Smart Cities & Urban Innovation: Demos & Drinks

A Tech in Motion Boston event held at PTC, Boston, MA

May 15, 2019

On Wednesday, May 15th, I attended an event at PTC’s Boston seaport headquarters. I trust Tech in Motion to put on good events, drawing a very techy crowd and featuring interesting topics. As usual, I wasn’t disappointed. Wednesday’s Smart Cities & Urban Innovation: Demos & Drinks covered the topic of urban tech.

The program featured a presentation by Jaclyn Youngblood and Yifan Lu of Boston’s Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, including a mention of Boston’s Safest Driver Competition.

Before and after the presentation, there was time for networking and for visiting several area companies in the urban innovation space.

BetrSpot is an app that allows people to trade spots. Spots in line. Spots at the bar. It’s a marketplace for physical first-come, first-served spaces.

Beta Blocks is attempting to create smarter, more connected Boston communities.

Cambridge Mobile Telematics is the company whose Drive Well platform is being utilized as part of Boston’s Safest Driver Competition, mentioned above.

Soofa was showing off its cool Soofa Sign community news feed display units – or, as they call, them, “the world’s first outdoor 42” electronic paper display for downtowns, neighborhoods, parks, and campuses.” (I’m enthralled and look forward to trying them out.)

Tolemi is a “governing intelligence” platform. What I recall most about my conversation with them was the detailed maps.

Getaround is a service/app that facilitates peer-to-peer car rental, sort of like an Airbnb for cars. I previously mentioned Getaround very briefly in this article about a Boston New Technology event in September 2018, and I first encountered Getaround at a BNT event earlier in 2018, though I didn’t mention the exhibitors in that write-up. Certainly seems like a product capable of gaining traction in its chosen market.

And I first encountered Zome just last month at Boston New Technology’s April 2019 startup showcase. Zome is a tool for creating and controlling micro power grids, allowing another way to control power grids during peak usage or other energy-constrained periods.

In all, it was a great sampling of city-focused technology. Hosted by PTC, of course, at its seaport district headquarters. The event was held on PTC’s demo floor, which contains showcases of several of PTC’s augmented reality products. And the group of attendees was Tech in Motion’s typically tech-focused audience.

What to Expect Next

Tech in Motion lists its upcoming events all over North America on the Tech in Motion events page. Its next Boston event occurs on July 11th, its “Appy Hour” networking mixer at Back Bay Social. Also note that October 9th date for the 5th annual Timmy Awards.

I attended the Embedded Systems Conference last week, as well, on Wednesday and Thursday. You can expect coverage of some of the presentations I attended at that conference here in the blog over the coming days.

And tonight (Monday, May 20th), I’ll be attending Boston New Technology‘s EdTech and CareerTech startup showcase, BNT101, at Hult International Business School in Cambridge.