SXSW

Austin, TX – Today, MD Ally was announced as the winner of the Mayors’ Matchup Civic Tech Pitch Competition at South by Southwest (SXSW). Each year at SXSW, the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) helps organize a competition with entrepreneurs and innovators promoting new ideas and technologies to address major city challenges. MD Ally will now go on to pitch their technology to hundreds of mayors at the USCM Annual Meeting, which will take place in Kansas City, MO, June 20 – 23, 2024. The event serves as the finale to the Civic I/O Mayors’ Summit at SXSW.

This year, the competition’s judges were Sandy Springs (GA) Mayor Rusty Paul, Denton (TX) Mayor Gerard Hudspeth, Moreno Valley (CA) Ulysses Cabrera, and Fontana (CA) Mayor Acquanetta Warren.

MD Ally was one of six companies competing for the $10,000 prize.

Brave Technology Group | @bravecoop
Brave Technology is a cooperative that builds tools that detect drug overdoses and activate life-saving community response.
 
Common Agency | @commonagency
Common Agency offers a new platform for building community engagement through neighbor-to-neighbor networking, helping to identify shared interests and ideas.
 
Voltpost | @voltpost
Voltpost is a climate-tech company that is democratizing access to electric vehicle charging by retrofitting lampposts that reduces the cost, timing and physical footprint of charger deployment while serving EV drivers living in multi-unit housing who lack dedicated parking spaces.
 
GoodRoads, Inc |@goodroads
GoodRoads utilizes cutting-edge technology to streamline and enhance the ways roads are planned, built, and maintained. With a focus on automation, GoodRoads aims to simplify the complexities of road management, allowing for swift decision-making and resource optimization.
 
MD Ally |@mdallyinc
MD Ally partners with public safety and their payor partners to implement a new telehealth care pathway for non-emergency patients and eliminate the logistical barriers that often prevent innovative and sustainable programs in the pre-hospital setting.
 
Hover City | hovercity.official
Building the world’s first flying house, Hover City designs and manufactures lightweight high-end tiny houses that are off-grid, modular, robust and can be quickly deployed to extreme locations.

“The solution MD Ally provides is so needed in our communities. We are experiencing such an overrun in our emergency rooms and call systems, particularly around mental health, and I am worried that we are not addressing all physical health issues and getting help to the people who need it. MD Ally stands to offer that critical assistance and I extend my heartfelt congratulations to Shanel Fields and her team,” said Fontana (CA) Mayor Acquanetta Warren.

“It was such a privilege to pitch MD Ally at the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ civic tech competition at SXSW this morning and we are honored to win this incredible award,” said Shanel Fields, CEO of MD Ally. “We are eager to connect with different communities across the country and extend our impact to help patients nationwide. We look forward to continuing our conversations with mayors in the coming months at the Conference’s Annual Meeting in June.”

Mayors from across the country convened in Austin with Mayor Kirk Watson for SXSW and participated in the Civic I/O Mayors’ Summit. The summit features interactive discussions to empower local leaders to use emerging technologies to tackle cities’ biggest challenges. In addition to the summit, mayors took part in several SXSW interactive panels.
 

 
About the United States Conference of Mayors -- The U.S. Conference of Mayors is the official nonpartisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more. There are more than 1,400 such cities in the country today, and each city is represented in the Conference by its chief elected official, the mayor. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.