Bjarne Uldal is a brand & business innovator who, over the last 25 years, has been involved in more than 30 start-ups, both as an investor, business developer and brand consultant.  Marrying a deep knowledge of branding with a hands-on approach to entrepreneurship, Bjarne has earned a reputation as a creative, commercially oriented person, who’s always on the lookout for points of differentiation that can be accentuated by compelling storytelling.

Bjarne is one of the co-founders of Nordic Edge, the official Norwegian innovation cluster on smarter cities and communities, and the organizer of the Nordic Edge Expo – the largest annual conference and exhibition in the Nordics on Smart City trends, methodology, new innovation and technology.

In his capacity of being the Chief Innovation Officer at Nordic Edge, Bjarne is responsible for establishing innovation partnerships with companies, organizations and academic institutions around Europe, in China and in the US. Bjarne has also been the main facilitator of the process leading up to the launch of the national Smart Roadmap for Smart and Sustainable Cities and Communities last year. Furthermore Bjarne acts as a facilitator and advisor to a number of cities and municipalities who are determined to build smarter and more sustainable communities.

Lars Larsen Black has been Head of IT at Tórshavnar kommuna since May 2017 when he moved back to the Faroe Islands after spending 9 years in Copenhagen where he studied E-Business at the IT-University of Copenhagen and working as an IT-Project manager and coordinator both in the consultancy and retail business.

At the IT-department in Tórshavnar kommuna Lars is responsible of a broad range of areas and has the daily management of the departments employees, tasks and objectives including IT Support, Operation and Maintenance, IT-security, Consulting, Network and infrastructure, Process optimization, Project Management, Smart City solutions and Digital Transformation.

Digital transformation has a high priority in Tórshavnar kommuna and Lars believes the, recently started, digital journey for Tórshavnar kommuna has much higher chance of successes by cooperating with the neighbours in the Nordics. He is, therefore, very excited to have Tórshavn beeing a part of the Nordic Smart Cities Network, sharing knowledge and participating in events with Nordic Edge.

Tórshavn is small, probably the smallest capital in the world, and thus it is paramount to share knowledge, participate in projects and such events as Nordic Edge Expo as to ensure the digital journey has a similar backbone as the neighbours in the Nordics whom the Faroe Islands shares so many similarities.