Geraldton, Australia Becoming a Smarter City, with IBM Help

Working with an IBM Smarter Cities Challenge team, the city of Geraldton, Australia is working to build its eminence in technology and clean energy, to attract partners and investors on its path to becoming a global Smarter City.

geraldton

Geraldton CEO Tony Brun writes at Citizen IBM about how IBM and Geraldton’s collaboration on how best to use its abundant natural resources. As a member of the global community of Smarter Cities, Geraldton is today well positioned to improve the quality of life for its citizens while advancing its agenda for economic development. Get the story. 

Related:

Ginni Rometty Discusses How to Build a Smarter City:

The Smarter City (interactive)

- Posted by Regan Kelly

IBM CEO Virginia Rometty to Address the Council on Foreign Relations

On Thursday, March 7, Ginni Rometty will be addressing members of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Virginia Rometty headshot

Virginia Rometty

The event will be broadcast live on Thursday evening at 6 p.m. EST. Get the details and watch it here.

You can see a replay and read more about the speech on the Smarter Planet blog, where you can also join the conversation.

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– Posted by Regan Kelly, Editor/Community Manager, The Greater IBM Connection

IBM Video Series Celebrates International Women’s Day

iwd_squareInternational Women’s Day is this week: March 8, 2013.

To coincide with this global event, 18 IBMers – of all ages, cultures, and stages of their careers – are talking about IBM values, corporate social responsibility, job opportunities, and flexibility. In these videos, they’re sharing why they love being part of a company that makes the world a better place, with its enduring commitment to diversity (including diversity of thought), and its rigorous focus on innovation.

Check out the video below from IBM Australia:

In this video from IBM Diversity, Sylvie speaks of the opportunities and amenities provided in her time with IBM to promote family and professional achievements. She also shares her insight on how leadership is demonstrated differently when it comes to gender, and says, “Women tend to collaborate more, which can be the signature of a strong leader.”

Some of the events IBM has or will be participating in for 2013 for International Women’s Day:

IBM has also had a long history of supporting and participating in this notable worldwide event. Here’s a few of the past stories and events:

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Greater IBM: How do you plan to celebrate International Women’s Day?

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Additional resources:

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–Posted by Julie Yamamoto, Program Manager, The Greater IBM Connection

The Big Bang, Big Data, and IBM: Supercomputing R&D for Radio Astronomy

This circuit board is covered with antennas geared to listen to radio signals of a frequency between about 450MHz and 1.5GHz. The Square Kilometer Array project aims to cover a square kilometer across the southern hemisphere of Earth with such antennas.

This circuit board is covered with antennas geared to listen to radio signals of a frequency between about 450MHz and 1.5GHz. The Square Kilometer Array project aims to cover a square kilometer across the southern hemisphere of Earth with such antennas. (Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

(from cnet.com)

HANOVER, Germany — IBM is working to advance the supercomputing state of the art in memory, optical links, and processing with research stemming from a massive radio telescope project.

Called the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), the telescope is to be built from 2016 to 2024 in southern Africa and Australia. Before that, IBM is working to develop the necessary computing technology through a five-year partnership with the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (Astron).  The idea is to create computing systems that can handle the tremendous quantity of data from the radio telescope, said Ronald Luijten of IBM Research in Zurich. It will produce 14 exabytes of data each day — about 14 million times as much as an ordinary PC’s hard drive can hold. Read more / see the photo gallery.

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– Posted by Regan Kelly, Editor/Community Manager, The Greater IBM Connection

Getting to Know the Millenials – Q&A with IBM’s Abe Thomas

What can the recent IBM Global Student Study tell us about the leaders of tomorrow?

Abraham Thomas

Abraham Thomas

In this Q&A publsihed in Business Day Live, Abraham Thomas, IBM South Africa’s general manager, speaks to Margaret Harris about this, and the issues, differences, and challenges uncovered. Read more.

More:

Insights from the 2012 Study

Download the report

study cover

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– Posted by Regan Kelly, Editor/Community Manager, The Greater IBM Connection

IBM Teams Up With Deutsche Telekom For ‘Smarter Cities’ Products

IBM is building on Deutsche Telekom’s Machine-To-Machine expertise to deliver integrated products for Smarter Cities projects around the world.

IBM Logo Featured

Learn about the new IBM and Deutsche Telekom partnership to deliver an integrated solutions portfolio that enables cities to make better use of their services through intelligent data capture and analysis, in this article by Darryl K. Taft, TechWeek Europe.

Smarter Planet Video: Solving the Problems of Bolzano, Italy’s Aging Population

What does Italy’s aging population have to do with IBM’s Smarter Planet?

In Bolzano, Italy, almost a quarter of the population is older than 65. In fact, Italy, along with Japan, has one of the oldest populations in the world.

As a result, Bolzano currently spends close to half of its social services budget on services for the elderly. This includes assisted living facilities that provide around-the-clock care. But assisted living facilities can cost a city and the people who stay there vast amounts of money that municipalities and families don’t have.

The solution: keep them in their homes where they are comfortable. But how?

IBM’s Smarter Cities team partnered with the city to outfit a small group of elderly residents’ homes with sensors which would in turn report data back to a central database closely monitored by the city. From there, the city could dispatch a care worker to visit the home. By allowing Bolzano to keep the number of its staff members the same, the program stabilizes the city’s costs while allowing it to care for its growing elderly population.

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– Posted by Regan Kelly, Editor/Community Manager, The Greater IBM Connection

Information Technology in Africa, The Next Frontier – IBM’s Leading the Way

- from The Economist

Lots of companies today have their eyes on Africa, but it’s IBM that’s leading the way.

That’s nothing new: the company sold its first gear there to South Africa’s railways in 1911 and a mainframe computer to Ghana’s central statistics bureau in 1964. More recently, it has been paying special attention to the continent, working with mobile-phone company Bharti Airtel, and opening offices in Angola, Mauritius, Tanzania, and Senegal – in all, more than 20 of Africa’s 54 countries.

Big Blue may be ahead, but it is not alone. Why IBM and an ever-increasing number of other companies are so enthusiastic about their prospects in Africa.

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty Addresses South Africa’s Business Leaders

IBM Chairman and CEO Ginni Rometty speaks to more than 200 South African business leaders about IBM’s commitment to Africa at the IBM CIO Leadership Exchange in Johannesburg, South Africa on February 5, 2013.

(Graham Carlow/Feature Photo Service for IBM)

IBM been doing business in Africa for more than 90 years. Most recently, the company has been expanding its presence by focusing investments in more than 20 African countries.

Read more about Technology in Africa: Extracting Insights from Big Data in this Smarter Planet blog post by Steve Hamm.

Related:

Follow IBM South Africa on Twitter: @IBM_SouthAfrica

Imbizo! IBM South Africa and Its Leadership Team

IBM CEO Virginia Rometty Shares Her Leadership Philosophy

Ginni Rometty: The 100 Women Who Rule the World (Forbes.com)

The Center for CIO Leadership

IBM Vice President, Gill Zhou, Is a Model for Working Women in China (Ad Age)

Gill Zhou, Vice President Marketing, Communications & Citizenship, IBM Greater China Group

Gill Zhou, Vice President Marketing, Communications & Citizenship, IBM Greater China Group

IBM Vice President, Gill Zhou, was recognized as being one of China’s Women to Watch in September 2012 at a gala event sponsored by Ad Age and Thoughtful China.  The recognition cites Gill as being a role model for Chinese women in business, as evidenced by her 760,000 followers on the Chinese micro-blogging service Sina Weibo (now more than 1M+). Gill is quoted in the article as follows: “As a woman leader, I always have to be conscious that we play multiple roles: professional, daughter, daughter-in-law, wife, mother, parent,” says Ms. Zhou, who often accommodates employees’ family needs by granting them flexibility. “It’s never easy.”   Previously in charge of Communications for IBM Asia Pacific, Ms. Zhou took on the role of leading marketing for IBM China in 2012 after driving double digit growth in the region in 2011.

At the gala event, Ms. Zhou had this thought to share with the event attendees:

“My key takeaway out of my 20 years career in the fast changing industry like IT is you have to choose your battles….but once you define your battles, DO IT with an unwavering focus…”

Ms. Zhou has also been recognized by a number of other organizations.  Prior to joining IBM, she worked at Motorola where she received the “Woman Star of Motorola” award for her role in making the company one of the top 10 brands in China (2000).   In 2004, she was recognized as being one of the top 10 women in China’s IT industry in a program sponsored by the All China Women’s Federation, Ministry of Information Industry and China Computerworld, and was also voted one of the Top 50 most influential women in China by Trends magazine.  More recently, she was a keynote speaker at Working Mother magazine’s ‘Global Advancement of Women‘ conference in Shanghai in 2011 where she spoke on Strategies in Building Your Personal Brand.

Read the full story and learn more about Ms. Zhou below, including some video footage from the event:

(Video credit: Thoughtful China Women to Watch Event)

–Posted by Julie Yamamoto, Program Manager, The Greater IBM Connection

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The January 2013 theme for The Greater IBM Connection is ”leadership”, and The Greater IBM Connection will be sharing various tips, tools, stories, and resources on this topic.