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.

ICF Director of Operations Matthew Owen sits down with ICF Co-Founder Robert Bell to discuss three of 2018's Top7 Intelligent Communities of the Year: Chiayi City, Taiwan; Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; and Taoyuan, Taiwan.

A Weekly Update on ICF’s 2018 Summit & Intelligent Community of the Year Awards

Last week I returned home from Vietnam & from London, where I met with one of our hosts, David Brunnen of Groupe Intellex, to review our pending 2018 Summit. David has been writing extensively about broadband issues and the “smart to Intelligent” concept as it applies to England for several years. As you will recall, he and his colleagues attended the last few ICF Summits and, after deliberation, the group decided to bring the ICF event to London in a time when the nation heads into uncharted waters and the future of its cities will be very different – in perhaps the best possible way.

Early Discounted Registration Available for the 4-6 June 2018 Conference

(19 December 2018 – New York City & London)  –The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) announced today that registration is now open for the ICF Global Summit 2018 taking place 4-6 June in London.
 
In recent years, the ICF Global Summit has been held in New York City, Toronto, and Columbus, Ohio, USA. This is the first ICF Global Summit to be held in Europe.

When: June 4-6, 2018
Where: London

PROGRAMME    |    SUMMIT UPDATES     |     SPEAKERS     |     HOTELS     |     REGISTRATION

What will you take away from the ICF Global Summit?

The annual ICF Summit is unlike any municipal, urban planning or economic development conference you attend.  You will take away value that translates into direct benefit to the citizens, businesses and institutions you serve:

• Economic development leads.  Identify site location and investment opportunities, as well as “soft landing” targets for local business, at our economic development matchmaking session. 
• Ideas you can put to use. Meet officials from cities, counties and metro areas who face similar challenges and have created strategies and programs to deal with them.  Many may have developed solutions that apply to your community. Peer mentoring starts at the Summit and continues long after through the relationships you forge. 
• Inspiration to act.  Too often, efforts to build a better community wind up in an endless loop of meetings, analysis, workshops and more analysis.  The inspiring examples you encounter at the Summit show you how to take the first essential steps on the journey. 
• International reach. McKinsey & Company estimates that 80% of the world’s trade will cross international borders by 2027.  Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Solow has proven that 80% of economic growth comes from technology innovation.  The Summit is your most direct route to international opportunity in the innovation economy. 

The Summit Comes to London

For the first time in its history, the ICF Global Summit will be taking place in London. ICF, together with NextGen, is looking forward to welcoming mayors, civic leaders, CIOs and industry representatives from around the world to an iconic city for this unique event.

Highlights from a previous ICF Summit

Annual Theme: Humanizing Data

Data has become the heartbeat of the new economy and the lifeblood of smart public policy in the 21st Century.

Two words born in the mid-1990s still shape our understanding of data’s central role. Engineers at Silicon Graphics, an early tech innovator, began talking about “Big Data” at about the same time the words “Open Data” first appeared in a report, which advocated for the free exchange of scientific information.

Two decades later, Big Data describes the high-speed collection, processing and availability of huge volumes of information. What once required days, weeks or months of computer time can now be processed and displayed in real time. Greater processing capacity has encouraged us to add sensors to objects, animals and even to ourselves, and to “scrape”the digital streams of the Internet to generate an even greater flood of data. By getting us answers sooner, Big Data delivers greater value. It also reveals patterns we might never have suspected were there, but which alter our decisions, investments and our well-being. The impact on businesses and institutions already mounts into the billions, measured by cost-savings, convenience, operational improvements and new forms of economic activity. Read more >>>

Key Events at the Annual Summit

• Urban and Rural Master Classes teaching development strategies based on information and communications technology
• Economic Development Matchmaking for public and private-sector organizations seeking new opportunities.
• Top7 Intelligent Communities Reception, honoring the finalists for the Intelligent Community Awards
• Top7 Conversations with the mayors and administrative leaders of our finalists
• Intelligent Community Awards Dinner, where one of the Top7 is named Intelligent Community of the Year

Get Involved

The ICF Summit is part networking, part immersion in best practices and part entertainment. We are inviting sponsors, speakers and partners to come forward. Please contact Marit Hendriks - marith@nextgenevents.co.uk - to discuss.

More about ICF Summits

Each year, the leaders of Intelligent Communities gather with their partners in technology, education, business, economic development, healthcare and other sectors at the ICF Summit.

Many participate in meetings of ICF's membership.  Working through our Board and committees, they determines the Forum's policies and steer its research and development programs.  These meetings are open to both Full and Associate members of the Forum, as well as to invited guests.  They engage in economic development matchmaking and a master class on challenges and best-practice solutions.  They hear thought-provoking keynotes and conversations from the innovators who are creating inclusive prosperity and solving social problems on a foundation of information and communications technology.  They network at lively social events and that honor the Top7 Intelligent Communities and witness the selection of the Intelligent Communities of the Year.

Summits take place in New York City, home of the Forum, and in Intelligent Communities around the world.  

Sponsors and Partners

London Montage image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. The montage is a compilation created by Southlondoneye in 2016, and includes the images London Pano by kloniwotski; Trafalgar Square by Elias Gayles; London Eye by Diliff; Tower Bridge by UlyssesThirtyOne; and Elizabeth Tower and Roundel by Supercar Roadtrip.

Lou and ICF awaited the Top7 at the American Museum of Finance on Wall Street.

Did anyone notice that Washington D.C. declared “Infrastructure Week” during the week of June 6? (LOL)

Fortunately, a few hundred miles north of the USA’s skittish capitol, in New York, the actual work of the new global infrastructure was on display. During the ICF’s first Summit in New York since 2014, we really were talking seriously about how broadband, knowledge work and implementing exotic things like the “Triple Helix” in Vietnam were bringing hope, prosperity and real change in the places we call “home.”

There is hope at the local levels. In fact, while national governments have their own “hyper” moment right now, local communities are giving “hyper” a good name.

This year’s Summit was also a Moveable Feast. One thing you need to know about an #ICFSummit: we really do not like to be in one place, especially some stale, over-chilled hotel conference room. When we do our thing we want people to experience the hyper city of New York, not the hype from a hotel conference room podium. A hotel is not a city.

A city is.

(June 8, 2017 – New York City) – The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) today named Melbourne, Victoria, Australia the 2017 Intelligent Community of the Year at a dinner ceremony in the prestigious Landmark on the Park venue in Manhattan. The awards ceremony was the conclusion of the Intelligent Community Forum’s annual Summit.

“Melbourne is famously ‘the world’s most livable city,’ but the question was ‘Are they an Intelligent Community?’” said ICF co-founder Lou Zacharilla. “They answered that question this year. They are redefining the concept of technology, work, and the workspace. They have created a city that functions like an artist’s canvas. They have built an entire system where creativity flourishes, education is harnessed to the workforce, and quality of life has become the city’s greatest competitive advantage. It is a dynamic combination and one the Intelligent Community Forum honors.”

Melbourne was selected as the 2017 Intelligent Community of the Year after a year-long evaluation that included a quantitative analysis of extensive data, site inspections by the Intelligent Community Forum, and votes from an international jury made up of experts from around the world. Communities in the Awards program are evaluated based on six Intelligent Community Indicators, along with a seventh criteria, ICF’s annual theme, The Internet of Cities.

In a classic essay, the anthropologist Anthony C.W. Wallace described the phenomenon of cultural awakenings. Such movements are triggered, he said, by stress. “The mazeways of the culture, the customary patterns of behavior, are blocked. People cannot move into the roles they anticipated; their lives do not unfold in the ways they had been led to expect.”

Under the duress of disintegration, both social and economic, a few creative individuals—Wallace called them “New Lights”—propose a way out. They create new pathways through the maze. At first there is nativist backlash, in which traditionalists urge a return to old ways. But eventually the New Lights prevail. Their ideas are adopted, and the society moves into a new era.

Let’s just call the 2017 Top7, now all arrived in New York, the “New Lights.”

This week is the annual summit of the Intelligent Community Forum, where I’m Senior Fellow. Although there are workshops and meetings of the more than 140 intelligent communities from every continent, the events that draws the most attention are the discussions with the Top7 of the year and the ultimate winner.

I can still see the roadway at 6:00 AM, lined with people on bicycles and motorbikes, each carrying enormous bags on their shoulders, tethered to a long stick. The bags are filled with fresh fruits and vegetables, all healthy and large. An agricultural land for centuries was waking to another day, and along the roads, people were starting to spread out their goods. Surprisingly, wood-fired, small grills were already cooking sizzling meats and foods. (At 6:00 AM, I thought? Hmmmm. I could still taste the delicious cooked meat and beer from my late-night meal only a few hours before!) Life was springing up, and everywhere there was movement and calm amidst the chaotic bustling. Around this morning glory of human awakening in Asia’s youngest country, something else was being planned for them, although I am sure few were fully aware of what it was or what it was designed to deliver.