Extreme Blue tackles Smarter Cities in Flanders

By bogaert
Summer season, time for another Extreme Blue! Summer season is getting by tradition the period that IBM starts with Extreme Blue project across Europe. The Extreme Blue program is a premier internship for top-notch students. In Belgium we started two projects this week, and each project is staffed with four students.
We assigned one project to the subject of Smarter Cities, with the challenge to develop the technology and the business plan for a new product or service that addresses an existing challenge in our society, in particular in the urban region of Flanders. The four students Dominik, Francisco, Harold, and Peter are from Austria, Belgium, and Spain. They have different educational backgrounds, in technology and in business. New Media Forum
The students’ agenda was filled during the first week with education sessions and information gathering meetings. We gave a brief overview of different project already running in Smart Cities at IBM, exposed them with ideas at the local telecom operator, and should meet soon representatives from local government (communities / cities). Now they will receive a series of goals, which includes the baseline, target and stretch. Over the next two weeks they will have to come up with a bunch of fresh ideas, which will be funneled by the mentors until we have one cool project they can work out in detail.
First of all I’m getting curious on (a) the different means the students will use to generate ideas, (b) the total number of ideas, and (c) the spread of the ideas in the different areas in Smarter Cities. Of course, I’m getting even more curious to know that one cool project that will be down selected.
Let’s cross fingers, hope that our team finds the coolest idea of all teams across Europe.