Mobility and connectedness have been the focus of discussion at four panel sessions yesterday at the fourth Qatar Information and Communication Technology Conference and Exhibition (Qitcom), which concludes today at the Qatar National Convention Centre.
Ministry of Transport and Communication assistant undersecretaries Rashid al-Nabit and Hassan al-Sayed were joined by senior executives from Lusail Real Estate Development Company, Qatar Ports Management Company, and Qatar Development Bank on stage during the session.
Azerbaijan’s Minister of Communications and High Technology Elmir Velizadeh introduced the theme of connectedness, citing his country’s strategic plan to become a leading media hub as part of Asia – connected by the ‘one belt, one road’.
Dr Allan James, vice president of Worldwide Business Development at Hyperloop One, talked about the future of mobility, giving the audience an idea about the implications of hyperloop travel.
He said hyperloop will create ‘transformation economics’, which will enable the developing world to skip public transformation infrastructure as it is known today. “This could result in the creation of super regions like ‘Stocksinki’ and ‘Talksinki’, where cities are able to optimise and share services and social infrastructure,” he added.
Ooredoo Qatar CEO Waleed al-Sayed talked about human and social development enabled by technology, followed by Smart Dubai director general Dr Aisha bin Bashr, who spoke about the importance of prioritising ‘happiness’ and creating a ‘happiness’ agenda.
Antoni Vives, former mayor of the city of Barcelona, urged those involved in urban development to adopt a ‘first city, then technology’ approach.
The transport and logistics panel saw a lively discussion on challenges and opportunities for Qatar and other regional countries.
Dr Ulrich Koegler, partner at PwC, pointed out that productivity is increasing, and this can be capitalised by government through the introduction of standards, forward looking and adaptive regulation, and the incentivising of experiments.
Silvester Prakasm of the Land Transport Authority of Singapore reminded the audience that sometimes, “the biggest barrier to technology is human acceptance and hard work is required to win trust.”
Speakers on the panel tackling digital clusters agreed on the importance of an existing community with a clear specialty and insights.
Steve Fifita, executive director at City Digital UILabs USA, stressed the need for government funding and frameworks.
Cross-sector collaboration and public-private-start up engagement to deliver on both digital clusters and smart cities was a point strongly made by Spain StartUp founder and CEO Maria Benjumea and Director of the Internet of Things and City Digisation North Europe for Cisco Bas Boorsma.
Panel sessions also covered the importance of cybersecurity, data privacy, regulation, and interoperability.
Experts during a panel session at Qitcom yesterday.
