The 2020 SmartSA Datathon Competition is open to any developer, designer, idea person, or anyone in between who want to submit a proposal for consideration*. Selected finalists will be eligible to compete in the competition July 11-18, 2020.
*The City of San Antonio, CPS Energy, SAWS, SARA, and VIA employees are not eligible to participate in this event.
No. Registration is free, but you must submit your team member info and proposal by June 24, 2020 to be eligible.
Yes! Attendees must register as a team, each composed of at least two and at most six people.
No. Participants must form and register their team by June 24, 2020. Finalists will be chosen for the July 11-18, 2020 SmartSA Datathon Competition via a selection committee, and will be notified by email by July 5, 2020.
Participants and their teams must be registered by June 24, 2020.
Participants must be at least 18 years of age at the time of the event.
Datathon teams can work on any type of data tool (web apps, mobile apps, dashboards data visualizations, algorithms, or visual mock-ups, for example) that will help the SmartSA partners achieve their goals Please see the judging criteria for more guidance on what the SmartSA partners are looking for.
Public data sets and developer resources are posted to www.civtech-sa.com/datathon/. The datasets will continue to be available throughout the SmartSA Datathon Competition on July 11-18, 2020.
Here is an overview of how the projects will be judged:
Challenge Areas
How many challenge areas were addressed in your idea out of the Affordability, Environmental Quality, and Access to Services categories?
Ease of Implementation
How feasible/easy would it be for the SmartSA partners to implement or use your ideas within their organizations? Is the idea, application, dashboard, model, etc. multidimensional that could grow or shift with changing community and SmartSA partner needs?
Most Compelling Application/Dashboard
Is the dashboard visually compelling, easy to understand/use, and or engaging?
Would potential users would want to interact with the product?
Most Insightful
What insightful or compelling information can be learned and or used by a SmartSA partner(s) within a specific challenge area? How impactful, critical, or useful could it be?
Community Value
Is this project something that is open to the public and or community? Is the value or importance of the idea clear and evident? What is the longevity of the idea or project?
No. Due to COVID-19, our 2020 SmartSA Datathon will be done online. We hope to host you again in person in 2021!
No. However, teams are encouraged to use whatever online collaborative tools for the ideation and development throughout the 2020 SmartSA Datathon Competition.
Yes! Teams have the chance of being awarded over $10,000 in prizing:
1st Place: $5,000
2nd Place: $3,000
3rd Place: $1,500
Don’t forget to invite your friends and family to the Virtual Demo Day because the crowd’s favorite will also take home $750 in awards.
| Department | Challenge Description |
| Office of Historic Preservation | The Office of Historic Preservation has worked to established itself as a resource for owners of aging or historic buildings. We frequently receive inquiries on how to make existing structures more energy efficient, especially in our warming climate. Often, the initial thought from property owners is to remove original materials, but research has proven that less invasive retrofits provide a greater return on investment while aiding in efficiency. This also prevents the detriments of unnecessary construction waste, which is the largest single-stream waste source in the United States. The challenge is to develop an open access website, app, or tool that calculates the carbon footprint of renovation projects and suggests ways to make an existing or older home greener through adaptation strategies. This challenge is in direct response to the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan locally and the global challenge of climate change. Through this challenge, we hope to provide a fun, interactive, and accessible tool that helps quickly quantify or visualize the outcomes of various available energy efficiency interventions, including: investment cost versus rate of return; energy and water use impact; and total overall life cycle impact, from resource extraction to manufacturing to installation to projected end of life. This tool could also serve as a central bank for resources and service providers for energy upgrades, including city programs. We think this tool could help the city meet CAAP goals and empower property owners with the knowledge to make the best decisions possible for the longevity of their investment. |
| Solid Waste Management | The Solid Waste Management Department (SWMD) has 725 employees and travels over 7 million miles annually. Of these employees, 485 have a commercial driver’s license. Although there are laws, directives, and departmental policies that prohibit distractive behavior we routinely catch employees with their cell phones, reading maps, or eating food while driving. These behaviors place the City of San Antonio at great risk. The reason we catch these occurrences is we have an onboard solution that detects sudden impacts or braking and records the event. However, these are only the events that have a sudden shock or deceleration. We would like to identify all the other occurrences that may be happening where a driver is taking their eyes off the road. The more time a driver’s eyes are away from the road, the higher the risk. SWMD would like a solution that could identify these high-risk drivers and how much distractive driving is taking place in order to take corrective actions before an accident or near miss occurs. |
| Solid Waste Management | The City of San Antonio’s Solid Waste Management Department collects of 1 billion pounds of material each year. The material is collected and taken to various facilities to be recycled, composted, or landfilled. Each truck load of material generates a disposal ticket from the facility. These tickets are provided to the drivers and manually inputted by SWMD staff to document the information. The desire is to eliminate the manual process and implement a solution that would automate the capture of the ticket information. This will increase accuracy, minimize lost tickets, and improve efficiencies. The solution should consider optical scanners with text recognition, RFID, or barcode scanners that will capture desired information such as tonnage, ticket number, truck mileage, and truck number to be stored in a database for reporting and performance tracking. |
| Solid Waste Management | The City of San Antonio’s Solid Waste Management Department (SWMD) services approximately 360,000 residents annually with one time a week of garbage, recycling, and organics collection. SWMD seeks a contamination detection tool that will identify and capture the dumped content. Additionally, it will provide the point of location of where the cart was serviced (latitude and longitude). This is an effort to create a pathway towards a more sustainable city, as the SWMD has set a goal to reach a 60% residential recycling rate by 2025. |
| ITSD/Office of Innovation | San Antonio residents & customers currently travel to a myriad of siloed websites to pay bills, update personal information, or request services. This challenge is for a mobile application that is a one-stop shop for services across City departments and partners. Respondents of this challenge are required to complete a design research phase that would identify which services are critical and most frequently used by San Antonio residents, and use cases for those services. The mobile application can start small, with a handful of services and provide a streamlined point of access for residents to interface with partners across City departments. The application must explore the infrastructure required to store, host and allocate appropriate access to data generated by users of the application with respect to the highest standards of privacy and security. The application can also explore potential revenue streams for the City and partners via the mobile application. This initiative will be incorporated with the mobile services effort provided through the City Hall To-Go program. |
| Event | Challenge | Team |
| Veterans Codeathon | San Antonio is a hub for the military and veteran communities but making them aware of the great things our city offers is a challenge. We have recognized this disconnect and hope to identify and create solutions to bridge this gap. Create a solution to assist active duty military members, veterans, and their family members to get connected to local resources when relocating to San Antonio. | Care Package |
| Veterans Codeathon | San Antonio has a wide variety of local veteran-owned companies and businesses, and we hope to create a one-stop-shop that raises awareness of these companies and increases involvement from the greater San Antonio area. Create a solution to help drive awareness of local veteran-owned organizations/businesses. | VB Book |
| Veterans Codeathon | There are a ton of organizations that assist our ever-growing military population in San Antonio but it is a challenge keeping up with all of the amazing things they offer. We want to assist in bridging that gap and having more people take advantage of the great things these organizations offer. Create a solution that connects the Veterans Service Organizations (VSOs) to active duty military members, veterans, and their spouses. | Milhub |
| Veterans Codeathon | The only way to end veteran homelessness is to get the population of homeless veterans the help they need. Being able to connect those in need with the VSOs who have resources to help is a top priority. Create a solution that helps provide VSOs access to the homeless veteran population. | Outreach Grid |
| Veterans Codeathon | There are a ton of organizations that assist our ever-growing military population in San Antonio but it is a challenge keeping up with all of the amazing things they offer. We want to assist in bridging that gap and having more people take advantage of the great things these organizations offer. Create a solution that connects the Veterans Service Organizations (VSOs) to active duty military members, veterans, and their spouses. | United |
| Department | Challenge | Partner |
| NISD | As San Antonio continues to expand in population size and continues to have high-profile sporting and entertainment events, increasing or modernizing security of the facility is top of mind. (Roughly 1.1 million residents and or tourists visit the Alamodome for more than 120 events each year.) | Northside Learning Tree Club |
| NHSD | Develop a mobile app for NHSD that would provide department information and allow residents to apply for Housing & Neighborhood Services through the mobile app. | |
| World Heritage Office | The World Heritage Office is seeking a mechanism to collect demographic data from attendees to our outdoor events, in an efficient and user-friendly manner. | |
| 311 | The goal of this project would be to enhance citizen engagement through a better understanding of neighborhood information easily accessible for residents. The project would provide a platform where residents can access information about their neighborhood in a dashboard format. | |
| SWMD | The SWMD currently has over 359,000 customers and 1 million different sized carts in circulation within the San Antonio area. The SWMD is eager to see a solution that has the latitude to revamp SWMD’s customer communication using either an app or text notifications. Two functional areas within SWMD that would greatly benefit would be for service tracking for collection services and cart repairs/exchanges | |
| ACS | ACS intakes 31,000 dogs and cats a year. The current system for obtaining a good picture, in a quick manner and getting it into the system is inefficient. We are looking for a program that allows for an easy capture of a good quality picture on a fast moving object, that formats and uploads a picture quickly. | Sam Houston High School – Cyber PTech |
| Health | We would like to develop a mobile App for the Community Nutrition Programs that would enable the community to easily locate ¡Por Vida! partners near them when choosing to eat out. It would be nice if residents could also see an interactive map on our website with locations of food establishments with their scores (based on DHD) and include Por Vida sites. Should also include a search function. | |
| Health | Create an interactive version of the PDF data and maps currently displayed on SAMHD website. | TAMUSA |
| TCI | Develop use cases for our SATRIP data (signal status). This would be a citywide solution. This solution could help our citizens have near real time traffic signal status. | Trinity University |
| OISC | San Antonio residents & customers currently travel to a myriad of siloed websites to pay bills, update personal information, or request services. This mobile application would identify which services are critical and most frequently used by San Antonio residents across partners — including CPS-E, SAWS, SARA, EAA, SAHA, VIA etc., and provide a streamlined point of access for residents to interface with these agencies. | |
| OISC | The Office of Innovation is seeking to design and implement a digital process for the City to collect, explore and evaluate solution-driven ideas that will improve the customer experience, effectiveness, and efficiency of City services. | UTSA |
| CPS Energy | In what ways can energy utilities promote grid beneficial customer actions by utilizing gamification concepts? | OLLU |
| CPS Energy | What ways could energy utilities work with local developers and city agencies to encourage the construction of Zero Net Energy home communities for low and moderate-income citizens? | UIW |
| City Dept/Partner/Sponsor | Challenge |
| Karen Wagner High School |
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| CAST Tech High School |
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| CoderDojo |
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| SASmart – Mayor’s Challenge |
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| StartEdUp Foundation. |
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| University of Incarnate Word |
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| St. Mary’s University |
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| Our Lady of the Lake University |
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| Texas A&M San Antonio University |
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| University of Texas at San Antonio |
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| Codeup |
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| Codeup |
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| Codeup |
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| Codeup |
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| Codeup |
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| Codeup |
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| Codeup |
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| City Dept/Partner/Sponsor | Challenges/Development |
| Charged Up | CPS Energy Aid CPS Energy with electric cars and their usage of electricity |
| Protect your Assets | Finance Creating a process to make procurement easy and seamless for the public |
| Recasa | Historic Preservation Create a platform that allows people to find/purchase salvageable materials |
| Garden Tech | Innovation An app that would increase engagement and final purchases at farmers markets |
| Jellyfish | CPS Energy & COSA Created hi-resolution maps and forecasts of air quality in SA |
| Ada One | SAWS & SARA Focused on sewer overflows & proposed installations of various pipelines throughout San Antonio |
| Data Collab | CPS Energy & COSA Created low cost air quality sensors to capture real time data and dashboard analyzer |
| Fun w/ 311 | COSA Created a dashboard to view 311 calls, city weather, police and various forms of data |
| Hooli | CPS Energy Created a dashboard consisting of population gowth and air quality in San Antonio |
| City Dept/Partner/Sponsor | Challenge |
| Outreach Grid |
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| Rise Civic Consulting |
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A Codeathon (or Hackathon) is an event for coders and all types of professionals to work collaboratively on software development. Simple as that! The results usually end up being websites, apps, or robotics that fit a specific need.
The Veteran’s Codeathon is an open data event that challenges coders, designers, and tech experts in the area to build something extraordinary to improve the quality of life for our active duty military members, veterans, and their spouses in San Antonio.
All coders, designers, and tech experts, both veterans and non-veterans alike. Participants from outside the San Antonio community are encouraged to participate as well.
All are welcome to participate no matter the affiliation!
Register here.
Registration is open now
Thanks to our amazing sponsors, we are able to provide the following cash prizes to the winning teams:
This year’s community challenges and data are brought to you by the City of San Antonio and TXServes.
The opportunity to win prize money for your innovation/idea, fun times with your team. Knowing you contributed towards helping active duty military members, veterans, and their spouses.
We are excited to partner with TXServes – San Antonio, which is a part of the AmericaServes network that strives to help service members, veterans and their families around San Antonio, TX. Your donated money will be included in this donation!
No, you must be on a team of at least 2 members
Absolutely! Please email codeathon@geekdom.com
No. You must be 18 or older to participate for liability purposes.
Winners will be announced on the last day of the event – Sunday, November 10th, at 1:30 pm. We’re excited to see the final products.
Any applicable intellectual property rights to a submission will remain with the contestant. By participating in the codeathon, the contestant is not granting any rights in any patents, pending patent applications, or copyrights related to the technology described in the submission.
Yes, at the bottom of the main landing page please click the pop-up titled “schedule”
Food, shirts, mentors, prizes and an awesome weekend.
Geekdom: 110 E Houston St, San Antonio, TX 78205
Parking meters are free after 5pm on Friday and are free on weekends.
Here is a link for various other parking options.
How can we reduce the amount of waste created by property deconstruction? In a typical home deconstruction, up to 25% of materials can be reused and up to 70% of materials can be recycled. Too often, these materials end up in the landfill instead of being reused or recycled. How can the City quantifiably reduce the volume of reusable/ recyclable building materials that end up in the landfill by developing a digital technology that connects sellers and buyers of salvaged materials?
How can the City encourage diverse participation on City Commissions & Boards? Over 1,000 applications were made to City Boards & Commissions last year. To streamline applications, the City Clerk needs a user-friendly application system that connects applicants to open seats, allows the Clerk’s office to efficiently analyze applicant data, and finds unique ways to reach underrepresented communities who are eligible to apply.
How can the City connect its citizens to affordable housing? Our community’s shortage of affordable homes touches hundreds of thousands of households. Half of all renters and one in five homeowners are housing cost-burdened in San Antonio. Both residents and affordable housing developers need space to connect. This challenge is to create an online portal that helps service providers and the public locate available affordable housing, and makes it easy for landlords to share information about available affordable housing units.
How can local government better connect to private sector services? International, local and small businesses provide important resources as vendors of goods and services to the City of San Antonio. However, many businesses encounter barriers to partnering with local government. Some of these barriers include the lack of visibility of upcoming solicitations (open applications), limited access to current contract information, and limited contact with small business owners. This challenge is to create a tool that makes it easier for all businesses to find and respond to the City solicitations that they qualify for.
How can we address the challenges faced by our City’s homeless population? According to the 2018 Point in Time Count of the homeless population, a total of 705 homeless individuals living unsheltered on the streets of San Antonio. In an effort to combat homelessness, the Department of Human Services (DHS) began a Coordinated Homeless Encampment Outreach Initiative with the support of six City Departments and Haven for Hope. DHS currently tracks individuals and locations using an excel spreadsheet that is updated weekly in order to provide the right services to individuals. DHS needs a mobile technology platform that can identify individuals found in these encampments in order to connect them to customized services that help address their unique needs.
How can we uplift the small business community? Launch SA, an entrepreneurial center that the City of San Antonio administers in partnership with LiftFund, manages relationships with over 90 local business resource partners. These business resource partners provide entrepreneurs and existing businesses with key knowledge, including business plans, licensing, permitting, financials, marketing, access to capital, and human resources. Launch SA refers approximately 5,000 individuals to local business resource partners each year. However, these referrals are inefficient as they must occur via telephone, email, or in-person at Launch SA. The City’s Economic Development Department needs a centralized system that helps existing and aspiring entrepreneurs navigate the resources provided by partners.
How can the city help panhandlers transition into a safer lifestyle? The city seeks a tool or technology that helps reduce incidents of panhandling in a unique and sustainable way that considers the social, economic and environmental issues faced by panhandlers. Residents of the CivTechSA program are invited to develop a technology solution that can be prototyped to address panhandling. This online application or platform could provide an opportunity for alternative giving to local charities, for example, or connect panhandlers to work on beautification projects throughout the city that pays them a living wage. Ultimately the solution must reduce incidents of panhandling in a unique and sustainable way that considers the social, economic and environmental issues faced by panhandlers.
For more information about the CivTechSA program and how you can get involved, please email us at civtechsa@geekdom.com.
| City Dept/Partner/Sponsor | Challenge | Participants/Winners |
| Animal Care Services | Alert notification tool for potential pet adopters | Youth Code Jam |
| Center City Development and Operation | It’s easy for people to get lost/ confused on the River Walk. CCDO staff needs help keeping people on the right track. A navigation and information tool would help. | Youth Code Jam |
| Dept. of Human Services | Head Start Family Support workers don’t have an easy way to update/ provide information to families in need. An online dashboard or database management tool would help. | Youth Code Jam |
| Parks and Recreation | Expanding and resident/visitor knowledge of trail systems and park locations. | Youth Code Jam |
| Health | CPS Energy, VIA, Metro Health have lists of people who need uninterrupted energy and/or mobility needs. Locating residents with functional needs during emergencies is difficult. As part of AlertSA, need a complete list. | Youth Code Jam |
| Convention and Sports Facilities | Increasing and modernizing security at high-profile and sporting events necessary as San Antonio grows. | Youth Code Jam |
| Human Resources | Digital Employee Recognition (EnCore) Platform | Youth Code Jam |
| Human Resources | One-stop Employee Provisioning | Youth Code Jam |
| Government Public Affairs | Examine usability of the COSA website; identify areas of improvement for future users | SA Works and Youth Code Jam |
| Government Public Affairs | The website needs a Spanish translation feature. | SA Works |
| Sustainability | Challenging to engage residents and other stakeholders in a comprehensive planning process, i.e. Climate Action and Adaption Plan. Create a personalized mobile application | Youth Code Jam |
| Arts and Culture | Several manual and non-automated systems with events entered into them but no systemwide way to track, monitor and market events to the public. | >Youth Code Jam |
