Free Mansion House event to showcase new digital innovations

17 May 2013

Kate Dinnigan and Henry Judge from Dublin City Council crèche at the launch of the 'Your Future City' digital showcase today

The Mansion House in Dublin will be playing host to a free digital showcase called ‘Your Future City’ next Monday and Tuesday in order to give people a taste of how technological innovation is impacting on every aspect of our lives. One of the event’s attractions will be a LEGO-building workshop.

The digital showcase at the Mansion House is taking place to coincide with the Open Innovation 2.0 conference that will run at Dublin Castle next Monday and Tuesday.

At the event, more than 20 new innovations will be on display so that people can interact with these new technologies.

The showcase will be broken into zones covering innovations for the home, work, schools, city, environment and garden. Each zone will include demonstrations displaying the innovation taking place in Ireland and internationally.

One of the big attractions is set to be a LEGO workshop at the forecourt of the Mansion House so that people of all ages can build their vision of the Dublin of the future. These ‘Build The Change’ LEGO workshops have already taken places in 10 European cities.

There will also be a giant interactive social media wall to allow people view and interact with social media commentary on the event and share ideas on how Dublin can engage more with digital technology.

Lord Mayor of Dublin Mr Naoise Ó Muirí said that the event will allow people to experience how technology will affect them.

Some of the projects that will be on display will include the ‘Behavioural Prediction’ initiative that is being developed by Intel, ESB Networks, SAP and M2C.

The aim of the project is to predict a person’s daily behaviour by analysing available data. There will be a demo showing how such predictions can be used to set a person’s alarm clock, open and heat their car in the morning and set timings to switch on lights just before they arrive home in the evening.

Another demo that will be on display is CityWatch. Developed by Dublin City Council, Intel and Trinity College Dublin, the goal of the project is to allow citizens interact on issues such as making sure public services meet their needs and helping cities become more sustainable. It’s all about using the power of the crowd to turn citizens into ‘reporters’ and to strive for a greener Dublin.

Other demonstrations will include a solution to predict which rooms are most frequently used in a home in order to heat or cool these rooms when needed and reduce energy bills.

There will also be an Irish developed solar-powered device on display. This device is targeted at teachers to allow them monitor temperatures and humidity levels in classrooms.

The showcase will kick off at 12pm on Monday, 20 May and will finish up on Tuesday afternoon at 5pm.

Carmel Doyle was a long-time reporter with Silicon Republic

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