Out With The Old in with the New: Join MCIC & The A4MC Team to Ring in the New Year at Entrepreneur's Eve!!! 

Celebrate the end of an incredible year for Chicago Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the beginning of an exciting future by joining MCIC and the A4MC Team at the 1st ever Entrepreneur's Eve! at the Adler Planetarium!!

Find out more exciting details and buy your tickets today!!!

The final ranking is in.

Congratulations to Grand Challenge winner SpotHero!

Congratulations to  A4MC's 20 Grand Challenge Finalists and 3 GO Finalists!!

The Apps 4 Metro Chicago IL is coming to an end with over 70 amazing entries, 3500 public votes, amazing collaborations and even more inspirational stories! Now the moment we have all been waiting for!

The A4MC Top 20 Grand Challenge Finalists are ….

The Public has Spoken! With over 1200 votes the public’s Top 5 Finalists in no particular order are…..

• Taxi Share- Taxi Share is an application designed to increase efficiency, reduce CO2 emississions and cut down on already congested streets and highways.  The app allows users to find each other and share a cab to popular destinations around the city and to the major airports. 
• Crime Alert- Crime Alert is a cross-platform web application, resource page, blog, and SMS service that serves to alert users of crime in their community and surrounding area as rapidly as possible user-inputted addresses, and heavily customizable filters so that users only receive information that they believe to be relevant to their lives.
• MassUp.us- is Chicago's "Social Cycling System. " It's a Web App comprehensively meeting the needs of urban bicyclists. It features maps, directions, compass, ride recording, calorie counter, speedometer, weather and much more.
• Make Green a Habit -  This is a green social network with a simple goal: to inspire people and organizations to create a greener and sustainable habitat. Ghabit uses social media technology to allow users to create an online green community, track and compare green habits, and much more!
• TreKing – The only Android app to support all four major transit systems in Chicago.

Judges Choice: Our expert panel reviewed all of our wonderful entries and their Top 5 are…

• Chicago Lobbyists-  Chicago Lobbyists is a web based app that is an open data, open government, and open source project intended to improve the transparency of interactions between the City of Chicago and lobbyists and their clients.
• allSchedules- AllSchedules gives you access to a huge collection of transit schedules, for different transport modes (bus, metro,train, tram ferry, etc.), in multiple cities around the world. 
• OwtSee- OwtSee is an Android based and a web based application that presents information about the Chicago parks and community events in one convenient  place. 
• Spot Hole- This app is a tool that improves the process of citizens reporting potholes and helps the city clarify and address those concerns.
• Transit Stop: CTA Tracker - This mobile app gives you quick and easy access to bus and train (‘L’) arrival time estimates for every Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) bus and train stop. 

Excellence Extended: The Top 5 Winners from the Transportation and the Community Round automatically make up the remaining 10 A4MC Grand Challenge Finalists and to refresh your memory they are…

• Community Round:
  • IFindit Chicago- An android app that is designed to help low income and homeless residents connect with critical resources such as medical clinics, food pantries, shelters etc.
  • Mi Parque- is a bilingual participatory placemaking web and smartphone application that helps residents of the community contribute and share their vision for the future of Little Village’s new park. Community members can submit ideas about how to make this park, and other open spaces in the area, safer, greener and healthier places that meet community needs
  • Chicago Local Guide- is an android app is meant to help local people as well as tourists find:  interesting places and points-of-interest near them; locate specials and promotions from local businesses; updates on cultural, social, and technology events around Chicago; and breaking local news .
  • OkCopay- A comparison search engine for medical care that allows users to search for the procedure they need, compare local providers, and view their actual prices.
  • Fixit!- A mobile app that allows Chicagoans to report issues, like public property damages, that require city attention.

• Transportation Round:
  • SpotHero-Spothero efficiently connects parking demand and parking supply.  We allow parking spot owners to earn income by renting their spot when it's unoccupied
  • FasPark-Faspark helps drivers find street parking in real time.
  • InThirty- Use InThirty to see the Chicago city resources that you can access within a thirty-minute train, bus, or
  • TrailBlaze Chicago- TrailBlaze Chicago records and anonymously reports your bicycle tracks, allowing you to vote for new paths simply by carrying your phone while you bike.
  • GoChicago-  With GoChicago, users can make a list of the places in Chicago they'd like to see, view directions to each place on a map, or call the place for more information.

Delta's GO (Green Opportunities) Award Finalists: goes to the the best App designed to help users find, create, sustain or share green products, practices and programs in the City of Chicago

• Light Bulb Finder- An app that estimates the energy savings from changing the bulb and how long it will take for the new bulb to pay for itself. It also calculates a home’s total energy savings potential and environmental impact for recommended bulb replacements.
• Recycle City Chicago- This app shows the closest recycling center and the driving direction to that location to help residents of Chicago recycle. 
• Chicago Recycle Helper-  Chicago Recycle Helper is a web application that helps people locate recycling drop-off points for various materials in the Chicago area.

   

Apps Newsletter from MCIC

See it here.

New Special Awards for Grand Challenge

The Delta Institute is offering a $2000 Green Opportunities (GO) award for environmentally-themed apps, and the Innovate Illinois Grand Prize will be $6000 this round.  More information here.

Congrats to the Apps 4 Metro Chicago IL Community Round Winners!

The Apps 4 Metro Chicago Illinois Community Round was a grand success with over 30 wonderful entries, and 1200 + votes!  T

The votes are in and you can view the complete list of Community Round, State and Placemaking Award winners here!

We invite software developers, community groups, businesses and individuals to build apps that solve problems and improve services in Metro Chicago. Also, we encourage developers to develop trading applications that benefit our people in generating passive income. Because investing in stocks, cryptocurrencies, and various commodities is an effective way for a better profit. But finding a reliable trading application is all that matters due to various fraudulent sites in the market. To find the best trading application read the trading apps vergleich guide, and choose the right one that suits your needs. Our goal in this three-phased competition is to increase government transparency by facilitating the building of software applications that are creative, useful, and designed for long-term impact.  

The key to winning this contest is to demonstrate that you have created something useful for our community. The judges are looking for apps that are built with the input and support of not-for-profits, community organizations and businesses. For more details check the judging criteria on the guidelines page.

Any and all software applications are eligible as long as they are for a platform widely available to the public like the web, smart phones, and SMS.

Support for this competition comes from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Illinois Science and Technology Coalition, the Motorola Mobility Foundation and The Chicago Community Trust.