On June 5 and 6, the City of Tampere – one of STARDUST’s Lighthouse cities – organised its first industrial Hackathon contest together with the 6Cities: City IoT and 6Cities: Reboot the City at the demo fairs in Kampusareena entitled, “Enlighten Tampere”. Goal of the event was to provide an avenue for company teams to take it up a notch and pitch radical ideas that will turn Tampere into a smart city.

As part of STARDUST’s local initiative, their solutions addressed all of sorts of challenges to be encountered in smart cities such as smart buildings and smart mobility. As the title speaks for itself, the city was also particularly interested in finding the most creative solutions to make its street lighting network and the city’s IoT (Internet of Things) smarter.

The jury selected three teams as winners of the Enlighten Tampere Innovation challenge. Two of the winners, namely Remod and Arcventure, proposed solutions addressing the city’s street lighting system. The former team from Oulu thought of utilising single LED street lights that adapt to the citizens’ needs in reference to the current weather and visibility. Straight from Helsinki, the latter group suggested on controlling the street lights using citizen-based crowdsourcing. On the other hand, Golden Nuggets from Tampere presented an idea on developing an effective user application for public transportation using timetables, route guides and an application that collects data on crowd flows and the utilisation rate of services. Thanks to the new procurement law, the three winners will have the chance to negotiate with the city of Tampere to turn their ideas into a reality.

Voting also took place among the attendees of the demo fairs. Apart from Arcventure (that also won via the jury’s votes), Trinovation of Triona won the public’s attention as they proposed an idea on building a service-oriented application for road networks.

The innovation challenge turned out to be an overall success, as it led to new ideas and gave the possibility to  participants from the industries and city representatives to collaborate with one another. As challenging as it seems, the event promoted a camaraderie that STARDUST hopes to instil between the different local stakeholders to paint a brighter picture.