“I teach two things, suffering and the end of suffering.” Buddha

Over the years I have attempted to understand the “inner mysteries” of place. It has always been a core belief of mine that communities succeed or fail, as do sports teams, on what are called the “intangibles.” The unidentifiable or ineffable – call it “chemistry,” as they do in athletics – components. Hard to measure, impossible to see but felt like a breeze when things go along smoothly and like a sledgehammer on the chest cavity when they do not. To borrow a phrase from the American president’s inauguration speech in 2017, a sense of “carnage” seems palpable.

I prefer the word of the ancient wisdom traditions to describe these intangibles: the “soul” of a place.

Rarely have I seen a mayor cry when receiving an award. But there I was, in London, on the angular stage of American Square, standing next to Mayor Jukka Mäkelä of Espoo, moments after announcing our 2018 Intelligent Community of the Year. It is always a thrilling event, much like a World Cup, with unexpected moments almost guaranteed and plenty of nationalism garnishing our celebration of our eclectic salad of communities.

Apparently as surprised as most everyone in the room, the mayor took the stage and greeted everyone on it. He took his trophy and looked at it for an almost uncomfortably long time before speaking. I realized that this was partly because he was in a minor state of shock and delight. He acknowledged his Top7 peers, whose long faces were not as long as I imagined they would be. Each had a classy smile on as they applauded. This said everything you need know about our Top7 this year.

A panel discussion exploring how the "datafication" of business and institutions is creating wholesale change in business economics, practices and employment, and how communities should prepare to respond. Moderated by Roberto Gallardo.

Binh Duong, Vietnam Journal – Part One

“History is always more exciting, inspiring and approximate of the truth when you focus on telling the story of the heroic ones of the tribe,” Michael Medved, Historian.

In my travel journal from December 2016, I wrote this about my first trip there to the aspiring Intelligent Community of Binh Duong:

Vietnam. The word stirs many images, feelings and opinions, especially as an American. Even now. Here for the first time, and it is gratifying to see the work and ideas of ICF being embraced and put into action. Hopefully the ICF Method will be remembered here as a unifying idea for the Intelligent Community of Binh Duong and for human communities elsewhere in the country. The ICF Method is being put to work in this place of great potential by some amazing people in the Smart City Office, the government and in academia. Many are becoming my friends. I am glad they are working with the Dutch (Eindhoven International Project Office) on this program, since Eindhoven is a former Intelligent Community of the Year and, more than most, totally grasps the “triple helix” method. (Hell, they practically invented it!) I believe these ideas and the “helix” approach can apply everywhere, although at various pace depending on a lot of things. Vietnam will be proof of it someday. The intent and seriousness are here. But as always, as is the case just about everywhere, there is a ways to go. I will say in my talk tomorrow that this place is someday going to be “the pride of Vietnam,” because I can feel that. And I am hopeful for that to happen someday sooner rather than later.

A panel of government, university and technology experts debate the impact, potential and perils of Big Data and Open Data to introduce the theme of the 2018 ICF Summit.

“The purpose of life is not to increase its velocity.” – Gandhi

My ancestors came to America from the southern regions of Italy and populated New York City, as well as many small towns in Upstate New York and Pennsylvania. It surprised people unfamiliar with the unique and specifically local and regional nature of Italy that, even though I am of Italian ancestry, I did not visit Venice in northern Italy until I was nearly 40 years old.

I was there for my honeymoon. It was a glorious, sunny day. The Grand Canal and especially the Rialto Bridge at dusk captured me like love itself, and though northern and southern Italy are as different as the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, I knew I had, in some deep sense, returned “home.”

My new wife and I were headed to the site of La Fenice, the iconic opera house which had mysteriously burned to the ground in the late 1990s. She loves opera and I love walking in cities and meeting people.

Greg excels at relationship building, facilitating strategic partnerships, coordinating industry and sector initiatives, and forging substantive collaborations between the public and private sectors. Greg has been tasked with the development of strategic partnerships and alliances between communities and business sectors and is responsible for guiding the development of economic development strategies reflective of Winnipeg’s broad and diversified economy and manages north/south trade activities related to the Mid-Continent Trade Corridor. Greg holds director positions on a variety of bi-national and tri-national business development boards including the Canadian/American Border Trade Alliance (CAN/AM BTA) and NASCO (North American Strategy for Competitiveness). Greg has a Master’s Degree in City Planning from the University of Manitoba and has his Economic Development certification through the University of Waterloo.

ICF Director of Operations Matthew Owen sits down with ICF Co-Founder Lou Zacharilla for part 2 in this special series discussing 2018’s Top7 Intelligent Communities of the Year. This week, Matt and Lou focus on Ipswich, Queensland, Australia and Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

An update on the ICF Summit – June 4-6 in London

Since the start of the new year, partnerships have continued to fall into place for the ICF Summit in London.  The Summit’s organizing group, NextGen Events, reported that Total Telecom is an official media partner of the event. Total Telecom is a media organization which reports on telecom trends and news from and in the UK.  Recent reports include one on broadband gaps in the UK and elsewhere.  https://tinyurl.com/y8hq2rtq

First the ICF London Summit News: our program is online. Remember that until you finish reading.

Depending on how you look at today (4 January 2018) there is good news, disturbing news or information that you can use to make up your mind what kind of news it is.

It is certainly good news if you are a CEO of a FTSE 100 company. Today is being called “Fat Cat Thursday” in and around London. According to the High Pay Centre, a British think tank, while pay for CEOs in Britain actually fell in 2017, each has already earned the gross annual salary of the average full-time employee in Britain. They will have earned £28,758 by late afternoon today. https://tinyurl.com/yc76wds5