Talking Digital

Virgin Media is working with training provider Freeformers and Innovation Birmingham to offer small businesses in Birmingham the opportunity to participate in a series of online training workshops to learn how to build a live web page, release a viral social video, develop a web app and new social online marketing techniques. The workshops will take place on three days across three consecutive weeks in June 2013 at Birmingham Science Park, Aston.

You should consider applying for this free training programme if you are:

 - A small or medium-sized business based in Birmingham

- Are able to commit to attending three sessions, either on the 12^th, 19^th and 26^th of June, or on the 13^th, 20th and 26^th June 2013 at Birmingham Science Park, Aston

- Agree to provide feedback on your experience that can be used in case study material for other small business to benefit from

- Have an idea of how you will use digital training to improve your marketing or business model.

 If you are interested in applying, please contact us by 17^th May, or get in touch with Virgin Media directly at Daniel.Butler@virginmedia.co.uk or on 0207 909 3287.

The Next Gen Skills Debate – Birmingham Re-Worked on Monday was organised in association with Birmingham’s Commission on Youth Unemployment and Birmingham’s Smart City Commission, to take a transformative look at how we invest in skills & enterprise as part of a digital economy and create a brighter future for the young people of this city.

The Next Gen Skills Debate took place at Millennium Point in front of a packed house, energised by the support of Sampad and BOA students, who were our ‘Next Gen’ reporters’ for the day  – a reminder that young people need to be at the heart of the debate and shaping the next generation of learning – their future now. More » – #nextgenskills

The Council is moving on with its project to make council data available as open data. Our aim is to make

as much open data available for free. However,  there is some policy work, which includes sorting out IPR issues and which licensing to use.

However, work is going on at the same time to abstract operations data which is not currently published. This is being used to test ways of publishing data in formats which will encourage re-use, such as XML, JSON and RDF.

The current Open Data web page on birmingham.gov.uk will be replaced with a platform to provide a repository for open data as well as additional information and services, such as metadata. If you want to find out more about this project or get involved please contact raj.s.mack@birmingham.gov.uk

In early December we hosted a Future Internet event, funded as part of CONCORD, the Facilitation and Support Action for the Future Internet PPP programme. Through its membership of ERRIN – project partner in CONCORD – the West Midlands is a sub-partner in the project and involved as one out of four pilot regions across the EU.

This event provided the opportunity to share knowledge of ‘smart city’ activities in the West Midlands and then in the second half of the programme to present the Future-Internet PPP, illustrate two FI-PPP use cases and outline the future Call 3. The event also welcomed a presentation from the EIT ICT Labs which also illustrated the opportunities of international collaboration.

It provided a good network base of SMEs, corporates and public sector representatives to outline recent developments in the concept of smart cities from a regional perspective in the first half of the programme and then use this base to illustrate how the Future Internet PPP could be of assistance in supporting the goals of smart cities.

Raj Mack, Head of Digital Birmingham introduced the audience to the activities that Birmingham were engaged in under their smart cities. Raj pointed out the growing importance of cities and talked about Birmingham’s roadmap (You can view Birmingham’s Smart City Vision here).

From Birmingham to its West Midlands neighbour Coventry. Tim Luft from the University’s Serious Games Institute gave a wide ranging presentation on some of the new technologies that would contribute to solving some of the challenges cities are currently facing such as congestion, pollution. Intelligent transport systems, driverless cars, hydrogen fuel cell cars are likely to change our driving habits.  Virtual reality applications means that we can order our reading and sun glasses on line from a virtual optician and the Google augmented reality glasses http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/google-begins-testing-its-augmented-reality-glasses/ will be available in 2013.

The days when tourism involve buying a paper-based guide, map and brochure are going too but all these technological changes require a user input such as Living Labs and he introduced the City Lab Coventry http://citylabcoventry.org/home.asp?slevel=0z0&parent_id=1 where the city could play a strong role in testing new ideas.

Of course new technology does not always mean a new market and this was where the next speaker, Professor Irene Ng from Warwick University gave interesting presentation on new concepts of value, exchange and ownership. More and more in a digital world we do need to own a product to gain a benefit from it. A mobile phone can easily replace a camera, a calendar, a calculator and a torch. So we move from the concept of buying to using but all this takes place in specific contexts. For Professor Ng, data was the new oil and context was the new oilfield. As an example, she used a person listening to music in a gym. This involved a range of services – supply of music, wifi supply, social network site, the phone, the gym itself.  These all converge in a range of value propositions that are linked together. This gives rise to potential disruptive technologies or service, for example, a supermarket paying for your fuel to drive to their supermarket (already started by Tesco and fuel vouchers). Professor Ng’s book entitled ‘Value and worth; creating new markets in the digital economy’ will be published in 2013 by Innovorsa Press, Cambridge, UK.

Charlotte Crossley, then presented the Birmingham Science Park http://bsp-a.com/ which was one of the oldest science parks in the UK and had just celebrated its 30^th birthday. One of the strong points of Birmingham Science Park is that it has attracted a computer games industry and it is estimated that the West Midlands produces 25% of the market for games. The Science Park will open a new digital

plaza with workspace for the future and technology for the future provided by CISCO in 2014 http://bsp-a.com/press/birmingham-science-parks-icentrum-building-to-become-a-cisco-living-lab-showcase-for-collaborative-technology/ . This will give more incubator space and increase the attractiveness of the park for ICT-based entrepreneurs.

Richard Tuffs introduced the ERRIN network www.errin.eu and the Future Internet-PPP and the CONCORD Project http://www.fi-ppp.eu/concord/. Richard Tuffs focused on the opportunities for call three which would open in May 2013 of Future Internet and highlighted the need for the region to start developing a consortium that would respond to the needs of the call. The key elements of any consortium should be that it can able to bring the results of the FI-PPP to the market and engage in market uptake with industrial support. It is also important to engage with a wide community and focus on building an ecosystem based around industrial partners and their SME ecosystem which can connect to innovative SMEs and involve a full range of partners including industrial associations, regional development agencies, public sector and of course SMEs.

Dr Khaldoun Al Agha from LRI, Université Paris-Sud/CNRS, France then presented the EIT ICT Knowledge and Innovation Community http://www.eitictlabs.eu/ . The EIT ICT KIC has five co-location centres based in Helsinki, Eindhoven, Stockholm, Berlin and Trento. London and Budapest will join as associate partners. The KIC has thirteen action lines http://www.eitictlabs.eu/action-lines/ including Digital Cities. Calls will be announced under these action lines in 2013 and a Digital City event will take place in March in Paris which give an update on previous activities. http://www.eitictlabs.eu/ict-labs/all-events/article/digital-cities-of-the-future-worskhop-paris/.

The role of the Digital Cities action line is to produce  tools that can be used for smart cities such as: infrastructure to offer large-scale telecommunication systems to facilitate data exchange; the provision of distributed schemes for scalable systems aiming at large numbers of participants; optimized data management; identification, security and privacy; customized and new intelligent services and business model innovation, etc.

Again Khaldoun Al Agha emphasised the citizen aspect of smart cities. We need to develop smart citizens and there seems to be various models from top down perspectives such as Rio de Janeiro to more bottom up models developed by bloggers, and independent citizens. The ICT KIC is developing a hybrid model between the two.

Presentations can be found here.

al with the cities immediate and future challenges.

The context for these challenges, are not dissimilar to other cities – we need to move to a low carbon economy and adapt to climate change; as
more and more people live in cities and population increases, we need to get better at managing our resources such as energy and housing; the financial situation has compounded many of the inequalities of the city; some of the areas of the city are extremely deprived; wages are lower, more people are unemployed, and the health outcome of residents are poorer in these places.

Technological change brings big opportunities to offer new exciting solutions for new services provision – that supports better integration across service providers to enable a shared and connected approach, stimulates innovation by SMEs and responds to and informs changes in consumer choice and behaviour – all leading to a better quality of life and more jobs.

We have a real opportunity to constructs a coherent and viable future for our city and position ourselves to maximise the opportunities that it brings. We don’t underestimate the challenge this presents, but believe that with the right collaboration and working closely with our partners that we can do this together.

There are seven key priority areas of our roadmap to becoming a Smart City. These look at how we make better use of the city’s data to improve lives; support new business models and innovation for SMEs and entrepreneurs; enable a more joined up approach across sectors such as transport, energy and health and support and empower our business and citizens to help shape and jointly design services.

• Leadership/ownership: The Smart City roadmap must strategically be led at the highest level, but also fully embrace communities, businesses and citizens at a grass roots level to help shape and jointly-design services.
• Exploiting technologies: Birmingham needs to develop ultra-fast digital connectivity, to attract inward investment. A Smart Development Blueprint will shape this plan.
• Service transformation: Working together, sharing all available data
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  to modernise services so issues are anticipated and prevented rather than reacted to and fixed. This will deliver more personalised and targeted services for citizens.

• New information marketplaces: Promoting an ‘Open Data’ agenda for the council and others in recognition of the fact that maximising the use of high-quality information can help improve services and develop new opportunities for entrepreneurs.
• Supporting innovation: Reviewing public procurement practices to encourage new ideas, along with the creation of an innovative development fund.
• Closing the digital divide: Affordable connectivity and improving existing skills are vital to capitalise on the opportunities the Smart City agenda offers.
• Profiling and influencing: Developing ways in which the city’s many organisations can work together to champion Birmingham as a Smart City in the areas of enterprise and social collaboration to make the city an attractive location to invest in

Please take a look at the Vision statement – an online version of the Smart City Vision Statement is available here.

We are keen to have your views on this, particularly to have your involvement in helping to shape the more detailed roadmap and action plan that will follow on from this. The aim is to have this completed by summer 2013 and we will be working with business, third sector and communities to shape what this looks like. Any thoughts or for more information email us at: smartcity@birmingham.gov.uk

Finally, we would like to thank the Smart Commission members, that have given their time to help shape and define what this vision looks like and the momentum this presents to build our future Birmingham together.

Back in June, we were approached to see how we could support the YRS Festival 2012, after it had outgrown its previous location in Bletchley and bring it to Birmingham. Through the hard work of many people, particularly Lara Ratnaraja and Big Cat, the Custard Factory and Birmingham, became home to the YRS Festival for the very first time.

Cllr McKay, Cabinet Member for Green, Safe and Smart City at the Show and Tell

This was a great coup for Birmingham; not only do we have the youngest population out of all the cities in Europe (so capturing the talent and ingenuity of young people resonates really well with us), but also the Open Data agenda is right at the heart of our Smart City programme. Ensuring data is open and accessible and easier to use will enable huge possibilities in the development of new apps, services and innovative products as part of this.

YRS 2012 proved just that. With access to open data and a week of intensive coding by youngsters (nigh on 500, some as young as 7!), at different centres across the country – we had a centre in Birmingham, courtesy of BCU (Millennium Point), something amazing took place. The culmination of all the hard work and late nights, ended with a massive sleepover session at the Custard Factory on Friday night  (fuelled by some 200 pizza’s) and show and tell on Saturday.

Their creations, along with the presentations were awe inspiring – postcode wars app; a way to go were some of the winners -100 projects from 38 centres; but for me it does drive home the need for us to get our data out there, and let nature do the rest.

Our thanks to Emma and her team for a brilliant event.  YRS is living proof of what is possible, highlights the significance of supporting young people to develop the skills needed for the jobs of the future and provides a great concept that we would like to explore and develop further in Birmingham.

Discover – Digital Skills for carers was launched at a Carers Celebration which took place on the 21st June 2012 at the New Bingley Hall in Birmingham, England. The event was put together by the Birmingham Carers Centre in recognition of the positive difference all carers, both formal and informal in Birmingham, make to those that they care for and in the long run, the communities that they live in. It was great to see so many carers, of varying ages, nationalities and backgrounds joining hands to celebrate all that they do well!

Digital Birmingham were proud to launch Discover, on behalf of all Partners, at this event. We spoke to an array of people who were keen to learn more about the project and what incentives and qualifications it may be able to offer them and how this could better their lives in the long run. The key thing that both Annette and I observed was that a majority of carers were keen to have some sort of involvement in future trials, however dependent on what their personal situations were like at the time.

Overall a successful launch – A big thumbs up to Tina Donovan, Manager of Birmingham Carers Centre and all of her Partners in arranging a hugely successful event to mark the end of the UK’s National Carers week. If you would like to sign up for updates on the project, please go to http://www.discover4carers.eu for more information.

Click here to view our activity report f

rom

April 2011 to March 2012, there has been a slight delay in this being published due to local changes within the City!

Smart approaches to services such as healthcare, transport, utilities and waste management have the potential to transform the efficiency and sustainability of urban communities, improving the quality of life for citizens through significant reductions in both cost of service provision and in carbon emissions.

Though a complex issue, current thinking suggests the scale of potential benefits increases if the City adopts an integrated or holistic approach to delivery.

To address these risks and ensure the technology fulfils its potential, The British Standards Institution has been commissioned by the UK Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) to formulate a Smart Cities Standards Strategy. This strategy identifies the needs and concerns of stakeholders and explores the Smart Cities concept.

Smart Cities will also create opportunities for UK businesses to establish a lead in the design, implementation and management of Smart Cities both nationally and internationally.

BIS will be holding a series of workshops, a key opportunity for you to influence the way standards might be developed to meet your needs or concerns :

1 - Those representing

users of Smart City solutions (including regulators, privacy and consumer groups, researchers, academics) – 29 May 2012

2 - Those supplying Smart City solutions (including manufacturers, system integrators, service / utility providers, consortia, consultancies, researchers, academics) – 31 May 2012

Attendance is free for everyone, but places are limited. Find out more, please click here.