The Changing Landscape of #SmartCities

Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief

Sandra Baer is the President of Personal Cities — a smart city company focused on innovation and stakeholder engagement. Not only is she a champion of creative collaboration between the public and private sectors; her firm delivers strategic advice to cities and companies that builds trust and accelerates the deployment of innovative technologies.

sandra baer personal cities

Sandra is a particularly in-demand and busy speaker, so we are doubly glad that we have secured her for our event, ‘The City Briefing: Smart Cities‘ which takes place 14:00-17:00 on Wednesday November 30, 2016.

Back in September she presented at the VERGE Summit, Santa Clara, CA, on ‘Why Technology Procurement is Broken and how to Fix it‘ and in early October was again in action at the Greencities Summit, Malaga, Spain presenting on ‘Digital Strategies to Accelerate Stakeholder Engagement, From Rhetoric to Action: Strategies to Accelerate Smart Cities‘ and only last week in fact (November 11) Sandra gave the keynote presentation on Smart Cities at the Placemaking Symposium held at the University of Dundee, Scotland.

At our #SmartCities City Briefing Sandra will talk about the ‘Changing Landscape of Smart Cities‘. Sandra has a new definition of a smart city that focuses on the critical elements of a successful smart city and its leadership, including the characteristics of savvy city leaders. Based on her extensive experience she will describe the requirements that cities around the world are going to have to meet in order to build prosperous, livable cities.

The case studies that she will present will demonstrate the need for: a smart city executive committee, strengthened outreach and new collaborations to include all stakeholders.

When we last met, she told us “I believe that savvy leaders understand the importance of communicating a city’s character more than a brand image, a city should understand its sense of place and work to help people who live, work, play and visit a city. From safety and security to transportation schedules to way finding for city venues to learning about city events and becoming ‘comfortable’ in an urban environment‹all of these elements can come together to make citizens and visitors happy to be in a city that understands their needs”.

Sandra, who is an effective advocate for strengthening a city’s image — engaging the community ecosystem to make every city more prosperous, has previously served as Senior Director for Alliances at the Smart Cities Council where she was responsible for leading engagement with government and civic leaders in cities around the globe.

Other speaking engagements Sandra has lined up over the next few months include; Kuwait City, Global 2016, where she will be leading a workshop on Smart Cites (November 16); Porto, Portugal, where she was invited to join a Smart City International Delegation (November 18-20) and early next year she will be speaking in Doha, Qatar, on Smart Cities at QITCOM (January 23, 2017).

Sandra will be speaking at ‘The City Briefing: Smart Cities‘ which takes place 14:00-17:00 on Wednesday November 30, 2016 in the lecture theatre of the world’s largest law firm, Dentons.

Tickets cost GBP 96.17 and registration can be found here

#ff @sandrambaer @dhuelsermann @matt_teeman @primesight @LinkUKconnect


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