[MEDIA ADVISORY] Smart city stakeholders gather to kick-off 2022 activities focused on creating resilient citizen-centered cities and fostering youth leaders of the future
February 14, 2022
The World Smart Sustainable Cities Organization (WeGO) is organizing a hybrid event on February 23 to introduce its activities for 2022 to its members, partners, and stakeholders around the world. Aligning with the newly risen key questions following the COVID-19 pandemic and the accelerated digitalization of societies, this year WeGO is launching activities for a broader more inclusive audience aiming to empower youth as the leaders of the future and build resilient smart cities.
The event will serve as the launching ceremony for the ‘WeGO Smart City Champions’. This program, open to anyone under 35, aims to build the capacity of young people in South Korea and overseas in the fields of urban development, sustainability and smart cities, to build their capacity for living and working in this era of 4th industrial revolution.
WeGO will also introduce other additional new programs, such as the ‘WeGO Smart Cities Index’, which will enable cities to assess their development stages, benchmark, and gain inspiration from other cities of the world, and the ‘WeGO Nexus’, a community platform for WeGO members to communicate with each other and conduct matchmaking activities—all focused on promoting public-private partnerships, bridging the digital divide, and promoting the ethical development of digitalization needed to create citizen-centric smart cities in these post-pandemic times, in contrast with the previously dominating technology-centric vision of smart cities.
The event will open with remarks by the Mayor of Seoul (who also serves as the President of WeGO) and the Ambassador of Mexico, and a keynote speech by the Edgelands Institute, one of WeGO’s newest partners. Following this, WeGO will introduce the details of this year’s activities, the ‘WeGO Smart City Champions’ program and some of the participating students from 7 universities. Selected partners and partner programs will also be showcased, before the event ends with a short networking session for offline participants.
Participants of the event will receive an overview of WeGO’s activities in 2022 and learn more about how they can partake in and benefit from these activities. While most participants will join online, certain key participant—such as representatives from WeGO’s domestic members and partners, embassy officials, and professors and students—will attend the event in-person.
- What? Beginning-of-year event organized to showcase WeGO’s new activities to smart city stakeholders around the world
- When? February 23, 15:00-16:30
- Where? Hybrid (In-person at the Seoul Global Center 9F (Jongno-gu) and online via Zoom)
- Who?
- WeGO and its President Se-hoon Oh, also Mayor of Seoul (TBD)
- Representatives from smart tech companies and domestic and international institutions
- Ambassadors and representatives from domestic embassies
- Stakeholders from academia and youth involved in the ‘WeGO Smart City Champions’
For media enquiries, please contact:
Alizée Rousset, Program Officer, WeGO Secretariat
02-720-2931; alizee@we-gov.org