We recently interviewed Charles Reed-Anderson on our Smart Cities Chronicles podcast, asking him to share the two provocative articles he wrote in January around the 'hype' associated with the many smart city ranking systems that are out there, as well as the many forecasts on the value of the smart cities market that many of the research companies and analysts publish each year.
"Dont believe the hype," he said.
It seems the level of randomness, and high level of variety in what the commentators and analysts are projecting, is adding more noise to the conversation. And this fuels the media headlines, and then cities and others consume this, and act upon it.
So where is the good news on smart cities, where are we at? What impact are we having, and what value we are delivering? There is heaps out there, and thats what we want to celebrate at Smart Cities Week.
These are just some of the questions that sit behind this years Smart Cities Week Australia theme - "State of the Nation."
"We want to discuss where we are at - the 'state' of the nation - and we also want to explore what the role of the 'State' is in the smart cities agenda," Adam Beck, SCCANZ Executive DIrector, said.
"For these reasons, among others, we have established 'State of the Nation' as our 2020 theme," Beck said. "And we are excited."
SCW Australia 2020 will see some powerful plenary sessions covering these headline topics, but its real feature is the bespoke dialogue sessions where we match the topic of dialogue, with the style of session.
Another trend shaping the design of SCW is that of collaboration - cross city and cross region peer to peer exchange and investment. This 'cities helping cities' trend is just the approach we have dreamed of, as it becomes the starting point for potential demand aggregation, thus risk reduction and ultimately investment attraction.
"And with the Smart Cities Activator platform, we are seeing smart cities projects being shared across regions and nations now," Beck said.
SCW Australia is being hosted in Melbourne from 26-28 August. More information can be found at smartcitiesweek.com.
