As we start to look at restarting face-to-face interaction in the world again, we are starting to take stock of the developments from the pandemic that we want to keep in our post-pandemic lives. Let’s keep the bicycles and the scooters and the evening walks. Let’s also keep flexibility in the workplace, allowing people to work from home when it is convenient and productive. And let’s definitely keep the online conferences!
During the past months I have been able to learn so much and attend conferences that I normally might not have been able to. One such case was the MIT DesignX Symposium: Design >> Fast Forward event last week. I might not have made the trip to Cambridge to attend the event in person in a non-pandemic year but I was able to join this year because it was online. And it was so worthwhile.
Standout sessions for me where two sessions on day two which discussed how opportunities for equitable growth need to be “hyper-local” to be effective and how we need to keep in mind that a transport network is “humans trying to access opportunities”. The first point was made by Mercedes Bidart in panel four and the second point was made by Justin Coetzee in panel five. Videos of the event are accessible here.
In any case, not only did the online nature of this event allow me to attend from a distance but it also allowed MIT to get inspiring speakers with global expertise from far away. What is happening in transport innovation in Africa is directly applicable to transport innovation in the US and in many other places in the world. We should be attacking transport and smart city reform with international references in mind. Solutions need to be “hyper-local” but knowing global best practices is key to finding these local solutions.
As much as I love to jump on a plane and meet up with people in person for informal as well as formal conversation, online conferences can serve as a very useful tool to supplement in-person conferences to make sure we are learning as much as we can from each other across borders. And it also a great way to have more inclusive conversations without the prohibitive travel costs!
smartcityperspectives.com 