There are now some pictures from Zaragoza, Spain where I attended the Innovate Europe conference two weeks ago. I put the pictures in Flickr instead of in my photo gallery. I decided to give Flickr a try and I can already see why so many people are enthusiastic about it. (Some of the pictures don’t belong in the Innovate Europe "set" but I could not figure out how to remove them).
Zaragoza has 620,000 people and is the fourth largest city in Spain. It was founded more than 2,000 years ago by Emperor Augusto and is one of the great monumental cities in Europe. The baroque buildings are quite impressive. The food was in small bites (aka Tapas) and was excellent and there were many bites!. Lunch was typically in mid-afternoon and dinner as late as 11 PM.
With the great food, beautiful city, and a new high-speed train, Zaragoza is the ideal place for international events. The city will host Expo 2008 which is going to be a cultural celebration of the relationship between water and human communities. It has the nickname ZH2O and some extensive projects are being planned to wow large numbers of people who are expected to visit from around the world.
In another project, the "Digital Mile", the Zaragoza government has acquired a long stretch of land formerly used by the railroad and plans to use it to construct a new one million square meter city. The digital mile will include 10,000 e-citizens, a museum of the future, an advanced information center, a digital library, laboratories, start-up companies, drop-in help centers, houses, schools, healthcare facilities, and public services. The mayor and his administration are hoping to create a model for a knowledge based community with "high quality urbanism" and a "singular architecture". The dream is to have a public space of the 21st century with fiber to the home at 100 megabits and biometric authentication for security and commerce. One building in the concept drawing looked like the Guggenheim Museum.  Collaborators include the MIT Smart Cities Research Group and the University of Zaragoza. One of the goals of the project is to create 4,000 knowledge-based jobs. (Also see Jeff Clavier’s blog for more comments about the Digital Mile).
I would highly recommend Zaragoza as a city to visit for anyone going to Europe. The service was excellent, the city is clean and beautiful, and the people are very friendly. Brush up on your Spanish first.

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