We're already knee-deep in coverage of San Francisco's high-profile, high-stakes mayoral race here at The Bay Citizen, and we're thrilled to announce one new way we're covering this momentous election.

We are teaming up with Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, the Bay Area nonprofit dedicated to creating social change through digital culture, to present the Summer of Smart. It's a four-month experiment in urban innovation and open government revolving around the SF mayoral race, complete with hackathon weekends, an unconference, and tech-focused mayoral debates.

The goal: get a lot of people talking about how technology can help city government work better and improve daily life for urban citizens.

SoS kicks off on June 16th with SFOpen11, a debate on technology and open government between nine mayoral candidates presented with GovFresh and Change.org.

That's followed by three weekends of multidisciplinary 48-hour “hackathons," where developers, designers, community leaders, urban planners, journalists, artists, and other creative minds are  invited to rapidly prototype digital solutions to some of the city’s most recognized needs. The best of the apps and ideas will be presented to the mayoral candidates in September, where the candidates get to weigh in on the projects and present their own technology plans for the city.

We'll be on hand liveblogging, tweeting and photo-documenting the whole shebang--follow along on Twitter at #sfSoS and at our website on our tech blog, The Sandbox. We'll also be publishing a few highlights built during this unique event. Stay tuned!