About

Atelier Tomorrow Inc. (ATI) is an Arizona nonprofit based in Tucson. ATI is an umbrella "think-tank" hosting projects dealing with citizen engagement (Smart Citizens), urban and regional development, and urban and regional innovation platforms. Its activities take place in Southern Arizona and Scandinavia (primarily, in Denmark and Sweden).  

ATI's founder and chairman, Dr. Robert Jacobson, is an experienced industry-development policymaker, having worked for a decade on legislation to establish Silicon Valley as the "home" of today's multibillion-dollar electronic-commerce industry.  He has been a high-tech entrepreneur and CEO in California, Seattle, and Malmö, Sweden, first as a leader in the 1990s VR community and later in the fields of innovation management and novel approaches to regional development.

A Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Jacobson has worked and taught in Denmark and Sweden as well as in California and Washington State.  Dr. Jacobson earned his PhD in Planning from UCLA; his thesis, "An 'Open' Approach to Information Policymaking," was published in 1989.  An ARPAnet user, he later founded the USENET newsgroup, sci-virtual.words, the early home of today's VR industry veterans. He was and remains an early member of The WELL, America's first large online community, hosted in Sausalito, California, and established in 1985.