NYC BigApps

NYC BigApps is an annual competition sponsored by the government of New York City. It provides local programmers, developers and entrepreneurs with access to municipal data sets to build applications for the Web, tablets and mobile phones. Contestants have access to more than 170 data sets supplied by over 30 city agencies, including weekly traffic updates, schedules of citywide events, property sales, restaurant inspections and mappable data around school and voting districts. The contest does not include information such as subway schedules from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, because the city doesn’t have control over that data. However, the organizers include data from the NYC Department of Transportation. The contest is part of a larger New York City effort to increase government transparency and encourage entrepreneurship.

Contest has mixed results

Some contest winners have gone on to become viable companies. For example, MyCityWay, was a contest winner in 2010. MyCityWay subsequently raised venture capital funding from FirstMark Capital and IA Ventures, as well as a strategic investment from BMW.

On the other hand concerns have been expressed that many contest winners fail to become viable companies. For example, the grand-prize winner for 2011 was an app that let people swap information about how subway trains were running. A year later, it seemed to have attracted very few users. Sportaneous, a 2011 pickup-sports app that won second place and the Popular Choice Award, is no longer available in Apple’s App Store, and is back in testing.

Contest judges

Judges for the contest have included: Dawn Barber, Co-founder, New York Tech Meetup; John Borthwick, CEO, Betaworks; Chris Dixon, CEO & Co-founder, Hunch; Jack Dorsey, CEO, Square, and Co-founder, Twitter; Esther Dyson, Chairman, EDventure; Lawrence Lenihan, Founder, CEO and Managing Director of FirstMark Capital; Naveen Selvadurai, Co-founder, Foursquare; Steven Strauss, Managing Director, NYCEDC; Kara Swisher, Co-Executive Director, All Things Digital; Fred Wilson, Managing Partner, Union Square Ventures.

Further reading

• Alan Fever, The Mayor's Geek Squad, NY Times, March 23, 2013
• Erin Durkin, Mayor Michael Bloomberg employs innovative contest style to bring bright, new ideas to meet city challenges, NYDailyNews, February 10, 2013
• John Leland,Turning Unused Acres Green, NY Times, April 29, 2012
• Phyllis Furman, Mayor hands out prizes to local software developers who turn NYC data into easy-to-use apps, NYDailyNews, April 18, 2012
• Joshua Brustein, Contest Whose Winners May Not Succeed, NY Times, March 2, 2012
• Joshua Brustein, In M.T.A. App Contest, Many Buttons Worth Pushing, NY Times, January 6, 2012
• Brad Stenger, "Scene Near Me" Hackers: From BigApps to TimesOpen, NY Times, November 21, 2011
• Brad Stenger, TimesOpen: Social Media on Nov 14, NY Times, November 4, 2011
• Joshua Brustein, Want to Join Me for a Game? Anyone? NY Times, September 30, 2011
• Joshua Brustein, Commuter Reports From, Well, Commuters, NY Times, April 29, 2011
• Patrick McGeehan, Bloomberg Announces Investment in Tech Start-Up, NY Times, May 25, 2010
• Associated Press,Subway finder wins BigApps competition, NY Post, February 8, 2010
• Adam Lisberg , New award-winning phone app, Wayfinder NYC, points the (sub)way, NYDailyNews, February 5, 2010
• Jenna Wortham, New York City Names Winners of Apps Contest, NY Times, February 4, 2010
• Robert Johnson, Techies show off big app-etites for city info, NYDailyNews, December 28, 2009
• Sewell Chan, City Errantly Releases Private Data Gathered in 'Apps' Contest, NY Times, October 7, 2009
• Sewell Chan, City Admits Lapse in Data Release, NY Times, October 7, 2009
• Emily S. Rueb, When Road Rage Turns Into a Brawl, NY Times, October 6, 2009
• Jenna Wortham, New York City Wants You to Create an App For That, NY Times, October 6, 2009
• Sewell Chan and Patrick MCgeehan, City Invites Software Developers to Crunch Big Data Sets, NY Times, June 29, 2009

External links

• Official website