteen04 event space to connect over beer, pizza , listen to the event briefing and pitch the seed of their ideas, in the hope others would be inspired to join forces with them for the day and a half journey ahead. For the majority of attendees, this was their first time in a Hackathon, which was great to see, as we continue building on our Venture Catalyst event format.

Mission briefing

 Pitch night saw 4 teams emerge, ready to tackle one of four event challenges:

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1. Vibrant City: People don’t always know what’s on or where to go to make best use of the city - How can IoT help people assess the mood and pulse of the city to help them make decisions about what to do and where to go?
2. LuminoCity: Parts of the city are poorly lit, considered risky and are therefore underutilised, with a corresponding impact on night time economy and cultural life. How can IoT activations help bring more people into the city at night to help make it safer?
3. Circular City: The amounts of energy and effort that go into production are wasted in a throw away society. How can IoT help the war on waste and improve re-use of resources, or deliver greater efficiencies in their use?
4. Open Challenge: Our catch-all for other ideas and personal passion projects.

Teams hit the ground running from 8am Friday morning to start assembling the building blocks of their concepts, planning out the teams activities and collaborating in private team channels on Slack (we like to encourage our teams to be born digital). It meant we could invite our event mentors to monitor and engage with the teams as their ideas took shape, with remote support. Fuelled with healthy snacks from Lynchs Hub, our caffeinated crews hatched creative concepts that drew on local inspirations.

​One team integrated the parallel #reclaimthenight activities to draw inspiration and make urban wayfinding easy, personal and ambient; another explored how to heatmap growing crowds where smaller festivals and events might be occurring; a small, diverse and deeply talented team grappled with safety dimensions of rock fishing.

​The ripples of engagement spread well beyond the room as teams set out to validate their ideas, spurred on by our onsite mentors to test assumptions, prove the demand and assess the adequacy of existing problem|solution patterns.

Teams are in deep dive stage on problem definition, solution match phase of #SoNewy #UrbanIoTHack - focus helped by mentor input from freshly caffeinated @This_is_Dog & @BlueChilliGroup - @cherylgledhill #hackaus pic.twitter.com/u0Dz3Modnv

— Eighteen04 (@eighteen04) October 25, 2018

Encouraged by their discovery work, our diverse crews then set about the detailed build phase, mocking up concepts, registering domain names, 3D printing enclosures and bringing their teams up to speed on core IoT components that needed to be integrated. We watched over the course of Friday night as teams stayed connected, contributing and creating, reconvening on Saturday morning to support them through the final push to submission of their entries on DevPost by midday. Once done, with a celebratory WooHoo!, it was time to pause, eat and prepare for pitches to our guest judges from Anditi, Newcastle City Council, Spark Festival and Assemblient.

#sonewy teams sweating on final @devpost submission deadlines in #sonewy - We’re one of 4 #hackathons running this weekend for #sparkfest thx to @maxine Building about to fill with WooHoos as they hit milestone ahead of pitches, judging at 1pm pic.twitter.com/FgxRYWIb5N

— laughingmind (@laughingmind) October 27, 2018

With pitches completed, our inspired judges convened to sift through the rankings, emerging with a consensus for our winners to receive their recognition, in the following order:
First prize: Team Luna, with their ambient, personalised lighting solution, targeting private facilities, campuses and events;
Second Prize:NewyIoT, with a new gateway product perfect for community engagement and exploration of IoT as a grassroots product, creating edge to edge coverage across our cityscape;
Third prize: PeepScape, with their heat map for showcasing where crowds are gathering and exploring, delivering insight for urban place engagement and activation-as-a-service.

Want to dig deeper into their entries? Head to DevPost, where you can explore and engage with their ideas, give them a boost, or get involved with taking their concepts forward. Our top 2 winners will now benefit from Eighteen04 resident credits and their startup supports to progress and refine their concepts. 

Our teams’s project (NewyIoT) was one of the winners at this years #SoNewy #UrbanIoT #Hackathon! A big thanks to @laughingmind, @eighteen04, volunteer mentors, helpers and participants for putting together a great gig! pic.twitter.com/D8afi1ltr1

— Core Electronics (@CoreElecAU) October 28, 2018

With the event taking place shortly after the release of Startup Muster, Australia's annual startup activity snapshot, where early stage activities were recognised as sorely needed, we're calling on the local community and beyond to engage with the teams concepts, reach out and help them make the event just the first stepping stone of a longer journey. 

The 2018 results are out now from the largest and most comprehensive survey of the Aussie startup ecosystem!

AI is the new no1 leading industry
The number of overall startups is down
The number of women in startups is down#startupAUS #auspol https://t.co/mlstW7GaLn

— Startup Muster (@startupmuster) October 20, 2018

Completion of the event sees us bring to a close iteration 1 of our #SoNewy event model - with higher than usual barriers to entry, in a fast moving sector that requires a broad span of knowledge and a skilled team to deliver engaging concepts. We've been delighted to see the emerging feedback, and will be working closely with local stakeholders for what comes next.

UrbanIoT Hackathon was an opportunity to connect with local thought leaders across a wide range of technologies and services. The event was the perfect mix of startup culture and fostered the ingrediants for meaningful innovation. I'll be back, for sure.

It's tough to get a handle on what new technologies might mean, or how you might network with people who can teach you things, or where to go to get to play with these technologies. This kind of event is essential to force yourself to upskill a little, to focus directly on applications rather than just talk, and to just to get you to jump in to explore what is possible in this space. It's a lot of fun and terrific to be part of an event where everyone is working towards shared goals - it's definitely competitive but you're working with other people who also care about what might evolve in this space.

​IoT was a great topic to explore for me to learn more about the opportunities that it presents cities. Loved the diversity in the team gals/guys/techs/creatives. If you're seeking rapid immersion in an industry area/challenge, while practicing the art of letting go - to see what emerges (getting creative)- then get yourself along to a Hackathon! Great way to futureproof your skills!

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This hackathon was part of a collaborative startup engagement project between the City of Newcastle and Eighteen04. The project received grant funding from the Australian Government under its Smart Cities Smart Suburbs program, with event delivery managed as a collaboration with Laughing Mind.