Arizona Technology Council, in partnership with Sustainability Transition Consulting, will present the inaugural Smart City Summit: Share Your Smarts. The all-day event, featuring a stellar lineup of speakers, will occur Thursday, September 28 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the DoubleTree Resort by Hilton Paradise Valley – Scottsdale, 5401 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale. Pricing, the agenda and registration can be found here.

“The Smart City Summit is an important event that will bring business, education and government leaders together to discuss the future well-being of our cities,” said Steven G. Zylstra, president and CEO of the Arizona Technology Council. “There is much we can do in Arizona to make our cities cleaner and more sustainable, and to develop infrastructure that lends itself to a connected environment that improves transportation, education, security and communication.”

The Greater Phoenix Economic Council (GPEC) has stated that a major opportunity for the region lies in capitalizing on its legacy sectors that are evolving in emerging technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and sensors. As a result, GPEC has embarked upon an effort to brand Greater Phoenix as “The Connected Place.” 

“Arizona has become a hotbed of testing self-driving autonomous cars, with much of the underlying sensor technology emerged from military and aerospace applications,” said Zylstra. “Innovation is happening in our state faster than you can imagine. Companies here include those in manufacturing, as well as the components, software, and communications systems that power and operate them.”

In line with The Connected Place theme, the Summit goal is to bring Arizona together to share the latest advances in transportation, security and education as they apply to the development of smart cities, smart universities and smart schools. The Summit is open to leaders in corporate, education and government institutions, with the purpose of discussing the progress the state has made in the three core values promoted by the Smart Cities Council: livability, workability and sustainability.

The Summit will feature four separate tracks: network security, IoT, education and transportation. For each topic, a panel of experts will discuss the progress we have made, the challenges we face and the innovations being developed to overcome these challenges. 

Speakers for the Summit include Philip Bane, managing director, Smart Cities Council; Sameer Sharma, global GM, Intel; Frank Grimmelmann, president and CEO, Arizona Cyber Threat Response Alliance; Curt Cornum, vice president – chief architect, Insight; Steve Thompson, general manager – Phoenix, Uber; and many more.

For more information on the Arizona Technology Council, visit www.aztechcouncil.org.