Schneider Electric to host Smart Cities Hackathon

Schneider Electric will be holding its first hackathon on smart cities from 8–9 May in Sydney, as part of its annual Innovation Summit. 

The event will bring together programmers, engineers, designers, sales, marketing and user experience professionals. At least 10 teams are expected to develop innovative solutions for three real-world challenges and build ‘smarter’ cities. These solutions can be game changers when it comes to managing cities effectively.

“Urbanisation, digitalisation and industrialisation are three megatrends which have provoked a huge increase in energy demand and, in turn, spurred the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution. The purpose of this hackathon is to build and test solutions to disrupt the market. We need to adapt to ongoing worldwide changes by enabling the next generation of movers and shakers to consider innovative ways to manage cities and to make them more effective,” said Zone President of Schneider Electric Pacific Gareth O’Reilly. 

Partnering with Australian start-up accelerator BlueChilli, the Smart Cities Hackathon will link with BlueChilli’s new open innovation program, CityConnect, which finds, funds and develops start-ups with smart cities solutions.

Teams will be asked to pitch their ideas to the judges in the afternoon of the second day. Judges include O’Reilly, entrepreneur and investor Steve Baxter, Blue Chilli Chief Innovation Officer Colette Grgic and Schneider Electric VP of Strategy and Transformation Preeti Bajaj.

The overall winner will be rewarded with a cash prize of $3000, a place in BlueChilli’s CityConnect boot camp and a chance to receive $100,000 in investment to develop the idea through the CityConnect accelerator.