Creator of Photoshop to Deliver Keynote at First Smart City Tech Summit

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Feb. 23, 2016 - PRLog -- KANSAS CITY, MO — February 16, 2016 — Think Big Partners, a Kansas City based technology, innovation and entrepreneurship focused consulting firm and manager of the KC Living Lab, has announced the dates for the first in a series of Smart City Tech Summits. This initial Smart City Tech Summit, to be held March 29 – 31, 2016 in Kansas City, will focus on the public safety challenges faced by cities and their citizens from domestic terrorism and active shooter threat situations.

Attendees will be able to hear from industry leaders on the latest trends, lessons learned, development of new strategies and deployment of public safety technologies to help protect citizens in their daily lives.  The event will include a keynote address from John Penn II, one of the original creators of Photoshop and the Senior Solutions Architect for Law Enforcement for Adobe in Silicon Valley.

Mr. Penn has spent more than three decades writing software and exploring the role software plays in the prevention and investigation of internet crimes against children, and crimes involving digital media. He has been instrumental in the development of advanced victim identification tools and techniques, and as a digital forensics expert who provides the necessary implementation and training for police officers and federal agents.

Smart City Tech Summit’s primary goal is to educate municipal leaders, critical infrastructure executives, law enforcement, school administrators, large technology providers, emerging technology innovators and others, to improve responses to domestic terrorism threats that often involve an active shooter situation. The event will discuss many of the most critical safety concerns that all cities, school districts and organizations face today, and examine the technologies that can help manage and solve these challenges. Attendees will have the opportunity to see and experience the capabilities of leading public safety technologies from legacy providers and emerging startups in order to foster more innovation, collaboration and better understand how technology can help keep people safe. On the last day, a full-scale, live technology demonstration will feature an active shooter threat response by the Kansas City Police Department, along with recently declassified technologies for public safety, including satellites, drones, sensors, predictive analytics and more.

As a community leader in business innovation that solves real-world problems, Think Big Partners is hosting this Smart City Tech Summit so that public officials, entrepreneurs, technologists and innovators have the chance to meet and share information with the intent that the insights shared will prove valuable in addressing future public safety challenges. “The shootings in San Bernardino, CA at Inland Regional Center; Aurora, Colorado at the Century 16 theater and Newtown, Connecticut at Sandy Hook Elementary School, have required public safety agencies small and large to analyze their abilities to provide protection and care on a daily basis,” said Think Big Managing Partner Herb Sih. These tragic events have also required public safety agencies to modify their response procedures for active shooter incidents. “It is our hope that this conference will foster the type of collaboration and partnership that is the hallmark of American problem-solving, and we can think of no more important problem to tackle at this time,” said Sih.

In 2015, Kansas City announced a public-private partnership with Cisco, Sprint, Think Big Partners and others to develop a 2.2 mile smart city deployment in the downtown loop. The goal is to provide the City with a framework for citizen engagement, innovation and a more efficient delivery of city services. Initiatives that are developed in Kansas City will be shared with other municipalities to spread the adoption of useful technologies across the country. Smart City Tech Summit attendees, be they government, private sector or citizens, all have a role in identifying and adopting the most effective technologies available.

About Think Big Partners

Think Big Partners helps entrepreneurs build successful companies by providing them highly collaborative and flexible workspaces, creating innovation partnerships with large organizations and developing emerging technology solutions that deliver powerful, problem-focused results. Think Big Partners helps a community unlock the power of entrepreneur-led economic development and is a leader in Smart City / Internet of Things technologies and the innovation community.

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For more information about Smart City Tech Summit, please visit our website at www.smartcitytechsummit.com. If you are interested in being a presenter, exhibitor or sponsor, please contact Think Big Partners at (816) 842-5244 or contact us through the website at www.smartcitytechsummit.com.