The Team

Patricia McKenna

Patricia McKenna is the founder and President of AmbientEase (Emergent Adaptive Solutions Everywhere) Inc., exploring the rapidly evolving information landscape afforded by new, emerging, and next generation technologies. As such, McKenna is concerned with the implications of new technologies for cities, communities, and learning environments. McKenna engages with educators, learners, business, government, and local communities around use experience and unexpected possibilities for leveraging and generating new relevancies and vibrancies in 21st century information spaces for learning, living, and working.

With a focus on smart cities and learning cities, McKenna has evolved a practice and learning space consisting of workshops, courses, project initiatives, community collaborations, presentations, and works in progress for sharing at conferences and in other physical and digital spaces.    

​Patricia holds an undergraduate arts degree from the University of New Brunswick, a Masters degree in library science from McGill University and a Doctorate in information management (with a focus on emerging technologies) from Syracuse University, iSchool.

Patricia offers smart cities advisory services and is:

• Conducting Urban Smart City explorations and invites your participation in assessing patterns, relationships, and interactions with your city, community, or urban regions
• A member of the Program Board for DAPI (Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) International Conference (HCII 2023, 23-28 July, Copenhagen, Denmark)
• A member of Phi Kappa Phi (love of learning)
• A member of the Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars (CAIS)
• A member of the IEEE Smart Cities Standards Group

The AmbientEase team is project-based and evolving, depending on the initiative(s), characterized as emergent, adaptive, and dynamic.

Emergent

We are exploring and contributing to emergent concerns, requirements, issues, challenges and opportunities related to the Internet of Things (IoT), the Internet of Cultural Things (IoCT) & Apps, the Internet of People (IoP), the Internet of Data (IoD), the Internet of Experiences, and beyond.

Adaptive

Adaptive reuse; artificial intelligence (AI); creative economies; urban metrics; patterns and relationships; and evolving notions of urban-ness and urbanity, and theory for smart cities (e.g., ambient theory) are key focus areas of our work at this time and we respond to opportunities where these elements may be present.

Dynamic

Our team work responds to the dynamic, as in, rapidly changing and often complex nature of challenges and opportunities in cities, communities, and regions. ​Urban life in terms of livability and sustainability in the context of smart cities, learning cities, and future cities is currently being explored as a way of fostering greater awareness, flourishing, participation, and understanding.