SYRACUSE — Mobile technology is the future of the economy and that’s why this is “such an important competition.”

That’s how Marissa Shorenstein, New York president of AT&T, Inc., referred to the Central New York Civic App Challenge during her remarks at the Sept. 11 announcement about the event at the Tech Garden.

“This really for us is about using mobile technology to lead the next generation of tech jobs and investment and to keep them local and that’s really what this is about,” said Shorenstein.

AT&T and several local partners teamed up to announce the contest in which participants are competing for cash prizes totaling $18,000.

CenterState CEO, Syracuse University, the State University of New York (SUNY) Oswego, Girls in Tech, and Hack Upstate joined AT&T (NYSE: T) in announcing the competition.

Community members, and particularly, the hacker and technology community, can participate and build software applications over a 60-day period, Seth Mulligan, vice president for innovation services at the Tech Garden for CenterState CEO, said in his remarks at the Tech Garden.

“The goal of the challenge is to encourage local developers to build and deliver apps that could serve … community members,” said Mulligan.

Organizers hope the competition encourages innovative thinkers, designers, artists, developers, and entrepreneurs to create “intuitive and novel” mobile apps that address and provide solutions for social and civic issues in Central New York, according to the AT&T news release on the event.

Teams submitting mobile apps must include at least one member that is either a current resident of 12 counties that make up the region, or attends one of the region’s colleges or universities.

The counties include Cayuga, Cortland, Herkimer, Lewis, Jefferson, Madison, Oneida, Onondaga, Oswego, Seneca, St. Lawrence, and Tompkins, according to the news release.

Participants can register for the competition at the website: attcny.hackupstate.com, according to the news release.

Hack Upstate will facilitate the contest that will continue through Nov. 11.

The organization holds twice-annual weekend hackathons that bring Upstate developers and designers to Syracuse, according to its website.

Girls in Tech is a global, nonprofit organization focused on the “engagement, education and empowerment of influential women in technology,” according to its website. The organization has a chapter in Syracuse.

Hacking

Hacking is the “fast and collaborative way that technology coders and software developers can get together … and piece together pieces of software in a new way,” says Mulligan, speaking with the Business Journal News Network after the event. Mulligan acknowledges that hacking has a “negative connotation,” as it’s often associated with cybersecurity threats, but says in this case it can lead to innovation.

A panel of judges, including local technology experts, community stakeholders, and elected officials, will determine the winners of the competition.

Contest participants will compete in two different tracks. One track is for developers who are already working on community-service themed apps, while the other is for developers who will create a civic app from scratch, according to the news release.

AT&T will award the $7,500 grand prize and $1,500 runner-up prize to the winners in each category during a Nov. 19 event at the SUNY Oswego Metro Center in downtown Syracuse.

Contests, in general, usually bring out the competitiveness in the students that are hackers [and] who have a good idea, says Sean Branagan, director of the Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Syracuse University.

Branagan spoke with the Business Journal News Network after the event.

The real value of such a competition isn’t who wins, he contends.

“The value is those connections that are made by those students between and among themselves, coming up with amazing ideas and letting [those ideas] be shaped,” says Branagan, who also spoke during the Tech Garden announcement.

To encourage submissions, the Tech Garden hosted an adult-literacy hackathon on Sept. 13 and 14.

It will also host the upcoming Hack Upstate fall hackathon on Oct. 4 and 5, and the Hack hunger and homelessness, scheduled for Nov. 7 through Nov. 9, according to the news release.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com