Notes from Meetup #2
The second edition of SmartSheffield was held on Monday the 5th December, and featured talks, news updates and interesting discussions, along with excellent pizza and beers, of course, courtesy of Arup.
We are still tinkering with the format and frequency of the event, and may well introduce some changes for the next one. Particularly around whether to theme each event around a particular ‘smart domain’ or not - we want to keep the church as broad as we can in order to encourage as much cross-fertilisation of knowledge and ideas as possible, but there would definitely also be benefits to getting many people from a particular specialism debating at the event as well. Balancing these two ingredients is going to be key, and we’ll keep everyone posted on this.
Secondly, we’ve started videoing the talks and have also created a place to publish them, along with presentation material, etc. We’ve chosen a public Trello board to do this, as each event can be represented as a separate column with all the files and links relevant to each topic below it. This public trello board can be accessed here, and we’ll also link to it from the website of course: https://trello.com/b/G5dwTLRJ
Please let us know what you think of the videos and Trello board, does it work for you?
Moving on, here are the main themes discussed at the event on Monday:
Roy Woodhead from IoT Transforms
IoT Architectures
Roy Woodhead, who has recently set up a new consultancy called IoT Transforms, gave us an excellent overview of the main communications technologies available for creating city-scale IoT networks.
Roy’s intentions were to:
Start a conversation about how we organise our thoughts on the large and complex subject of IoT to enable Smart Cities.
Break the complexity into chunks.
Focus on a ‘chunk’ to understand how it works.
Build capability in the group.
Job well done I think!
You can access the video and presentation material, as well as engage in conversation about the talk, at this link: https://trello.com/c/8pZ1hVTv
Rob Gregory from Becotix
Passive Ticketing
Next up was Rob Gregory from 5 month old Sheffield-based startup Becotix, who spoke about the concept of using beacons in conjunction with smartphones to enable ‘passive ticketing’, i.e. the ability to use public transport without needing to buy tickets at any point. Instead the Becotix system recognises when you get on and off particular buses and then calculates the best possible fare based on your journeys after the fact.
Becotix are about to commence a live trial of the system at Keighley, Bradford, which will use a beacon network covering 29 buses and 102 bus stops. You can follow their progress at Becotix’ blog.
Here’s Rob’s presentation with animations:
Richard Motley from Integreat Plus
Social Enterprise Exchange
Richard Motley from Integreat Plus presented about the new Social Enterprise Exchange programme that has just launched (unfortunately there’s no video of his talk, but I have shared a link to the launch slides on Trello).
Social Enterprise Exchange is a programme of support for social enterprises in the City Region, which is delivered by a community-based consortium in collaboration with Sheffield City Region Growth Hub and funded by the European Regional Development fund. So it’s a great example of how initiatives can connect both bottom up and top down approaches to deliver value to the city’s citizens and foster economic development.
Furthermore, from a smart city perspective, the Social Enterprise Exchange provides an excellent vehicle for engaging with social enterprises to seek their help in delivering larger infrastructure and smart developments - there are opportunities to support some of these startup concepts, and/or design mutually beneficial collaborations, especially in areas such as food, resources, inclusion, health and social care, etc.
Check out the info on Trello: https://trello.com/c/969gyb4A
Chris Dymond from Unfolding
SmartSheffield News
As always, I presented a short update of smart city news and activity that I have become aware of since the last meetup, you can see the video and comment on this Trello card: https://trello.com/c/ybIxp4H3
Here’s what I covered this month:
Sheffield City Region Integrated Infrastructure Plan
The Sheffield City Region IIP was published last week, produced by the SCR Local Enterprise Partnership in conjunction with Arup. This document sets out the infrastructure requirements for the region to deliver the growth ambitions set out in the Strategic Economic Plan, and is the first comprehensive regional infrastructure plan outside of London.
The plan shows where critical connectivity (both physical and digital), waste, energy and transport investments will need to be made to support the expected growth, and should therefore be considered an important guide for smart city and urban technology opportunities.
Def worth a read, you can find the relevant docs, including the exec summary, at the SCR’s website.
Sheffield Digital Comms Network
I have been involved in creating a new network for people who manage and produce content for the city’s key web and social media properties. We held a workshop at the end of November, sponsored by the Sheffield BID and produced by me via Unfolding, to bring the city’s content and social media managers together and discuss the opportunities for collaborating to improve the digital user experience for citizens and visitors engaging with Sheffield and its various offers. The workshop was very well received and the resulting network will now look to meet regularly with each meeting arranged by a different stakeholder in rotation. In addition digital platforms have been created for communication between members of the network and information sharing.
More info will follow on this as the network develops, meanwhile updates will probably go out on the Twitter hashtag #SheffDigiComms.
‘City of Ideas’
The Site Gallery in Sheffield, which is Sheffield’s leading contemporary art space and specialises in moving image, digital art and performance, has been awarded a major grant by Arts Council England for a place-making project in the heart of the city’s Cultural Industries Quarter, called the ‘city of ideas’.
The project will:
“…create new and accessible public art commissions animating existing spaces in the city centre. It will also create opportunities for young people, artists, the digital sector and public to work together over the next three years.”
This is going to be a really interesting initiative that combines digital tech, creative arts and urban spaces to create experiences for citizens.
The official press release is here (pdf).
NYC Tree Map
With Sheffield’s tree management in the news so much recently, I thought it would be interesting to see how other cities use digital tech to build a positive relationship between citizens and municipal tree management, and perhaps the definitive example of this came to my attention recently, in New York’s Urban Tree Map, where citizens can:
“..learn about the trees that make up our city’s urban forest, mark trees as favorites and share them with [their] friends, and record and share all of [their] caretaking and tree stewardship activities.”
But more than just forging a relationship between citizens and their trees, the site also uses an algorithm developed by the U.S. Forest Service to calculate the estimated monetary value of every single tree in the city, and encouraging an open debate on what value means.
The NYC Tree Map is here: https://tree-map.nycgovparks.org/
Sheffield Digital Incubator
Sheffield City Council has let the contract to deliver the Sheffield Digital Incubator (see last month’s SmartSheffield for more info on this), however the official announcement has not been made yet, and communications are embargoed. Hopefully we’ll be able to say more about this project at the next event.
Sheffield Public Wifi
The city’s public wifi concession is also progressing through procurement. The last we heard from the council was that the invitation to tender is about to go to providers who have already shown interest, which number in the 20s. We don’t know how long this process will last or at what point there will be public information about it, but perhaps we should do a meetup that focuses on city-wide wireless connectivity early in the new year.
And that closes things out - thanks everyone who came for coming, please come along next time if you couldn’t make it last time, and I hope to see you all again early in the new year!
