Enabling a Smart City through Smart Governance

More than ever, competitiveness is of utmost importance for Cities. It is the difference between attracting the right ingredients for an healthy population, thriving economy, or loosing these.

A City must be agile, fast to act, deliver swift reaction when required, sharp and engaging.
A City must be the pulsating living organism that attracts all good that life has to offer to its citizens, a beacon of prosperity and security.

A City must be the living symbol of the potential that each of its citizens can unleash.

Fact is, if you’re lagging on decision making, if you’re not delivering decisions when they’re needed – when you finally do, your actions towards execution will come when it’s too late… and while you keep adding each one of those laggard decisions with their faltering executions happening when relevance is degrading, nothing hurts more the economy of a place than the passage of inconsequent time. While others are going at it and getting to the best piece of the pie.

Ultimately the faster your decision making processes, the better your adaptability ratio is, and hence competitiveness.

So why Smart Governance?

You may throw as much money and resources at it as you wish… if you’re slow deciding, when you finally act the bandwagon has already passed.

Smart City Expo World Congress 2014, Barcelona, Spain

Next week we’ll be re-visiting Barcelona for the Smart City Expo – the key meeting point for experts and leaders of the world’s most innovative cities, companies, research centres, universities and international organisations. 🙂

We’ll be on the Microsoft booth, right in the middle of the exposition area. It’ll be a good opportunity to be with friends again and meet a lot of new people and learn and contribute from and to their experiences.

Our contribution to the event will be on Smart Governance, with Board Meeting Enterprise.

We look forward to connecting with you there 🙂

Visiting Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: 4th – 6th November 2014

We’ll be traveling to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from the 4th of November to the 6th of November 2014 to present Board Meeting Cloud (Windows 8.1 and Microsoft Azure) and Board Meeting Enterprise (Windows 8.1, Office, SharePoint Server, Lync, Outlook, SQL Server, Microsoft Azure, On Premises or Private Cloud) at Microsoft Device Day 🙂

Board Meeting Cloud is a self-service agenda management solution with a modern & touch user interface that stores you data geo-redundantly in the Cloud.

Board Meeting Enterprise is an enterprise grade solution that allows the implementation of Smart Governance on large & structured organizations, enabling agility in end-to-end hierarchical decision making workflows (from the hierarchies to the Board), cost cutting while reducing drastically the environmental impact and time consumption on non-value adding tasks. This can be implemented either On Premises, on a Public Cloud Provider or on a Private Cloud Provider.

If you’d like to meet us while we’re there, we still have some slots free for meetings and would very much appreciate that 🙂

Visiting Mexico City: 27th – 29th October 2014

We’ll be visiting Mexico City with the Portuguese Deputy Prime Minister for a trade mission from the 27th to the 29th of October of 2014.

Would you like to know more about Board Meeting and connect in Mexico City? Reach out to our Managing Partner on LinkedIn 🙂

Busy week in Portugal, Mexico and Canada

We’ll be visiting Mexico City on October, 15th and 16th for the Microsoft CityNext Mexico ISO18091 Workshop, so if you’ll be around, let’s get in touch 🙂

Simultaneously, we’ll be travelling to Toronto, ONTARIO for meetings on October, 17th and to St. Andrews by-the-sea, NEW BRUNSWICK on October, 18th for the ERDI Fall 2014 where we’ll present with our Canadian Board Meeting Partner: MindShare. Naturally, if you’d like to connect on any of these locations, please do reach out to us 🙂

Last but not least, there’s also a lot happening in Portugal, so if you’re into Smart Governance and agile decision making, ping us!

Let’s change the World, one Board Meeting at a time 😉

Greenfest 2014: João Couto, Microsoft Portugal General Manager

Board Meeting Enterprise was one the examples mentioned by João Couto, General Manager for Microsoft Portugal, at Cascais GREENFEST 2014, of environment friendly solutions that Organizations and Cities can implement while adopting Smart Governance practices to drive agile decision making, compliance and transparency.

Changing the World, one Board Meeting at a time 🙂

Reminiscences from EDUCAUSE 2014, Orlando, FL

Last week we travelled to Orlando, FL for the EDUCAUSE 2014, an annual conference that bridges the worlds of Higher Education and IT together.

We’re really thankful. Every single person we’ve met engaged on a meaningful and constructive conversation with our team, and for that we are very grateful.

It was really beneficial to meet with so much Deans, Provosts, Vice-Provosts, Board Members and CIOs from so many Higher Education Institutions and to be able to show and demonstrate our smart governance product, Board Meeting Enterprise, and get good, constructive feedback.

It was especially satisfying to hear over and over again these words:

«there’s nothing like this».

We cannot help but feel good about it.

Just wait for what we’re cooking next 😉

EDUCAUSE 2014, Orlando, FL, U.S.A.: Smart Governance for Higher Education Institutions

In a few hours we’ll be leaving to Orlando, FL, for EDUCAUSE 2014, to share our thoughts on Smart Governance in Higher Ed, and our contribution with our Board Meeting Enterprise.

The EDUCAUSE Annual Conference presents a robust, community-generated program that explores today’s toughest IT issues facing higher education.

If you’re curious about how we can help Smart Governance adoption with Board Meeting Enterprise on your Higher Education Institution, drop by the Startup Alley – we’ll be fairly easy to spot thanks to our blue Board Meeting rollup.

For you, we’ll have case studies, presentation, demo of our product, a lot of stories from the field and direct contact with the people who define our product roadmap.

Last but not least, a limited deal opportunity only available for the attendees of EDUCAUSE 2014… Curious?

When the event is finished, we’ll head to Miami for meetings, meetings, meetings – that we also look forward to. If you’re interested in meeting, we still have a few slots available on Friday the 3rd/October.

See you in Florida!

Toronto is such a great place :)

While waiting for our flight to return home we couldn’t help but reflect on the amazing week we had in Toronto while visiting as part of the Portuguese Deputy Prime Minister trade mission.

Everyone was very welcoming and eager to listen and exchange experiences, with a very healthy attitude. Great meetings that we felt coming out with more than we came in. Always learning.

We can’t help but be excited about the feedback every single person we’ve met gave us about Board Meeting Enterprise. There’s something about the words “there’s nothing like it” that always made us smile 🙂

We will definitely come back – even facing your incoming Winter 🙂

Great place, awesome people in Toronto.

A new approach, a fresh start

Every now and then you find an Organization that is struggling with the day-to-day and stuck in a pattern of reactive behaviors towards their environment.

What will it take for the realization that the repetition of the same choices and actions are likely to produce the same results – hurting competitiveness.
On the hyper-demanding World that we live in, that is working very hard towards extinction.

Adoption of IT solutions helps, but you can only make a difference if you take the opportunity to rethinking how your Organization is acting on the day-to-day, to simplify and obtain desired consequences out of the daily efforts.
Little sense resides on recreating what is not working, or is not agile, on any IT tool that you bring in.

Everyday is an opportunity for change. And change always brings good things.

Fear not. Change the World.