Hack the Connected City of the Future

Can you build the digital backbone September that brings people together in tomorrow’s city centres?

(pass word: COT-coherent-item)

Why this challenge?

What makes a city worth visiting? Is it the shops? The cafés? The cultural venues? The events? The people?
In reality, it is all of these things combined. A city centre comes alive when people move through it, discover new places, support local businesses, meet each other and feel connected to their environment.

Yet today’s city centres face an important challenge. Information about local businesses, cultural activities, events and community initiatives is fragmented across websites, apps and social media platforms. As a result, citizens often discover only a small part of what their city has to offer, while local organisations struggle to reach their audiences and valuable opportunities for interaction are missed.

At the same time, everyday life is becoming increasingly digital. We search, shop, communicate and make choices online. But what if digital technology could do more than keep people behind a screen?
What if data, digital infrastructure and AI could help people go out, explore their city and meet others in real life?This is where you come in.

The Challenge

Imagine a future where residents can effortlessly discover what their city has to offer. Where local businesses, cultural institutions, event organisers and municipalities collaborate through trusted digital infrastructure. Where technology helps people connect with places, opportunities and each other.

Your challenge is to design the city centre of the future: a place where digital tools help people move, meet, discover and connect in the real world.
During this one-day hackathon at Connect-U in Enschede, you will work in teams of up to five people to develop innovative ideas, concepts or prototypes that help create more connected, vibrant and resilient city centres.

Whether your solution involves digital platforms, trusted data spaces, AI-powered services, smart recommendations, new collaboration models or entirely new approaches, the goal remains the same:
How can digital infrastructure help people discover, meet and connect in tomorrow’s city centres.

1. Think & design
Develop a scalable concept for how data, digital infrastructure and emerging technologies can help cities become more connected, discoverable and resilient. This track focuses on systems thinking, digital ecosystems and scalable concepts that could support future city centres across the Netherlands.

Suitable for students in Business Information Technology, Computer Science, Data Science, Business Administration (Digital Innovation) and related programmes.

2. Build & apply
Develop a concept, prototype or demonstrator that shows how digital technologies can help people discover, meet and connect. The emphasis is on practical implementation, usability and real-world impact.

Suitable for students in ICT, Creative Business, Commercial Economics, Digital Marketing, Retail Management and related programmes.

The coaches

5 coaches will be present, each making two rounds of 10 minutes to answer questions and provide feedback. These feedback rounds take place from 11:30 – 12:15 and from 15:30 – 16:15.

The Jury

Dr. ir. Martin Spitholt
Martin Spitholt is an entrepreneur, investor and innovation accelerator with over thirty years of experience in bringing new technology to market. In 1993, he co-founded Telecats, a company that grew into one of Europe’s leading providers of speech technology and smart customer contact solutions. As CFO and head of business development, he guided the company through its transformation from a software supplier to a cloud services provider, serving clients such as KPN, VGZ and the Dutch National Police. In 2017, he sold Telecats to the Webhelp Group (now Concentrix). Today, Martin serves as director of the Sustainable Scale-up Foundation, where he builds consortia of entrepreneurs, knowledge institutions and governments around innovations that make a real-world difference — in areas such as energy transition, digital twins for the built environment, data sharing in supply chains and biobased construction. Through his company Nxtvalue, he supports startups in securing funding and advises companies on mergers and acquisitions.

Martin holds a PhD from the University of Twente, where he also studied industrial engineering and management. He approaches innovation through the lens of both an entrepreneur and a financier: a great idea is only truly great when it helps the customer, has a realistic business model and can scale.

Harm Jan Arendshorst
Harm Jan Arendshorst is a technology entrepreneur and expert in digital twins, digital identity and trustworthy digital infrastructures. With over 25 years of experience designing and developing complex digital systems, his expertise spans IoT architectures, cybersecurity, identity management, data spaces, digital wallets and trustworthy AI. As founder and CEO of iLabs Technologies, Harm Jan works on the development of digital twins and the digital infrastructure they require. For him, a good digital twin goes beyond a digital representation or visualisation — it’s about the architecture behind it: how systems, data and physical objects connect, how information can be exchanged reliably, and how security, privacy and interoperability are built in from the start.

Harm Jan has spent years working on international standards and architectures for IoT, digital identity and digital trust. He served as an expert for ETSI on the security, privacy and interoperability of IoT platforms and is active within AIOTI on IoT security.

For students, Harm Jan is above all a technical sparring partner. He can quickly grasp new ideas and critically assess what it takes to actually build them. How do you design the architecture? What data do you need? How do you get different systems to work together? Where are the dependencies or vulnerabilities? And how do you make sure a concept doesn’t just sound interesting, but can actually be built and scaled?

Tess Rutgers-van Rozenburg Rottier
Tess Rutgers is an entrepreneur, strategic advisor and connector at the intersection of technology, innovation and public-private collaboration. With over 25 years of experience, she has brought together companies, governments, knowledge institutions and entrepreneurs around technology-driven developments with major economic and societal impact. Her career spans Gartner, pioneering tech startups and large international players in digital marketing and business development.

In 2015, Tess founded ValueTrack Network and developed Valuetracking: a method for building multi-stakeholder networks around significant, technology-driven innovations. The starting point is shared purpose, joint development — connecting parties with different interests around a common goal, then creating the conditions to actually develop, apply and scale new solutions. Technology is never the endpoint. It’s the combination of technology, market development, policy, people and collaboration that determines whether an innovation creates real-world value.

Tess has applied this approach in a wide range of national and international public-private programmes and events, including TEDxBinnenhof, the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in The Hague and a major Dutch innovation mission to India. She has also developed and led programmes on digital technology, AI and healthcare.

In recent years, she worked as a strategic advisor for the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) and the Ministry of Economic Affairs, including on digital identity and the European Digital Identity Wallet. She currently serves as Strategic Advisor for the EU Business Wallet Ecosystem within the European WE BUILD Consortium, where governments, businesses, knowledge institutions and technology partners collaborate on a trustworthy European ecosystem for digital business identities. Tess sees innovation as an interplay of technology, market and people. Her strength lies in designing the networks and collaborations that move parties from talking about innovation to actually taking the next step together: shared purpose, joint development.

Michiel Vos
Michiel Vos is an entrepreneur, founder of Zupr and co-founder of the Beezy initiative. He believes technology and software can make the world a better place. A quote by Horace Mann captures his personal credo: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

That conviction drives his commitment to the local economy. He wants more of the wealth created locally to flow back into the community, rather than being absorbed by large international tech companies. To make that happen, people need to be able to find online what’s available nearby — things to do, see, buy and experience. With that vision in mind, Michiel has spent nearly twenty years working on a non-profit basis for local retail.

Through Zupr and Beezy, he works on making local product availability and shop inventories digitally accessible. He also gained experience with complex e-commerce and digital platforms as founder of Jaloezieen.nl (sold to private equity) and through his work for companies including Suitsupply and Blim Groep.

As a jury member, Michiel looks at how an idea contributes to everyday life. Does it help residents, visitors and local entrepreneurs? Does it bring people and organisations together? And what does it take to make it work in practice?

Hein Roelfsema
Hein Roelfsema has been Professor of Regional Development and Entrepreneurship at Saxion since 2024. He has also been affiliated with Utrecht University for many years as an Associate Professor of International Economics. In the Netherlands, he is best known as a driving force behind the centers for entrepreneurship within the national valorisation programme, in which he also fulfilled a national role for the Global Entrepreneurship Network and the Dutch Centers for Entrepreneurship. His focus is on international entrepreneurship: he has delivered entrepreneurship courses and train-the-trainer programmes in more than sixty countries. More recently, he has also turned his attention to retail, through two projects in which he collaborates with many partners: Age Inclusive Retailing and a project on the role of technology in the new high street. He also participates in the retail platform supported by RVO.

Practical info

• Feedback coaches round 1: 11.30 – 12.10 hrs, round 2 at  15.30 – 16.10 hrs
• Lunch: 12.00 – 14.00 hrs
• Finish your pitch at 18.00 hrs and mail your presentation PPT to PLieshout@inretail.nl
• Start pitches: 18.30 hrs; 1 or two people per pitch
• Award ceremony: 20.45 hrs
• 21.00 hrs THE END!

Both challenge tracks have their own prizes:
1st price: €1.500 per team
2nd price: €750 per team

The hackaton is organised by University of Twente, Hogeschool Saxion, INretail, Retailagenda