As COO for economic development and marketing, Ben Pole drives the strategic and operational direction of Economic Development, Smart Digital City, Marketing and Communications, Tourism and Events, and Media staff and resources for Queensland’s fastest growing city. He leads integrated programs and performance for one of Australia’s most successful destination marketing organisations to achieve key market advantage and new market success, with a particular focus on developing industry leading digital networks, multi-channel content marketing, and systematic change management. Previously, he served as Director of Strategy, Marketing and Communications at Gold Coast Tourism Corporation.

On June 6, Espoo was named as the 2018 Intelligent Community of the Year. Prior to the Summit, and before knowing his community would be named Intelligent Community of the Year, Mayor Jukka Mäkelä spoke with Lou Zacharilla about Espoo.

Roberto Gallardo is Assistant Director of the Purdue Center for Regional Development and a Purdue Extension Community & Regional Economics Specialist. He holds an electronics engineering undergraduate degree, a master's in economic development, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration. Gallardo has worked with rural communities over the past decade conducting local & regional community economic development, including use of technology for development. He was Founder of the ICF Institute for Rural Studies at Mississippi State University.

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.

Part 2 of 2

Mayor Fred Eisenberger was born in Amsterdam and came to Canada with his family when he was eight years old, settling in Hamilton.

Fred is currently serving his second four-year term as mayor. Previously he served as a member of Hamilton council, as chair of the Hamilton Port Authority, and as president and chief executive of the Canadian Urban Institute, where he was involved in the development of leading-edge, progressive urban policy.

Part 1 of 2

Dr. Norman Jacknis is currently Senior Fellow at the Intelligent Community Forum. His responsibilities include leading ICF’s Rural Imperative, building on the ideas he developed for the US Conference of Mayors on a future-oriented economic growth strategy for cities.

(New York– 8 February 2018) – The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) named the world’s Top7 Intelligent Communities of 2018 today.  This is the think tank’s 16^th annual Top7 list of regions, cities or towns that have gone, in ICF’s words, “from Smart City to Intelligent Community.”  This year’s list includes communities from four nations, with Taiwan contributing three, Canada two communities and Australia and Finland one each. The seven will travel to London in June where one will go on to be named the Intelligent Community of the Year, succeeding Melbourne, Australia, the reigning community.  The announcement will take place as the culminating event at the ICF Global Summit from 4-6 June at Siemens’ Crystal Facility and other sites around London. (www.icfsummit.com)

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