Recently, Elon Musk ordered his staff to return to a 40-hour work week or face termination. Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citigroup and BNY Mellon, are just some of the financial institutions that have also declared their staff to return to work. Tim Smart, a reporter at the U.S. News wrote on March 22, 2022, “After grappling with the Great Resignation and the Great Retirement, the workplace is now facing the Great Return.” But what will it be like?

Ignite, along with the City of Fredericton are pleased to announce that Fredericton has been named one of the world’s Top7 Intelligent Communities by the Intelligent Communities Forum (ICF). New Brunswick’s Capital City joins the Regional Municipality of Durham in Ontario as the only other municipality in Canada to make the list, which includes cities and counties from Australia, Brazil, Taiwan and Vietnam, as announced on June 21, 2002. In alphabetical order, the Top7 Intelligent Communities of 2021 are:

Communities from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Taiwan and Vietnam become finalists for Intelligent Community of the Year to be named at the ICF Summit in October

(New York, USA & Binh Duong, Vietnam – June 21, 2022) – In an announcement today at the conclusion of a hybrid live and online conference, the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) named the Top7 Intelligent Communities of 2022. The 20th annual Top7 list includes cities and counties from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Taiwan and Vietnam. 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 October. (www.icfsummit.com)

I’m excited and honored to be in Vietnam this week for the Top7 Conference - Post-Pandemic Recovery: How Digital Innovation Drives Growth in Our Community, an event that is helping to create a positive, peaceful future for our cities and our world. I would like to thank Binh Duong and Becamex for inviting us here to Vietnam’s first Intelligent Community for the conference. It has been a pleasure to watch Binh Duong continuously making progress and to be here to congratulate the city on its 25th anniversary. It will be good to see my colleagues from the Netherlands and Eindhoven, too. Eindhoven remains, 11 years after its achievement as Intelligent Community of the Year, one of the best examples of what can be done with innovation, cooperation and the power of the Trip Helix.

Our theme today is “How Digital Innovation Drives Growth.” We will ask our guests: what does that mean? And what kind of growth? Economic, social and cultural, political maturity and excellence? Yes, all of these! We should be proud that in Smart Cities and Intelligent Communities, governments also innovate and learn to provide better, timelier and more reliable services to their eager cities and towns.

On the Sunshine Coast, we are nestled in nature and green at heart.

We care about our environment, from the sparkling coastline to the ancient peaks of the Glass House Mountains and verdant green rainforests.

And more importantly, we care about preserving it for years to come.

We continue our Leadership series by looking at an issue facing many communities, particularly in the US - Policing. First, we speak with an LA Times crime reporter about some of the issues that face the large city, and then we speak with representatives from two intelligent communities to learn their solutions.

(June 14, 2022 – New York City, NY, USA & Binh Duong, Vietnam) – On June 21, 2022, the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) and Binh Duong province will jointly present the 2022 Top7 Intelligent Communities Conference & Announcement: After the Pandemic: How Digital Innovation Drives Growth in Our Communities. The day-long conference features live and online events in Binh Duong, culminating in the announcement of the Top7 Communities of 2022. ICF co-founder Louis Zacharilla will be at the live event to deliver the keynote address on the current state and evolution of the Intelligent Community.

The Top7 Communities are chosen from among the Smart21 Communities of 2022 to be finalists in the yearly Intelligent Community Awards. In October 2022, one of these seven communities will be named the Intelligent Community of the Year at ICF’s Global Summit. The city of Binh Duong was one of the Top7 Communities of 2021 and is a Smart21 Community again this year.

Homelessness is a complex but solvable problem. In Hamilton’s Systems Planning Framework: Coming Together to End Homelessness, our community has laid out a roadmap for ending chronic homelessness by 2025. This means building a system that ensures homelessness is prevented whenever possible, or if it cannot be prevented that it is rare, brief, and non-recurring.

FREDERICTON–HOTSPOT, A FREDERICTON-BASED PARKING APP, HAS BEEN ACQUIRED BY IBI GROUP, A TORONTO-FOUNDED TECHNOLOGY FIRM.

HotSpot was founded in Fredericton in 2013 and is now present in over 80 municipalities, cities, and universities across Canada. The app also has more than 460,000 users and some presence in every province.

IBI, which stands for Infrastructure, Buildings, and Intelligence, has about 60 offices worldwide.

Continuing in our Leadership in Unconventional Times series, ICF Co-Founder Lou Zacharilla is joined by Dr. Peter Williams.