Welcome to City Camp 2013 Review. What is City Camp, you might ask. For those of you that don’t know, City Camp is an event where people of different professions such as designers, developers, government workers, come together and generate ideas that would make the community better. City Camp NC 2013 was a 2-day event, which took place at the James Hunt Library at North Carolina State University Library. On the first day, Adriel Hampton, from City Camp LA and Bonner Gaylord, the General Manager of North Hills Raleigh, started the program by speaking about the advantages of having City Camp in the Raleigh area. Mr. Hampton, Mr. Gaylord and other well known people from the community, including Raleigh Mayor, Nancy McFarland, and many elected city councilpersons were given the opportunity to briefly pitch their ideas for community improvement.
During the second half of the day attendees had the chance to visit sessions about community improvement. One particular session I attended involved the use building permits that would later become the Geo Build project. A team was formed to start working on this particular project.
During the second day, I was excited to begin working with the Geo Build Project team. Our team was divided in to four groups: a data group, a marketing/presentation group, a developer group, and a design group. I was in the design group which designed mock ups and wire frames for a mobile phone app. Geo Build is an open source version of Angie’s list, which Angie’s is purely based on reviews and opinions and requires a paid membership. Geo Build was designed to include data of documentation of building permits. Our team felt that this was a beneficial app because there must be documentation in order for the consumer to make home improvements. This, of course, would be a free app which makes it even more desirable.
At the end of the second day, each team presented information about what their team accomplished. All ideas were discussed and voted on. The three best ideas won cash prizes. The team which won first place was a team which came up with the idea of having a Local Library mobile phone app, which would enable users to find books at the library. The second best idea was Geo Build. I was thrilled to actually participate with this team and realize that this idea was well appreciated. The third best idea was called Pulse Point. This was a mobile app that would help people who find themselves in life threatening situations such as choking or dying, receive treatment faster. Pulse Point reaches out to people who know CPR or First Aide and encourage them to respond to the person in need.
I really enjoyed going to City Camp NC 2013. It was fun meeting many important people from the Raleigh community and making new connections.