The late morning session

The second session has the following speakers

Prof Richard Collin, Grenoble School of Management, codirector of Green and Connected Cities cluster
Gilles Pennequin, Meditteranean Union
Francisco Salas, new tech advisor, Malaga

The Tunisian representative, Lamia Chaffai had to cancel, and a lady from Morocco (I didn't catch her name unfortunately) speaking about the Moroccan experience.

Its quite wide ranging - not for the first time I see that one key thing about these ICT events is where it does raise the issue of ICT in terms of sustainable development, city governance etc. as so often because its seen as a specialism on the one hand, and ubiquitous on the other hand, ICT doesn't get mentioned except at a supplier level. Its often easier I guess for a city or government authority to just bring in the CISCOs or IBMs or CAP Gemini etc. but it seems that this seems contradictory in terms of the "new technologies" coming out - as much of the local digital economy will be outside of these corporate models, as well as innovation.

We're now getting a case study from Francisco Sala in Malaga - again, I get the sense that other parts of Europe are less "silo" based than we sometimes are in the UK - e-Government and environmental sustainability - Malaga are involved with Covenant of Mayors and with the Eurocities network same as Manchester.  Malaga just received the Eurocities innovation prize for a solar energy information collection project - tool available from their website. They seem to be integrating their ICT/e-govt and energy efficiency projects/energy planning. Might be a useful case study to look at in the context of the PEPESEC project that MDDA are also involved in. (http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/31443)

Prof. Richard Collin from Grenoble School of Management now talking. He's looking at mapping various actvities - sees a need for new systems for linking together sustainable development with ICT - one of the key reasons for these events/networks to take place.

Alexandra Debasieux introducing the European thematic network ICT for Energy Efficiency, that I am here on behalf of Manchester, one of its 16 members.