February and March will be exciting months for universities across Europe as the IBM 'Smarter Planet Comes to You' tour is going on the road. Universities across Europe will have the benefit of hosting the tour for a day on their grounds, getting educated on the skills and technology required for a Smarter Planet, and learning to be more competitive in tomorrow's work environment.

The tour is a world-wide initiative, launched in Europe at the beginning of February. The first tour planned for 2011 will last 6 weeks and will include 22 university events in 11countries .

With each university visit, we offer students and faculty the opportunity to hear from IBM's executives and experts on how to become part of a Smarter Planet. During the day, innovative solutions and technologies will be presented, demonstrated and discussed.

A Skills Truck, represents a unique and innovative way to drive awareness and build hype around the tour, will be based on the universities’ grounds, enabling attendees to meet with IBM's experts; 'play' with IBM's 'serious games' and learn about new and exciting technologies.

The skill truck activities are:

• Smarter Planet demos: Smart Office’: How to integrate different sensors and devices through IBM middleware:Say it, sign it’: Type in message and it will automatically be translated into sign language
• Meet the Experts – tech talk/demos
• Gaming Zone – competition for highest scorers for both CityOne and Innov8BPM serious games
• Learn about dW and My dW - join My dW/create your profile
• Enter a draw to win an MP3 player
• Learn about the Student Portal and Academic Initiative
• Job Zone
• Twitter Zone
• Giveaways
• Smart Wall

Smarter Planet comes to you .... February 23th at the Campus Nord.

Tour Schedule & Agenda

The tour is expected to skill around 6000 people through attendance at the main tent, the localised sessions and visits to the skills truck. In addition, registration to the AI and MydW programs is expected to rise significantly.

Visit these pages for the latest news:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/groups/service/html/communityview
http://www.facebook.com/ibmskillstour