Updates

Startupbootcamp, the global accelerator for Smart City & Living startups has announced the 11 startups that will join its acceleration program in Amsterdam this April. The 11 companies were selected from the Top 18 teams that made it to Startupbootcamp’s Selection Days in Amsterdam on 21st and 22nd of March, after a 3 month-long scouting phase and the evaluation of over 400 applications from FastTrack events across Europe and the Middle East.

The 10 selected startups and a Startup in Residence cover various aspects of the Smart City & Living sector including Smart Mobility, Smart Working, Waste Management, Smart Society, and Urban Planning. They will go through three months of rigorous mentorship and training in the Startupbootcamp Smart City & Living accelerator program and join 404 startups that have already been accelerated by Startupbootcamp programs globally.

The intense 3-month-long program beginning in April will provide startups with a structured mentorship, masterclasses, partner days and strategic guidance regarding their investment and business opportunities. Throughout the accelerator program, the startups will benefit from partnerships with Cisco, Vodafone, Schiphol, Centraal Beheer, Eneco, Delta Lloyd, ING, PwC, TomTom, Ricoh and Unica, which will allow them access to potential customers, industry data, and investments, with the ultimate goal of becoming industry-leading companies on their own.

The accelerator program will culminate on the 20th of July with a Demo Day, where the 11 teams will be invited to present their work to 400+ investors, mentors, partners and media.

As a global supporter of Startupbootcamp, Cisco supports the structural acceleration of innovation and helps to contribute to a better startup ecosystem. According to Hendrik Blokhuis, the Program Director of Cisco's Digitale Versnelling Nederland (Digital Acceleration, The Netherlands): "More investments will be made in the form of expertise and resources to stimulate this acceleration even further."

“Smart technologies are those based on chips or Artificial Intelligence that can behave in intelligent ways. The future economic potential of such technologies is enormous, especially in industries such as education, health, and urban planning. Our new startups are breaking new grounds in these fields,” said Marc Wesselink, Managing Director of Startupbootcamp Smart City & Living.

Patrick de Zeeuw, co-founder of Startupbootcamp Global said, “We’ve been empowering innovators since 2010 and it is great to be able to welcome a new cohort of Smart City & Living startups here in Amsterdam. We see a massive potential from this area of technology startups.”

Startups Participating
Coavmi (France) - Coavmi is a flight-sharing platform to connect private pilots with passengers willing to share the same flight and its costs.
KAKIS positive sanitation (Slovenia) - KAKIS positive sanitation offers outdoor wooden composting toilets that are very user-friendly and that provide a perfect natural circle without waste.
Leave Your Luggage (Netherlands) - Leave Your Luggage facilitates an easy online solution for travelers who don’t want to drag their luggage with them to the airport.
Mahlzeit (Germany) - Mahlzeit is an application service that helps canteens to reconnect with their daily guests and improve their gastronomy experiences.
Mr. Clouseau (Netherlands) - Mr. Clouseau utilizes a wireless IoT data network to provide our future customers with a carefree and low-cost product to track their bicycles and other valuables.
Onh (Israel) - Onh is a web platform providing control over facility maintenance for inspectors and contractors by supervising maintenance checks.
Orkestro (United Kingdom) - Orkestro connects online retailers with local on-demand couriers which helps businesses assign and track their local deliveries and rapidly scale delivery operations.
Porter (Portugal) - With Porter your smartphone is the new digital keychain, replacing all your keys and keycards.
Rolling Promotion (Latvia) - Rolling Promotion facilitates transparent advertisements in the city by placing banners on bikes and providing detailed reports of the recorded GPS data.
SharePeople (Netherlands) - SharePeople offers entrepreneurs the possibility to have cheap access to incapacity income, combined with a fun way of personal development.
Xseed, Startup in Residence (Netherlands) - Xseed developed a self-learning algorithm that protects your business projects against the errors that always infect, drive up costs and push back delivery dates.

Nano Clay for a sustainable future

Looking for support to get funds for this great idea, patents over 40 countries
including Africa, UAE, India and China

call me on 0031 -06 532 40 595

Making Smart Cities Green, from you balcony in Amsterdam towards the dry garden plots in Dubai, from wet sand and dry desert sand

results changing sand to fertile soil with us:
-education and agricultural jobs with Universities
-less water needed to grow plant and crop roots 400% faster
-more trees for transforming carbonoxide to oxygen
-more fruit and vegetables for poor people
-better compost, more energy opportunities
-opportunity for growth saltwater and sweetwater plants
-nanoclay can be used for plants outdoor and indoor at schools, roof gardens, parks and beaches
-non toxic method for faster organic growth
-legal in all areas
-patented for more than 20 years
-sustainabillity fro farmers, greenhouse and land turnkey projects
-market size more than 50 Billion $ market for agricultural support and solution to world wide access of better soil
-ROI is huge for every 1$ the return of fertile soil and crops for trade are 2$ gross profit
(1:3) sales conversion

Electric vehicles, local renewable energy and smart ICT systems enable the city’s energy transition. This conference provides solutions to advance the transition, focusing on concrete experiences and emerging innovations.

The emphasis is on possibilities, costs and benefits, regulations and what bottle necks need to be cleared in the near future. Stakeholders from government, business, knowledge centres and electricity distribution demonstrate and discuss latest insights to implement systems, seek partners and collaborations, and realise the ambitions of Europe’s cities.

We are hosting the launch event for SEEV4-City, a project co-funded by the EU North Sea Region Programme with 7 operational pilot projects.

For more information and to register, please visit the website amsterdamV2Gconference.eu

Dear startuper,

You have created an innovative product or service related to parking in urban areas? No more hesitation, the ALD Startup Challenge is made for you!

The winning startup will sign a partnership contract setting a minimum value of 20 000 euros to experiment its project in one of the 41 countries where the group ALD Automotive is established.

https://www.agorize.com/en/challenges/ald-startup-challenge

Bedrijven en kennisinstellingen kunnen tot 1 mei subsidie aanvragen voor projecten die innovatie bevorderen. Binnen het Europese innovatieprogramma voor de Metropoolregio Amsterdam is een budget beschikbaar van 8 miljoen euro.

De call is onderdeel van het EFRO-programma Kansen voor West, dat zich richt op het versterken van de regionale economie.
De projecten die in aanmerking komen voor financiering moeten het innovatiesysteem in de metropoolregio versterken en verbreden en zich focussen op kennisvalorisatie. Ook fieldlabs zijn een speerpunt. Dit zijn praktijkomgevingen waar bedrijven en kennisinstellingen innovatieve oplossingen ontwikkelen en testen.

Samenwerking staat centraal, niet alleen tussen bedrijven en kennisinstellingen, maar ook tussen sectoren. Crossovers in bijvoorbeeld agro & food, creatieve industrie, energie, life sciences & health, kunnen innovatie kansen opleveren die bijdragen aan maatschappelijke uitdagingen in de regio.
Voorbeeld van een gesubsidieerd project is het Green Innovation Cluster, dat als doel heeft innovatie in de tuinbouwsector rondom Amsterdam te stimuleren. Er zijn 12 concrete projecten ontwikkeld voor het duurzaam versterken van deze sector.
Een ander voorbeeld is het Imaging Center Amsterdam. Het VUmc is gestart met de bouw van het center, dat onderdak biedt aan een hightech radio-chemisch laboratorium dat geneesmiddelen en therapie op maat ontwikkelt. Het project Tracing & Trading brengt de universiteit samen met het bedrijfsleven in dit laboratorium.

Organisaties kunnen tot 1 mei 2017 een subsidieaanvraag indienen. Een onafhankelijke deskundigencommissie beoordeelt de aanvragen inhoudelijk op een aantal criteria. De commissie kijkt niet alleen naar de projecten zelf maar ook naar wat er daarna gebeurt: Is er een daadwerkelijk marktperspectief? Hoe ziet de business case er werkelijk uit?

Met het EFRO Programmabureau Amsterdam kunt u uw projectidee bespreken.
U kunt bij hen terecht voor het toetsen van een idee of de beoordeling van concept projectinitiatieven. Het e-mailadres is KansenvoorWest@ez.amsterdam.nl.

People in staff functions in business feel they need tailer-made education. It will not take long before people engaged in smart city governance and management will feel the same need. As fas as I know, an educational institution in Slovenia is the first who is offering a dedicated master program in smart city management. I wonder whether a program like this will inspire other institutions. Personally I rather prefer that educational institutions in European smart cities develop and deliver one program together. Of course, such a program should be smart too by deploying advanced e-learning and by collaborative projects by learners from several countries.

Interesting read on the social en economic value of building intelligent urban spaces #adamsmartcity

On Monday afternoon, April 3 2017, Let it Grow is organising a commercial event from 13.00-16.30 at her Greenhouse Festival. This day focuses on the future: your future! Together with start-ups who are working in new ways with flowers and plants, our futurologist and a business audience we celebrate how the entrepreneurs of tomorrow will stimulate greening of the urban landscape. Don't miss it, register now!

A nice overview of the trends, highlights and more!

Becoming a high-performance organisation without managers is challenging but can result in maximising the deployment of all member's qualities. However achieving this goal requires de-learning an re-learning. Therefore the training at March 28th in Utrecht might be a first step

The city of London has unveiled a business plan to become a circular economy. Hopefully Amsterdam and London can learn from each other?!

The company I am working for is looking for personal stories, information concerning the positive aspects of tourism. Tourism is being displayed in a negative way a lot. We want to show that tourism can be a good thing, that every city can benefit from tourism. We need your help. Contact me if you want to know more or if you have a story or information for me about this subject. Thanks!

This is my first contribution to the theme Governance and Education as brand-new curator of ASC

Close your eyes and imagine a large industrial site at the end of the 19th century. 1000's of labourers are sitting behind sewing machines.
Still keep your eyes closed and imagine a lecture hall, you see again rows and rows of students who hurry to copy the words of the teacher.
The resemblance is clear. The difference too: The industrial site is history; the lecture hall is present time.

The problem is that universities failed to adapt their educational methods to the massive growth of the number of students. As a consequence, the small classrooms of the past made room for the lecture halls of the present. The ability to deliver quality is under pressure.

Quality in higher education is connected with the realization of two major learning outcomes:
• Ability to apply and to discuss scientific knowledge, together with an awareness of inherent philosophical and epistemological issues.
• Competences to analyse, critically reflect, and solve real live-problems, deploying scientific methods.

The majority of contemporary universities are realizing these outcomes only partially. As far as universities are aware they blame government because of insufficient funding. I do not expect any substantial change in this respect. Besides, universities better economize themselves first.

Universities must face reality and improve the quality of their education and deal with a growing and ever more differentiated student population, while funding will remain about equal.

This challenge can be solved only by become smart, which means that universities have to innovate, in particular by deploying ICT.

Universities can economize by flipping their classrooms radically and supporting their students in choosing appropriate open educational resources. At this time, online content covers any part of scientific knowledge. The best scientists are involved in their development and educational technologists have designed the best visual support. Delivering feedback at student's assignments are the only expenses left.

Digital sources are able to contribute significantly to the active acquisition of knowledge, the first of the two yardsticks for quality in higher education of higher education.
But what about the second one: The competence to analyse, reflect and solve real live-problems deploying scientific methods.
This objective definitely goes beyond the capabilities of open educational resources.

The one way to develop this competency is engaging students in independent work, like writing theses and doing projects, preferably in collaboration with institutions outside the university. Projects might be executed in small groups and students learn to deal with real problems and their owners.

Of course students need expert teachers' supervision. After having reduced their activities with respect to knowledge transfer significantly, teachers will have sufficient time to act as project supervisors and most will love it.

Well done Rotterdam! Thanks for the inspiration.
Traffic lights for cyclists with heat sensors!