Description

The Welsh Government recently announced a package of support to revitalise Welsh town centres. The aim is to enable businesses to plan projects which lead to economic growth as well as helping them make the best use of digital technology. This includes utilising data to help firms better understand their customer base and trends which will support businesses in their future planning and marketing activities. This will be achieved through ‘The Year of SMART Towns’ and is closely aligned with the Welsh Government’s Transforming Towns agenda and wider funding for town centres.

As part of the project, a number of ‘Become a SMART Town’ workshops will be delivered to towns in Wales. The workshops will introduce the concept of SMART Towns, help participants prioritise suitable challenges, and identify potential SMART solutions within an action plan.

The series of workshops will be delivered over virtual sessions and will be repeated multiple times over the course of the project. Prior technical or digital knowledge is desirable to participate.

The workshops will primarily focus on 3 main topics

TOPIC 1: GETTING TO KNOW YOUR TOWN

Understanding the elements of what makes your high street tick. What are the town's aspirations and attributes to make it a destination for consumers and what can make them stay longer, making it a sticky highs street to enable multiple purchases? We’ll also touch on who are the people that can be the catalyst to put the SMART into the town.

TOPIC 2: TECH FOR YOUR TOWN

Looking at the kind of infrastructure which will be needed for measuring and collecting data about the high street. We’ll look at examples of tools which could be used for Wi-Fi location analytics, IoT and apps. Under this topic, we’ll also explore the digital skills now required to succeed on the high street, expectation and consumer change that have occurred, and removing those barriers to implementing change.

TOPIC 3: TURNING TECH INTO INFORMATION

Having discussed some of the technologies and having an understanding the skillset needed, we now look at how we make use of the data being collected and setting some SMART objectives within the town to measure any changes implemented. Also, what could be shared and ways to share this information with the high street, consumers and other stakeholders.

Cost:Free
Book Here

WHEN:22nd,23rd,25th March 2022
WHERE:Online