Ag tech coders — time for a ground truth! And cash prizes! Apps for Ag, a competitive hackathon (in the best sense of the word) comes to Sacramento on July 15-17.
The top prize is $5,000 and the chance for your app to really do some good.
If that’s enough, recruit your development team and click here on the hackathon’s website: http://www.apps-for-ag.com
Apps for Ag v4.0 is sponsored by the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR), the State Fair, Cisco Systems Inc. and Dimension Data. The three prior successful competitions were held at West Hills College Coalinga (WHCC), then Cabrillo College in Watsonville and then UC Davis with the World Food Center.
This year, days one and two are at the very nice UC ANR facility in east Davis (between downtown and Target) and day three, the judging, is at the State Fair.
There will be a couple hours of networking at the State Fair and sampling of the beer and wine competition winners. Maybe I can persuade my wife to bring some of her blue-ribbon cookies.
The Apps for Ag volunteer organizing team is led by agronomist Patrick Dosier, UC ANR CIO Gabriel Youtsey, State Fair’s Jay Carlson, and Robert Tse from USDA, and sometimes they let me talk.
The California AgTech Roundtable — the pro bono group I co-founded in 2013 — launched Apps for Ag as a spinoff, like all successful tech startups.
Based in the Capital City, the Roundtable is a unique ag tech venue, providing market guidance to operating companies from senior state regulators, legislative staff and farmers from the major associations.
Of course, since we’re in Sacramento, we have a hidden agenda: creating next-gen good jobs in disadvantaged rural areas. We do this by collaborating with WHCC’s Farm of the Future program.
Located in the scorched heart of the San Joaquin Valley, the Farm of the Future has a hands-on student population that is two-thirds disadvantaged.
So our AgTech Roundtable in late 2014 asked how to spur the migration of ag tech and associated jobs? The resourceful Mr. Tse had the answer right there at our table. “Apps for Ag,” he said, noting the success of other hackathons.
Enter. Do well doing good.
Oh, and you may learn something USDA Deputy CIO Joyce Hunter is our keynoter.
