The annual Movin’On Summit will be held in Montréal from June 4 to June 6
By Skylar Griego
For many people, summer is the ideal time for traveling. Be it by bus, train or plane, the warmest season is full of eager travelers ready to take advantage of the mobility offered by today’s modern transportation systems. Both public and private transit companies can expect business to pick up in the coming months.
That’s why it’s the perfect time to hold the annual Movin’On Summit, an international conference for which companies, organizations and transportation authorities from different countries gather to discuss solutions to leading issues in the future of mobility all over the world. The 2019 Movin’On Summit will be held in Montréal from June 4 to June 6.
The Movin’On Summit began in 1998 under the name Michelin Challenge Bibendum. According to the Michelin Challenge Bibendum Wikipedia page, it was created by executives at Michelin, a French tire manufacturing company, who wanted to host an event that would “showcase technological research into ‘clean vehicles’ and allow them to be assessed in real operating conditions.”
Over the last two decades, the event has evolved into what it is today; under the new name Movin’On since 2017, the summit provides an opportunity every year for thought leaders in the industry to come together and address mobility challenges that fall under a particular theme. Past themes of the summit include 2017’s “smart and sustainable urban mobility for all” and 2018’s “bringing global, smart, sustainable and multimodal mobility to life.”
The theme for the 2019 conference is “solutions for multimodal ecosystems.” The speakers and activities at the event will focus on five key topics related to this theme:
Decarbonization and Air Quality. This topic explores local and global environmental issues in light of the Paris Agreement on climate change through the axes of improving air quality and accelerating and practicing decarbonization.
Multimodal Urban Transit and Society. This topic looks at the impact that social trends, public transit, transportation habits, technology and safety have on aspects of mobility like new mobilities, urbanism and infrastructure, multimodal transit, and people-friendly mobility. This section of the conference also encompasses the Michelin Challenge Design, which seeks to answer how we can design user-centric experiences that solve the megacity mobility challenges of 2035.
Innovative Technologies. This topic seeks to discuss key questions like, “how can machine learning and AI be applied to new mobility models to create seamless end-to-end mobility?” and “what new mobility models, smart e-mobility and open source hardware and software can be created using readily available data?”
Goods Transportation and Multimodality. This topic focuses on logistics for cities and citizens and end-to-end logistics for goods transportation over long distance, as well as last-mile delivery.
Circular Economy. This topic tackles the life cycles of new sustainable mobility products, including batteries, tools to manage the circular economy and innovative solutions contributing to an effective circular economy.
The Movin’On website presents the summit as a multifaceted, carbon neutral event that is experienced as an “ecosystem of more than 5,000 leaders from academia, politics, cities and businesses.” The different areas of the conference include:
- The innovation center, where companies present their latest innovations and inventions to “transform the mobility of tomorrow” in areas such as multimodality, mass transit, energy transition and door-to-door transport.
- The startup village, which is dedicated specifically to startup companies to present their ideas for the industry.
- Working sessions in which attendees can engage with the work of the presenting companies and experts in collaborative activities in the form of a think tank or presentations.
- Labs designed to take participants out of their comfort zones and create conditions for new thought patterns to emerge.
- Talks and panels led by leading experts from around the world.
- “Braindates,” for which organizers facilitate small-group meetings and discussions among attendees with related fields of interest in their industries.
- The Evénement Ride & Drive, which offers event participants the chance to test prototypes of the latest vehicles and technologies.
The Movin’On website does not include a schedule for the conference, but there is a list of who will be speaking. The 2019 Movin’On Summit speakers will include:
- Carla Bailo, president and CEO of The Center for Automotive Research.
- Hervé Bernard, director of social and inclusion at Humanity & Inclusion, formerly named Handicap International.
- Guangzhe Chen, senior director of transport and global practice at the World Bank Group.
- Ellen Greenberg, deputy director for sustainability at the California Department of Transportation.
- Michael Hurwitz, director of transport innovation at Transport for London.
- Ursula Mathar, VP of sustainability and environment protection at BMW Group.
- José Gomes Mendes, secretary of state for mobility in Portugal and chairman of the steering committee at the Transport Decarbonisation Alliance.
- Christopher Schafer, senior director of strategic development in Canada for Lime.
- Sandra J. Sucher, professor of management practice at Harvard Business School.
- Mark De La Vergne, chief of mobility innovation in Detroit.
For more information on the Movin’On Summit and a detailed look into the topics that will be covered, visit
www.summit.movinonconnect.com.