One Spark allows “Creators” to showcase their business ideas to an actual crowd, as well as to voters who decide upon victors across a range of categories. The prize on offer is startup/working capital – money that was raised through crowdfunding. The festival in essence produces a live version of the online process of rewards-based crowdfunding. In only its second year, One Spark Creator booths now occupy more than twenty square blocks in downtown Jacksonville. Attendance this year hit a staggering 235,000 people.
The winners of the various categories have now been unveiled. They are, according to the Florida Times Union, as follows:
Art
First: Theater on a Mission, a group of high school and college students planning a mission trip to a Kenyan orphanage.
Second: Boneshakered Bigwheel, a giant wooden tricycle designed with legs, created by Ronald Schroer.
Third: Project Atrium, the Museum of Contemporary Art effort that unveiled artist Shaun Thurston’s site-specific painting during the festival.
Innovation
First: Renovation of Snyder Memorial Church, a city-owned landmark facing Hemming Plaza.
Second: Farm to Truck, a North Florida School of Special Education student project to grow organic foods for distribution through a food truck.
Third: Fur-ever Home Fund, a nonprofit that rescues endangered big cats.
Science
First: AquaJax, a nonprofit group trying to start a major aquarium in downtown’s Metropolitan Park.
Second: St. Augustine Aquarium and Botanical Gardens, scheduled to open in 2015.
Third: Down to Earth Farm, a Westside Jacksonville sustainable farm with an education center and plans for a community kitchen.
Technology
First: Earthguy.com, a website advertised as “the way you’d think group deals should work, for buyers and for sellers, if you came from outer space.”
Second: Wazinit, a device to scan pre-packaged foods and compare ingredients against a set of foods a consumer has pre-entered as triggering bad physical reactions.
Third: LiveSMART and Green Spark Mobile, a project of the U.S. Green Building Council North Florida.
Music
First: Grandpa’s Cough Medicine, fund-raising for the Jacksonville-based outlaw bluegrass band’s next album.
Second: Cyrious Exposure, a project by Jacksonville Beach singer-songwriter Dalton Cyr.
Third: A New Sound for the First Coast, a project to commission for a major musical work by composer Robert W. Smith.
For the “juried” winners the following companies were listed as winners:
Art: #ProjectAtrium (Creator No. 20196)
Innovation: The Meatrix System Meat Analyzer (Creator No. 20914)
Music: Sidereal 2014 Takeover (Creator No. 20476)
Science: Neuroinitiative – Inside the Neuron (Creator No. 21036)
Technology: PartPic: Visual Recognition for Replacement Parts (Creator No. 20730)
The juried winners each received a $10,000 prize along with airfare to One Spark Berlin scheduled for later this year.
You can catch the highlights from the vibrant One Spark 2014 Closing Ceremony .
