March 22-24th | More than 130+ hackers, developers and visionaries gathered in the City of Fountains for Hacking the Gigabit City, a weekend event aimed at creating and developing advanced uses for the ultra-high-speed connectivity that Google Fiber has brought to Kansas City. Local organizations, the Kauffman Foundation and KC Digital Drive, partnered with the national resources of Mozilla Foundation and US Ignite to kick off the event.
The big questions of the weekend event were:
[list] [list_item size=”large” icon=”icon-question-sign” hex_color=”1a7003″]How do we leverage Google Fiber?[/list_item] [list_item size=”large” icon=”icon-question-sign” hex_color=”1a7003″]Why do we really need this high-speed connectivity?[/list_item] [list_item size=”large” icon=”icon-question-sign” hex_color=”1a7003″]What is needed to develop programs that will create new businesses in KC?[/list_item] [/list]
A panel of three judges from Sprint, Kauffman Foundation and the City of Kansas City, Mo reviewed fourteen team presentations delivered on Sunday afternoon. Presentations were 5-8 minutes in length with a 2-3 minute Q&A session. There were a variety of technical glitches, software failures or general chaos during presentations as applications built in 48 hours failed to deliver as designed, but those glitches helped keep the event light and people chatting away (or watching the KU game streaming on laptops at Gigabit speeds). Attendees were definitely over-caffeinated or dragging from a lack of sleep after staring at a computer screen for 48+ hours of building, programming and developing! And remember, it was snowing!
Local developers already have several amazing projects under way. Instead of buying software, for example, individuals might be able to virtually borrow Photoshop and other expensive programs from the local library. Local cities could use real-time 3D modeling to show residents how city-planning projects would look. If a student gets sick during class, the school nurse might be able to bring a local hospital and the child’s parents into a teleconference or live videoconference.
The best team from this weekend will be encouraged to join the Mozilla Ignite Challenge, a competition that will award $485,000 to up-and-coming apps and developers.
A quote from Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet aptly captured the spirit of the weekend, “In the 1970s, many doubted there were uses for even 50-kilobit-per-second Internet. But soon application explorers came up with remote login, file transfer and email. Pioneers have since found new worlds in telephony, television, publishing, commerce and social interactivity. Today, while investing in gigabit generations of Internet, we are again sending out our application explorers.”
Aaron Deacon, one of the event organizers with KC Digital Drive summed up the weekend saying, “Inventing the future is hard: Essentially, we are trying to ‘birth the new’ this weekend. It won’t be easy, but our goal is to take small steps toward inventing revolutionary applications that can make all of our lives better.”
This event was featured in Forbes Magazine!
See what they had to say HERE
A Few Notable presentations:
Interactive MOOCs – There’s a lot of chatter among education innovators about MOOCs – “Massively Open Online Courses” where people can take courses anywhere. The problem with current Internet speeds is that these courses or engagement with the instructor is fairly one way. You watch a video or a live lecture, but the interaction is limited. With gigabit speeds, the developer team imagines adding much more robust interaction and online learning experience. A group has already partnered with NASA and is currently testing interactive open source software that allows students to engage with and study the workings of the Mars CURIOSITY Rover and manipulate 3D Solar System models.
Turnkey Access To Business Software or Library Check Out Access – “Imagine setting up a business in KC gave you access to a turn-key computer setup or your local library that with a click provided access to software such as Microsoft Office, Excel, database software, automatic backup, customer relationship management software, etc. All you need is a low-cost computer that can connect via high speed network to the cloud computing environment where all of these programs are running.” The ultimate in Cloud computing and significant cost savings for users in education, small business or home-based business.
Cloud 3D Modeling, Printing or Video Casting – 3D modeling or video is a pretty bandwidth intensive process – anybody who does it knows you need a computer with powerful graphics capabilities. But at gigabit speeds, the modeling or video can be crunched elsewhere or hosted on remote servers while teams using lower-end computers can work on them interactively, even though they are miles or continents apart. One group is developing this technology with a company called Natulis that works with shipwrecks/ salvage operations, streaming video feeds from ship to shore teams and hopes to have a submarine 3D video beta version developed later this year.