The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) is the original smart cities organization formed in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s – initially as the Canadian Smart Cities Institute (CSCI), which worked with the World Teleport Association to organize SMART95, the first smart city conference, held in Toronto in September 1995. The CSCI evolved into the Intelligent Community Forum as a global, but New York City-based non-profit think tank, when it moved from Canada to NYC in the late 1990’s. So, yes, we have been around for a considerable time.

Dr. Roberto Gallardo has published a new book titled Responsive Countryside: The Digital Age and Rural Communities. Dr. Gallardo is the founder and leader of the Mississippi State University Extension Service Intelligent Community Institute (MSUES-ICI), part of a worldwide network that assists rural communities to better plan for and prosper in the digital age. A brief description of the book follows.

Your personal or professional reputation is important. Today, that reputation exists mostly online – shaped by your pictures, posts and tweets as well as by what others post and tweet about you.

I recently spent two intensive days visiting the 2016 Intelligent Community of the Year, Montreal, in Quebec, Canada. While there, I learned that the world may be a lot more hopeful place than you might think. (For a taste of the experience, see the video compiled by my hosts below.)

The Jury has again warned me.

Before I leave for our annual Top7 site visits I get the same thoughtful warning from members of ICF’s international awards jury. It goes something like this, “Beware of the ‘Potemkin Village’ stunt that these cities may use on you once inside their borders. They will try to show you their best parts, not their broken ones.” The Jury has recommended in the past that we include a second person on our site visits. The second would serve as the provocateur for ICF. This makes sense because I am often there to perform necessary cheerleading with the media, and to remind other stakeholders in the cities why their city was chosen. So far, however, we have determined that the cost to the host community does not justify this.

The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) will present its annual Summit from June 13-17 in Columbus, Ohio, USA. The Summit is an international gathering of mayors, chief administrative officers, chief information officers and economic development officers from cities, state and regions around the world. It is a place to find economic development opportunities, strategic partners and technology solutions that help community leaders build prosperous, inclusive and sustainable communities.

New York, NY, May 5, 2015 – The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) today announced that it will present the 2016 Visionary of the Year Award to Rio de Janeiro’s Knowledge Squares (Nave de Conhecimento) program. ICF is recognizing the program for its novel approach, which makes digital inclusion the centerpiece of neighborhood regeneration for some of the city’s most impoverished and excluded citizens.

Surrey is one of just seven global communities to make the final shortlist for the title, Intelligent Community of the Year for 2016. Surrey has been ranked by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) of New York City for 2016 and 2015 and has made it to the finals both years. Louis Zacharilla, co-founder of the Intelligent Community Forum tours Surrey May 4-5 and city officials will be showing him some of the programs and projects that have made the city such a consistent contender for the sought after recognition.

ICF's Lou Zacharilla interviews Harout Chitilian about Top7 Intelligent Community Montreal.

PART 2: With smart infrastructure, smart people and smart money, an innovation ecosystem is never too far behind.

As we see the emergence of the Internet of Things in the short years ahead we will become even more used to changes in how we will expect things to work and how differently we will want to do things. Resistance to change has been the usual excuse for communities and people, in general, in the past to accept new ways of doing things, but as our urban areas increase their populations and it becomes more difficult to be mobile; to be able to do the things that we may have done previously and we will now have to share it with more people waiting to have access to it, there will be less resistance to change. Perhaps even pent-up demand will be experienced for things that people see in other communities and expect will or should be available to them in short order.