danShumway@FOSS: AT&T Civic App Hack-a-thon Announcement

The Gist:

AT&T will be partnering with RIT to sponsor the 2014 Rochester Civic App Challenge.
Part of the future of innovation is in the mobile sphere - AT&T is interested in furthering that process.
We want to engage students in the creation of app technologies, not just the consumption of them.

We want to get students thinking about how things are made and how they could be made - with a focus on civic issues and a sense of usefulness to the technologies that we create.
Contestants in the Civic App Challenge will be competing for around $18,000 of prize money.
The deadline for submissions is on April 23rd.
There will be a "check-in" in March to make sure projects are going well.
On the 21st, the whole contest is started off with a Hack-A-Thon in the Magic Center.

A personal focus on innovation and government.
Innovation is going to fuel our future economy, we are shifting away from an industrial driven economy.
In order to keep government smooth, and transparent, and running well - to "peel back the onion" and make things less complicated - we use technology.

We don't have expectations - we want to see what people do.
The goal is to have developers surprise us - and by surprising us to make our lives better.