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Smart Cities Challenge entry filed

Penticton’s entry in the $10-million competition sent on its way Tuesday
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Sunday afternoon, a group of volunteers gathered on Munson Mountain to change the “O” in Penticton to an “E” in honour of the city’s entry in the $10 million Smart Cities Challenge. Photo courtesy Shaun Kennedy/Moments Under Frame

For a little while, at least, PENTCTON turned into PENTICTEN, at least according to the city’s iconic sign on Munson Mountain.

Sunday evening, the Penticton sign changed to Penticten. Image courtesy Facebook.
The update appeared late Sunday. It didn’t take long to figure out it was in honour of Penticton’s entry into the national Smart Cities Challenge, where the city is competing for a $10-million prize.

Keith MacIntyre, a member of the core group driving the entry, said the idea of changing the Munson Mountain sign was sparked by a conversation about how to pronounce Penticton among MacIntyre’s employees.

“One of them said ‘pen-tic-ten.’ Of course, ‘ten’ is in my mind,” said MacIntyre.

From there, it was just a matter of recruiting some volunteers and putting a few burlap sacks in place.

MacIntyre said they had considered “TENTICTON,” until they realized it would be a lot harder to change the P than the O. It was just a bit of fun, but there was a more serious side to it.

“Community engagement is a huge piece of this. While we can’t put pictures in the application, the jurors will be looking at our website,” said MacIntyre. “We can put a picture there and I think showing the Penticton sign got involved in the Smart Cities Challenge will work well for us.”

That community engagement in the Smart Cities Challenge has grown to be as big a factor as trying for the $10-million prize.

“It’s been much bigger than I expected. The community has changed for the better out of this, in a really positive way. Myself and the rest of the team, we hope this becomes a catalyst in Penticton, for change and positive communication,” said MacIntyre. “I believe we really set something in motion.”

MacIntyre said it took less than $50 to make the change to the iconic sign on Munson Mountain Sunday. The working group of volunteers, he said, has spent less than 30 per cent of the $10,000 budgeted for them by the city.

Related: Smart Cities process hitting the right notes

The return on that investment could be enormous when Penticton is shortlisted, and then moves on to win the prize, the goal of which is developing projects that improve the lives of community members through innovation, data and connected technology.

The theme of the entry, which was submitted at 4:15 p.m. on deadline day, April 24, is Healthier Penticton, built around the challenge statement:

“Let’s build a physically and mentally healthier, strongly-connected Penticton where each person has access and opportunity to maximize their health potential.”

Related: Healthy Penticton is the theme for Smart Cities Challenge

Members of the Smart Cities Challenge team and supporters met Tuesday afternoon to officially file Penticton's entry in the national competition for a $10-million prize. Present were the city's chief financial officer Jim Bauer, economic development specialist Jennifer Vincent, Nicholas Vincent, Coun. Max Picton and Keith MacIntyre. Submitted photo
The Smart Cities group was making fine adjustments until the last minute. MacIntyre said that though the entry was ready, they were waiting until later in the afternoon to officially file it.

“Just getting a few more eyes on it, looking for typos,” said MacIntrye. The final application was put together with Louise Kozier as lead writer and Nicholas Vincent as community proposal lead, along with chief financial officer Jim Bauer and economic development specialist Jennifer Vincent from the City of Penticton.

“In particular, Louise put in a huge amount of effort in the last week to take what we have written and turn into the quality application we have today,” said MacIntryre. The full submission is available on the Smart Cities Penticton website.

MacIntyre and all the other volunteers have invested hundreds of hours over the last four months making the Smart Cities a reality for the city. Now the entry is filed, he’s planning on taking a little break.

“There is still a lot of work to do, to debrief the city and to get all the information, especially from our surveys, to make that public and share it with the community, make sure all the things we have done over the last four months don’t get lost,” he said. “Personally, on my volunteer time, I’ve seen the value of this community connection and engagement and I want to continue that.”

He acknowledged the support the Smart Cities Challenge received, with many people contributed what was needed to make it go.

“There are some incredibly talented people in the community, not just in the tech sector, but all sectors,” said MacIntyre.

When the project needed marketing help, needed writing help, community engagement, operations and more, MacIntyre said the help they needed was there.

He’s also received some admiring and envious communications from people in other communities looking at Penticton’s community involvement.

“I saw that as a key component of the challenge, and talking to Infrastructure Canada, that was reinforced for me. I’m surprised more communities haven’t taken that approach,” said MacIntyre. ‘I’ve had several people message me from other cities saying ‘we love watching what your community is doing and we wish our community was doing that.’

“It makes me feel good that way.”


Steve Kidd
Senior reporter, Penticton Western News
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