Diversity & Inclusion

What does ‘smart city’ mean to Philadelphia?

Want to help local government plan city services in the IoT age? Join this Tech in the Commons event Wednesday night.

Philadelphia City Hall. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

The next century of living in Philadelphia (or any city, really) will be drastically transformed by the different ways technology enters the picture.

For local governments, that will mean finding solutions to the city’s problems and cranking up efficiencies across the board.

But what does that mean for citizens, and how can they participate in the process?

Technologists and the public at large can get an answer to those queries on Wednesday, May 30, at the first project night of Tech in the Commons, our sister site Generocity’s free tech bootcamp series for nonprofits, presented by the Knight Foundation and Comcast NBCUniversal.

Register

Happening at the City of Philadelphia’s Innovation Lab in the Municipal Services Building, the three-hour program will be led by Ellen Hwang, assistant director of strategic initiatives in the Office of Innovation Management.

Last year,Philadelphia was awarded a grant on “smart city readiness” from the Smart Cities Council, which included in-kind financial support from the Council to develop a roadmap for applying smart technologies, as well as ongoing guidance from the Council and access to products and services. For its part, Comcast is investing in smart-city technology via its machineQ initiative. Here are some machineQ projects hacked together by local technologists last June.

Companies: City of Philadelphia

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