Smart City 101 – Pathways to Effective and Sustainable Smart City Projects

Leading municipalities across the globe are exploring avenues through which their communities will become smarter and more connected. With municipalities pursuing various approaches with respect to their "Smart City" objectives, it is not easy to determine the best approach for your community--indeed, the first steps to take are not always immediately clear.

Starting with an overview of the term "Smart City" – what it is and why there is so much buzz around the term, this course is designed to provide municipal leaders and their partners with a framework for smart city planning that course participants can apply in their community. Course participants will consider questions including:

• What is Smart City?
• What constitutes a Smart City project?
• Around what issues do experts agree and disagree when it comes to Smart City deployments?
• How are local governments and their project partners evaluating the Return-on-Investment (ROI) and Impact of Smart City Projects?
• What are some of the most helpful Smart City resources for local governments and their partners?

After an overview discussion, the course focuses on Smart City planning. Drawing heavily from the instructor's first-hand experience working with municipal leaders in their efforts to plan and deploy smart city projects, the course will consider questions including the following:

• What are the use cases and/or Smart City applications that are driving smart city deployments in leading municipalities across the globe?
• How does my community determine the best first steps with respect to smart city projects?
• What is the value of stakeholder engagement with respect to Smart City planning?
• What are the keys to effective Smart City stakeholder engagement?
• How to create an effective Smart City Steering Committee?

Instructor will provide an overview of specific examples of activities undertaken by leading municipalities. For example:

• Developing a Smart City Plan/Roadmap
• Pursuing Funding Opportunities
• Hosting Smart City Hack-a-Thons

Outcomes: Course participants will engage in an ideation exercise through which they will identify members of a Smart City Steering Committee for a specific community and existing projects that might be incorporated into a community's Smart City plan.

Who should attend? Municipal leaders and their project partners from industry, academia and the not-for-profit sector with an interest in advancing "smart city" planning efforts will find value in participating in this course.

The course will also provide an overview of effective smart city projects across the globe and will identify best practices and trends expected to drive the smart city sector in 2018 and beyond. For this reason, interested parties including entrepreneurs, software application developers and investors are also encouraged to join the course.

About the Instructor

William Maguire
Founder, Connected Communities LLC

Bill Maguire is founder of Connected Communities Consulting LLC, a firm that supports efforts by municipal leaders to plan, execute and realize their smart city objectives.

Bill also serves as a consultant to US Ignite, an independent 501(c)3 non-profit with a mission to foster the creation of next-generation Internet applications for transformative public benefit. In this capacity, Bill has worked to advance the private-public partnerships at the core of the Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) initiative, a $100 million opportunity for communities to host an advanced wireless research network. Bill has also acted as program manager for the Global City Team Challenge, a partnership between NIST and US Ignite through which more than 100 teams are working on collaborative deployments of Internet of Things technologies in a smart city environment.

Formerly, Bill served as Chief of Staff for the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Through the $4.7 billion BTOP program, NTIA supported the deployment of 100,000 new and upgraded fiber network miles connecting 20,000 anchor institutions, including more than 10,000 K-12 schools.

Bill is a graduate of Reed College and of Union Theological Seminary in New York. Bill's recent publications include: The Next Gen Classroom: Spectrum Policies for the 21st Century Classroom and FCC's Healthcare Connect Fund: Key Considerations for Rural Healthcare Consortia.