Unleashing SA’s digital potential
Flinders' Josh Morony and Ben Flink play with their award-winning phone app.
Flinders New Venture Institute will help two promising new digital projects towards commercial take-off as part of this year’s GovHack Unleashed open data competition.
The newly discovered digital entrepreneurs will work with Flinders New Venture Institute (NVI) experts at Tonsley, and co-sponsors Majoran in the city, under the special scholarship arrangement.
The winners of $15,000 Premier’s Awards will be announced on 31 July.
NVI is an entrepreneurial initiative of Flinders University. Majoran is a co-working community space for technical and creative freelancers.
The SA-wide Unleashed competition involved more than 200 people over the weekend 3-5 July, including a new event for under-18 year olds held at community centres in Mt Gambier, Playford and Onkaparinga.
Flinders NVI is sponsoring the third South Australian Unleashed ‘hackathon’, with NVI deputy director Ben Flink joining a judging panel from the State Government’s Office of Digital Government to decide the winners.
“The Premier’s Award winners will select the two projects that demonstrate the most likelihood of being developed further, either for commercial application or community or government use,” Mr Flink says.
“They will have the option of working with us at Flinders Tonsley for up to 12 months, with access to our award-winning Venture Dorm powered by MEGA pre-accelerator program.”
GovHack is a national competition targeting digital entrepreneurs to turn non-sensitive Government data into “an inspiring array of data mash-ups, smart phone applications and web tools to impact their local communities”.
Last year Mr Flink joined forces with Flinders University software engineering graduate Joshua Morony to develop a mobile app for Unleashed. Their PlaySA app won the Local Government Association prize for Regional or Local Council Communities.
“As a participant and winner of an Unleashed award in 2014, I know first-hand the benefits that are delivered to the South Australian community from this innovative event,” said Mr Flink.
The phone app gives families the full details, including play equipment, of all local or regional play spaces around the State.
The app project was a springboard for the young entrepreneurs to start a mobile development company called Monkey Do Studio.
