Summer of Smart

The folks at the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts came up with a great idea, Summer of Smart, a new model for how citizens and government can work directly together to address urban issues. Developers, designers, city officials, urbanists, journalists, community members, and other multi-disciplinarians getting together, building rapid innovation prototypes, and presenting them directly to government.

I was really intrigued to learn about this experiment and joined them on their SoS Urban Innovation Weekend 2: Sustainability, Energy, and Transportation.

I was amazed by the potential. The prototype I worked on with four other awesome people, ended up being a fantastic collaborative idea and also a winner on the weekend-long challenge. Our team came up with a community building game built around sustainability principles, and we named it the Neighborhood Game. And it's already in the process of being further developed to work in collaboration with The Neighborhood Empowerment Network. How amazing is that?! A diverse group of people with different disciplines can come together and work on an idea in one weekend that could have a positive impact in the world.

If you share on the excitement of this idea, you should stay tuned to SoS, and spread the word to other good folks. Look forward to collaborating with one of you on something amazing some day.