Hutchison Management

New Partnership focuses on creating nation of Intelligent Communities: Asset Mapping, Vision Alignment, Regional Power, Crowdfunding, Ultrabroadband for Social and Business Networking

Toronto, April 27, 2012 -The launch of a new co-branded website for i-CANADA – www.icanada.nu – symbolizes an alliance between Canada’s largest B2B technology network and the leading movement for the creation of an “Intelligent Nation”, say the principals of the two organizations involved.

“IT WORLD Canada is now working with i-CANADA on issues that accelerate the creation of Intelligent Communities “ said Fawn Annan, President and Group Publisher. “Creating centres where digital inclusion, e-business, social progress, and community sustainability are driven forward in a unified agenda is the goal. The result will be community sustainability, in an era where ultra-broadband connectivity is the fundamental economic building block.”

i-CANADA co-Founder Barry Gander, EVP of the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATA) added: “We recognize that high-tech is now in our DNA, to the point where the UN has declared high-speed broadband to be a fundamental human right. In other words, to be considered as a ‘human being’ today, you need food, shelter, and broadband.

Click here to read the entire announcement.

It’s been my great pleasure this week to extoll the virtues of the i-Canada movement and intelligent communities from the vantage point of this week’s i-Canada conference in Windsor. I was happy to speak to CBC Radio, and the coverage was subsequently extended to CBC News and Yahoo! Canada. Take a look:

Experts plan to make Canada smarter
i-Canada conference in Windsor aimed at making country more competitive on a global scale

Premiers, mayors and CEOs from communities across Canada will gather in Windsor this week to devise a strategy to make the country smarter.

The volunteer organization i-Canada is holding its advisory board meeting at Caesars Windsor on Thursday and Friday. The purpose is to encourage at least 50 Canadian communities to vie for the annual and international Intelligent Community of the Year Award.

Chair of i-Canada Bill Hutchison said the past 12 winning communities have experienced economic growth, increased employment and and improved social innovation immediately after the win.

Read the complete article here.

The i-CANADA “New National Dream” Summit at Caesar’s in Windsor on November 16-17, 2011 was originally planned as a smaller meeting of the i-CANADA Advisory Board. Attendance has grown beyond the original plan because of the interest by many who signed the Declaration on LinkedIn to create the i-Canada Alliance as a national movement.

Attendance now includes members of the i-CANADA Council of Governors, Mayors, dozens of Economic Development Officers, industry executives, academia, and community leaders in Health Care, First Responder, Creative Arts, Productivity, Human Resources, and other stakeholder groups.

Discussion and collaboration at the Summit is crystallizing around:

• A unique quick Self Assessment i-CAT guide to map communities through the process of becoming more globally competitive as “Smart Cities”; it is the product of massive collaboration with industry , academic and i-community leaders such as IBM, Intel, FunctionFour, ING DIRECT, Miller Thomson, Rhyzome Networks, Ryerson University and the City of Windsor.
• The ‘Growing Millionaires’ ecosystem model from New Brunswick: “We used to be known for potatoes and fish; now New Brunswick is a showcase for digital investments and green waves of wealth.”
• Resource matchmaking between vendors and community leaders, to match the latest methods and services with the pressing needs of community officers charged with evolving their cities.
• Dashboards that provide at-a-glance views of a city’s systems and operations.
• Matching Toronto’s i-Waterfront Challenge of one gigabit per second bandwidth from your home and much more for business – and what it does for healthcare, the arts, policing, city administration and the need to keep up with the best.
• Proven Processes and Best Practices for creating some of the world’s leading i-Communities.

The Summit in Windsor is definitely the place to be for anyone interested in supporting these goals and the i-CANADA national movement while trading ideas on how to transform their community into an i-Community … whether it is a region, a city or a smaller community … local or remote.

The IBM Intelligent Operations Center (IOC) for Smarter Cities will be demonstrated and it is an important development for the transformation of community operations management in tomorrow’s communities. Think of a dashboard that allows for the monitoring and potential control of certain city operations from one central location. The IOC will be demonstrated with the i-CANADA Assessment Tools (i-CAT) in what will truly be an amazing world first. i-CAT has been created over the past year by an i-CANADA sponsored initiative comprised of seventeen leaders in community measurement and operations from the corporate, academic, research, consulting and municipal worlds.

i-CANADA is not just about technology and communications infrastructure although ICT certainly provides the foundation and we intend to continually promote the best and newest in ICT to become globally competitive. It is a great opportunity for our ICT companies too. IDC government Insights estimates that the Smarter Cities IT market is $34 billion in 2011 rising to $57 billion in 2014, and increase of 18% per year.

The Summit and the i-CANADA movement also promotes the other essential elements in an i-Community including effective marketing of the community, a focus on digital democracies and a wide range of creative and social innovations. Canadians from the creative and social sectors will be there to share their ideas for moving forward.
Broadband for rural and remote areas is an important one too so come and meet Suvi Linden who is flying in from Finland to speak. Dr Linden was Minister of Communications when her government was the first in the world to implement legislation declaring “Access to Broadband is a Fundamental Right”. Rest assured it will be a rich discussion of many opportunities when we meet at the i-CANADA Summit in Windsor. Everyone who supports the i-CANADA movement and wants to help their community’s transformation to renewed economic and social innovation should be there.

The work leading up to Waterfront Toronto’s major ultra broadband announcement yesterday has certainly consumed a good piece of my life over the last four years. In fact, the planning began in 2004 but the result will be a “Living Lab” to drive change through Toronto, Ontario and Canada.

Coincident with the signing of the agreements to create this world class community communications service, I have resigned from my executive role responsible for this project at Waterfront Toronto to spend more time as Founding Chair of i-CANADA. I will also be advising cities around the world on strategies for becoming Intelligent Communities that capitalize on the latest in computer and communications technologies to achieve improved economic and social innovation and growth.

The goal of i-CANADA is to help a large number of Canadian communities rise up to Intelligent Community status, thereby raising Canada to be an Intelligent Nation. Achieving this goal will reverse Canada’s declining international rankings in Innovation, Productivity and Broadband.

Following are two media quotes from today’s many press reports of yesterday’s announcement. The full announcement and background information can be found in the “newsroom” at Waterfront Toronto’s web site: www.waterfrontoronto.ca.

A speed-wired waterfront
Excerpted from The Toronto Star, published on June 7, 2011
by Patty Winsa, Urban Affairs Reporter

Imagine being able to download a full-length movie onto your laptop in eight seconds, watch your kids play in the park from the comfort of your condo or connect to the Internet from under an umbrella at Sugar Beach.

Waterfront Toronto announced yesterday that residents who move into one of the city’s new waterfront communities will have something no one else in Canada has at home — unlimited access to one of the fastest Internet networks in the world, WiFi and a one-of-a-kind community portal.

What it does: Provides unlimited residential Internet with download and upload speeds of 100 megabits a second, 500 times faster than typical North American networks. Movies download in eight seconds compared with an hour and a half through a phone line or 20 minutes via a cable modem.

It also allows residents to access a community portal on a TV, tablet or computer. The portal is in development, but could be used to make reservations at a local restaurant, or to see the view from cameras trained on public spaces.

Costs: Home users will pay $60 a month for Internet, WiFi and the community portal, a price guaranteed for 10 years. Upgraded packages, at $100, will include phone, Internet and TV. Business packages will start at $79 a month.

Read the complete article here.

by Christopher Hume
Excerpted from The Toronto Star, published on June 7, 2011

If that sounds like the stuff of every city planner’s dream, listen to Alan Vihant, vice-president of development at Great Gulf, who, with architect Moshe Safdie, is in the middle of putting together a large mixed-use project at the foot of Sherbourne St.

“This is a big deal for us,” Vihant enthuses. “Knowledge workers are going to demand that kind of service. They’re already used to living in high rises. They’re going to want to walk to work. They want to be close to Union Station and public transit. The next generation of workers all wants to live down here.”

Read the complete article here.

Ten days from now, on June 3rd in New York, the Intelligent Community Forum will announce the 2011 Intelligent Community of the Year. The winner will be selected from among the Top 7 finalists remaining in the competition that began with more than 300 applicants. Once again this year Canada has two of the Top 7: Stratford and Windsor-Essex. Last year, we had Fredericton and Moncton in the Top 7. The fact is that the world’s leading Intelligent Communities have consistently had higher rates of economic development and employment growth than their neighbouring communities. They certainly are innovative communities and they attract foreign investment.

Canada has islands of excellence, as evidenced by our performance in the annual Intelligent Community competition. However, as a nation our international standings in innovation, productivity and broadband performance continue to decline when compared to other leading nations. The goal of i-CANADA is to reverse this trend by encouraging and supporting many Canadian communities to all rise up to international standards and compete to be the Intelligent Community of the Year. If they are successful, not only will our communities reap the rewards experienced by all other Intelligent Community winners, but Canada will become an Intelligent Nation as we string together our pearls of excellence into a national necklace of excellence.

Last Wednesday, May 18th I was pleased to Chair the Executive Panel on Technology Trends as part of CATA’s Annual Gala. The following video provides comments from panel participants and during the banquet I described i-CANADA’s growth over the past year following our announcement of i-CANADA at the same Gala a year ago.

More than one thousand individuals, companies and institutions have signed the i-CANADA Declaration; ING Direct and IBM have signed on as Diamond Sponsors; members of the Governors Council already include Hon. David Alward, Premier of New Brunswick as Chair with a number of mayors and CEOs as fellow governors. Other Canadian leaders have joined the Advisory Council as subject matter experts and the Board of Directors is providing governance and guidance. Further information is flowing in the i-CANADA LinkedIn Forum, and I invite all interested parties in Canada to join the parade to raise Canada to Intelligent Nation status, while also raising our national broadband, innovation and productivity performance to once again lead the world.

The 26th Annual CATAAlliance Innovation and Leadership Awards Gala Dinner will be held May 18, 2011 at the Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa. The event celebrates the best of Canadian innovation and showcases the world’s most adopted technologies.

For over two decades, the CATAAlliance Innovation and Leadership Awards Gala Dinner has been celebrating the best in Canadian advanced technology. It has become one of the most eagerly awaited events in Canada’s business calendar. Award sinners are recognized for their innovation, expertise, and leadership in Canada’s advanced technology community.

Guest emcee Paul Brent, host of CTV’s Tech Now, will lead a Power Podium Panel including Sir Terence Matthews and other industry leaders, focusing on this year’s event theme of Technology Futures.

Get all the details here!