“Neither Snow nor Rain Nor Heat Nor Gloom of Night ……stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

As I get ready to leave for my Top7 Site Visits I remember back to February 11 when the seven were chosen.

Pierre-Luc Lachance, a City Councilor for the Saint-Roch and Saint-Sauveur district of Quebec City was there and on my panel. He is the Deputy Mayor for Entrepreneurship in that fine Canadian city. Quebec played host to this year’s 2019 Top7 Announcement. Mr. Lachance was elected in 2017 after a rigorous campaign. Evidently most EVERY campaign in Quebec City, where the politics can be as hard as the ice on the St. Lawrence River in Winter, is rigorous. Pierre-Luc won his campaign by going “retail.” He went to the heart of his community and did something that seems low-tech but has resonance in local elections. He won the hearts and minds of his fellow citizens by physically knocking on 7,500 doors in the neighborhoods of his district! That alone should have guaranteed him the post.

(April 9, 2018 – New York City, NY, USA) – The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) has released a comprehensive ranking of Intelligent Communities grouped by Innovation, one of the Factors defining Intelligent Communities in the ICF Method. The list is the latest publication in ICF’s By The Numbers series. It provides a useful guide to the relative strengths of communities in ICF’s network, and an inspiration for greater progress in coming years. Future By the Numbers rankings of Intelligent Communities will be released by ICF in the coming months.

The list ranks Intelligent Communities in our global data set using data on communities submitted from 2014 through 2018. This data is carefully weighted to balance the self-reported and third-party data of the Smart21 evaluation and the data from later stages of evaluation that is subject to onsite validation.

You go to a conference and a speaker talks about the vital importance of innovation.  Your city, county or town needs to be more innovative.  It needs to become smarter.  It needs to be agile.  It needs to juggle flaming torches while keeping a hula hoop in motion. 

Actually, none of that is why innovation is important.  The guy who first uncovered the truth was Stanford University professor Moses Abramovitz. 

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.

Jean-Francois Barsoum, Canadian Leader of Smarter Cities, Water and Transportation at IBM, joined Lou Zacharilla for this discussion. Since joining IBM, he has provided strategy advice to a diverse set of clients: financial institutions, higher education, professional associations, pharmaceutical companies and telecoms. Jean-Francois has also been invited to speak at conferences on the subjects of innovation, smarter transportation and climate change on four continents.

The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center continues to expand its ambulatory care network with a new, large outpatient care center planned for Dublin.

Pending approval by university trustees this week, Ohio State will continue the process to acquire 34 acres of land owned by the city of Dublin near State Route 161, State Route 33 and Shier Rings Road. Dublin City Council will hear the first reading on this proposed land purchase during its March 11 meeting.

In the middle of the night on an abandoned bus lane somewhere in Eindhoven three cars pass by, in the front BMW i3 someone is behind the wheel, the other two vehicles are unmanned. At an appropriate distance and fully automatically they follow the front driver.

Amber, a car-sharing platform, tested for the first time on the public road with their shared cars, at night on a blocked bus lane. To this end, the company worked together with the municipality of Eindhoven and SmartwayZ. Amber called this a successful test and the aim is to introduce platooning as of next year in order to be able to transport cars from hub to hub at night.

When you think of major markets for Canadian tech innovation, Atlantic Canada does not often top the list. But Fredericton saw an increase of venture capital deals and dollars last year, culminating in the city nailing a spot as one of Canada’s top five tech markets in PwC’s MoneyTree report for Q3 2018. It was the first time New Brunswick’s capital city had made it onto the list since CB Insights began collecting MoneyTree data in 2012.

OurCalling (www.OurCalling.org) is a Dallas-based organization that has created an interactive smartphone app that provides information and emergency alerts to some of the most vulnerable members of a community: the homeless.

OurCalling's app has a database of service providers for the poor, a list of resources such a clinics, food banks and rehab facilities, a calendar for volunteer opportunities, a way for individuals to report a situation where volunteers can go assist someone in need, and more. While it started in Dallas, they are currently working to expand nationally to provide information on services to homeless people all over the US.

Listen to this fascinating episode of The Intelligent Community to learn more about how OurCalling developed the app, the lessons they learned on building relationships, and their plans for what's to come with their mission. 

The Norwegian city of Tromsø annually hosts the Arctic Frontiers conference, with the 2019 edition having focused on a Smart Arctic. This focus is timely, given present interest in Smart Innovation. But what does ‘smart’ mean in Arctic contexts? And how can Northern peoples and organizations benefit from it?