We know the winner of this year's #NakopniPrahu competition. However, the Prague Innovation Marathon does not end with their announcement. The three most successful teams continue to work on their projects, with six-month support of mentors and in collaboration with project managers from the city's OICT. Last year's winners have fresh experience with this: the Metacity team, Nature in Prague and Collboard. They worked intensively on their prototypes for six months. We were therefore interested in what results they achieved.
"Innovations are the common denominator of all projects of the OICT Smart Prague office. It is therefore a joy to watch how someone from the outside develops their ideas, with what determination and willingness to change not only Prague for the better. Cooperation with such passionate people is a very nice diversion for us, so we will be happy to contribute our experience and background to them. The time we dedicate to them so that they can realize their projects is definitely worth it. We inspire each other and show others that they too have the opportunity to develop the city with their innovative approach in cooperation with experts who are an integral part of #NakopniPrahu," emphasizes the importance of the Prague Innovation Marathon Petr Šuška, Director of the OICT's Smart City, Innovation and Project Management Department.
Last year's winner, the Metacity team, succeeded with a project that aims to simplify communication between citizens, developers, non-profit organizations, city institutions and other stakeholders involved in city development and planning using data visualization. "Metacity is a tool for urban planning data visualization and its basic functionality is the integration and display of 2D and 3D data sets. Within six months, we created a module for the Metacity platform that enables the display of the traffic situation in the territory of Prague. Thanks to this experimental prototype, we can collect feedback and reactions from individual entities that work with traffic data sets," says Jan Petýrek, co-author of the winning project.
Last year’s 2nd place was won by the Nature in Prague team with the soulroots project, which focuses on improving human mental health through spending time in nature accompanied by exercises that lead to personal growth. "The application supports the citizens of Prague to move and stay in nature and encourages them to exercise, which supports mental health and personal development. We used the support in particular to create a basic version of the mobile application, in which the users can create their profile, add personal information, and then in the map environment they can view pre-prepared routes and specific exercises designed for them," says Adam Táborský, the founder of Therapy among the trees, who is behind the application together with his collaborators.
The Collboard team took 3rd place last year with the Collboard.com project, i.e. a virtual blackboard for schools. The application is intended for online teaching, hybrid teaching, when the class is divided into several parts, either at school or at home, as well as for regular teaching using an interactive whiteboard or projector. "Collboard is a simple virtual whiteboard designed for schools, to which new functions can be very elegantly added from the available library of modules. The six-month collaboration helped us expand Collboard with several modules that are ideal for teaching geography and national history. On top of these modules, we have created a set of interactive materials that contain geographical facts and places from the Czech Republic, Prague, Europe, and the Earth. The teacher has the opportunity to add map materials and further work with them and adapt them to teaching," explains Pavol Hejný, co-founder and developer of Collboard.
About the #NakopniPrahu project
The Prague Innovation Marathon – Nakopni Prahu is a public competition for teams of innovators whose task is to come up with and develop in detail a proposal for a solution to eight selected challenges to improve life in Prague. The organizers of the marathon are the municipal company OICT in cooperation with the City Hall of the capital city of Prague. More information: www.nakopniprahu.cz.