Speaker Profile: Future Cities Forum – Michael Blumenstein

Michael Blumenstein is an Associate Professor and the Dean (Research) of the Science, Environment, Engineering and Technology Group at Griffith University where he previously served as Head of the School of Information and Communication Technology.

Michael is a nationally and internationally recognised expert in the areas of automated Pattern Recognition, Handwriting Recognition, Document Analysis and Artificial Intelligence. He has published over 100 papers in refereed conferences and journals. His research spans numerous projects applying Artificial Intelligence to the fields of Engineering, Environmental Science, Neurobiology and Coastal Management. Michael has secured numerous internal/nationally competitive research grants to undertake these projects with funds exceeding $AUD3.7 Million. Components of his research into the predictive assessment of beach conditions have been developed for use by local government agencies, coastal management authorities and in commercial applications.

Michael has been invited to serve on a number of Journal Editorial Boards and to act as General Chair, Organising Chair, Program Chair and Committee member for numerous national/international conferences in his areas of expertise. Following his achievements in applying Artificial Intelligence to the area of bridge engineering (where he has published widely and has been awarded federal funding), in 2008 he was invited to serve on the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering’s Working Commission 6 to advise on matters pertaining to Information Technology. Michael is the first Australian to be elected onto this committee. In addition, he is Chair of the Queensland Branch of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. He is also the Gold Coast Chapter Convener of the Australian Computer Society in Queensland as well as the Chairman of the IT Forum Gold Coast and a Board Member of Software Queensland. Michael also serves as a member of Queensland State Government’s ICT Ministerial Advisory Group. In 2009 Michael was named as one of Australia’s Top 10 Emerging Leaders in Innovation in the Australian’s Top 100 Emerging Leaders Series supported by Microsoft.

Michael will be speaking on Health Informatics and the ICT Industry on Australia’s Gold Coast at the Future Cities Forum at the Rutherford Innovation Showcase.  Register now for this FREE forum!

National Competitiveness – Local Innovation?

Recent article from Future Cities Institute’s CEO, Malcolm Fraser

Many people have asked me for the reasoning behind, and the connections between, national competitiveness and local innovation…here are both.

National competitiveness is based on national productivity, being the capacity of the nation’s firms to achieve higher levels of productivity, and develop the capabilities to compete in more and more sophisticated industry segments.

Equally, as business success is now based on the paradigms of flexibility and entrepreneurialism, urban-based innovation development and entrepreneurship now generates national outcomes, with cities playing a significant role in overall economic productivity and national competitiveness.

Within this context, the Information and Communications (ICT) industry also demonstrates a positive impact on national competitiveness, where ICT production contributes to output, employment, and export earnings, and ICT use increases productivity, competitiveness, and growth across all industries in an economy. And while industries such as agriculture and tourism may in themselves not be knowledge-intensive, the innovation process, including knowledge inputs from outside industry firms and institutions, may indeed be.

The proposition is that national competitiveness and enduring competitive advantage in today’s global economy, increasingly lies in local things — knowledge, relationships, and motivations that distant rivals cannot match.

These local innovation ‘ecosystems’ are core to the creation and commercialisation of innovative products, processes, and services by entrepreneurs and reinforces the need for local indigenous skills, capabilities, and enabling ICT environments. It also reinforces the need for innovation programmes that focus on creating and supporting the complex stakeholder interactions that drive economic growth at local, industry and macro levels of an economy, to produce economic growth and social benefits for all citizens.

NZICT group chair Bennett Medary – Tech Industry vs the All Blacks

Article by NZICT group chair Bennett Medary on the upcoming Rutherford Innovation Showcase as published on the The National Business Review

The All Blacks aren’t the only ones limbering up to compete on a world stage against the best in the world over the coming months.

The New Zealand ICT and hi-tech industry competes against the world’s best every day. And NZICT, the group that represents the sector, along with key partners, is holding a number of events in September and October called the Rutherford Innovation Showcase in order to celebrate this.

Before I expand on this, let me firstly explain why I draw commonalities and make comparisons between the technology sector and the All Blacks.

Our NZ businesses don’t quite stack up in popularity rankings compared to the All Blacks. We don’t celebrate the win of a New Zealand software company like we do an All Blacks side beating the Aussies.  And we don’t collectively mourn a lost deal like we do an All Blacks’ loss.

However, we know that export earnings are the life-blood of our nation and there are a number of NZ technology companies that deserve All-Black status and admiration as exporters.

According to the Technology Network Investment Report 2010 (TIN100), exports of the top 100 technology companies in New Zealand are $4.9 billion annually, which is now ranked second only to the dairy sector.

I’ll repeat that in case you didn’t catch it. The New Zealand technology industry, in terms of export dollars, is nearing that of New Zealand’s dairy industry.

This is hugely encouraging and critical to our national future.  We must continue to do everything we can to enhance the performance of our great export earners of agriculture and tourism, however no other industry has the opportunity to scale and accelerate its export growth in the way the hi-tech and ICT sector can.

So we have a huge contribution to make and should absolutely continue to aspire to become our number one export earner, accelerating past our more traditional exports even as they continue to grow.

And we should be cheering those export sectors and their companies on as we avidly monitor their progress.  Our future quality of life absolutely depends on their continued success!

The Government understands this and is providing tremendous support for the industry, but there is still a long way to go before we even begin to realise our full potential.

In the meantime, let’s use the Rugby World Cup to celebrate and showcase some of our success stories.  NZICT is hosting a range of events come September and October of this year.

From software to satellites and robots to trade, we will celebrate and exemplify this industry in terms of what we’re doing, what we’ve done and what we aspire to do through the Rutherford Innovation Showcase.

We’ll have a range of quality international and domestic leaders attending our events and we’ll be launching the preliminary results of the TIN 100 2011 results, which should give us more to celebrate in term of industry growth and export statistics!  Some of the TIN 100 companies will be at this event to “pitch” their business to you like they have to do offshore.

We’ll be talking about the future of digital cities, trade and investment in the industry, digital content, big science, employment in the industry and many more things.

And just so we’re catering for a range of audiences and so that this article is still talking about rugby, we’ll even have a robot vs. human kick off, where we’ll test the best of the robot rugby ball kickers (from the World Robotics competition we are holding) against human counterparts.

Our events are free to attend. So make sure you come along and support the technology industry and wear black if you like; many in the industry already do.

Register here to attend the free events as part of Rutherford Innovation Showcase.

Have you registered for the FREE Future Cities Forum as part of #rutherfordshowcase?

Speaker Profile: Future Cities Forum Richard Simpson #rutherfordshowcase

Richard Simpson from Nextspace will be another guest speaker featuring at the Future Cities Forum as part of Rutherford Innovation Showcase in Auckland next month. His keynote will be on The Digital City.

Richard’s career spans architecture, technology, and politics.

In the 1980s he co-founded a pioneering 3D computer graphics firm (Cadabra) took New Zealand innovation to the world.  He also played a key role in the design team that conceived and initiated Auckland’s Sky Tower, and the 3D visualisations based upon sunlight performance controls that now, a quarter of a century later, define the splendid urban skyline of Auckland.

He next focused attention to a number of startups -  modular building, vanadium redox battery, and a joint venture in the timber industry with Carter Holt Harvey.

In 1997, he joined Intergraph Corporation as a senior executive and was based out of their corporate headquarters in the US, with global responsibilities for Utilities, Local Government, and Telecommunications sectors. He played a lead role on number of very large urban infrastructure projects in the telecommunications, infrastructure, energy and utilities sectors – especially in South East Asia, Japan and China.

In 2004 he was elected as an Auckland City Councillor on a grass roots community ticket for the CBD and central Auckland suburbs (Hobson Ward) and served as Chair of Auckland’s Transport and Deputy Chair of Economic Development Committee.  During this 3 year term Auckland witnessed unprecedented transformation with the halting of the Eastern Motorway, roll-out of major public transport initiatives, securing the electrification of rail, seeding the water front redevelopment and sparking the unification of Auckland into one ‘Super City’.

His international contributions to advancing geospatial technology has been recognised with his appointment to the International Society of the Digital Earth (ISDE) Executive Committee. He  also serves on the editorial board for the society’s scientific journal : International Journal for the Digital Earth published by Taylor and Francis, and Chairs the ISDE’s working group for Digital Cities.  He has also played an innovation and business development role for the Bioengineering Institute at the University of Auckland in the commercialisation of their core research applied to the Physiome project – a comprehensive multi-scaled mathematical model of the body. A complex multi-national initiative has strong parallels to the Digital Earth and the Human Genome projects.

In his current role at Nextspace, Richard is leading the vision for the Visual City – an innovative 3D platform developed by Nextspace for evidential modelling of cities from the crust upward . Visual City has already been successfully deployed by Melbourne’s South East Water  for visualisation of catchments, pressure sewer and the urban water cycle.  This is proving to have exciting potential for Australia’s fastest growing city, facing challenges of climate change, and the reliance upon the water resources of the world’s driest continent.

Other related initiatives have been underway in other major cities including Hong Kong, Sydney, Christchurch and Auckland. For Christchurch, Nextspace has teamed up with the Institute of Earth Sciences and Engineering (IESE) to apply the Visual City platform to stereographic forensic visualisations of the over 4,000 after shocks since the initial September 2011 quake.

Richard is currently Chair of the ANZAC Centenary Bridge governance committee – a bold project often referred to as Auckland’s next ‘Sky Tower’.

Nextspace (www.nextspace.co.nz and www.nextspace.org.nz ):

Nextspace is a partnership between Right Hemisphere and NZ Government to catalyse 3D visualization developed for the aerospace industry into improving NZ’s competitiveness .

New Zealand has built a strong international reputation in the computer graphics related industries – especially noted are the achievements of Weta Digital, Bioengineering Institute, Cadabra, Animation Research Limited (ARL), HIT Lab, Deep Animation, Right Hemisphere and Nextspace.    All of these have common interwoven threads of people and ideas.

Future Cities Forum: International Guest Speaker Billy Corbett #rutherfordshowcase

Future Cities Institute are proud to announce that Billy Corbett will be the international guest speaker at the Future Cities Forum as part of Rutherford Innovation Showcase.  His presentation will focus on  the development challenges facing cities in the developing world.

Billy Cobbett has been Manager of the Cities Alliance since May 2006.  He joined the Cities Alliance in March 2001  from the United Nations Human Settlements Programme in Nairobi, where he had designed and launched the Global Campaign for Secure Tenure.

Born in South Africa, Billy was overall coordinator of Planact, an urban NGO providing policy and technical support to civic organisations and trades unions. He moved to the African National Congress (ANC) headquarters in 1992, where he was National Coordinator of the Department of Local and Regional Government, and Housing. After the 1994 General Election, he was appointed Director General of the National Department of Housing, reporting to Minister Joe Slovo.  Prior to joining the United Nations, he was Director of Housing for Cape Town.

Future Cities Global Forum and Awards Program

The Future Cities Institute is an international NGO that operates on a not-for-profit basis to “empower local communities in a digital world”, by convening government, industry and academia together to achieve powerful local outcomes.

Through research, knowledge dissemination and capacity-building initiatives, The Future Cities Institute to plays a positive and growing role in helping countries to address critical policy challenges as they seek to improve human settlements and achieve sustainable urbanization.

On the 28^th September 2011, the Future Cities Institute launches the global Future Cities Forum and Awards Program, to:

• Support the development and growth of city economies by assisting to build successful enterprises, attract investment, create high skilled jobs and drive economic success via local entrepreneurship.
• Execute a global research agenda to collaboratively develop knowledge that supports sustainable economic and social development for cities.
• Together with academia, industry and local government, undertake an Awards program to celebrate and promote the success of cities on the world stage, as great places to live and work.

Innovation Showcase – Exhibition Opportunities now open

The Rutherford Innovation Showcase comprises of a three day Innovation Showcase  that brings together New Zealand’s leading technology companies with their key stakeholders and customers, from Asia, Australia and New Zealand to discuss opportunities to grow their respective organisations.

This is an opportunity for New Zealand technology businesses to take advantage of an unprecedented series of events, being held during Rugby World Cup 2011, to target key partners, customers and investors, both current and potential.

The Innovation Week presents the very best of New Zealand technology based innovation to the world, and provides a pro-active platform for collaboration between New Zealand companies and the international technology community.

The Innovation Showcase will be attended by delegates that are participating in the Innovation Showcase events running across the three days at the Langham Hotel.

Delegates will range from NZ Government Ministers and Chief Executives, Asia Pacific and New Zealand business leaders, Local Government Mayors and Councillors, Industry, Academia and Entrepreneurs.

Click here for more information on exhibiting.

 

Future Cities Forum – Rutherford Innovation Showcase

The Future Cities Institute in conjunction with NZICT,  will be hosting the one day Future Cities Forum as part of the Rutherford Innovation Showcase.  This  forum highlights opportunities for New Zealand cities to develop as world leading communities driving economic growth and social cohesion.

It will include an evaluation on opportunities for public private partnerships and will feature leading international speakers who will discuss global best practice for transforming cities and towns into digital communities.

Of special note is the government-industry panel session that will bring together economic development agencies, the keynote speakers and urban innovation experts to discuss critical challenges and opportunities to achieve sustainable urbanisation, and economic growth, through the creation of high skilled jobs, entrepreneurship and innovation in the local economy.

Interested in attending? Register now

Empowering Communities in a Digital Age?

At the Future Cities Institute, our mission is to Empower Local Communities in a Digital World. But what does Empowerment really mean? Here are some thoughts…

The World Bank suggests that Empowerment is the process of enhancing the capacity of individuals or groups to make choices and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes. Researchers* have also identified two essential factors that influence our capacity to make an effective choice – agency and opportunity structure:

• Agency is defined as a person, or groups, ability to make meaningful choices, i.e. they can envisage options for the future and make a choice.
• Opportunity structure is defined as the formal and informal contexts within which these people or groups operate.

For example, a young person may well informed about many potential jobs and careers they can pursue and have the ability to apply for them (agency) but because of their lack of education or the right skill sets (opportunity structure) are unable to make their choice effective…they are not empowered.

Another example comes from my own community a couple of years ago where we were basically a ‘black hole’ in term of our ability to get decent broadband in our suburb. As individuals we were able to contact the telco provider and request better broadband, but were unable to achieve change because of the power ‘imbalance’ of individuals trying to deal with a large national carrier. We just got the run-a-round.

However, as a community of people of people working together and combining our different experiences, education and social/business connections in industries such as technology, media, public relations and marketing, we were ‘empowered’ to make a choice (and take action) to take on the telco in the public media and put forward a strong argument for change. The end result, our suburb was the first suburb in the country to get the new broadband roll out. As a group we were empowered to transform our choices into desired actions and outcomes.

So, back to Empowering Local Communities in a Digital World…

Let’s face it we are in transition to a ‘techno-economic’ age where the focus of social development and economic competitiveness is based on:

• a focus away from having vast amounts of capital, to having vast amounts of flexibility
• a move from the command and control processes of the industrial age, to an age of ‘Flexibility and Entrepreneurialism’ and
• a move to local industry clusters and value added ‘zones’ of creative industries in city settings, rather than big development style campuses such as Silicon Valley**.

A critical factor to this transition is the nature of the ‘stuff’ that makes up this techno-economic age, innovation is now based on ‘weightless’ parts such as software and the Internet, that have no physical, manufacturing, shipping or inventory constraints. These technologies fuel economic growth via individual creativity, without the requirement for significant economic resources such as capital, plant or machinery, really who needs an office anymore?*.

Bottom line…

It’s about entrepreneurs in cities, drinking coffee, dreaming up new ideas and being empowered to transform those ideas (choices) into desired actions and outcomes through their developed skills and social connections, and the application of technologies like Cloud and Mobile.

If you don’t think technology, and lots of on-line friends, can empower people and communities, just talk to my friend Leila in Tunisia***…

* See Alsop and Heinsohn (2005)
**For more on these ideas see Varian 2003, Jessop 1992 and Hutton 2004.
*** See my post archives for the Tunisia Presentation