The Smart+Connected Communities Institute launched a year ago to the public to foster new thinking and collaborate about the needs of sustainable urban development.

Together with our members and partners we have made some great accomplishments.

• We offered physical events in New Dehli, India; Abu Dhabi, UAE; Chengdu, China and Rio, Brazil. Review archived events.
• We diversified our partnerships- industries/verticals, NGOs, public and private. Review our partners.

• Online Community

  • Currently, 3,670 cities represented on the website.
  • Monthly thought leadership webinars. Review Webinars
  • Original content- City Interviews with implementation examples, podcasts and case studies.
    • Policy, Implementation, Financing and Plans
      
    • Building and Infrastructure
    • Sustainable Urban Planning
  • Launched Group technology to community members and partners. Review Groups to Join.
  • Industry Thought Leadership Blogs. Our bloggers are fantastic. They do a great job of sharing what is innovative and providing information for practioners to implement. Review Blogs.
  • Named a finalist in the Stevie American Business Awards for a New Service or Product.

Looking Forward...

Recently, I launched a survey to engage the members on content needs, collaboration styles for this audience and how we can drive this community to the next level.  We will continue to enhance the content and site usability as well as work on the collaboration. The survey is providing great insight to the collaboration experience and styles of this diverse audience.

Through the survey and conversations with the community members, there seems to be three hot content topics- city examples, financing models and policy.  In response, we are in the process of creating a global city E-book that will capture city examples and implementation details.

Help me help you. Please contact me directly with your ideas, jillkeefer@smartconnectedcommunities.org or comment directly to this blog post.

If you haven't noticed, there are some great resources in the community. We have a diverse audience segment who can be resources for your upcoming projects. If you have a question, let me know, and I will help connect you to the right people in the community.  Here are some highlights of what is to come but stay connected for details.

• Adding Partners
  
• Creation of Special Interest Groups- community members and partners
  
• Providing Education and Training courses
• Creation of the City/ICT E-Book
• Providing Live Streaming of Major Events

Cheers to another good year!