New Year - Same Vision: NTXIA 2023 Recap
NTXIA 2023 Year In Review
2023 was an incredible year for the NTXIA team and our members, partners and innovators. With all of our accomplishments across new members, partnerships, program accomplishments and more, what better way to kick off 2024 than by highlighting all of these achievements and milestones as we jump into the new year!
New Members & Partnerships
We want to extend a huge thank you to our members. You are the heart and soul of NTXIA, and you all have been wonderful in welcoming our new members with open arms. In 2023, we are proud to share we now support a total of 49 members in NTXIA across public, private, transportation, economic development, entrepreneurs and academic sectors. NTXIA would like to give our new members another warm welcome, and we cannot wait to see how you all will succeed in 2024!
NTXIA is also excited to welcome our new domestic partners. We are proud to welcome Verizon, DART, Modii and Oncor as partners, in addition to Peachtree Corners & Curiosity Lab and the National Smart Coalitions, which includes seven entities across six states. These partnerships resulted in both in and out-of-market delegations for NTXIA that were extremely fruitful for our organization and members. A few to mention include Peachtree Corners, Georgia Tech and the Partnership for Inclusion Innovation (PIN), Richardson IQ, UNT eCAT Center, Dallas College and Pegasus Park. To our partners: your participation and support of NTXIA is key for our members’ success, and we cannot thank you enough. Thank you for your support!
Regional and Grant Support Programs
Our regional support programs are the bread and butter of our mission here at NTXIA. A few major programs we supported last year and are continuing in 2024 include Freight Signal Priority [NCTCOG] a traffic signal optimization program that will reduce time, emissions, cost and improve quality of life for North Texas motorists [no more “I got caught behind a truck”!], Frisco EDC’s Innovation, Smart Cities and Entrepreneurship Strategic Roadmap, and the Dallas County Smart City Blueprint. We cannot wait to see how these programs continue to develop!
We want to thank the Cisco Grants Office Resource for their expertise and insights this year. On the whole through collaboration including and beyond the NTXIA, the region secured an unprecedented number of Federal Grant Awards that support innovation, technology, health, logistics, electric battery, autonomous vehicle and workforce development projects across Texoma, ARPA-H, Earth 2 School, NSF’s Regional Innovation Hub designation, RAISE and BUILD grants, Charging Resiliency Grant series with COG and more. Grants are a huge part of what we support here at NTXIA. If you are interested in collaboration, please reach out!
Program Accomplishments
With all of these incredible partner and member additions, 2023 was also a year of multiple program accomplishments and first-time events that benefited our members and innovators. With almost too many to name, we want to highlight six major programs from 2023.
Call for Innovation and Dallas County Drone Demo Day
In partnership with Marketplace.city, NTXIA led the call for innovation for Dallas County’s first Drone Demo Day to showcase multiple robotics and drone use cases for the county. Over 60 attendees across residents, university students and faculty and individuals from both the public and private sectors joined us to see these innovative solutions in action. We procured 3-5 projects for Dallas County as a result of the event. See a recap of the event here.
World Cup Innovation Roundtable
NTXIA and the City of Fort Worth hosted representatives from the Dallas Sports Commission and the Fort Worth Sports Commission, as well as representatives from various other municipalities and public and private sector groups at a tech roundtable to discuss broad challenges, opportunities and potential lasting regional infrastructure benefits connected with the 2026 event. We are looking forward to continuing to help host and plan these discussions and ideation sessions in 2024.Urban Resilience Fellows Program
Launching officially in the Spring 2024, Urban Resilience Fellows Program aims to connect interdisciplinary students from universities and higher education institutions across Dallas Fort Worth with community partners to develop innovative solutions to pressing local issues like mobility and transportation and cybersecurity. This spring’s initial cohort includes student teams from UT-Arlington and UT-Dallas, and partners City of Dallas, North Central Texas Council of Governments and the International Inland Port of Dallas.
Broadband Leadership with Digital Infrastructure Working Group
In collaboration with Cisco, we created the “Communities Reimagined” roadmap - a best-practice-driven plan that helps members evaluate and present broadband investment opportunities to decision-makers. NTXIA led six total monthly meetings which featured in-depth discussion and expert presentations on key digital infrastructure topics.Texas Takeover at Smart City Expo World Congress Barcelona
With nine organizations attending, NTXIA and our affiliates were represented in over 20 panels and three of the five public sector booths in the USA Pavilion were from Texas. Check out videos from the event here! Interested in joining us at Barcelona this year? Send a note to our leadership team today!
Immersive Innovation Series Kickoff
To wrap up the year, we kicked off our Immersive Innovation Series with a visit to the University of North Texas eCAT Center. It was an incredible day of tours, demonstrations and discussions for our members. Partnerships were formed to include public and private sector partners in the use of the campus resources and research partnerships. There are more field trips to come in 2024 –stay tuned for an exciting announcement!
One of our big goals in 2023 was to activate these programs but also to promote the incredible work NTXIA, our members and partners achieved. We are proud to share NTXIA secured almost 200 media hits across local, regional, national and international media outlets and shared multiple press releases to continue to promote the work our partners, innovators and entrepreneurs are putting forward.
We are absolutely thrilled with the momentum we achieved in 2023 and without a doubt are planning to continue to lean into this momentum with multiple announcements planned for Q1 of 2024 and throughout the year. Thank you again to all of our members, partners, innovators and entrepreneurs – we could not do this without you! Are you interested in becoming a member or partner of NTXIA? Reach out to our leadership team today to find out more about what NTXIA can do for you!