Notes from Meetup #6: Coalitions of the Willing
The September SmartSheffield meetup was held on Monday the 11th September, and was the sixth(!) meetup of the ‘modern era’, i.e. since Arup came on board as hosts and sponsors last October.
It’s probably time to take stock of what we’ve done so far and where we’d like to go next, but frankly we’ve little time for such naval gazing! Suffice to say that Matt and I always review each event afterwards, and our feeling is that the event is growing and becoming more significant to Sheffield’s emerging digital strategy (more about which later in this recap), that it’s attracting people from more diverse organisations, and has a good balance of technologists, business people and policy makers. One thing we would like is to convert all this interest and activity into more bids for project funding, so we’re thinking of hosting bid workshops in between the main by-monthly meetups. Please let us know if you think this would be a good idea!
We’ll also continue to tweak the format slightly - for instance we’re going to set stricter limits on talk length from the next edition onwards: we’re thinking a 10 minute maximum talk length, no more than 5 slides, and a max 5 minute Q&A afterwards. With so much to discuss, and the event attracting talks on so many active projects in the city, we are in danger of losing valuable networking time unless we set stricter limits!
Anyway, that’s enough self-reflection for now, here’s a recap of all the talks and news from last Monday. As always, the videos, presentations and any other supporting documents are also available in Trello, where you can also comment specifically on the topics discussed.
Mark Gannon from Sheffield City Council
Building a Digital Coalition for Sheffield
This is probably the most important talk we’ve had at SmartSheffield so far, in that it’s the first detailed public expression of the city’s overarching approach to the digital agenda, across many smart city domains. Mark, who is Director of Information Systems and Business Change at Sheffield City Council, explains the intention to build a coalition of digital leaders across the city who are active in a range of domains, and how this coalition can be brought together and encouraged to collaborate and self-organise.
Sheffield is building a reputation for taking quite a holistic approach to the smart city agenda (for instance the report ‘Smart-Eco Cities in the UK: Trends and City Profiles, 2016’ says “Sheffield’s concept of the ‘smart’ is experimental in its openendedness”. Which is nice.) and the ‘Digital Coalition’ strategy that Mark outlines continues in that vein with the intention to nurture groups of people who are active in digital development and innovation across many different aspects of importance to the city, and not just those directly under the auspices of the council.
Please watch and read the presentation for the low down, but in a nutshell the plan covers the following aspects:
The opportunity (why should we do anything?)
Who is the ‘we’?
What domains, and subdomains, should the coalition cover?
How could the coalition assess progress?
How can it be challenge-driven?
What behaviours and capabilities should we foster?
How should it be governed and organised?
What’s happening next?
If you’re quick, there is an opportunity to discuss the plan in more detail on Thursday the 21st September at the Digital Policy Conflab event at The Workstation from 6pm till 8pm. This event is hosted by Sheffield City Council and Creative Sheffield, in collaboration with Sheffield Digital, and you can find out more about it and register here: https://digitalpolicyconflab3.eventbrite.co.uk
Lee Mullin from Autodesk
Building Information Modelling (BIM) and the smart city
Lee Mullin is a specialist in Digital & Building Information Modelling for Construction at Autodesk, and provided an excellent tour of the technologies, applications and opportunities provided by BIM and how it connects to other smart city agendas such as movement monitoring, sensor networks, city operations centres and observatories, etc.
In addition, Autodesk are looking for collaborations to extend their core BIM technologies into new areas such as social care and infrastructure monitoring, as well as modelling. You can find out more about their BIM technologies here and/or get in touch with Lee directly.
Neal Forse from WND UK
National Sigfox roll out
Neal is co-founder and CEO of Wireless Network Developments UK (WND UK), who have taken over the contract to roll out Sigfox across the country from Arqiva (whom we heard from back in February). Neal’s approach to the roll out is very different, as they have substantially changed the cost/quality/speed equation, which, along with being venture finance-supported, has opened up different business model options for them. They are now looking for installation partners and will provide free access to the network for any building or estate owners that come on board. This approach seems much more scaleable, and brings Sigfox more firmly into play for SMEs and innovation projects.
Get in touch with them at their website, or via Twitter if you’re interested in hosting a gateway, or partnering on an IoT application with them.
Chris Dymond from Unfolding
SmartSheffield News
Finally, I presented my regular slot highlighting things that have come to my attention in the Sheffield ‘scene’ recently. Here’s what I covered:
Superfast South Yorkshire Vouchers
This was really just a reminder that funding is available from SFSY both for broadband connectivity, up to £2,500 match via their Connection Vouchers, and for new innovations that use it, up to £12,500 match via their Innovation Vouchers.
This could be a great, local source of funding for smart city experiments, and we should look to take advantage of them!
All the details about them are here.
The Sheffield Things Network
There was a meeting of the Things Network (the 3rd one) before the main meetup. This network is coordinating the effort to develop a community-owned and operated LoRaWAN network across Sheffield and the surrounding areas. A full write up of the meeting will be published to the Things Network Sheffield community page, meanwhile here are some highlights:
Chesterfield Things Network have commissioned a single-channel gateway for testing.
Scott and Cullen have nearly finished building their gateway.
Craig Pickles has also built a single channel gateway.
Hive IT have a TNS gateway on order.
Uflo are keen to work out a way to include Things Network gateways in their plans, perhaps incorporated into the planned weather stations, perhaps part-funded by innovation vouchers from Superfast South Yorkshire.
In addition, Steve Jubb at Uflo has an opportunity to put a TNS gateway on the roof of the Arts Tower, alongside a WND Sigfox gateway when it is installed in the next couple of weeks.
There may also be opportunities to incorporate TNS gateways into SCC social housing upgrade work.
Shmapped
Shmapped is an app developed by the Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust in conjunction with the University of Sheffield. It “invites users to map the good things about Sheffield’s green and built spaces.”, and is part of the “Improving Wellbeing through Urban Nature (IWUN) project run by the Universities of Derby and Sheffield.
It looks like a really interesting data gathering exercise. The app can be downloaded from the AppStore or Google Play (just search for “Shmapped”, obviously), and you can find out more about the project here.
Coulomb
Coulomb is a Facebook Messenger application developed by longtime SmartSheffield collaborator Stuart “Stubbs” Grimshaw. Coulomb is designed as an information service for drivers of plug-in electric vehicles and hybrids, and allows them to register their cars and when they are using public charging points. Doing so “helps you find the owner of that EV that’s finished charging when you’re low on juice and need to be on the road.”
The app is available via Facebook. And Stuart has also written about why he created it.
Active 10
Active 10 is a wellbeing app that has been developed as part of Public Health England’s “One You” initiative and in conjunction with the University of Sheffield. Active 10 is essentially a fitness tracker and motivator, but designed for people who are currently extremely inactive. It encourages users to perform at least one brisk 10 minute walk each day, and shows them how they are progressing.
It’s another in a burgeoning line of health and wellbeing apps that are being designed and developed in Sheffield, as the medical, life sciences, sports science and wellbeing research continue to collaborate.
You can download Active 10 from the AppStore or Google Play (search for “One You Active 10”), and you can find out more about it here.
KNOWING
KNOWING is a research project currently getting started at the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield, which aims to better understand “the KNOWledge politics of experimentING with smart urbanism” (KNOWING, see? Very clever!).
The project (actually, it’s an Open Research Area, which is a common platform for bidding for research projects as collaborations between certain European countries - meaning it will consist of multiple projects all with a common theme and motivation) intends to look at 8 European cities (Sheffield, Barcelona, Berlin, Hamburg, Eindhoven, Den Haag, Toulouse and Lyon) and compare their smart city and urban innovation efforts to see how they are shaping and re-shaping “urban knowledge politics”.
Which a) is fascinating and means that we potentially have a great way of connecting with urban innovators in those other cities; and b) means that, yes, we are being closely observed and monitored…
Hopefully Rachel, Aiden or Simon from the UI will be able to come and tell us more about it at a future meetup.
Meanwhile, there is a website in the process of being created to collate it’s activities, and an article about it all here.
BIN@Sheffield 2017
BIN stands for Business Innovation Network, and is “an informal international network of academic and industry partners engaged and supporting the creation of a sustainable forum for sharing good practice and opportunities in Innovation”, involving the Universities of Sheffield, Porto and Sao Paulo. It is designed to bring academics, researchers and businesses together to share knowledge and discuss what’s going on at the edge of research and technology. They host an annual conference which alternates between the three partners, and this year it is Sheffield’s turn once again.
The overarching theme this year is ‘Digitalisation’, with a particular focus on three strands: Health and Wellbeing, Industrial Digitisation and, of particular interest to us, Smart cities & mobility.
Here are details about the conference and registration.
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That’s it for another month. The next event will most likely be Monday the 6th November at the usual place and time. Please let me know if you spot anything that you think I should cover in SmartSheffield News, and let me know if you’d like a speaking slot - as I mentioned in the intro we’re going to limit slots to 10 minutes presentation (max 5 slides) and 5 mins Q&A from now on, you have been warned! :)
You can reach me at info@smartsheffield.rocks, or @SmartSheffield on Twitter.
Thanks again to everyone for coming along and getting involved!
Cheers,
Chris Dymond
