That was the main question we talked about September 14 at the FuW Forum in Zurich. Sharing learnings and exchanging ideas and experiences is of great value. To learn from each other, align and get inspired. That is why Amsterdam Smart City hosts a lot of international groups in our Smart City Lab and sometimes visits interesting international conferences to share our story.
The FuW Forum in Zurich had a very interesting line-up with speakers from all over the world. It was an honour for me to give an inspirational key note on behalf of Amsterdam Smart City. The message I wanted to get across: "Don't overestimate technology. Smart technology offers great opportunities but to make it work we have to make a whole ecosystem work. And that means cooperate, listen to each other, help each other, fail, learn, adapt, try different perspectives.....All so called 'soft' skills that we need to combine with a world of bits and bytes. That is where the real challenge lies. To overcome these issues a world in transition needs an independent and neutral place, where changemakers can meet interact and start working together.” An exciting message to bring being at Google headquarters. But I was glad to hear that most speakers and participants saw smart technology as a means to an end instead of a goal in itself.
Below some interesting quotes of other speakers:
Prem Ramaswami – Google
"We invented the technology of cars to move from A to B and now we spend most of the time standing still in the traffic – 42% of the cities are parking lots."
Ute Schneider - Technical University Wien
"We only start moving, when it really hurts"
Silke C. - Fraunhofer Gesellschaft
“At the moment, data is not fully exploited, the data is distributed everywhere and cannot be brought together, there is a lack of trust – that is why a European governance is now being built."
Salomé Mall - Smart City Lab Basel
"The real estate industry is not mobile, it needs innovation to bridge the next crisis."
Markus Schläpfer - ETH Zurich
"If we measure and understand human flows, we can use this for transport, infrastructure and the use of modern technologies.”
And Audrey Tang, Taiwan's Digital Minister
"With the first Ministry of Digital Affairs we encourage the digital collaborative democracy between government and people - we must trust each other going into future live.”
