Moncton hosts Intelligent Communities Summit - Impressive roster of speakers
finalized

MONCTON, Sept. 23 /CNW/ - From October 5-7, Moncton will be home to the first ever Intelligent Communities Summit. The Intelligent Communities Summit, "Leveraging Technology for Community Development" will bring together international leading-edge community, academic and private sector leaders to share best practices and engage participants to brainstorm next steps in leveraging technology to enhance private sector growth and community development. These next steps will be designed to help businesses and communities weather economic storms, prosper and improve quality of life.

Intelligent Community Forum Co-Founder Robert Bell will join New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham , Canadian Wireless Telecom Association CEO Bernard Lord , and Innovation America CEO Richard Bendis as featured speakers. Some of the other speakers and panelists will include:

    
    - Dr. Michael Bloom, Vice-President of Organizational Effectiveness for
      The Conference Board of Canada;
    - Ken LeBlanc, founder, president and CEO of PropertyGuys.com;
    - David Schindler, Executive Director of Springboard Atlantic Inc.;
    - Nancy Mathis, Executive Director of Wallace McCain Institute;
    - David Gourley, Director of Business Development for Oracle;
    - Victor Garcia, Chief Technology Officer, Hewlett Packard;
    - Michael Oster, National Director, Public Sector Business Development
    - Christian Couturier, Director General of National Research Centre's
      Institute for Information Technology, and;
    - Russ Mathews, North American product director for Wireless Broadband,
      Motorola.
    

Also, representatives from several innovative and intelligent cities, such as the Canadian Cities of Waterloo, Ottawa , Fredericton and Moncton, as well as Sanford (Florida), Oulu ( Finland ), and Stockholm ( Sweden ) will participate in a session entitled: "A tale of seven cities-how innovative communities are leveraging technology as a tool for economic development". Mayor Brenda Halloran , City of Waterloo, and Chair of the Intelligent Community Forum Alumni will be facilitating this session.

"It's a great opportunity for CEOs, mayors and council members, senior municipal government officials, business leaders, economic developers, educators and anyone who has an interest in how they can leverage technology to prosper and improve the quality of life in their respective community and learn from the best in the world," says George LeBlanc, Mayor of the City of Moncton.

In addition to keynote presentations, plenary roundtables will focus on:

    
    - How to leverage technology to carve your niche in the global economy
    - The role of universities as catalysts for technology-based economic
      development
    - Next generation technologies that will allow communities and private
      sector companies to be more successful in a competitive economic
      climate
    

The Intelligent Communities Summit will conclude with a luncheon of the prestigious Economic Club of Canada . This will be the first-ever presence of the Economic Club in Atlantic Canada . The keynote speaker for this luncheon is Ms. Rahaf Harfoush , new media strategist, and a key member of U.S. President Barack Obama 's social media team as he sought the Democratic nomination and Presidency of the United States of America.

Following up on Moncton being named one of the 2009 Top7 Intelligent Communities in the world by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), the City of Moncton, in partnership with many sponsors, including Atlantic Lottery Corporation as Partner Sponsor, Enterprise Greater Moncton as our Associate Sponsor, and Bell Aliant, The Economic Development Corporation of the City of Dieppe, Nanoptix, Atlantic Cancer Research Institut, Tech South East, Cisco, HP, Spielo/GTECH, Motorola, Oracle, Technology Ventures Corporation, Roycom Inc, Barett Xplore as our Allied Sponsors, is proud to present the first Intelligent Communities Summit at the Delta Beausejour on October 5-6-7.

To register for the Summit or the luncheon of the Economic Club only, or for more information on the Intelligent Communities Summit, please visit: iMoncton.net

For further information: Media Contact: Ben Champoux, Business Development Specialist, City of Moncton, [phone]; Paul Thomson, Director, Corporate Communications, City of Moncton, [phone]