most actual, interesting and revealing interview with Umbrellium’s/Thingful CEO Usman Haque on smartness, smart cities, engagement, social factors and the criteria/preferences involved. This talk is part of a series ‘Building Engaging Spaces of the Future’ by Momenta.
Published in 2018, the text by Evgeny Morozov and Francesa Bria offers a clear vision and action doc on the current trend of declaring many cities ‘smart’. Their plea for a far more democratic and in-control situation is not a refusal of technological developments but for a rethinking of data-ownership  and  responsibility. “The authors discuss alternative smart city models, which rely on democratic data ownership regimes, grassroots innovation, and cooperative service provision models.”
On April 9th. 2015, the 4th. IoT, Built Environment & Smart City conference, now organized as a MeetUp, was held in Rotterdam, this year back on its original location, i.e. V2, Institute for the Unstable Media. Besides a fine line-up of speakers, among which Nimish Biloria (TUD-Hyperbody, Ben van Lier (Centric), Jan Belon (Buitengewone Zaken) , Floris Schiferli (Superuse), also one political party from Rotterdam (Nils Berndsen/D66) was present; which can only be admired, given the subject. Worthwhile in particular was the lecture (read by me due to her illness) from Cristina Ampatzidou; and especially the closing debate, moderated – like the whole event by Leon van Geest – delivered some interesting discussions and statements.
Constructive meeting and – above all – breakout sessions – yesterday on the 14th floor at Central Post Rotterdam as part of Engage Rotterdam; organized by Hogeschool Rotterdam and Livework on Smart City-issues. Once again a call for ‘rethinking the future’ (Ingrid Mulder, TUD & HR) and various attempts to create real participatory projects, some of which will be added to the CityLab-010.
At the IoT-conference on Build Environment & Smart City in Rotterdam on April 9th. we had a live-stream with Prof. Frans Vogelaar from hybridspacelab in Berlin; followed by a brief questioning from the conference audience.
