For the second year, challenged developers and entrepreneurs to do something useful with the from state agencies.
Of 31 companies that accepted the challenge, nine made it to Thursday’s final event and focused on I-70 traffic congestion, boosting tourism and better connecting businesses with colleges.
Three won $25,000 each in contracts with the state government to develop their apps into products.
Team Mentor Matters
The 2015 Winners:
• Mentor Matters, in Denver, offered a way for college students to be matched with business mentors.
• Stay CO-Flow, from Fort Collins, used traffic data to predict congestion and encourage tourism. Using an app, drivers stuck in traffic can quickly search for distractions at the next exit. In turn, small businesses could offer perks and discounts targeted to those drivers.
• And the cheekily-named , also from Fort Collins, created a tourism app to suggest activities based on user preferences.
But even the ones that didn’t leave with a big check had . GoGo Colorado pitched an app that combined state department of transportation data with crowdsourced live traffic reports to help guide travelers on the I-70. CoNext, pitched by students and faculty, proposed an app to help students network with the business world by relying on faculty recommendations.
This public and private approach to data is definitely an interesting effort. But it doesn’t guarantee success. Of the , one appears to have already called it quits. Local Sage, last year’s third-place winner from Colorado Springs, and no longer maintains . Second place is still around but hasn’t offered an update since May 2014.
But first-place winner appears to be .
Interestingly, the company between the developers and the state is . It was contracted by the state to suss out data from area agencies and spit it out into a format that developers could use. The company has created more than that are available free for anyone to peruse and make sense of. Data comes from all sorts of sources — the Department of Transportation, Division of Water Resources, Department of Education, etc.
Go on, , you might be surprised to see what’s available.
