Michelin’s Movin’ON summit has been described as ‘Davos’ for mobility so it was quite a thrill for CLIP to be selected to represent the future of micro-mobility & multi-modal transit as one of the winning startups here.
Movin’ON is a global sustainable mobility summit featuring three days of presentations, panels, round tables and hands-on workshops as well as demonstrations of innovative vehicles and technologies.
Day ONE – I started early (5:30AM) to set up our kiosk as the rare crowd of leaders from academia, politics, cities and business filed in to spend the next 3 days addressing global challenges with a focus on defining the future of sustainable mobility.
With a clear call to action for More Mobility, Less Impact – Florent Menegaux, CEO Michelin kicked off the 3 day summit.
Beautifully designed & hosted in a giant turn of the century cinema-studio transformed with curious architectural interventions.
I fielded thousands of questions during the three days here from some extremely curious and insightful people in mobility. A surprising outcome from these interactions is that a majority of people still aren’t fully aware of what e-bikes are and their significance in the gradient of urban mobility.
There is much work to be done here in educating people about the new modes of sustainable mobility, worldwide.
Day Two -My favorite highlight is demo-ing CLIP to the super gracious Generale Consul of France – Catherine Feuillet. It’s always so awesome when your work resonates and creates a spark of excitement in the other.
One of the panels I attended of note was about redefining multi-modal solutions of the future. An insightful conversation between Greg Clark (HSBC Global Banking), Mark De La Vergne (City of Detroit) and Carla Bailo (Moderator). A surprising anecdote shared here about the MTA cold-calling Detroit Transit seeking a consultation on lessons learned from Detroit’s new and successful bus network deployment.
The thrust of the conversation here is clearly on the immensely positive impact of multi-modal systems on the quality of life in cities and a call to action for easy collaboration between diverse systems and groups trying new ideas and openly sharing successful results no matter where in the world. Case example : Curitiba teaching the world a lesson on dedicated bus lane deployment.
Of course, I couldn’t do justice to the summit without a shout out to the fantastic food trucks here at the summit. Check out this awesome pizza truck with a cool built in brick oven. 🙌🏽
The evening ends at a cocktail mixer between the startups and other business & government leaders. I continue to meet some amazingly inspiring people here –Pierre Lavoie – the triathlete champion now working on getting more bikes on our streets. The wonderfully forward thinking Mayor of the town of Bridgewater from Nova Scotia, David Mitchell – who loved the idea of using CLIP to encourage his constituents to start using bikes more. We part on a promise to follow up and make this happen not just for Bridgewater residents but for everyone across the world.
Day Three – I’m invited to participate in a workshop on Micromobility. I get to participate in a brainstorming session with Venkat Sumantran, the former CEO of TATA motors responsible for the TATA NANO. This is an obvious fan-moment as our goal at CLIP too is to design for the mass consumer market as well.
The workshop ends with a call to action to better educate everyone , especially city officials about the economic benefits of micro-mobility to accelerate better policy and infrastructure.
As the summit drew to a close – we bid goodbyes to each other – excellent people doing important work on the future of mobility. We return, inspired and emboldened to carry on our work with renewed enthusiasm for the sustainable near future.
A big thanks to Jehan de-la-Forge and Nastasia Bernard – who managed us all with perfect grace. Last but not least, before i flew back to New York i got to take a quick detour to meet a dear friend from my architecture school days in India – Jean Lou Hamelin, now a practicing Architect in Montreal. It was fantastic seeing you Jean-Lou . Until next time!
