Over the past 100 days the people have spoken. In several important cities they decided to lift their voice and open the exits for several incumbents. New mayors and elected officials were sworn in among several Intelligent Community Forum Foundation cities, including three Intelligent Communities of the Year, Toronto (2014), Taichung (2013) and Taipei (2006). These champions replaced familiar, popular and controversial leaders. The most notable for me was in Taichung, Taiwan.

“The Day Salman Khan Quit His Job…

Education, as practiced for the past millennium, is not particularly productive. Teaching has always been one of those professions, like medicine or music, in which customers vastly prefer quality to productivity. A teacher can effectively teach only so many students … The problem appeared insoluble until 2004, when Salman Khan began tutoring his cousin, Nadia, in math over the Internet….Nadia prospered and soon other relatives and friends sought Khan’s help. So he decided to pre-record tutorials and distribute them on YouTube...The videos turned into a viral hit and attracted enough financial support from donors to let Khan leave the hedge fund. One of his supporters, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, said “It was a good day his wife let him quit his job.” … Today, the Khan Academy has an online library of more than 4,300 videos on elementary and secondary math as well as computer science, biology and other topics...”

Any community using technology to improve its economy can participate in the rigorous yearlong awards program

New York City – July 9, 2013 – The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) announces the opening of nominations for the 2014 Intelligent Community of the Year award. The 2014 awards marks the 16th year the New York-based think tank will name the Intelligent Community of the Year, a community that is a global leader in creating wealth and jobs by seizing the opportunities of information and communications technology (ICT).

$6.6 million project monitored 11 communities over two years and tracked increases as high as 60% in the use of broadband to boost their economies

(New York City, New York, 12 June 2013) — Connecting rural Minnesotans with the Internet boosts their abilities to do things like find new job opportunities, engage in continuing education and strengthen business performance. The evidence of these significant gains is contained in the Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities (MIRC) project. The $6.6 million project spanned from 2010 to 2012. Robert Bell, co-founder of the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) compiled data on the five key indicators that the ICF knows are crucial to any community’s success in the digital age. Bell’s analysis shows the 11 MIRC test communities made substantial progress.

ICF also presents awards to Waterloo’s Blackberry founder Mike Lazaridis as the 2013 Visionary of the Year and a Lifetime Achievement Award to Dana McDaniel of Dublin, Ohio

(New York City, New York, 7 June 2013) — The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) today named Taichung City, Taiwan as the Intelligent Community of the Year during its annual awards ceremony at Steiner Film Studios in Brooklyn, New York, USA. Taichung City, which has appeared among the Top7 Intelligent Communities for two years in a row, was represented by a delegation led by Deputy Secretary-General Ching-Chih Liao. The co-founders of ICF – Louis A. Zacharilla, John G. Jung and Robert A. Bell – presented the award to Taichung City, which succeeds Riverside, California, USA, the 2012 recipient.

(New York City, June 4, 2013) — The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) will hold its annual Summit this week in New York City. The invitation-only three-day event is an international gathering of mayors, chief administrative officers, chief information officers and economic development officers from cities, states and regions around the world that are designated Intelligent Communities by the ICF. The theme this year is “Innovation and Jobs”.

New York City – 21 May 2013 – The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), a New York-based think tank dedicated to studying the use of information and communications technology to create the community of the 21st Century, today announced that it will award Dublin, Ohio (USA) Deputy City Manager Dana L. McDaniel its third-ever Lifetime Achievement Award at ICF’s annual Summit in New York on Friday June 7 at 12PM EST.

If over 70% of the world’s nine billion people are jammed into mega-cities by 2050, would everyone really want to live in one? ICF seeks to define new role for prosperous rural communities.

Over 50% of the people on earth now live in cities, often at the expense of rural areas, and the UN projects that by 2050 that percentage will increase to over 70% as the global population exceeds nine billion people.* Today, the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) announces The Rural Imperative, to call attention to the challenges facing rural communities in the 21st Century, and provide a framework for them to seize their destinies and identify ways to create sustainable, long-term prosperity.