http://www.cityandbits.de/unternehmen/team/

City & Bits was founded in May 2001 as a spin-off-company of the technical university of Berlin, department of city and regional planning. The founders of City & Bits had experiences out of different projects in dealing with city and regional development und new technologies. Providing knowledge in terms of using technologies for better organization with the aim of enhancing city and regional development is the goal of City & Bits. The company is offering their customers in the public sector strategies, methods and technologies to provide better services for the citizens and the local and regional businesses. On a very early stage, compared to other companies, City and Bits focused on city and regional portals to connect all activities at a local or regional level.

The main activities of City & Bits are:

Providing services and consulting in:

• information management / intranet,
• modernisation of administration
• portals, egovernment, epartizipation

• district Nordfriesland: "from islands to network"
• city of Coburg: "egovernment, information management, culture networking"
• city of Berlin, Alexanderplatz: "interactive citizen participation for redesign of the place"
• district Mecklenburg:"meck-it!" encouragement of medial competence for adolescents"
• parliament Nordrhein-Westfalen: consulting for the enqueue committee futur of the cities, "influence and scope for design of ICT technologies for the urban development in the district NRW"

"Knowledge, creativity and engagement are the relevant factors for innovation, progress and quality of life in the 21st century. The creation of integrative information- and service interfaces as well as the use of net based means of work- and cooperation make numerous demands on the technical infrastructure of cities and regions. At the same time regional portals offer cities, communes and regions actual, high-quality and interactive information. They exceed common public relation and become a cultural value and an important tool for activating urban planning. Main reasons for success for the creation of infrastructure are 1.strategical long sight 2.combination of organisation, content and technology as well as 3.a cooperative together of various actors. Creation of infrastructure is therefore first of all an ambitious process of project and coordination which needs strictly an strategical planning and professional project management."

What do we think that people can learn from us

as an non directly content involved technical consultant company we would like to keep the discussion going and give inputs for an technological transfer.

What do we want to learn from others (in general)

understanding and overview of the european technological and educational situation content:

• strategies for activating rural regions by enhanced forms of education
• various methods for self education for activating rural regions technology:
• the part of ICT in rural regions
• ICT tools

aim:

• creation of an education network
• partnership (cultural, economical, technological, social)

• communication plattform for an integrated work in terms of developping an european network for rural zones (publicating own activities, partnersearch, knowledge transfer)
• developping an open source tool that can be used also in other surroundings as municipalities or institutions.