Several days ago, we wrote a blog post to announce the beginning of the First IEEE Smart Cities Conference in Guadalajara, Mexico. Now that the conference draws to a close, we can firmly say that the conference by all measures has been a tremendous success. The conference had over 500 registered participants drawing from academia, industry, and government — fully in agreement with the triple-helix model of innovation. From industry, dozens attended from IBM and Intel alone. The conference also benefited from the presence of the Governor of Jalisco, The Honorable, Aristóteles Sandoval, as well as several generous industrial sponsors.
The conference also distinguished itself for its focus on civic engagement, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Aside from the ample opportunity for networking and lively conversation, the conference featured a “Student Hackathon”. For two days, student teams were challenged to develop, in real-time, cloud-based Smart City Apps on iOS and Android platforms. The winning teams developed apps for smart transportation, healthcare, and community service and won monetary prizes of 500 & 1000USD. The LIINES wishes these teams all the best as they form small businesses to bring their apps to the market.
With such participation, and despite the landfall of Hurricane Patricia only 24 hours earlier, it is clear that the First International IEEE Smart Cities Conference has established itself as a premier international conference and the flagship of the IEEE Smart Cities Initiative. Please do stay tuned for announcements for the 2nd International IEEE Smart Cities Conference to be held in the idyllic mountain city of Trento, Italy in September 2016. Interested readers can join the IEEE Smart City Initiative and its associated LinkedIn group.
LIINES Website: http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/liines
