Go Code Colorado Announces 2019 Winners
Four Teams Awarded $15,000 in 6th Annual Competition
Denver, May 31, 2019 – Go Code Colorado, an annual competition that asks teams to develop useful business insights, analyses, and tools using public data, announced the four winning teams at the final event Thursday night. For the first time ever, the competition included two tracks: Analytics and Product. The award winners in the Analytics Track are FlowCodeColorado and Sucesso and the winners in the Product Track are EnrollMe and Trackers.
Over 40 teams and nearly 200 individuals from across Colorado competed in this year's Go Code Colorado competition. The winning teams pitched their business solutions for industries that ranged from food truck owners to civil engineers to a panel of judges at Thursday's event at the Exdo Event Center in Denver.
"This year's finalists proved that with the help of public data we can tackle unique challenges and create innovative solutions for Colorado," said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. "Congratulations to EnrollMe, Trackers, Flowcode and Successo on their victories -- your ideas show how innovative Coloradans can be."
Go Code Colorado is a statewide competition that encourages the use of public data to build useful insights, analyses and tools for the Colorado business community.
"Go Code Colorado is an amazing statewide effort to encourage public data use in business. States have and collect so much data it's great to see Colorado encouraging businesses to make use of it," said John Wilker, Founder of 360 Conferences and a judge at the final competition and awards event.
The Go Code Colorado competition is hosted by the Business Intelligence Center at the Colorado Secretary of State's office. In the six years since its inception, hundreds of developers, designers, business professionals, analysts, and entrepreneurs have participated in the award-winning challenge.
Go Code Colorado held kickoff events for the 4-month challenge on both the Western Slope and Front Range in February. In March, teams attended Challenge Day, where they worked with mentors, attended classes, and met additional teammates. At the Final Competition Event, the winning teams pitched their business ideas to a panel of judges representing Colorado's tech community and state and local government.
The judges chose the four winners by considering if the team's submission is new and different, adds value to Colorado businesses, uses public data, and would help businesses make data-driven decisions. The judges also weighed a separate technical evaluation of each product and their live-pitch at the finals on Thursday.
"It's wonderful to live in a state that is so clever in how it ties together economic opportunity, civic engagement, technology and data. Being a part of Go Code Colorado is a truly unique experience, one that brings extraordinary pride!" Said judge Julia Richman, Chief Innovation and Technology Officer for Boulder County.
Former Go Code Colorado winner Scott Stoltzman from team FlowCodeColorado out of Fort Collins competed in the newly minted Business Analytics Track and was excited by his second win. "First off, I have to thank my mother. She always encouraged me to compete in anything beyond my comfort level and to be appreciative of any opportunity that arises. Without her support over the years, I may not have been so successful! My second experience was fantastic and I can't wait to compete again next year."
More details on the four 2019 Go Code Colorado winners:
BUSINESS PRODUCT TRACK
Trackers (Boulder)
(app name Position My Kitchen) Position my Kitchen provides food truck vendors with a web application to locate optimum sites and times using public data about brewery and office locations, pedestrian traffic, farmers markets and Colorado events in combination with demographic data.
EnrollMe (Denver)
Web application for visualizing public school performance data so administrators of charter schools, new owners of charter schools, and any given business owner looking to locate a new business can see high performing schools in a variety of metrics like current or historical performance metrics and financial history to determine how to open a new school or decide which neighborhood to locate their business in so their employees have access to quality education for their children.
BUSINESS ANALYTICS TRACK
FlowCodeColorado (Fort Collins)
Analysis forecasting times when water surplus will be released downstream (aka "free river" events) based on publicly available historical data to inform owners of oil and gas companies when they can capture water required for their processing that would otherwise be required to purchase at non-surplus times.
Sucesso (Denver)
Analysis providing pavement pricing and forecasting combined with public data on highway quality and projected project needs for civil engineers and construction materials procurement buyers looking to utilize recycled materials in future projects.
