Read about The Connective in recent news:

Image courtesy of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFVe2vKhwRw Fireworks aren’t the only show in town anymore. For generations, they’ve been part of how communities celebrate: loud, bright, familiar and deeply tied to civic tradition. But across Arizona and the country, more cities are starting to experiment with a different kind of night sky. Drone light shows are showing up at Fourth of July events, New Year’s Eve celebrations and large public gatherings, offering cities a

Cities already have eyes on the streets and vehicles moving through neighborhoods every day: waste trucks, maintenance vehicles, emergency vehicles, code enforcement vehicles, park vehicles, and more. What if those vehicles could also identify problems, spot risks, and feed real-time insights back into city decision-making systems, making those mobile assets more intelligent? Cities don’t need to wait for fully autonomous vehicles to benefit from artificial intelligence (AI)

The Public Sector Shift: AI Enters the Sensorimotor Phase While generative AI transformed digital information, Physical AI (Embodied AI) is moving into its "sensorimotor phase"—shifting from predicting outcomes on screens to executing autonomous actions in the physical world. For city leaders, this represents the next major wave of municipal efficiency, moving automation directly into the physical infrastructure of urban spaces. Public Sector Use Cases The physical nature of

Why Arizona should focus on quantum sensing, hardware, and industrial deployment By Dean Duncan and Chris Lucero | The Connective At a Glance: Arizona's Quantum Opportunity Quantum is becoming a driver of economic growth, not just a research topic. The first commercial opportunities are emerging in sensing, photonics, advanced hardware, secure communications, and precision measurement. Arizona already has a strong foundation in semiconductors, optics and photonics, aerospace

Learn how the Town of Gilbert successfully adopted AI with Axon Draft One through strong governance, pilot testing and cross-department collaboration.

On February 26, Arizona state leaders, municipal partners and industry experts gathered together for the Arizona Public Sector AI Symposium, at the Tempe Center for the Arts . Members of The Connective smart region consortium facilitated important discussions around how AI can impact city planning and operations, and benefit constituents and government employees now and in the future. Discussions at this first-of-its-kind event demonstrated how Arizona is becoming a nationa

Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming part of everyday city operations. Rather than focusing on long-term speculation, many cities are already taking practical steps to apply AI in ways that improve services, support staff, and inform better decision-making. For Arizona cities and towns, looking at how peer cities are already using these tools can help local leaders better understand where to start, where to improve, and what to prioritize. At the 1st Annual Ariz

Aerial View of Phoenix One of the most practical places to begin your new smart city journey is with an oft overlooked asset right over your nose: streetlights. For cities looking to plan or expand their smart city strategy, streetlights represent one of the largest infrastructure networks in the city that comes prebuilt, wired and ready for deployment. But beyond the basic function of illuminating our way, these poles form an important backbone for smart city technologies.

Chris D. Lucero is a 30-plus-year technologist with deep experience spanning emerging technologies, systems engineering, and secure digital infrastructure. After a long career at Intel, where he served as Director of Emerging Technologies and Strategy, Chris has worked across product design, industrial IoT, cybersecurity, and large scale systems that move from concept to production. He is also the founder of Luminos Innovation, has served as CTO for an Arizona cybersecurity