In 2012 The Nature Conservancy formed an experimental partnership with JPMorgan Chase & Co. through their Technology for Social Good program. This program partners JPMorgan Chase staff with non-profits using technology to explore innovative solutions to business challenges. In this case, we partnered with them to explore innovative opportunities for leveraging technology to reconnect urban populations to nature.
In November 2012 I joined a weekend-long Code for Good hackathon at the London JPMorgan Chase headquarters. Nearly 100 students from leading technical colleges around the U.K. competed on solutions that would broaden our constituency for conservation through technology. The winning solution used augmented reality and gamification concepts to enable stewardship and promote green living via mobile devices.
We built on this concept by aligning with TNC’s Healthy Urban Trees initiative to prototype a tighter concept that focused on getting people out into nature within cities by encouraging them to run, walk, meditate, relax and connect with others.
