IntelligentBuildings® Ballantyne Village Named Global Top 3
Intelligent Community Forum Announces Finalists for 2006 Awards – to be presented at Polytechnic University, NY
The Intelligent Community Forum announced the finalists for its annual Intelligent Community of the Year Awards. The awards will be presented at a luncheon ceremony on June 9 at the Marriott Brooklyn Bridge Hotel during the second day of the ICF’s annual conference in New York. The 2006 edition of “Building the Broadband Economy” will again be produced in association with the Institute for Technology & Enterprise at Polytechnic University with support from underwriters including IBM, New York Grant Company, InnerWireless and Intel Corporation. The conference takes place at the MetroTech campus of Polytechnic University, one mile from lower Manhattan. The 150 year-old school, home to the first campus-wide wireless network in New York City, has a history of achievement in areas such as radar, microwave technology and advanced telecommunications, and has produced three Nobel Prize winners.
The Intelligent Community Awards are presented in four categories to the Intelligent Community, Intelligent Community Visionary, Intelligent Community Technology and Intelligent Building of the Year. ICF will present its first Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006 as well.
Nearly 200 delegates from around the world, including Mayors, ambassadors from nations with intelligent communities, leading technology company executives, founders and CIOs of communities worldwide, will gather to meet and discuss ways that broadband communications is making a practical but profound impact on the infrastructure, economy, businesses, governments and social growth in their regions. Delegates are expected from China, India, Canada, France, Japan and Portugal to listen to best practices and case studies.
Founder of Blackberry to Keynote
James Balsillie, Chairman and Co-CEO of Research in Motion (RIM), founder of the Blackberry device, will be one of the keynote speakers at the conference.
The Canadian Consul General of New York and the Province of Ontario will host a reception honoring the Top Seven Intelligent Communities and the finalists of the three other awards on the evening of June 8th at the Bank of New York in Lower Manhattan.
ICF Lifetime Achievement Award – William G. Hutchison
In addition, the ICF’s first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award will be given to William G. Hutchison, P.Eng. Hutchison’s whose work as the Founding Chairman of CANARIE, Inc. produced the world’s longest national ultra-broadband communications network (CAnet4). Hutchison, the Global Telecom Leader of Balaton Group, was named one of Canada’s Top 30 Movers and Shakers over the past 30 years in 2005. He has served as Founding Vice Chairman to the National Advisory Board for Science and Technology and CEO of Consolidated Companies, Inc. ICF will recognize his vital contribution to promoting the concept of the intelligent community to Canadian and international projects and audiences since the inception of the New York-based think tank.
The Finalists
The Finalists for the Intelligent Community Awards for 2006 include a sweep of the world’s activities in broadband communication and economic and social development.
Intelligent Building of the Year
University of Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. www.usherbrooke.ca. With two leading supercomputer sites on the international list of 500, the university has 63 buildings, including a newly-emerging C$120 million facility to house research teams and for the training of knowledge workers for enterprises, associations and corporations. The university, through its physical infrastructure, is cited for its contribution to global computing and for encouraging development of a knowledge workforce through its 25,000 students.
Ballantyne Village, Charlotte, North Carolina, United States. www.ballantynevillage.com. ICF cited phase one of the 160,000 square-foot mixed-use and lifestyle development project for its innovative use of community design and its infrastructure, which includes an advanced Cisco Connected Real Estate network, which automatically emails management when supplies run low, or energy meters require attention. The facility offers 6 mbps of broadband capacity, WiFi and IP POS services which are offered to tenants as a utility.
MaRS Discovery District, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. www.marsdd.com. Completing a North American sweep for the category, MaRS consists of two square kilometers in downtown Toronto in an area designated as the city’s Centre of Innovation. Toronto was among ICF’s Top Seven Intelligent Communities in 2005. The MaRS Centre, which includes three buildings, serves as a connecting point to foster collaboration between the business, scientific and financial communities. ICF cited MaRS as a development that would feed innovation and economic progress for the community.
Intelligent Community Technology of the Year
Cisco Systems IP Contact Center (IPCC) Technology. Cisco Systems, United States. www.cisco.com. Cited for its ability to facilitate “digital democracy” by making government broadband and communication systems more efficient, Cisco’s IPCC technology helps communities, including Sacramento, California (USA), to coordinate calls on a single platform, or foundation infrastructure, and to take advantage of wireless connectivity.
Automated Passenger Clearance (APC) and Automated Vehicle Clearance (AVC) Systems from Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Immigration Department, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, People’s Republic of China. www.immd.gov.hk. For the second year in a row, the Hong Kong SAR has a technology recognized by ICF as being worthy of its final three in this category. According to ICF, the combination of innovation from a governmental agency, and the importance to economic growth of the two systems (commonly referred to as “e-Channel”), enabled HKSAR to be recognized. ICF cited the role of broadband technology in processing the 13.6 billion people and 1.4 billion vehicles that pass through land immigration check points, and noted that the growth of the local economy depended on the efficiency by which people and vehicles were processed. A range of devices, including smart cards, scanners and data collection networks are continuously being examined for new innovations that support the emergence of Hong Kong as an intelligent community.
InTouch eCRM (Citizen Management System), MMI Internetworking, Fort Worth, Texas, United States. www.getintouchtoday.com. The technology developed by MMI Internetworking is used by local government agencies to capture and manage citizen requests. The browser- based software alerts citizens who have filed complaints or requested an answer from their local government of the status of the issue.
Intelligent Community Visionary of the Year
Three organizations that use broadband for a range of missions were identified by ICF for its annual Intelligent Community Visionary of the Year award.
Ministry of Communications, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan – Amirzai Sangin, Minister of Communications, Kabul, Afghanistan. www.moc.gov.af. ICF noted that Afghanistan is a nation that “has struggled through much of the 20th century to bring its people and its economy forward.” Through the use of satellite and other telecommunications infrastructure, put in place under the direction of His Excellency Amirzai Sangin, former CEO of Afghan Telecom, the nation has been able to conduct national elections, use the Internet and related applications successfully, and, despite its formidable challenges, has taken a critical step toward joining the Digital Age .
Digital Opportunity Trust – NetCorps Program. Janet Langmore, President. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. www.dotrust.org . NetCorps was cited by ICF for it role in developing information technology workers (which ICF refers to as “knowledge workers”) through training in many parts of the developing world. Acting as a “digital age Peace Corps,” DOT attempts to jump-start new IT businesses by providing the training and skills required for work in the 21st century. DOT use people locally and within the culture for the training.
Medical Missions for Children – Global Telemedicine & Teaching Network. Patterson, New Jersey, United States. Peg Brady, Executive Director. www.mmissions.org. Dedicated to serving the medical needs of extremely ill children in underserved American and international communities, Medical Missions for Children uses a satellite and Internet-centric platforms to enable real-time treatment of remote, critically ill children. Its Telemedicine & Teaching Network (GTTN) broadcasts an extensive program of continuing medical education and enhances dialogue among medical specialists in communities across the globe.
One selection from each of these groups of finalists will be named by ICF as the recipient during its annual luncheon on June 9th. The annual event will take place beginning at 1:00 PM (Eastern) at the Marriott Brooklyn Bridge Hotel, near Polytechnic University, site of the conference.
Intelligent Community of the Year – Top Seven Honored at the Bank of NY
In January 2006, at the annual Pacific Telecommunications Council conference in Honolulu, ICF announced its annual list of the Top Seven Intelligent Communities in the world. Each will send a delegation and representatives to next week’s conference, where they will be honored by the Canadian Consulate General and Province of Ontario at a reception for conference attendees on the evening of June 8 at the Bank of New York in Lower Manhattan. Throughout the conference the seven communities will speak in special “Conversations” session with ICF’s Director of Development, Louis Zacharilla.
In alphabetical order the Top Seven Intelligent Communities of 2005 are:
Cleveland, Ohio, United StatesGangnam District, Seoul, KoreaIchikawa, JapanManchester (Eastserve District), United KingdomTaipei, TaiwanTianjin, ChinaWaterloo, Ontario, Canada
The Intelligent Community of the Year is chosen through a combination of statistical analysis by Evalueserve, India, and voting from a committee of 35 people in every continent.
ICF noted that, while the Top Seven Intelligent Communities list is often viewed as a competitive ranking that is not its intent. ICF has developed a list of five Intelligent Community Indicators that provide the first global framework for understanding how communities and regions can leverage broadband and digital technologies to succeed in an economy that becomes more global by the day. The Top Seven are chosen, not because they excel in all of these areas, but because each demonstrates excellence in at least one or more of these criteria.
Because of the number of submissions, the complexity in evaluating the “most intelligent” and the wide range of cultures and approaches communities take to make the transformation to the Digital Age the ICF establishes a theme each year that enables a focused review for selection. In 2006 the theme for the Top Seven and Intelligent Community of the Year is “sustainability.”
“We believe our Intelligent Community Awards finalists and our Top Seven represent a powerful and useful snapshot of how the world’s communities, companies and institutions are adapting broadband communications to better serve their people, economies and cultures,” said ICF Chairman, John G. Jung. “ICF looked closely at whether the progress made represents progress which can be sustained, and has taken root for the future.”
Intelligent Community Forum
The Intelligent Community Forum (www.intelligentcommunity.org) is a global think tank, formed by World Teleport Association in 2000 that focuses on the uses of broadband and information technology for economic development by communities large and small. ICF conducts research, creates conferences, provides speakers, publishes newsletters and research and presents annual awards that give a significant profile to communities leading the way in the Digital Age.
