Press

May 1, 2013.  Fast Company: LED’s are Here, Now Which One Do You Buy? 

April 10, 2013.  MIT Technology Review: Cleanweb or Deep Tech: Diverging Paths for Energy Startups

April 8, 2013.  Boston Business Journal: Zappos-for-lighting App BulbTrip Wins Boston Cleanweb Hackathon

April 8, 2013. BostInno: Sim City for Energy, LED ROI, and More at the Boston Cleanweb Hackathon

April 8, 2013.  MassCEC Announces Cleanweb Hackathon Winners

March 28, 2013. Growing the Cleanweb Sector in Boston:  A Common Sense Convergence

March 8, 2103. Cleanweb: An Opportunity to Get Energy Entrepreneurs Thinking Bigger | BostInno

This year’s Steering Committee organized a Cleanweb Panel Discussion on March 7, 2013, sponsored and hosted by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Clean Tech Open Northeast, and Greentown Labs.

March 7, 2013. The Energy Data Jam Goes on Tour | Department of Energy

This year’s event features a “Data Jam” Challenge Competition, drawn from events hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Planning and the Department of Energy, with solutions shared at a future Energy Datapalooza event similar to past events held at the White House.

U.S. Deputy CTO Leads Opening Session at Boston Cleanweb Hackathon

March 29, 2013.  Nick Sinai, U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, will facilitate the Boston Cleanweb Hackathon Opening Session on Saturday, April 6, 2103, from 9:00 to 2:00PM for participants of the Data Jam track.  Sinai’s Boston roots include roles as a venture capitalist with Polaris Venture Partners and Lehman Brothers Venture Partners, a consultant at the Cambridge Strategic Management Group, and undergraduate studies at Harvard University.

“I am excited by the innovation and global leadership happening around the cleanweb in Greater Boston and look forward to joining them next week. These kinds of collaborative efforts help our nation move toward energy independence while spurring new jobs and economic growth,” said Nick Sinai.

The ”Data Jam” model – brainstorming to address specific challenges and creating viable solutions within a rapid timeframe encourages the use of open data to drive innovation and lasting impact by convening entrepreneurs, investors, business and thought leaders, developers, and experts to tackle solvable energy and resource problems.

The challenge themes at next week’s event will be Transportation Efficiency and Building Efficiency.  At this session, challenge ideas will emerge from group, including one presented by the City of Boston that is linked to goals set by the Mayor’s Greenovate Initiative to reduce energy use and emissions.   Challenge products may have the potential to be a featured app for Greenovate Boston and reach a citywide audience.

This track is available for up to (50) participants.

Following a moderated discussion, brainstorming, prioritization and voting, teams will forms and commit to building solutions and launching new features, products, and even companies over 90 days.  The first milestone and reward follows the presentations of concepts on Sunday, held immediately following the pitches for the weekend-only hackathon competition.   Top choices in each category are invited to pitch their solution-in-progress on the main stage of the VERGE Boston conference (May 13-14) and receive free admission to the 2-day event ($1,495 per team member).  Separate prizes and recognition of winners will happen in June 26 launch event for the Clean Tech Open Summer Academy.

In addition, some solutions may be offered to the White House and the Department of Energy to feature in a second annual Energy Datapalooza.

It is the first time a hackathon and Data Jam were held on the same weekend.  Upon completion of the hackathon competition, hackers may also join teams forming for the 90-day Data Jam Challenge as needs are defined.

The Boston Cleanweb Hackathon is made possible by sponsors, especially the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and EnerNOC.

 

Inaugural 2012 Boston Cleanweb Hackathon and Cleanweb Press

Press Release

Boston Cleanweb Hackathon in the news!

What is Cleanweb?

Great Press from Recent Cleanweb Hackathons in Silicon Valley, New York and London

Additional Cleanweb Coverage

 

The Story of How the Cleanweb Hackathon Came to Boston

First Ever Boston Cleanweb Hackathon:  Developers and Innovators Wanted

[Recommended reading: “Inventing the Cleanweb,” Technology Review, published by MIT, April 2, 2012]

Boston is preparing for the first Boston Cleanweb Hackathon on May 4-6. Students, entrepreneurs, companies, developers, and innovative business people will roll up their sleeves and create new applications in one weekend for prize money and bragging rights.

The kickoff party is at the Venture Cafe at the Cambridge Innovation Center and the main event will be held at Greentown Labs, a cleantech incubator in Boston’s new Innovation District. Registration is open.

Organizers expect a great turnout and media interest is high (Boston Business Journal, April 3, 2012).  Local sponsors include leading investors and service providers such as Venrock, Black Coral Capital, Point Judith Capital, Big Fish, Clean Tech Open, Klavens Law Group, Johnson Controls, and Greentown Labs.  Surge Accelerator, an energy-based company incubator in Houston, TX is sponsoring and attending before their own event later this year.

Cleanweb Origins

A year ago, the term ‘cleanweb’ was coined by two cleantech entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley.  It is based on the simple idea that the next wave of innovation in a cleaner energy economy is happening, and it’s coming from information technology applications that address resource constraints, whether those limits are related to energy, water or even food.

Cleanweb is about creating low cost, capital efficient web-enabled business models capitalizing on the easy access to huge amounts of data – Big Data as some like to call it – that is available and open source.  It’s also about leveraging the data from million of things that now capture them, from shipping crates to smartphones – known as the “internet of things.”

Cleanweb is about realizing high returns directly and indirectly through the smarter use of our built environment and available technology.

Cleanweb is about creating software solutions to solve resource problems.

Sunil Paul and Nick Allen, successfully built web companies earlier in their careers in Silicon Valley, then turned their attention to building clean tech companies to support a transition to a lower carbon economy.  The convergence was logical and practical.

Other entrepreneurs and innovators liked the idea too, which spurred even more ideas and new thinking.

Cleanweb Hackathons Put The Idea of the Cleanweb on the Global Map

Silicon Valley – September 2011

From this enthusiasm, the first Clean Hackathon was organized in Silicon Valley in September 2011.  The event was sold out and industry leaders judged the event including Yves Behar, world-famous designer and founder of fuseproject; Lew Tucker, CTO of Cloud Computing at Cisco; James Joaquin, Partner at Catamount Ventures and former CEO of Ofoto.com and other startups; Scott Zimmerman, Attorney at Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich, and Rosati; Eric Shiflet, Development Program Manager at Tendril.

According to the organizers, “We had about 100 participants to work on software prototypes for about 36 hours straight.  They worked on 14 projects and about 12 working prototypes ranging from buildings to agriculture to solar finance to transportation.  We had about 1/3 of the participants who traveled from outside the Bay Area including Dallas, Seattle, Boulder, and Vancouver.”  Media and blogs covered the event, including GigaOm, Fast Company, and New York Times .

New York – February 2012

New York followed next with its Cleanweb Hackathon in February 2012.  It was even bigger than the event in Silicon Valley, had more sponsors, and attracted more attention.  Judges included Fred Wilson, Principal of Union Square Ventures; Rachel Sterne, NYC Chief Digital Officer; and Frank Rimalovski, Managing Director, NYU Innovation Venture Fund.

The timing was perfect.  One of the New York event’s special guests was Aneesh Chopra, the first CTO of the United States.  He had recently announced the Green Button Initiative, a private-public partnership with utility providers to standardize homeowner energy use data so that people can understand it with a simple click and businesses could create innovate models by using the data.  The momentum grew even more when the U.S. Department of Energy announced in March 2012 an “Apps for Energy” $100,000 prize competition for the best new apps that use the Green Button electricity use data.

[Finally, outside the U.S., London held its first ‘green’ hackathon in January 2012, led by Gavin Starks, Founder and CEO of AMEE a company with a mission to aggregate and automate access to the world’s environmental and energy information.]

The Next Wave of Cleanweb and Hackathons Around the Globe

The Cleanweb trend is going viral. More and more entrepreneurs are combining the power of energy and IT innovation (see Technology Review and “Why Cleanweb will Beat (& Better) Cleantech,” SXSW Conference, March 2012).

Upcoming events are happening in Boulder, CO (May 18-20); Houston, TX; Austin, TX; Paris, France; and more.