Newsletters 2015

Newsletter 3/2015

Welcome to solve Smart City challenges in Europe’s largest hackathon on November 6-8
Ahoy all Smart City innovators! There is still one week left to register to Europe’s largest hackathon SlushHacks & Ultrahack taking place in Helsinki on November 6-8. Register latest on the 30th of October at os.ultrahack.org and participate in solving the City of Helsinki’s competition challenges in Smart City & Civic Tech track of the hackathon. Travel grants available for international participants. Winners will be revealed at SLUSH.

Offer your agile pilot to Smart Kalasatama
A smart city is built together. Smart Kalasatama’s Programme for Agile Piloting is buying small pilots that provide new innovative services for people living in the Kalasatama area. Offer your pilot to the first round of the programme latest on the 30th of October.
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Smart Kalasatama in Bloomberg News
Kalasatama is a new smart distict in Helsinki and an experiment in smart urban living. When completed in 2030, its’ 20,000 citizens will be fully integrated into the ICT infrastructure of the city. Bloomberg News’ team visited Helsinki and made a video about Smart Kalasatama.
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FINEST Twins: Smart City Center of Excellence
The FINEST Twins Center of Excellence will be the first EU cross-border Smart City research excellence and demo lab and it will contribute to the emergence of European Digital Single Market in the urban context. The focus areas are Smart Environment, Smart Mobility and Smart Living and the results will be scientific, innovation and business related co-operation between Helsinki region and Estonia in the Smart City thematics.
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City of Helsinki is Open World Hero 2015
City of Helsinki has been awarded with the Open World Hero 2015 prize. One of the most recent examples of the City of Helsinki’s role as a source of inspiration and pioneer work in openness is the City of Helsinki Information Technology Programme, which applies open source, opens city procurements and promotes an open ICT ecosystem.
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Helsinki the third best city for innovation and entrepreneurship in the world
Helsinki has been ranked among the three best cities for technology, innovation and entrepreneurship in CITIE’s comprehensive report. Helsinki came third, behind New York and London.
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Helsinki shines on the heat map of EU’s Real-Time Cities
Frost & Sullivan surveyed European real-time cities in their utilization of open data, use of open source and publishing of datasets. The survey put Helsinki in uncontested first place in the number of datasets published. The City of Helsinki was also praised for its extensive activities with data-based services, open source utilization and collaboration with various actors.
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Helsinki scores high in the European digital city index
Helsinki scores high in the recent European Digital City Index. Helsinki is stated to have a benign innovation policy environment and to be a well-connected city, scoring also high for entrepreneurial culture, skills and early-stage support. Further, Helsinki is stated to have a strong ICT talent pool. Industry-defining technologies such as SSH, Linux and MySQL have been developed in Helsinki. Today, Helsinki region is a home for over 500 tech startups and numerous incubators and accelerator programs.
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Bright Baana – Light in the Underworld Helsinki
City of Helsinki together with Forum Virium Helsinki celebrated the UN International Year of Light with the Bright Baana event. In September, the bridges of a popular cycling and pedestrian route in central Helsinki were transformed into lighting installations.
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Eventmore App to the Global Smart City App Hack Final
Eventmore, a new mobile app helping to discover events, has won the Helsinki Smart City App Hack Competition. The Finnish champion will participate in the Smart City App Hack global final in Barcelona in November. Congratulations and good luck!
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SILVER introduces an intelligent care robot
SILVER (Supporting Independent LiVing for the Elderly through Robotics) is a research and development project establishing and executing a Pre-Commercial Procurement process suitable across several EU countries. During the latest SILVER assessment panel, the Phase 3 tenders were evaluated. The panel decided to award a contract to Robot Care Systems with Lecorob. An intelligent care robot LEA is designed to enable the elderly to live independently at their own home.

New members of Forum Virium Helsinki: Helen, Affecto and The Federation of Finnish Technology Industries
Forum Virium Helsinki has new member organizations: Helen, Affecto and the Federation of Finnish Technology industries. Get familiar with our new members and what they look for in the forthcoming cooperation.
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The network of Open & Agile Cities welcomes new members
Open and Agile Smart Cities initiative welcomes new cities to the smart city network. The second wave of memberships was launched in September.
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Welcome to a workshop on location-aware data and interoperability on Nov 25-26
The fifth workshop in the Share-PSI series, “Maximising interoperability – core vocabularies, location-aware data and more”, is organised in Berlin on November 25-26 and is open and free for everyone. You can lead a session at the workshop, deadline for the submission of session proposals is the 25th of October.
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Upcoming events
Welcome to Ultrahacks hackathon on November 6-8 and to Open Finland Challenge’s Gala event on the 3rd of December. You can also meet us in Barcelona Smart City Expo in November.

Newsletter 2/2015

Building an open city: read our latest publication
View our latest publication and get familiar with the ways and initiatives with which Forum Virium Helsinki is building a more open and smart city.
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City of Helsinki’s ICT programme 2015-2017
The City of Helsinki ICT programme aims to make the most of information technology to aid citizens and city development. The ICT programme focuses on several themes, which Forum Virium Helsinki has helped promote and will continue promoting also in the future. Open city development, open innovation, open data and open source are among these themes.
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Smart Kalasatama initiative enters a new phase
Helsinki’s Kalasatama area is being built into a worldclass model district of smart urban development. The area is developed through agile piloting, and the use of ICT technology and data. Smart Kalasatama is part of a 6Aika spearhead project of the City of Helsinki. It is coordinated by Forum Virium Helsinki. Now the initiative enters a new phase.
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Nordic Open Data Week 2015
Nordic Open Data Week is a joint Nordic effort to make open data more tangible to citizens, private and public sphere. The week features public events about the different shapes and forms of open data. In Helsinki, for example, the Six Cities Strategy is organizing a hackaton to develop new open data based spare time business concepts and prototypes, and it takes place in four cities in Finland simultaneously.
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Open Finland Challenge seeks the best civic digital innovations
The largest digital openness innovation competition in Finland is now launched! The 7th annual competition fosters the growth of civic innovations that promote an open society – and calls individuals, teams, companies and researchers to participate. The competition lasts until Nov 8, and over 20 000 euros worth of prizes are given out.

Partner survey: fruitful cooperation and increased project satisfaction
At the start of this year Forum Virium Helsinki once again asked its members and closest partners to rate its operations in 2014. A clear majority of respondents were happy with their cooperation with Forum Virium Helsinki. Satisfaction in projection cooperation had increased, while communication and events were also given high scores.

The Citizen Driven Innovation Handbook
Citizen Driven Innovation Handbook is a guidebook bringing citizen-driven innovation to policy makers and change agents around the globe. The guidebook was co-produced by the World Bank and members of the European Network of Living Labs.
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Nordic innovators creating solutions for independent living
In May, the Nordic Independent Living Challenge held a matchmaking event in Copenhagen, Denmark. For 75 solutions chosen to enter this stage, it was a chance to network, get inspiration and tools to further develop their ideas. The Challenge provides innovative solutions how elderly and disabled people can live independently in their own home.

Nordic Built Cities Arena
Inspirational thinkers from across the Nordics gathered in May to share experiences on how to develop liveable, smart and sustainable cities. The event participants got also the chance to give input to the new Nordic Built Cities programme. Forum Virium Helsinki’s CEO Jarmo Eskelinen gave a presentation under the theme “Nordic innovative solutions for urban spaces”.

Network democracy for a better city
D-CENT’s event Network Democracy for a better city was organised in May in Barcelona. The event attracted around 170 high-level policy makers, academics, activists, civic society organisations, and hackers together to debate on eDemocracy’s future developments.
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FutureEverything 2015: What now Democracy?
Since 1995, FutureEverything has been exploring the meeting point of technology, society and culture which lies at the heart of the digital debate. This year, the Future Everything Festival was arranged for the 20th time. Forum Virium Helsinki’s CEO Jarmo Eskelinen was one of the speakers in the conference.
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Newsletter 1/2015

Open and Agile Smart Cities joining forces
Thirty-one cities from seven countries have launched the “Open & Agile Smart Cities” initiative to accelerate adoption of common standards for global smart city development. The commitment marks a milestone in boosting the digital transformation of cities into engines of growth and citizen satisfaction through co-creation. In Finland, the country’s six largest cities carrying out The Six City Strategy – Open and smart services are among the cities launching this global smart city initiative.
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CitySDK in API Predictions for 2015
Forum Virium Helsinki’s CitySDK initiative is listed as a benchmark in API Predictions for 2015. Predictions #6: Industry standards & interoperability get traction.
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Funding and support for 60 European startups & SMEs
An acceleration initiative CreatiFI has selected the top 60 European start-ups and SMEs who will get funding and business development support. Within the programme entrepreneurs get help for business development and up to 50,000€ grant for a prototype development.

Helsinki among the leading European Smart Cities
Helsinki’s pioneering work within the Smart City theme has gotten steady international media coverage and visibility. In February, Mashable listed Helsinki as being among the top 5 European Smart Cities exploring and developing the next best practices in how cities of the future operate and shine.
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Building a better Helsinki
When the European Parliament compared the Smart City initiatives of 468 European cities, Helsinki was ranked as one of the top six. Propelled by agile city development policies, Helsinki is planning to stay at the cutting edge in the future.
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Open Data Day Helsinki Hackathon
The Open Data Day Helsinki Hackathon inspired great crowd, discussion and hacking under the beautiful glass ceiling of Hub13. Organized as part of the international Open Data Day (Feb 21st), the event attracted over 50 participants. The event was organized by Forum Virium Helsinki and it’s co-operation partners.
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Smart Helsinki discussed widely in Nordicum
Smart Helsinki is once again discussed widely in the latest issue of Nordicum. What is there for Helsinki in “being smart”? View pages 7-13.
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Finland to host the first Mobility as a Service ecosystem in the World
Twenty-three key organisations in Finland have partnered to cooperate in the establishment of the first Mobility-as-a-Service operator in traffic. The goal is to offer tailor-made traffic services to citizens based on their individual needs. One of the many pilots of the entity is organized by Forum Virium Helsinki later on this spring.
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Helsinki: Smart City – Smart Choice at MIPIM 2015
City of Helsinki showcased its major urban development projects at MIPIM 2015 conference in Cannes. For instance Smart Kalasatama initiative was well presented as a national spearhead site for smart urban development. Smart Kalasatama is planned and built with broad-based solutions that will apply best practices and technologies.

Apps4Europe 2015 winners
The winners of Apps for Europe 2015 were announced after a successful International Business Lounge event at FutureEverything conference. The winner of this year’s competition is GoOV and the runners up are Allryder and Data Tank. Congratulations!