Sébastien Gagnon, Vice President of Sales & Public Affairs at bciti is a recognized leader in the municipal world in municipal management and intergovernmental relations. He has more than 20 years of experience in intergovernmental relations, and has worked both in the public and private sectors. He has a Master’s Degree in Marketing, a Postgraduate Degree in Commerce and a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science with a concentration in International Relations.

A panel of government, university and technology experts debate the impact, potential and perils of Big Data and Open Data to introduce the theme of the 2018 ICF Summit.

Victor Frankenstein is a fictional character who created life from a collection of spare parts in an 1818 novel by Mary Shelley.

Mark Zuckerberg is a Harvard dropout who founded a company that went from zero users and zero revenue in 2004 to more than 2 billion monthly users and nearly $28 billion in revenue today.  That makes him a living (if alarmingly young) legend.   

Kevin Roose tied the two neatly together in a New York Times editorial, "Facebook's Frankenstein Moment."  It's well worth reading, because it presents the best imaginable example of a challenge that will face the place you live in the next 20 years.  

Big Data is big business. But what difference does it really make in the cities, suburbs and towns where we make our homes? Does the Big Data future belong entirely to the big tech companies like Google and Facebook? Or are there benefits that matter to the rest of us in the place called home? Robert Bell is a co-founder of the Intelligent Community Forum and co-author of Brain Gain: How Innovative Cities Create Job Growth in an Age of Disruption and he joins Carol Maresca and Corey Johnson to talk about it.