S07E11 of Connection Problem: City Coronavirus Strategies
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Bonjour,
It’s been a productive couple of weeks since the installment, and it’s nice to see a bunch of stuff coming up for fall and winter — so this is a little more self-centered than usual. I expect the next episode will have a more “external” focus again. Let’s jump right in!
Yours,
— Peter
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You’re receiving this because you signed up for this newsletter on tinyletter.com/pbihr or through my company’s website, thewavingcat.com. The Waving Cat is a boutique research and strategic advisory firm; I also co-founded ThingsCon, a non-profit that explores responsible tech. On Twitter, I’m @peterbihr. If you'd like to work with me or bounce ideas, let's have a chat.
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New video series is live
A new video series I’ve been putting together in collaboration with Körber Stiftung is going live: “Corona Crisis — Lessons for the Future of Cities” (link goes to my blog post) explores how different cities deal with the coronavirus crisis, especially what roles digital tools play and how civil society is involved in the decision making. We haven’t widely publicized this, so let me quote my own announcement:
“And while overall we’re pretty broad with our interest in this, there are two focus areas that we’ll be emphasizing: The use of digital tools (and the trade-offs that inform the decisions around them) as well as how engagement with civil society works.
While every city and administration has to find their own way, I’m convinced there are lessons to be learned from others. Over time, a picture should emerge: Patterns of approaches that seem more promising than others, best practices, and maybe some surprising insights.”
For the first interview I spoke with Aik van Eemeren, the Public Tech lead at the City of Amsterdam’s CTO office, and more will be coming online soon — initially a pilot mini series of 3, then we’ll see if there’s enough interest to do more. You can watch #01 here.
In episode 2, I had the tremendous joy of speaking with New York City’s CTO John Paul Farmer. You can watch #02 here.
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New(ish) website
Always be relaunching, eh? I’ve been updating the company website: New theme, but mostly updating the descriptions of work. Talking about the kind of work I do isn’t particularly straightforward as it’s so varies (see this blog post for some background) and I was very happy that during that re-write Matt Webb also wrote about similar things online; I find talking to peers in this space and reading their thoughts is tremendously helpful, which is the main reason I’m bringing it up here as well.
If you look at my company website as it is now, you’ll notice that it’s a lot more opinionated and personal (I scrapped most of the “we” language given that these days I mostly come in by myself and only occasionally bring in a team); and I tried to focus less on past work and more on the types of issues and challenges that currently catch my interest.
The wording I’m opening with isn’t perfect yet, but I think there’s something there:
“The Waving Cat houses the advocacy and research of Peter Bihr — and works with clients to center citizen empowerment within emerging technologies.
The Waving Cat is built around the core belief that emerging technologies must serve citizens and society, and never the other way around.”
This is a bit of a departure from previous comms; before I stressed more an aspect of open-ended strategy; increasingly I come to believe that it’s important to bring strong values to the table. This also should have the positive side effect to help sort out bad matches. So that’s what I’m rolling with. Let me know what you think?
By the way, as part of this update I also keep experimenting with making it extra easy to book an informal call (currently on Tuesdays) to discuss any ideas or just have a chat. The idea is that some folks are super respectful of others’ time, which is great, but also serendipitous chats are important and enjoyable and so if you feel your idea isn’t quite where you’d like to formally arrange a call (which is also easy; just hit reply here!) then this is the super-low barrier way to go. No pressure.
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ThingsCon
Over at ThingsCon there’s also a lot happening. We’re not currently doing the best job at comms over there, either, because everybody’s a little busy but that said, we have virtual workshops almost every month (easy to find on the website) and I’d like to highlight 2 events:
- We’ll be hosting a session at the NGI Policy Summit (ThingsCon announcement, summit website) on 28 September about learnings from the ThingsCon community around critical making and IoT-related policy and trust.
- In early December, we’ll have our annual ThingsCon event. This year it’ll be fully virtual of course, and be spread out over a week so it’ll take the shape of a ThingsCon Festival. More on that soon. If you’d like to get involved in this somehow (as a speaker, sponsor, participant…) let me know and we’ll arrange the necessary calls.
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Currently reading: The Fault in Our Stars, John Green; Über den Anstand in schwierigen Zeiten und die Frage, wie wir miteinander umgehen, Axel Hacke
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What’s next?
As for publicly accessible things: The new interview series mentioned above, Corona Crisis: Lessons for the Future of Cities, will have more videos published this week or next. Later this month I’ll be speaking at the NGI Policy Summit, in a shared session with other ThingsCon team members. In early October I’ll be speaking at the Umeå Institute of Design about trust, technology and smart cities. And of course during the ThingsCon Festival in December I’ll be a co-host. The other things aren’t quite public yet, but hopefully there’ll be announcements soon.
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If you’d like to work with me or have a chat to explore collaborations, let’s chat!
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Who writes here? Peter Bihr explores how emerging technologies can have a positive social impact. At the core of his work is the mission to align emerging technologies and citizen empowerment. To do this, he works at the intersection of technology, governance, policy and social impact — with foundations, public and private sector. He is the founder of The Waving Cat, a boutique research and strategic advisory firm. He co-founded ThingsCon, a non-profit that explores fair, responsible, and human-centric technologies for IoT and beyond. Peter was a Mozilla Fellow (2018-19) and an Edgeryders Fellow (2019). He tweets at @peterbihr and blogs at thewavingcat.com. Interested in working together? Let’s have a chat.
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