Author Archives: Kate Dungate

Project Director speaks at British Ambassador’s Residence in Vienna

As a prelude to European Utility Week an invitation-only networking reception was held on 2nd November in the centre of Vienna. Professor Enrico Motta took this opportunity to discuss the key issues related to smart cities within the context of utilities.   Following an introduction by HMA to Poland Robin Barnett, Professor Motta led the […]

MK:Smart participates in international utilities debate

This week our Project Director, Enrico Motta spoke at an international strategic conference dedicated to utilities in Vienna. The conference, entitled European Utility Week included over 500 utility representatives from across the continent. Professor Motta spoke as part of the Smart Cities work-stream of the event. This was a great opportunity to promote the project […]

Young people dream up Smart apps

This month, MK:Smart participated in the Brunel Urban Scholars programme – encouraging pupils to pitch a smart city app. Open University Researcher, Annika Wolff who works on the Education element of MK:Smart, gave a talk to a group of scholars who participated on that day at Brunel University, Uxbridge. The topic was “Big Data: new technologies and implications […]

The Broadband World Forum

Last week MK:Smart was represented by BT at one of the world’s largest telecoms, media & technology events held at the London Excel centre.  Amongst the BT content, there was a keynote presentation by Tim Whitley (BT’s Managing Director of Research and Innovation) which described how the MK Data Hub has been designed to support the monetisation of IoT services. On the BT […]

Inward Investment

Inward Investment Officers visited Milton Keynes to learn more about opportunities for business emanating from a Smart City. On 15 October MK:Smart played host to a visit at the Transport Catapult from 21 Inward Investment Officers from various British embassies from across the world. This included Tel Aviv, Helsinki, Berlin, Chicago, Paris, Toronto, Rio de Janiero, Istanbul, […]

Sign up for the next Smart Cities MOOC

As our Smart Cities MOOC reaches its midway point, over 7000 learners from around the world have joined the free online course. Week 1 started by exploring what it means to be a smart city, examining contrasting examples from around the world. Students learnt how systems thinking can be useful for exploring city challenges. There […]

Britain’s Smart Cities 2015

 MK:Smart’s Project Director, Enrico Motta, and Geoff Snelson, Director of Strategy for MK Council, spoke at this conference hosted by the Telegraph,which brought together city leaders and other major stakeholders to share examples of innovative urban projects. In particular, Geoff and Enrico took part in a panel discussing the issue of “Closing the gap between theory and implementation”, where […]

Celebrating Phase 1 of the MK Data Hub

Yesterday evening we celebrated the launch of the first phase of the MK Data Hub. This invitation-only exhibition took place at UCMK, in Central Milton Keynes and included a series of short talks and a showcase of MK:Smart’s innovative work. The Phase 1 MK Data Hub Launch was a fantastic opportunity to share engaging demonstrations from the forward-thinking work […]

Double Award at VMworld Europe

We’re pleased to announce that the MK Data Hub has received two prestigious awards in an event run by a global leader in Virtualisation and Cloud Computing. The MK Data Hub received awards for“Best virtualisation and disaster recovery project” and the top prize of “Best at show” at the VMworld Europe User Awards 2015. The event held in […]

MK:Smart in Dutch FT

On 3rd October MK:Smart was mentioned in the Dutch version of the Financial Times. The article describes Milton Keynes as a successful new town which is expected to grow to 300,000 in the next decade. Here are some key excerpts (translated via Google translate): “[…] last year, MK Smart started a project that has run […]

Smart Cities MOOC goes live today

It’s not too late to sign up for this free online course on smart cities which has drawn over 4,000 subscribers. What is a smart city? What is the role of citizens? What is the connection between urban innovation, enterprise and smart cities? These are just some of the questions we’ll be tackling in this free six week online […]

Our MK website ready for collaboration!

Our MK, the new collaborative website designed for sharing ideas on how to transform Milton Keynes into a smart and sustainable place to live in, was showcased at the launch event held at Transport Systems Catapult office on Wednesday 23rd September. Story submitted by Anna Klis-Davies from Community Action: MK Launched as part of the city-wide […]