Cities collaboration

With the aim of boosting the exchange of knowledge and collaboration between cities, and most of all, to focus the work carried out during the committee working meetings, diverse thematic and operative meetings will be organized. These meetings will allow having a “real” exchange and debate through the use of new methodologies such as “Mini BarCamp” that can facilitate the interaction between the participants, but also the identification of collaboration projects.

In order to focus the work developed in the working meetings, each working meeting will be centred in one of the key areas of performance identified during the elaboration of the “Smart Cities Study: International study on the situation of ICT, innovation and Knowledge in cities” and that incorporates a “holistic” vision of Smart City, which brings together 6 key Areas of performance that affect the development of cities: governance, people, mobility, environment and living.

The first working meeting held in May 2013 in Bordeaux was focused on the “Smart Economy” axis and allowed the attendants to share vision and also debate new tendencies on issues related with the creation, attraction and retention of talent, the importance of boosting new merging sectors of activity especially the ones related to the new technologies, innovation and green technologies, the importance of creating and enable infrastructures and spaces for the business development and creativity in order to give support to the entrepreneurship, among others issues.

During meeting, took place an open discussion and exchange of experiences through the « Bar-Camp » – style workshops.  This methodology includes the establishment of topics of discussions according to the participant´s interests and the topics of the meeting and then work in small groups that allow:

• Experiences and project sharing
• Identification of possible projects of collaboration.

 As a result, 2 collaboration projects were identified: 

 How can cities link traditional and new ICT Industries?

The City of Bordeaux promotes encounters between different sectors of the traditional economy and the digital businesses. These meetings has so far focused on three strategic areas that represent potential growth and cost savings for companies in all sectors of activity:

• E-marketing and e-commerce for the conquest of new markets.
• Data mining for a better understanding of the market and optimal positioning
• New productivity tools: 3D and cloud

The open proposal made by the city of Bordeaux is to create an exchange of experiences on these topics within UCLG. Many cities, with their Chambers of Commerce and private actors are also working on this topic that represents a great source of endogenous growth.

The proposed methodology for this collaboration would be:

• Online exchanges every four months on the tools developed and the strategic themes that make up the process of Grand Junction between traditional economy and the digital economy (such as the three themes mentioned above). 
• Invitation to cities that are or will establish a process of Grand Junction to participate in a large-scale forum to be held on this topic in the fall of 2014 not only as spectators but bringing with them a company of classical economics having managed to accelerate its growth through the use of digital technology. 
• Creation of an online compendium of good practices on this subject in the next 18 months. 

Creation of spaces of collaboration for companies

The creation of specific spaces of collaboration between companies form the diverse cities. Proposals of activities:

• Organization of business encounters. The city of Lappeenranta proposed to organize something with “Greentech” companies after the summer.
• Mutual knowledge sharing between companies though the identification of 4-5 key sectors of excellence in each city.
• Online mentoring workshops where companies can share their experience regarding entrepreneurship.

Both projects are currently in progress. Cities interested in taking part in these projects of would like to propose another project, please contact the Committee Secretariat: promotion@bilbaointenational.bilbao.net.