Bringing creativity and innovation to local highways: Future Highways 2016 - 5th July, Innovation Birmingham

UPDATE: Highlights from the day, as told by everyone else, on social media in the room and remotely - A fabulous event that delivered and surpassed it's design intention.  Huge thanks to everyone who contributed to make it such a success ;-)

Local highways meets creativity 

Bringing data, academia, technology and highways engineers together in a practical way was always going to be a challenge - one I decided to take on a few years ago, and this year's Future Highways conference, 5th July, Innovation Birmingham is the fruit of that labour.

I've felt the need for some time to shake up the traditional conference design for local highways maintenance.  To do away with the more rigid, serious, formal and inject some creativity, innovation, and practical hands on learning in its place.  

The highways sector has been talking for several years about engaging and sharing more effectively, and putting users needs first. A friendlier, accessible conference format that encourages all those with expertise and interest in local highways to take part, not just within the highways sector, seemed the right thing to do.  

Turning dreams into reality

The Future Highways conference has been an industry leading event for the local highways maintenance sector for several years. Having experienced it as a delegate (2013), speed learning session leader (2014), and delivering a data workshop (2015), this year (2016) I've had the fantastic opportunity to design the whole thing!

It's quite a responsibility, and the key to success for me has been balancing the traditional needs of the sector, the desire to reach out, collaborate and connect with others outside the sector, the practical and effective use of data, and the delivery of a successful event for organisers Landor LINKS.

Like any challenge, there's a lot of research and development.  Three key threads have been:

• Collaborating with the Local Government Technical Advisers Group, to engage with and make it attractive to the traditional highways engineering side 
• Providing secretariat services to the Future Highways Forum to understand the desires and wishes of the future focused senior leaders in the sector (the Forum members, chaired by Jason Russell, Assistant Director of Highways, Surrey County Council)
• Taking an active role in the open data community, (Future Highways goes to Open Data Camp) to find people with highways experience / interest, who are already, or willing to get more involved with the highways sector to bring data theory into practical reality.  Open Data camp goes to Cardiff in autumn 2016.

What you can expect

The result is a brilliant mix of speakers to inform and inspire, and afternoon facilitated workshops to enable active participation and engagement to solve practical, real-life challenges in new ways.

We have speakers and workshop facilitators from the highways maintenance sector, local authorities, open data, academia and tech/developers.  It's safe because you'll recognise many of speakers and their topics, it's exciting because your mind will be expanded by the unexpected expertise of others who are also working to transform local highways delivery with you.   

The brand new iCentrum venue is also very exciting, being home to the West Midlands Combined Authority and Transport Systems Catapult incubator centre for Intelligent Mobility.  With our strong open data theme, I'm quite excited about the latest announcement of a strategic partnership between the Transport Systems Catapult and the Open Data Institute to develop transport data infrastructure.  I believe this means we'll get the chance to integrate real life highways asset and user needs data and challenges with the wider intelligent mobility agenda.  

Inform - first morning plenary session, in familiar format to help the traditionalists feel comfortable, and set the scene for all parties 

(chaired by Jason Russell, Assistant Director of Highways, Surrey County Council and Chair, Future Highways Forum)

• Nic Cary, Head of Digital Transformation and Open Data, Department for Transport (I was hugely inspired by Nic's presentation at the Smart Internet of Things event in April 2016, setting an inspiring scene for integrating transport, data and mobility.  Here's why Nic is suggesting placing less reliance customer satisfaction surveys to understand user needs.
• Rob Gillespie, President, Local Government Technical Advisers Group (representing engineers and technical managers in the metropolitan and unitary local highways authorities, and the need to understand). Here's why Rob's presidential theme is Connectivity and Quality of Life. (Twitter: @LG_TAG)
• Jonathan Raper, CEO, TransportAPI (a successful Open Data Institute startup providing a single platform for transport data, providing a navigable interface linking data providers with developers and others needs transport data).  Liveblogging the Smarter Travel LIVE Transport Hackathon, co-run by TransportAPI and Landor LINKS, opened my eyes to the capabilities of developer teams to solve highways and transport-related challenges.  (Twitter: @TransportAPI, @MadProf)

Inspire - does what it says on the tin, inspires new ways of looking at local highways challenges from within and outside the sector

• Bjorn Birgisson, Pro-Vice Chancellor and Executive Dean, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Aston University  shares his secret roads knowledge, development of advanced asset modelling software to balance technical, financial and other risks, and leading transport infrastructure activities in the Midlands Innovation world-class research and innovation partnership. Read more in this exclusive interview. (Twitter: @AstonUniversity, @Aston_EAS)
• Yotta and Lancashire County Council case study,  Yotta provide the Horizons and Mayrise software packages for local highways asset management, and also deliver road condition surveys (@Yotta_Ltd)
• David Whitton, Head of Highways, Capital Development and Waste, Devon County Council, The role of data in Transforming Highways Service Delivery. Did you know?  Devon County Council are one of the first local authorities to publish highways asset condition data as open data. (@DevonHighways, @DevonCC)
• Reinhold Behringer, Professor of Creative Technology, Leeds Beckett University sharing progress on the collaborative Roadee project with Leeds City Council, Leeds Data Mill, and WetGenes developers.  They're using mobile phone data to predict road condition. This means capturing and utilising road condition data is unlikely to remain the preserve of dedicated survey companies in the future. What does this mean for standards and accessibility to the data?  (@R_Behringer, @LeedsDataMill, @Leeds_Highways, @wetgenes)

Improve - choose from these facilitated workshops where you can work in small groups to overcome specific challenges / barriers to local highways delivery:

1. Intelligent data...transforming highways service delivery (Chris Dyer, Head of Professional Services, Yotta)  Twitter:@yotta_ltd
2. Longer lorries- using data to influence, and manage the impacts on our local highways assets (Dominic Proud, Service Delivery Manager, Transport and Highways Development, Telford and Wrekin Council, and Chair, Technical Advisers Group (TAG) National Transport Committee) Twitter:@LG_TAG
3. The role of local highways in the Electric Vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure (Neil Williams, Director, Tilix) (Tilix on Linked In)
4. Smart Rural: How can rural communities capture the benefits of data, connectivity, and the Internet of Things? (Ben Proctor, Director, Likeaword Consultancy) Twitter:@likeaword
5. Open data principles, tools and resources (Lucy Knight, Policy and Strategy Adviser, Devon County Council, co-founder, Open Data Institute (ODI) Devon node Twitter:@jargonautical
6. Opportunities and risks of the Internet of Things on the highway (Martin Howitt, IT Architect, Bristol City Council, co-founder, Open Data Institute (ODI) Devon node Twitter:@martinhowitt
7. Strategy and engagement to prioritise user needs in local highways (Kelly Doonan, Content Designer, Devon County Council) Twitter: @allyblue22
8. Why and how to provide Urban Traffic Management and Control (UTMC) data as open data (Andrew Radford, Transportation Services, Birmingham City Council)

More than just a conference

Another thing about conferences I wanted to change, was to make the focus less on the event itself, and more about an ongoing conversation and evolution of thinking.  We're building a community around the Future Highways theme, and here's a few ways you can be part of that:

Linked In: Future Highways
Twitter: @futurehighways #futurehighways
Web: futurehighways.net

What I've learnt 

Throughout the design process, I've done my best to balance the potentially competing needs of tradition, innovation, and practicality.  I've been hugely inspired by those who have chosen to take part.  It's their willingness and dedication that will collectively make this a cracking step forward towards the more creative, innovative approach the local highways sector has been wanting for so long.  

Through this experience, I've learnt that it's crucial to gain the recognition, acceptance and respect of each group of people you're working with.  I've chosen to immerse myself in each group (events publication company, traditional highways sector, and open data community), understand where each is coming from and trying to find common points of interest that can act as bridges, or connectors, between them.

This has been a challenging process, but a very rewarding one, and I very much look forward to welcoming everyone to the event on 5th July in Birmingham. Don't miss out, book your ticket now! 

I'd love your feedback, and once we've enjoyed and reflected on the day itself, the question I'll be asking myself, is what's my next challenge?!