Week 1, Day 2 continued

Going in, we knew that Week 1 will be focused on "discovery". So, we were basically a sponge to absorb as much information as possible. After intently listening to various city related facts, we were treated to a "city tour".

The first stop of the "city tour" was to get a 360 degree view of the city from a 41 story high roof top! As a side note, I noticed that many of the roof tops were painted in green. Perhaps it's a symbolic support of the city's green initiative.

The rest of the tour stopped at various places so the team will get first hand view of the city's key traffic choke points along with newer section of the city that had better traffic flows.

National and local media were also very interested in the SCC event as CheongJu was the very first city in Korea that was selected by IBM for SCC.

The next stop was the "central command center" for the Bus transit system. I think the team was pleasantly surprised by the level of sophistication around Bus traffic monitoring (I know I was). As each bus was installed with a GPS tracking device, a huge monitor was able to display the exact location and movement of every bus on a real time basis. A SCC team member with an analytical mind was salivating as this rich data source could be a gold mine for deeper analysis.

After a nice lunch at Outback Steak House, there was the "big" meeting with the City Mayor & his staff.

This meeting also included expanded IBM team members from IBM Korea along with various camera crews from the media. Judging by the scale and flawless organization & execution, the meeting reinforced everyone's commitment to SCC. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of this meeting as I was focusing on the meeting topics :-(  However, I have a good feeling that video links will be available from the media outlets soon.

Finally, the day ended with a great traditional Korean dinner hosted by the mayor. I actually counted more than 10 courses. Wow.