September 14, 2018
On Tuesday, September 18, the Colorado Smart Cities Symposium, hosted by the Colorado Technology Association, will take place at the McNichols Civic Center Building in downtown Denver. This one-day, multifaceted program is in partnership with the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance and presented by Arrow Electronics, and brings together thought leaders in smart city technology, innovation and public-private partnerships to discuss how to solve the complex urban challenges our cities face.
The Symposium—which is being attended by more than 400 participants from the enterprise, government, academia, research, impact investment, startup and nonprofit sectors—explores the policies, processes, products and projects required to realize truly connected communities. Similar to the Alliance’s mission to improve quality of life by providing a collaborative third space to design solutions for previously unsolvable city challenges, the Symposium provide attendees with tools to create a better citizen experience through multi-sector and cross-jurisdictional innovation and partnerships.
For the Alliance, the Symposium is a critical actualization of its collective goals to bring together diverse stakeholders to create connected Smart Cities that can generate positive outcomes for the public interest and our urban environments. Currently, the Alliance—while still nimble and in development—is gearing up to serve as an incubator for Smart City pilot projects through its use as a living civic lab. Throughout its growth over the past year, the Alliance has provided space for private and public-sector members to share resources, best-practices, and lessons learned in the Smart City arena, especially in regards to challenges faced by municipalities that cannot necessarily be addressed through traditional avenues of government procurement.
The Alliance is unique within the United States as being one of the first concerted efforts to develop and grow a connected Smart City region among diverse stakeholders and jurisdictions, which is critical in Colorado due to its vast range of urban and rural landscapes—from large metropolitan areas such as Denver, Boulder and Colorado Springs, to mountain town members like Aspen, to suburban cities like Lone Tree, Greenwood Village and Littleton. The Symposium’s programming reflects this mentality of recognizing the need for a multifaceted approach to making Smart Cities their most successful, including through its themes of Visioning, Innovation, Leadership, and Insights. Topics within each of these key areas—which includes presentations, panels, and keynote speeches—include Exploring the New Economic Model, Empowering the Innovators of Tomorrow, Moving Ideas into Action, Turning Big Data into Citizen Benefits, and The Power of Collaboration, among others.
This collective approach found within the Symposium aligns with the belief of Colorado Smart Cities Alliance Co-Founder John Tolva about how Smart Cities will thrive, noting that, “The pace of growth in Colorado demands that we look at new models of collaboration between our companies, our cities, and our research institutions. The Colorado Smart Cities Alliance is more than an effort to rethink solutions to urban complexity; it is an effort to remake how we experiment, test, and scale solutions in the first place.”
Throughout its agenda, the Symposium will provide attendees with the opportunity to meet and collaborate with top Smart City influencers; learn about how both companies and municipalities alike can leverage new Smart City opportunities; engage with cutting-edge technology demonstrations to see how these solutions can be implemented into real world scenarios; understand how universities and research labs are using the urban environment as testing platform and readying students to take on Smart City challenges; and discover new business models to drive revenue for Smart City solutions, especially for start-ups and small businesses. A snapshot of Symposium attendees includes representatives from Intel, LGS Innovations, Microsoft, The Colorado Health Foundation, City of Longmont’s Economic Development, RTD Denver, and the University of Colorado.
The value of the Symposium is also amplified by the prominent speakers and panelists that will be at this inaugural event, including: Sean Harrington, VP City Solutions for Verizon Wireless; Aiden Mitchell, VP & GM, IoT Global Solutions for Arrow Electronics; Amy Ford, Chief of Advanced Mobility for the Colorado Department of Transportation, State of Colorado; Eulois Cleckley, Executive Director, Department of Public Works for the City & County of Denver; Chelsea Collier, Founder of DigiCity, Co-Founder of Impact Hub Austin, and Editor-at-Large for Smart Cities Connect; and Eric Drummond, CEO & Founder for the Innovation Corridor, among many others.
The Alliance expects that the connections made and collaborative ideas generated within the Symposium can be leveraged for its own organization to keep critical momentum for upcoming pilot projects, ongoing discovery of city challenges, and other key activities that make the Alliance a valuable resource and third space for its multi-sector members.
The Colorado Smart Cities Symposium takes place on Tuesday, September 18, 2018, from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the McNichols Civic Center Building near downtown Denver, Colorado. The event is now sold out. Follow the Symposium on social media through the hashtag, #CoSmartCities. For more information on the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance, please visit our website or email us at john@coloradosmart.city or Camron@coloradosmart.city.
