Abbi Insights and 2Mee winners of the Mediastad Innovation Challenge

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Abbi Insights and 2Mee have emerged as the winners of the Mediastad Innovation Challenge for innovative SMEs. MediaMatters recently organized this challenge for the municipality of Hilversum. The challenge was meant to find solutions that use innovative media technology to better reach and engage citizens.

Involvement

The municipality of Hilversum would like to see more involvement from citizens in the various issues that concern the city. This involves new ways of getting citizens interested in subjects they have not been attracted to so far. For example the energy transition or improving the living environment. How can the local government inspire or activate citizens to get involved? The companies that participated in the Challenge came up with solutions for this.

A total of five SMEs were selected for the final of the Challenge. Besides Abbi Insights and 2Mee, they were Dropstuff, Hulan and StellaSpark. The five companies had the opportunity to present their solution to experts of the municipality of Hilversum in December.

Chatbot

Abbi Insights, in collaboration with the Mobile Interaction Company, offers a conversational platform. It is a smart chatbot that the city of Hilversum can use to start a conversation with citizens in an accessible and personal way. The British 2Mee, which cooperates with the Dutch company Updeas, offers an 'avatar' that the municipality can use to replace text messages and other communication. This could, for example, be a personal video message from the mayor.

In the coming period, the city of Hilversum will enter into talks with both parties to see if and how a pilot with their technology is possible. The Mediastad Innovation Challenge is made possible by ClickNL.