First time in the World, Great Festival of Creativity was organized on May 20-22, 2014 by London Design Festival in Istanbul, Turkey. This festival was the first one of GREAT Festivals which bring together the experts and artists from the world of British fashion, design, luxury, innovation, technology, education, food and beverages.
The Great Festival of Creativity realized with many interesting sessions, panels and networking activities on May 20-22, 2014 in the Seed, Sakip Sabanci Museum, Istanbul. Admittedly, the most attractive things of the festival were the new materials which won Nobel award in the modern fashion design category.
On the other hand, during the 3-days live activities, the most reputable and entrepreneur companies and persons came together and the famous speakers and leaders of the business world from Turkey and Great Britain told their resource of inspiration, opinions and ideas. One of the prominent sessions of them was “Future Cities” Session. Léan Doody, the smart cities consultant on Arup, Richard Upton, a creative entrepreneur, Martin Mayfield, an engineer and a member of Institution of Mechanical Engineers and Leyla Arsan, CEO of TAGES, presented the smart city models and the issues in different aspects. Leyla Arsan pointed out the importance of open data, mobile apps and developer engagement activities to make cities smarter. As a model, she presented the results of the CitySDK Project and Hackathonist events.
Hackathonist is a developer competition event which is organized by TAGES in the cooperation with Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) within CitySDK Project which aims to create a toolkit for the development of digital services within cities. The toolkit comprises of open and interoperable digital service interfaces as well as processes, guidelines and usability standards. 1st Hackathonist was organized on Nov 1-3, 2014 in Istanbul and the 2nd one, Hackathonist 2014, was organized on May 8-11, 2014 in Istanbul. Leyla Arsan presented the result of the Hackathonist events and their impacts so far. During Hackathonist 2014, 6 smart applications have been developed by Istanbul transport open data and the teams were awarded in 7 seven categories. For more details about the winners and the awards, please click on the following links: www.hackathonist.com, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99h1h2fu1PM&feature=youtu.be. Leyla Arsan also emphasized the law 4734 which prevents public institutions to make the public data open in Turkey and stated that the law would change if we want to have a smart and transparent city and finished her presentation with the summarizing motto “Be Open, Be Smart, Get an Easier City, Be Happy!”
More information about the Great Festival of Creativity is available on http://greatfestivalofcreativity.co.uk/tr/
Aslihan Kagnici, 03 June 2014
