FIREBALL establishes a coordination mechanism through which a network of Smart Cities across Europe engages in long term collaboration for adopting User Driven Open Innovation to explore the opportunities of the Future Internet. The coordination process will be grounded in exchange, dialogue and learning between Smart Cities, who are considered as key demand-side drivers of Future Internet innovation. It also will be grounded in bringing together the Future Internet, Living Labs and Smart Cities constituencies.

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See the Helsinki smart city showcase:

(via Open Living Labs)

‘Bundled, Buried and Behind Closed Doors’ is a short documentary by filmmaker Ben Mendelson which offers viewers a glimpse inside one of the world’s most concentrated hubs of internet connectivity: 60 Hudson Street, New York.

Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors from Ben Mendelsohn on Vimeo.

Mendelson’s film not only shows us how the internet lives in our cities by revealing its hidden physical infrastructure, but also how it often inhabits buildings which have a long history in communications, as with 60 Hudson street, which was already a key hub for pre-existing communication networks.

Infact, the global map of internet in Bundled, Buried and Behind Closed Doors demonstrates that the positioning of infrastructure within cities, and the patterns of cities themselves is more steadfast than we think.

Video duration about 10mins.

Further reading: An interview with Ben Mendelson ‘The New York City Building at the Centre of the Internet‘ on This Big City

Post by Per-Johan Dahl| This post is a new entry on No Place to Hide: an online map of potential places

VIEW PROJECTS ON THE MAP HERE

Title: UrbaNomad
Place: Oslo School of Architecture Department of Information Technology, Norway
Type: Event
Author: Guy Lafranchi, Per-Johan Dahl, Mikael Pedersen
Date: October 1 to 3, 2002

http://maps.google.com

Description: The UrbaNomad workshop was one in a line of workshops conducted by RIEA, following the Taormina workshop (Aug 2001) and the Lund workshop (Oct 2001). It gathered a design studio for a limited period of time, raising questions on urban research and spatial design.

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Dal 10 al 12 giungno 2011 Cluster sarà la sede del contributo torinese per “OpenJapan”, una staffetta progettuale della durata di 72 ore che riunirà architetti e designer di dieci città sparse per il mondo. L’obiettivo è la produzione di idee per un futuro sostenibile per le aree del Giappone devastate dal terremoto e dallo tsunami dello scorso marzo.

“OpenJapan” è un’iniziativa di OpenSimSim, una piattaforma collaborativa con sede a Berlino, che dà la possibilità di condividere idee, concetti, esperienze e conoscenze. Ispirato dal desiderio di aiutare i Giapponesi, OpenSimSim ha lanciato “OpenJapan”, un progetto open source condiviso da città con differenti fusi orari che lavoreranno per una maratona di 72 ore.

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Cluster is pleased to host ‘Open Japan‘ a 72hr volunteer workJam which will bring together architects and designers across 10 global cities from June 10 – 12 2011 to produce ideas for a sustainable future in the areas destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami which struck Japan on March 11 2011.

‘OpenJapan’ is an initiative by OpenSimSim, a community driven platform based in Berlin which offers the possibility to share ideas, concepts, experience and knowledge, and to inspire people throughout the design process. Inspired by the desire to help and assist people in Japan OpenSimSim launched ‘OpenJapan’ an open source project to be shared across cities from different time-zones working in parallel during a 72hr work sprint.

Torino will be one of the several nodes worldwide along with Tokyo, Chennai, Moscow, Berlin, Madrid, Paris, Lisbon, New York and Kansas engaged in the global brain-storm which will kick off in Tokyo and then get passed on to Chennai and so on forth between the four time zones. Each team will be briefed via Skype and updates and information will be passed via Twitter, Facebook and cloud computing, while the work will be documented on video with workfiles stored and shared in a virtual server.

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