Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 34, Number 11, 1 November 2017 — In Pursuit of the Purple Prize [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

In Pursuit of the Purple Prize

Startup Gompetition unites tech innovation, culture, and environment

By Lindsey Kesel

PURPLE MAI'A

The idea for the Purple Prize eame about after Kelsey Amos read an artiele on "Zen Haek" events happening in Japan, twoday sprints where designers and engineers get together in sacred temples to build applications and platforms centered around themes. As co-founder of Purple Mai'a Foundation, a loeal nonprofit that teaches kids in underserved schools about coding and eomputer science, Amos loved the idea of creating a distinct culture around the mixing of IT and traditional Hawaiian practices. She and founding partners Donovan Kealoha and Olin Lagon got together with their board members Kamuela Enos and Forest Frizzell to talk about the disconnect between the loeal tech community, cultural practitioners, nonprofits and environmentalists. They imagined, what would an "aloha 'āina hackathon" look like? As they were teaching the youth to code, it made perfect sense that they should invest in building the kind of landscape that would support aspiring startups. "We want to be clearing the way ahead of these kids, and start cultivating the kind of tech eommunity here that we want to see," says Amos. In 2016, Purple Mai'a hosted its first Purple Prize, a six-month-long competition where teams presented ideas rooted in Hawaiian values with the goal of developing

innovations that are not onlv viable

in the sense of cre ating a marketablf product, but also ir terms of serving tht people of Hawai' broadly. The even drew widespreac community sup port and winnen shared $80,000 ii prizes - fundec by donations fron Kamehamehi Schools, Hawai' Community Foun dation, Datahousc and Amazon Wel Services - to takc their ideas to thc next level. This year's event the "Waiwai Chal lenge," asked team: to create efficiencies that address the conservation, protection and man ii-

agement of loeal water resources. "The word 'waiwai' reflects the insight that freshwater is the basis of all life and any thriving society," says Amos. "Our stewardship of this resource is a key priority for the future, and technology should play a role in it." One competitor, Team Mai Tai'd, tackled the problem of an undersampled coastal marine environment by building a low-cost tide gauge that measures water levels in real time and sends the data to the web or iPhone app using radio frequency. Though oceanography professor Brian Glazer had been exploring the concept from an academic angle for years, his crew worked closely with Paepae o He'eia and team mentor Robin Campaniano from Blue Startups to grow the idea from an entrepreneurship angle. "I wanted to enable a broader spatial understanding of the coast, so places like the fishpond could

access measurements that they could normally not afford,"

says Glazer. "That's where the beautiful marriage lies between research interests and applied scienee... The Purple Prize pushed me outside of mv comfort zone to

consider the end user and create a deeper impact." At the event kickoff in March at Ka Papa Lo'i 'o Kānewai and Hālau 'īnana, participants learned about traditional resource management systems and their relevance today. With 12 teams competing - double last year's number - the October finale at the University of Hawai'i West O'ahu invited the public to watch finalists pitch their ideas to a panel of thought leaders. Winners were chosen in two categories - In-Flight and Startup - based on four criteria: bold and audacious, creative, impactful to many and pono. Mālama Loko I'a took first plaee in In-Flight with its tablet interface that functions offline, allowing community members to collect an array of fishpond data for community-based ecosystem management. I'a Kilo Practices for the Contemporary Kia'i Loko took home the Startup win with a

tool to document and quantify fish at mākāhā (sluice gates) over tidal, lunar and seasonal cycles using underwater cameras and maehine learning for better management and community engagement. Nohealani Hirahira's team took second nlaee in Startur) for Native

Stories, a platform created around place-based stories and cultural practice content to perpetuate indigenous wisdom. "This is my first experience in this type of competition," she says. "The experience was invaluable... from the advice on pitching and our business ideas to the network that we developed." The aim for Purple Prize in the next few years is to reach a wider range of participants, and engage more undergraduate eollege students. "Beyond any sort of technological fix, I think we're building a new network of eollaborators and creating the social systems necessary to solve realworld problems," says Amos. "At its core, the Purple Prize tells people we're here to invest in you. We want to see you succeed, we want to share your ideas and run with them." More information is available at purpleprize.com. ■

. The six-month long Purple Prize eompelilion grew oul of imagining whal an aloha 'ōina haekalhon would look like. - Photo: Courtesy Purpte Maia.