From Big Apple to Big APPle in New York

The eight-hour-long session included breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Image: Betsy Scherzer

What's one way for cities to get data tucked away in their archives out to the public, while at the same time encourage one of the newest industries around—mobile application development? For New York City, the answer is to hold a contest.

“It’s a win-win-win situation,” said Brandon Kessler, the CEO of ChallengePost, a nationwide website built around the idea of getting real people to offer ideas to help solve civic problems. “For the city because they get all these apps for free, for the app makers because of the huge exposure and access to VC’s, and it’s a win for New Yorkers because they get improved quality of life through innovation and free apps.”

Kessler's organization was hired by city-sponsored NYC Big Apps to host a competition encouraging the use of the data sets in such categories as “Investor’s Choice” (for the most commercially viable application), “Best Green App,” and “Best Education App.” This past Saturday, nearly 100 entrepreneurs, software developers, user experience specialists, and students, gathered at Pivotal Labs to brainstorm and share skill sets with one goal in mind: to develop these new apps, and win $50,000 in prizes.

New York, the largest city in the country and one that's positioning itself as a leader in the startup business space, has published nearly 900 data sets and released the APIs so anyone who knows how can use the data to create free-to-use apps. It's the latest development in a growing trend of cities making such information public.

In this, the third year of the competition, data sets include such reports as a directory of temporary public art, quality-of-life indicators, and birthrates by mother's age, just to name a few.

The benefits of opening the data to the public are twofold. First, that the data is public at all leads to increased government transparency, making it easier for citizens to hold the government accountable. And, second, it has the potential to improve the lives of anyone who uses the free apps, Kessler said.

In the first year of the event, one startup, NYC Way, now MyCityWay, was developed in order to better navigate New York’s “urban scene,” helping users find jobs, apartments, restaurants, parking spaces, wireless hotspots, and much more. The company, now funded by Firstmark Capital, BMW i, IA Ventures, and the New York City Economic Development Corporation, which now serves 70 urban markets around the world.

But, according to Kessler, the competition is about more than just winning. “Everybody who makes an app gets some form of recognition. The real value is that all these people are developing all these apps for people to use for free.”

Kessler says ChallengePost was created to host just such events, what he calls "meaningful competitions" or competitions with the goal of somehow improving society. The site was launched in the Summer of 2009 on the back of a $775,000 seed funding round, raising an additional $4.1 million in series A funding from investors, including Betaworks, Esther Dyson, Jason Calacanis, and Josh Schachter. The first funding round was led by Bob Borches, general partner of Opus Capital, and former senior director of iPhone at Apple, and Irwin Jacobs, the cofounder and chairman of Qualcomm.

In addition to New York City, ChallengePost clients include Samsung, the World Bank, Thomson Reuters, Mozilla, 35 agencies of the White House, and first lady Michelle Obama.

The deadline for entering an app into the competition is January 25, at 5:00 p.m. ET. Public voting will take place between on or about February 8 at 10:00 a.m. ET and March 8 at 5:00 p.m. ET. For more details about the project, click here.