Posts Tagged ‘Digital Birmingham’

Final preparations are underway, yes even at this time of the night, for the first Stakeholder event of 2012 – Birmingham: The Ticket to a Smart Connected City tomorrow.

The event aims to discuss the smart city agenda and key developments in Brum with interactive participation from the audience. Click here to view agenda.

Follow us on Twitter via #SmartBrum

We’ll also be streaming live (with special thanks to @civicolive), watch this space for the link up details!

Digital Birmingham will be hosting Digital Unite‘s second National Social Housing Forum in Birmingham this Thursday 1 December 2011 from 10.30 – 15.30 at Maple House.

The aim of the forum is to look at ways to support digital inclusion activities for residents and tenants. There will be hardware, software and connectivity suppliers there (BT, Avonline and Networked Neighbourhoods are amongst a few) plus social housing providers to explore how services can be better tailored to benefit your organisation.

Places are complimentary but limited, so if you’d like to attend, please email kathy.valdes@digitalunite.com

Again we’ve been busy with the preparation of funding bids  and supporting the support the three city Council priorities; Employment, Education & Skills,  Clean Green & Safe City and Protecting Vulnerable People with a strong focus on raising the profile of Birmingham.

Please click here to read the second quarterly update of what’s happening in the world of Digi Brum!

Last week, Robert Bell, Founder of the Intelligent Communities Forum and Lluis Olivella, Joint Director of IT (and Former CIO) for the City of Barcelona joined strategic leads and key decision makers in Birmingham for a Smart Cities Symposium.

The Symposium stimulated exchange and discussion to progress Birmingham’s Smart Connected City ambition, that will be key to accelerating Birmingham and the region’s economic opportunities and growth.

This is the start of a series of activities to deliver a long term vision and roadmap to enable a transformational step change in how we deliver services, do business and live our lives.

Yesterday, Annette attended the Digital Inclusion Social Housing Forum which was held in Microsoft’s offices in London and hosted Digital Unite.The aim of the workshop was to work with social housing providers to identify how they could get their tenants online.

Annette gave a presentation to the group around things that Birmingham is already doing; the Windor Tower project, 4G network proposal and explained the benefits of Looking Local ie Birmingham’s Interactive Digital TV channel.

The forum talked about the barriers for people on low income and how some of these can be addressed by looking at different funding models ie PAYG/sponsored models. There was an appetite for social housing providers to get together to procure services as a whole rather than individually to ensure that they get better value for their clients; which included procuring affordable digital equipment for the tenant and broadband access.

It was suggested that the next meeting be held in Birmingham and hosted by Digital Birmingham, dates will be posted shortly.

We have a couple of updates on EU bids that the Digital Birmingham team have submitted in the last few months:

DISCOVER is through to next round!
Our proposal for the EU CIP Call 5 which looked at “Digital Inclusion Skills for Carers bringing Opportunities, Value and Excellence” has passed the first evaluation and is one of two bids being looked at favourably for funding.

Networking intelligent Cities for Energy Efficiency
The EUROCITIES NiCE FP7 proposal has been accepted and negotiations are now in progress. The project will directly support the delivery of the Green Digital Charter, of which Birmingham is a signatory. This will include development of a framework for reporting the ICT carbon footprint and including ICT related carbon reductions as part of the Covenant of Mayors and learning exchanges with other cities.

Watch this space for further updates…

History provides many examples of great ‘Firsts’. Chuck Yeager – the first person to break the sound barrier by flying faster than the speed of sound; Neil Armstrong – the first man to walk on the moon; Sir Roger Bannister – the first man to break the 4-minute mile; Alexander Bell – first in the race to invent the telephone.

Now I’m not suggesting that taking the first tentative steps towards making Birmingham the first City in the UK to have a Citywide 4G wireless network is even close to flying to the moon, but having being heavily involved with developing the 4G proposal for Birmingham, it does fill me with immense excitement on the glimpse into the future that it holds.

The demand by consumers for data ‘on the go’ is now at an all time high and this demand will only continue to travel in one direction……UP. With more and more businesses and people  using smart phones and tablet devices, networks are struggling to meet the demand and 4G technology holds the potential to solve that problem. It also offers potential to enable services to be delivered in new and innovative ways; just imagine …virtual visits from your doctor, real time CCTV on public transport, live streaming of high definition video whilst commuting to work. More – Birmingham unveils it’s 4G plans!

It’s been a busy three months for the DB team, see attached the first installment of our quarterly update April – June 2011.

Image courtesy of Daimler AG

Yesterday Raj Mack attended the award ceremony for the European Award of Excellence “City for Children” held in Stuttgart as part of their Annual Conference Cities for Children where the innovative Keeping IT in the Family initiative was named as winner in category 2 (training for parents and educators). Led by Digital Birmingham, the initiative was created in 2008 as a way of bridging the digital divide – getting children within some of the city’s less affluent areas to help teach their older relatives about how to use computers and other modern technologies for everyday tasks.

In winning the award, Birmingham has beaten stiff competition from across Europe, particularly Munich and Nis and it’s a real boost to see Keeping IT in the Family recognised in this way. It has proven to be an excellent scheme that has passed knowledge across the generations as well as being transferable to other towns and cities in the UK and beyond.

Please click here to view images from the two day event.