See what the buzz was about at Smart City Expo World Congress
A hive abuzz with excitement. That’s what Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC) felt like this year. Our CityNext team was inspired by the eagerness of city leaders to empower what’s next for their city with connected digital solutions.
Municipalities of all sizes are finding that they can address age-old problems and shape their future in new ways that are more economically viable, accessible, efficient, and scalable than ever before. They understand how transformative digital and cloud technology can be for their city. In other words, it’s no longer a question whether digitally transforming can help them achieve their desired outcomes, it’s an imperative.
City leaders are looking to weave the fabric of a connected society. By that, I mean they want to bring together local and national governments with commercial businesses so that all systems are working together to improve people’s quality of life. Because they know that by doing so, it will help them make their city safer, more sustainable, prosperous, and inclusive.
Together with our CityNext partners, we were thrilled to show attendees how a digital, connected infrastructure—powered by our intelligent cloud and intelligent edge—can help them enable the cohesive community to which they aspire. They loved seeing how they could connect people and information and infuse intelligence throughout their civic systems and services to improve urban experiences for their citizens.
We know that we – and the technology industry at large – have an important role to play in enabling the close collaboration that will spur continued innovation. As Tim Turitto, Industry General Manager, Government, Microsoft, says in our SCEWC Day Two video, “…the connections you make through people is really what drives the innovation and the pace of change we talk about.”
That’s why a vital part of our CityNext initiative is engendering connections not just between technologies and systems, but between people—among our vast ecosystem of partners, city leaders, government officials, citizens, academia, first responders, urban planners, and more. So, we were thrilled to see so many alliances being made at Smart City Expo.
It’s our great privilege to work with thousands of partners and customers worldwide to help them digitally transform citizen services using technology they can trust. For us, each city transformation is an opportunity to live up to our own mission of empowering every person and organization – every society – on the planet to achieve more.
We’re grateful to the dozens of CityNext partners who joined us at Smart City Expo to showcase solutions that are helping cities improve urban mobility, citizen services, public safety, access to high-quality health and education, and other priority areas for their community.
If you missed the event, or simply weren’t able to see everything you’d hoped to see, you can still catch up. We took video right from the Expo floor each day and posted it on our event site so you can hear daily show recaps and insights from our thought leaders, watch interviews with partners highlighting industry trends, and even see selected demos.
See what the buzz was all about on our Smart City Expo World Congress page. And read the latest from IDC’s VP of Government and Smart Cities, Ruthbea Yesner Clarke, in a white paper about the state of smart city solutions and how to map a path ahead as you seek to transform your community.
And thank you to all of you with whom we had such inspiring and productive conversations about how our trusted CityNext solutions can help your city become more sustainable, prosperous, and inclusive. We look forward to continuing those conversations.
