Recap: Texas Takeover at Smart City Expo World Congress 2024
The 2024 Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona was another action packed event this year for NTXIA and our members! From our US Pavilion presence with partner Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners and a strong DFW presence from NTXIA, McKinney, Frisco, Dallas College, Fort Worth and DFW Airport showing up and showing out! A week of speaking across multiple panels and session tracks, exploring the latest innovations in ‘tech for good’ in smart cities, speaking with members of the press, and holding our first 2024 Smart Cities Global Startup Challenge pitch event, it was one for the books! A great annual reminder of the strength and heart of those in this industry around the world! Thank you to our incredible team, partners, and members for your support and work throughout the week – the conference would not be the same without you all! Check out videos from the conference here.
This year, NTXIA had four incredible team members man our booth in the USA Pavillion, including Executive Director and Co-Founder Jennifer Sanders, Director of Strategic Partnerships Yumna Bham, Dallas Innovation Alliance Director of Operations Karmenly Alegria. The DFW presence was strong, with members from NTXIA, McKinney, Frisco, Dallas College, Fort Worth and DFW Airport showing up and showing out! The NTXIA booth was filled with potential new innovators who were eager to connect with the North Texas delegation, and the team had remarkable conversations with representatives from companies and peer delegations from across the globe. SCEWC couldn’t have been a better stage to welcome National Smart Coalitions Partnership (NSCP)'s first partner Sand Technologies!
This year, AI was of course on the menu in a big way, as was ethical implications of the deployment of technology. The NTXIA team and coalition members had the pleasure of sharing our regional insights and project progress on multiple panels over the course of the conference, participating in over 8 different speaking opportunities.
Without a doubt, North Texas had a strong presence at the conference this year. Of these opportunities, NTXIA Executive Director Jen Sanders had two main stage speaking opportunities where she highlighted Sustainable Urban Evolution and discussed the preparation of global events, like the 2026 World Cup.
Key themes shared amongst the Expo, Agora and Mainstage by NTXIA members included how to drive economic development opportunities in the US; building a resilient workforce through partnerships, fellowships and Tech Engines; elements to successful North American living lab environments; and how to bring tech and innovation into global events.
Day two of the conference was the big pitch day! The final pitches for our first Smart Cities Global Startup Challenge was held with our partners at Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners. Our top four finalists joined us at SCEWC for the day for our live and interactive pitching session. Our esteemed panel of judges included members across Curiosity Lab, NTXIA, McKinney, and Frisco, representing multiple U.S. smart city ecosystems.
NTXIA is excited to share the judges awarded startup VisionCraft as the winner! This Czech Republic-based startup provides actionable, real-time information from AI-based computer vision and object detection algorithms. This solution can be applied across sporting events, healthcare, ITS, manufacturing and logistics, and so much more. NTXIA and our coalition members are thrilled to welcome the VisionCraft team to the U.S., and North Texas. We are looking forward to working with VisionCraft!
Thank you to our coalition members, our team on the ground, and our incredible partners for your ongoing support. We cannot wait to see what 2025 has to bring for us, and for SCEWC 2025!