For a small country, Estonia has made a big impression on the global stage.

The Baltic nation of just 1.3 million people has attracted the attention of world leaders, academics and venture capitalists thanks to its high-tech digital society.

The numbers speak for themselves: Taxes are completed online in under 5 minutes, 99 percent of the Estonia's public services are available on the web 24 hours a day and nearly one-third of citizens vote via the internet.

Melbourne, Australia, has been named the happiest city in the world this year.

In June 2018, Time Out paired up with Tapestry Research to survey 15,000 people in 32 cities worldwide. They asked residents about food, drink, culture, lifestyle, dating, sex, community, travel, neighborhoods, affordability, nightlife, happiness, public transportation, and civic pride. The findings collectively helped both companies come up with an ultimate ranking for each city in every category.

Cameron Ritchie’s business started with the goal of getting more youth into the job market.

He launched Homewurk in Grade 11, an online service that connects students with odd jobs in Fredericton. Now a first year engineering student at the University of New Brunswick, Ritchie’s business is booming, leasing office space, hiring administrative staff, and securing top clients.

In October, he was named Startup Canada’s young entrepreneur of the year.

The Sunshine Coast has been recognised as one of the Top7 Intelligent Communities of 2019, sharing the global spotlight with communities from Canada, Taiwan and the United States including Chicago.

The announcement made overnight by the Intelligent Community Forum in Quebec, Canada, acknowledges those communities which exemplify best practices in broadband deployment and use, workforce development, innovation, digital inclusion, sustainability and advocacy.

In and of itself, the evolv1 office building is an impressive feat of engineering. Aptly situated in the “Idea Quarter” of the City of Waterloo, the evolv1 became Canada’s first project to receive a carbon-zero building certificate. So what better place to grow and develop the region’s burgeoning green industry?

That’s the intent with the official launch this week of evolvGREEN. A collaborative project to put the Region of Waterloo at the forefront of sustainable business and technology, evolvGREEN will operate from the green open office spaces of the evolv1 building, sending an important message in the process.

Sarnia and Lambton County residents are needed to help build a plan for the future of the community, one focused on three core tenets: economy, culture, and society.

It might sound vague, but brainstorming work by the Intelligent Sarnia-Lambton Taskforce has helped Sarnia-Lambton become a mainstay on Intelligent Community Forum’s “Top 21 Intelligent Communities” list. Conversely, the last four years have been bittersweet as Sarnia-Lambton has been shut out of the whittled-down Top7 Intelligent Communities list.

Small, Medium & Large Communities from Four Nations Show Transformative Change

(New York, USA and Quebec City, Canada – 11 February, 2019) –  In an announcement this evening at an event at Laval University in Quebec City, the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) named the Top7 Intelligent Communities of 2019. The 17th annual Top7 list includes cities and counties from the United States, Canada, Australia and Taiwan. One of these seven finalists in the think tank’s annual awards program will be named the Intelligent Community of the Year at the ICF Summit in June in New York City on June 13th. (www.icfsummit.com)

In alphabetical order, the Top7 Intelligent Communities of 2019 are:

• Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada
• Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Hudson, Ohio, USA
• Sarnia-Lambton County, Ontario, Canada
• Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia
• Taoyuan, Taiwan
• Westerville, Ohio, USA

	Rob van Gijzel

The best description I have ever heard about ICF as an ideas-driving think tank for enabling Digital Age policy for cities and towns was from Rob van Gijzel, the former mayor of Eindhoven, The Netherlands and the ICF Foundation’s first chairman. He called us, “The method of transformational decision making for cities.”

And we are. Or at least “a method” for this. We are also a group that inspired communities to believe that, yes, they can.

The world has cooperated with the ICF vision. Thanks to broadband and satellite telecommunications the world became flat. Like the sound of a rail train’s whistle, people heard something familiar and it allowed them to rethink the proposition of the small and the midsized city especially. It dawned on them that “the middle of nowhere” was no longer their domain. They had places with a history and assets that could be transformed.

These cities and towns have begun to determine the course of the global economy because of how they have moved from using smart technology to become Intelligent places. This year’s Smart21 is laden with them, from Vietnam to Ohio to India.

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The 2019 Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival will take place on Feb. 16 and Feb. 19, New Taipei City’s Tourism and Travel Department (TTD) said on Tuesday.

New Taipei City mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said that the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival has evolved into a powerful tourist magnet over the years, and last year alone 6.98 million tourists visited Pingxi.

This year’s sky lantern festival will take place at Pingxi Junior High School from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 16, and at the Shifen Sky Lantern Square from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 19, when Taiwan celebrates the Lantern Festival.