Community Innovation
True to our mission, MAGIC strives to build a tech ecosystem that supports our community and helps it thrive. Building our tech workforce through EDUCATION, and supporting business and startups through INCUBATION, puts our community in a good position to INNOVATE!
Innovation Begins With Community
Building change within your community take time, effort, and commitment.
MAGIC’s vision and mission for the City of Westminster is to cultivate a startup ecosystem using technology driven economic and workforce development initiatives; building upon the success of the Westminster Fiber Network (which offers true, symmetric gigabit internet service to our residents and businesses).
This translates to providing technological solutions to the citizens of Westminster for a better way of life.
We call this synergy #SiliconMainStreet.
Innovative Projects At Work
Using the technology resources in our own back yard, we can imagine innovative solutions to issues and concerns found thought-out Main Street communities across the country.
Through our various projects, we can prove out designed solutions that would work in communities everywhere. Innovation starts here.
Autonomous Corridor
The Mid-Atlantic Gigabit Innovation Collaboratory (MAGIC)worked to create a public-private partnership between various stakeholders to develop a virtual twin of the City of Westminster as the next evolution of the city’s fiber infrastructure to enable Autonomous and Smart City technologies.
The goal of MAGIC’s Autonomous Corridor Project is to increase connectivity in the Westminster community by attracting new businesses and innovators, as well as creating careers and research opportunities. The project aims to also connect parts of the community which are otherwise cut-off from Downtown Westminster and shopping centers along Route 140, due to the lack of public transportation options and other socio-economic factors. Developing Autonomous and Smart City technologies will bring more businesses and residents to the area while increasing the quality of life of its current residents.
Through these partnerships we have validated that this concept can work and build a cohesive community.
Healthy Smart Home
The MAGIC Healthy Smart Home project is a “living lab” research and development platform project with the primary mission of improving health outcomes and quality of adults with disabilities.
The project explored questions and developed solutions in four primary domains:
1) Engineering of sensors, data aggregation, storage, and analysis in a residential setting.
2) Using environmental, nutritional, behavioral, and physiologic data to improve health and quality of life for residents.
3) Developing policies, practices, and technologies to ensure the privacy, security, integrity, reliability, portability, and effective use of resident data.
4) Creating a person-centric health data ecosystem that shifts control of personal data to the individual.
This project proved that individual with disabilities and those with heath concerns can age in place with and still maintain a good quality of life.
Community Connections
ARIC’s newest innovation-focused, project-based learning program. Students work directly with real community clients to design and build solutions that address meaningful local needs across Carroll County (and perhaps beyond!).
Blending engineering, creativity, collaboration, and entrepreneurial thinking, this cohort of future technologist empowers them to move beyond theoretical learning and create work that has real-world impact. Participants develop the mindset and skills of young community innovators while seeing their ideas come to life.
Each multi-week session centers on a challenge presented by a nonprofit, business, or community organization. Students function as a design and innovation team as they learn to understand goal and constraints, generate and evaluate ideas, build and test prototypes and deliver a final product for real use.