CREATEProduceAthon: When HackAthon Meets Incentive Challenge to Catalyze Social Change in 72-Hours
ProduceAthon cultivates makers, creatives, and thought leaders to pool their minds, resources, and talents over 72-hours to produce large scale, systemic, and sustainable social change.
Please describe the activation your organization seeks to launch.
Our approach unites civic leaders, city innovations teams, social innovation partners, and individual creators and changemakers. Through our events, we activate communities throughout LA to learn about relevant social issues and work together to raise awareness about and develop innovative technology solutions for them. We ensure systemic and sustainable activation by using the compelling video content and technology prototypes developed during our events to drive growth and progress year-round.
Which of the CREATE metrics will your activation impact?
Number of high-growth startups
Patents per capita
Venture capital investment
Will your proposal impact any other LA2050 goal categories?
LA is the best place to LEARN
LA is the best place to PLAY
LA is the best place to CONNECT
LA is the healthiest place to LIVE
In what areas of Los Angeles will you be directly working?
Central LA
East LA
San Gabriel Valley
San Fernando Valley
South LA
Westside
South Bay
Antelope Valley
County of Los Angeles
City of Los Angeles
LAUSD
How will your activation mobilize Angelenos?
Advocate for policy
Digital organizing or activism
Trainings and/or in-person engagements
Create new tools or technologies for greater civic/political engagement
Encourage businesses to change practices
Increase participation in political processes
Connect Angelenos with impactful volunteer opportunities
Increase donations to organizations and causes
Describe in greater detail how your activation will make LA the best place to CREATE?
Beyond fostering a sense of collaborative innovation, our events culminate with specific deliverables that ensuring the content and prototyped concepts produced live beyond a 72-hour period.
ProduceAthon participants are divided up into teams during the event. Storytelling Teams and Tech Teams. While some team members develop actual content, videos, and prototype new technologies, other team members will be focused on strategy and growth pertaining to their projects.
Storytelling Teams are responsible for delivering a Content Strategy Plan to ensure the cause they've worked on can use the content to (1) generate awareness (2) increase volunteerism (3) increase donations
Tech Teams are responsible for delivering a business plan on how to fund, scale, and implement their proposed technology to address the social or city challenge they worked on.
The best ideas are presented to a panel of judges and investors at event culmination -- during a Release Party.
From there, the top two pitches will receive funding to implement their content strategy and business plan as well as access to resources, mentors, co-working spaces, and city officials for guidance that monitors progress and ensures sustainable and systemic growth.
The more events we're able to host in a given year will increase and attract higher caliber participants and result in more innovative ideas and concepts.
This, in turn, will generate greater interest among higher caliber investors and VCs.
This is how we ultimately affect and increase the Patents per Capita, # of high growth startups, and VC investment.
How will your activation engage Angelenos to make LA the best place to CREATE
Our activation involves city-wide and county-wide impact, as we intend to partner with various city innovation teams across Los Angeles County who will act as our Social Innovation Partners.
These partners offer insight on their most pressing social issues, along with desired success metrics they want to see directly impacted as a gauge for monitoring progress.
By working with a county-wide range of social innovation partners, the ProduceAthon challenge prompts and themes will be relevant, current, and very specific to unique challenges that various parts of LA county face.
We will also team up with educational and entrepreneurship institutions, who will act as mentors throughout the 72-Hour ProduceAthon duration. These experts will offer teams access to relevant tools needed in creating their deliverables, and guide them in optimizing their concepts and pitches for successful implemenation.
ProduceAthon culminates with a release party, where team participants present their deliverables and pitch their concepts in front of a panel of judges and investors. The winning ideas will receive funding for implementation and well as access to mentors and resources to ensure and monitor progress.
Please explain how you will define and measure success for your activation.
- The Number of Entities and Individuals involved with each ProducAthon event
a - Number of City Innovation Teams & Educational Institutions onboard
b - Number of changemakers signed up to participate on a ProduceAthon team
- Number of ProduceAthon events hosted / years
- Number of ideas and concepts funded / event and /year
- Number of patents applied for / awarded
- Number of VC and Angel Investors onboard / event
- Increase in $ raised & volunteers sign-uped to help specific causes post-ProduceAthon content creation and content release
- Number of business and tech concepts that become cash flow positive post-ProduceAthon
- Number of individuals hired during implementation phase for ProduceAthon winning ideas
Where do you hope this activation or your organization will be in five years?
Our end-goal is to have the ProduceAthon hosted on a global scale, with various cities and locations using our systemic ProduceAthon hosting process and online tools to facilitate and host ProduceAthons in their own cities. This, coupled with an online component for online participants to take part in local challenges, will extend our reach and impact.