New playbooks, whitepapers, and guides
“We must seize the moment,” urged Lee Davenport, US Ignite’s Community Development Director to an auditorium full of community leaders at last week’s Smart Cities Connect Conference and Expo. This call to action ended an overview of standout projects headed by our community partners that exemplify how to seize this moment of high needs, high opportunity, and high potential.
As a nonprofit organization with over a decade of experience working with smart communities to accomplish real change through technology, US Ignite knows that seizing the moment requires more than inspirational anecdotes. For this reason, we released three new resources to help community leaders build and execute successful smart city initiatives and projects:
A Communities Guide to Prize and Challenge Competitions
Prize and challenge competitions have gained significant popularity over the past few years as organizations (and cities) realize the opportunities these bring to a region. This new playbook will help city and nonprofit leaders learn about the proven tools needed to execute a successful challenge competition.
Building Trust-Centric Innovation Districts
As more and more cities of various sizes begin to explore the innovation district to spark or revitalize economic growth, this playbook provides an insightful overview of five different exemplary innovation districts- Chattanooga, TN; Philadelphia, PA; Seattle, WA; St.Lois, MO; and Arlington, VA.
Lessons from the Social Impact Evaluation of Project OVERCOME
Project OVERCOME connected underserved communities to the Internet, providing an excellent opportunity for us to understand better the effects of broadband access on education, employment, and access to healthcare. In this paper, US Ignite shares the results from the Social Impact Evaluation used to measure the impact of connectivity on Internet adoption and use.
The new resources join a long list of playbooks and policy papers created by US Ignite based on accumulated experience working with communities across the nation. We welcome any questions, comments, and suggestions for future resources to help leaders accomplish big things for communities through technology.
Stay tuned for additional reflections from the Smart Cities Connect Conference!