Thank you!
First and foremost, all of us at Smart Classes wanted to take a moment to thank every individual who has given their time in helping us deliver our first year of Smart Class branded events. Every one of you who has attended, sponsored, supported, or hosted a 2018 Smart Class, and even those of you who just expressed your interest, or shared one of our news posts, we are truly grateful that you could be a part of our inaugural year.
We hope all of you have a happy holiday season and a fantastic 2019, and most importantly, we can’t wait to catch up with all our familiar faces, and to see so many new ones, in the near-future!
2019 Events
We will be continuing strong into the new year with our first Smart Transport event of 2019 on February 12th! Here are confirmed dates and locations for all the Smart Classes we have scheduled over the next 12 months, with live links to each event page:
TRANSPORT Smart Class, Midlands 2019 – Birmingham, 12th February 2019
EMISSIONS & AIR QUALITY Smart Class 2019 – London, 17th April
TRANSPORT Smart Class, North of England 2019 – Leeds, 20th June 2019
WASTE MANAGEMENT Smart Class 2019 – London, 10th July 2019
TRANSPORT Smart Class, Scotland 2019 – Dundee, 12th September 2019
TRANSPORT Smart Class, London & SE England 2019 – London, 9th October 2019
WATER MANAGEMENT Smart Class 2019 – Birmingham, 14th November 2019
TRANSPORT Smart Class, South West England 2019 – Bristol, 4th December 2019
Already confirmed for 2020:
TRANSPORT Smart Class, Wales 2020 – Cardiff, 30th January 2020
Those with relevant credentials can secure a free delegate place by completing the registration form located at the bottom of the selected event page. Each event page cites examples of qualifying buyer side stakeholders. In the case of TRANSPORT Smart Classes, for example: “progressive city, borough, district and county councils; public and private transport operators/service providers; sub-regional transport bodies, combined authorities, integrated transport authorities and passenger transport executives; DfT and supporting national transport agencies; prime contractors etc”.
If you’re a Smart innovator/vendor, or if your company sources or advises on digital technology-enabled solutions, data-driven strategies or best practices that can play a key role in helping our delegates address their transport and mobility, emissions and air quality, waste management or water management challenges, please ask about our innovation sponsorship packages which (amongst other benefits) enable your speaker to deliver a unique thought leadership presentation around a priority innovation topic and your team of experts to host a series of deeper-dive roundtable consultations with the delegates. New for 2019: venue sponsor and breakfast/lunch networking sponsor options! enquiries@smartclasses.co
Feedback Highlights
Here’s just a small proportion of the testimonials and responses we’ve received from a cross-section of smart city-region stakeholders across the UK (dozens more can be found on our website!):
“It was a pleasure to contribute to this very well organised event. Great format!” – Head of Innovation, Transport for Greater Manchester
“Extremely beneficial. I went along to present information but came away with so much more, owing to being in a room full of like-minded individuals for various different organisations trying to achieve similar goals. The event was well structured and extremely informative. I would highly recommend” – Principal Bus Policy Planner, Transport for London
“A fantastic event. I learnt a lot from the innovators and keynote speakers, very insightful roundtable discussions and great networking opportunity” – Chair, Thames Estuary Partnership
“This was my second smart class – again, very well organised with great content” – Acting Head of Insight, Transport Focus
“I found the afternoon very helpful; a carefully curated audience, very well managed, and a warm friendly organisation to work with” – Ex-Head of Digital Transformation & Transport Data Policy, DfT; “A thoroughly worthwhile morning” – Policy Manager, DfT
“Well organised, great location and good brand of delegates” – Contract Manager, Birmingham City Council
“A very useful event, well worth the time spent. All the presentations and roundtables were valuable” – Group Leader Transport Projects, Blackpool Council
“Presentations were all relevant to CCRCD future proposals and the roundtables were all very useful” – Project Development Officer, Cardiff Capital Region City Deal
“The morning was very good! The speakers were excellent and the roundtable speed dating style discussion sessions were also really useful” – City Centre Programme Manager, City of Edinburgh Council
“Excellent event, very informative and easy to delve into each area further” – Public Transport Operations Team Leader, Nottingham City Council
“The mix of speakers and delegates was absolutely superb, and the talks were incredibly informative all round”, Smart Perth Project Coordinator, Perth & Kinross Council
“Outstanding! Great speakers and presentations and I look forward to applying the concepts from the ideas shared at the event in my future endeavours” – ITS Planner, Portsmouth City Council
“Love the structure of 10 minute talks – gets rid of the uninteresting info and keeps the attention – then the opportunity to speak with them all afterwards. Excellent event” – Parking & Traffic Control Management, Warwickshire County Council
“Excellent event – and good, pacy, interactive format. Well done and thank you” – Councillor, Lead Member Highways and Transport, West Berkshire Council
“I attend a fair few industry events as you might expect and this was certainly one of the best ones I’ve been to” – Head of Commercial Management, HS2
“It was great to get the opportunity to attend and reassuring to see how active we are in so many of the areas of discussion. Exciting times!” – Innovation Lead for Bus at Go-Ahead Group
“Thanks for organising. It was a really interesting morning” – Head of Digital, SUEZ Recycling and Recovery UK
“This was my first Smart Class event and I was very impressed by both the organisation and the content of the presentations” – Technical Team Unit Manager, Life Smart Waste Project, Scottish Environment Protection Agency
“Well done on a super job and a refreshing format for the event. It was a pleasure to be involved, hear and discuss some great presentations” – Software Business Development Manager, Yotta (Sponsor)
“Very well organised and delighted with the feedback from such an attentive and informed audience. A great format and a pleasure to meet the delegates and discuss some of their own smart city challenges” – Managing Director, Imperial (Sponsor)
“Great Transport Smart Class! Really interesting talks and a really productive day!” – Head of Partnerships, Cube Intelligence (Sponsor)
Retrospectives
Around 6 months ago (starting with the TRANSPORT Smart Class we hosted in Manchester on July 11th) we introduced our “Retrospective” releases, enabling the wider community to access the slides from our speakers’ Smart Class presentations, post-event. Here’s another chance to view:
TRANSPORT Smart Class, North of England 2018: Retrospectives Round-Up
TRANSPORT Smart Class, Scotland 2018: Retrospectives Round-Up
TRANSPORT Smart Class, London & South East England 2018: Retrospectives Round-Up
A number of Retrospectives have already been released over the last couple of weeks from our recent WASTE MANAGEMENT Smart Class 2018 (Leeds, November 28th) and TRANSPORT Smart Class, South West England & Wales 2018 (Bristol, December 5th) events. Standby in January for an unabridged Round-Up of each set of these Retrospectives!
Website Updates
As many of you may have already noticed, improvements to the Smart Classes website have been ongoing since launch, especially in the last few months. We hope that the website is even easier to navigate now and that you can find the exact information you are looking for much more quickly, whether it’s highlights from a keynote speaker or how to register for an upcoming event.
Early next year we will be rolling out our biggest update so far – all of you will be able to create a Smart Classes account, making signing-up for events, and gaining access to presentations, as simple as possible. Those of you who are very active within Smart Classes will see many improvements while using the site and we really can’t wait for you to see it all. Our new user login functionality also paves the way for many more updates with even more exciting features making sure you see the content that is most relevant to you!
Time for some R & R!
Thanks again for accompanying us on our Smart Classes journey. We hope you all manage to recharge the batteries and enjoy some quality time with family and friends over the festive break. Whether as a delegate, sponsor, keynote or host, we look forward to welcoming some of you to a Smart Class soon!
Best wishes,
The Smart Classes Team