NewCo Boston 2016

Session Title: Rethinking the Smart City - Where IoT Vision Meets Actionable Insights

This NewCo session will show our technology and how we've built easily customizable solar "brains" that can host different sensors. This will also involve a tour around our shop / office space. We will talk about the experiences at the Media Lab and working with city solutions that lead to the founding of Soofa. This involves the issues within a city and our general frustration with major incumbents being the only "smart city" companies. We will explain our plans and visions for our future direction, as well as gathering participant feedback around what they feel is an issue within the city or what aspects could use improvement. All throughout this questions and open discussion would be welcomed - we hope to create a good conversation among the group around the uses / needs of urban environments. This will definitely incorporate robust discussions about the future, our strategy process involves rethinking the way virtually any public space-based thing works. On a high level, we are very clear about our direction and issues being solved. But, we always wonder, is there a huge issue in cities that we are missing? Hopefully this session could encourage everyone to view the urban experience through an alien lens, rather than accepting things because they are "how things are". A good storyteller can draw people out of their everyday experiences and push them to consider regular things in entirely new ways.