The Summit At Start

Imagine your city or town transforming itself before your very eyes.

Imagine several years down the road that your city’s power systems are increasingly green, dependent more on renewable energy sources and less on carbon-based fuels.

Imagine that you’re able, almost by involuntary response, to reroute your electric car or moped around any traffic jams and reach your destination ten minutes early.

Imagine being able to walk down to the local farmer’s market to get organically grown vegetables which were grown in the same county as where you live.

Imagine your local government making material decisions about managing resources or serving the citizenry not by way of back room deals or little sunshine, but rather through open, transparent decisions driven by the gathering of community input via a social network and thoughtful, intelligent analysis of real-world data.

These are just some of the types of scenarios that may be being imagined across the pond in London at IBM Summit at Start, an eight-day national initiative in the U.K. by The Prince’s Charities to promote and celebrate sustainable living.

The Start initiative aims to demonstrate just what a more energy efficient, cleaner, and healthier future might look like, and is engaging experts and citizens from across the U.K. and around the globe to fuel this important discussion.

The IBM Summit is the business-to-business component of Start, and over the next eight days is going to engage 120 global leaders in business, the public sector, and academia to discuss the varying economic, societal, and environmental aspects of sustainability.

Each day of the Summit will have a unique theme: Cities. Energy. Transportation. Skills and People. Youth. Supply Chain. Finance. And Analytics.

On the final day of the Summit, there will be a synthesis of the previous eight days in the form of a wrap-up discussion on “Smarter Business.”

IBM CEO Sam Palmisano will be speaking and in attendance, along with a host of other luminaries from industry, the public sector and civic organizations from around the globe.

If you’d like to follow the action up close and personal, you don’t have to hop a plane to the U.K. (although it’s a lovely time of year to visit!).  Simply check out the IBM Summit at Start online press room.

You can also learn more about this type of sustainable future in a series on Smarter Cities published by The Guardian.

And if you’d like to join in the discussion, join our new People for a Smarter Planet group on Facebook, where there are a range of discussions and projects you can learn more about and even participate in.