Turning a town into a smart city. Would you help?

In just a few days from now, me and half a dozen other colleagues will facilitate the `JCI Smart City Challenge 2016’. A day-long massive brainstorming session between citizens, companies, town officials and academics. The goal? Unlock as many creative and innovative ideas that could improve life in the city of Ghent. My home town!

This is the start of an 18 month-long sustainability project. And we’re proud to support it as Delaware Consulting.

Turning a town into a smart city

With over half of the global population living in cities now, the city has become the crucial hub in facing the challenges of our time. With so many people living so closely together, there’s a huge opportunity to do some good. Or at least, do things better than we do now. That’s why JCI Gent Artevelde launched the `Smart Cities Platform’. With a group of colleagues at Delaware Consulting, we’ll support them in achieving their objectives.

Co-creating the smart city

You can only build a smart city when a lot of smart people are involved. The Smart City Challenge 2016 brings together citizens, companies, administrators from the town and academics in one big brainstorming session. During this, we’ll try to capture as many relevant ideas around 7 topics: Smart Energy, Smart Living, Smart Food, Smart Mobility, Smart Governance, Smart Citizens and Smart Economy.

Over 140 people have signed up for the event, making it fully booked! As Delaware Consulting, we’ll co-host and steer the sessions throughout the day, making sure everyone gets his say.

It’s absolutely thrilling and exciting to be part of such a vibrant and high-energetic event.

The proof of the pudding

What begins with a massive brainstorm, continues throughout 2016 and 2017. Once the best ideas have been captured, teams will be assembled to create actual prototypes and PoCs (proof of concepts). These will be presented in September 2017, during the follow-up event called `Tomorrow Ghent 2017’.

As Delawarians, we’ll also provide support throughout the project.

WIIFD

Maybe you’re wondering: why is a commercial organisation like Delaware Consulting taking on such a commitment? Or: WIIFD (What’s In It For Delaware)?

But to me, this commitment wasn’t a big surprise. As a company, we’ve always been very conscious about the social responsibility that we have. And a perfect way to show that, is by being fully involved in a project that could benefit the city where we opened our most recent (and biggest) office: Ghent. We can do business here because of the great infrastructure and solid support of the town and its inhabitants. So it only makes sense to give something back as well!

And being able to be part of that, as a proud inhabitant of Ghent and a proud employee of Delaware Consulting, is absolutely great!

Counting down

If you want to become part of the Smart City Challenge 2016 or Tomorrow Ghent 2017? Visit the JCI website, or, if you’re a Delaware Consulting colleague, get in touch with me.

I’ll report on our progress via regular blogs. Stay tuned for regular updates!

In the meantime: show your support by liking us or retweeting our updates.

Greetings from the (soon to be) smartest city of them all: Ghent!

 Author: Dries Storme. You can connect with Dries on LinkedIn.