Stay Connected“Making Smart Communities that are Accessible, Liveable and Sustainable for All”
The Smart Community Podcast is a hub where Smart and exciting people from all around the world come to discuss all things Smart City, Smart Town, Smart Region – anything that makes a place more liveable. Together we can create the Smart Community Collective.
Disclaimer: All content is representative of personal opinion only and is not associated with any company, organisation or government agency.
Hi #SmartCommunity friends! In this episode of the Smart Community Podcast, I have a fascinating conversation with urbanist and author Johanna Hoffman. Johanna is the founder of the research and action institute Design for Adaptation, and works primarily at the nexus of design, planning, fiction and futures. We talk about what a Smart Community is for her, and what inspired Johanna to write her book, which is called “Speculative Futures: Design Approaches to Navigate Change, Foster Resilience and Co-Create the Cities We Need”. Johanna tells us how we need to be using our imaginations more in our Smart Cities and Communities work, how that can build our personal and social resilience, and why we need to focus on future possibilities not just solving current problems. Johanna and I discuss the issue of information overload and interpreting data so that citizens can actually understand it and the role memory plays in speculative futures. We finish our chat talking about the dangers of tech goggles and silver bullet thinking. As always, we hope you enjoyed listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it.
Connect with Johanna on LinkedIn, her website or Instagram @johannaehoffman
Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community
Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube
Podcast Production by Perk Digital
Hi #SmartCommunity friends! In this episode of the podcast I have a fantastic conversation with Peter Bjorn Larsen, the founder of Smart City Insights, which is a Smart City advisory consultancy based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Now you may remember Peter from way back in Episode 190. In this episode we discuss some of the projects Peter has worked on, from Copenhagen to Canada to Scotland. Peter tells us about why it’s so important to have both public and private sector working together on Smart Community projects, and how we can create projects with multiple benefits or different benefits for different stakeholders. Peter and I then talk about the concept of data collaboratives, and how they’re different to data marketplaces, plus why we should be using data to solve “normal” problems. We explore the problem of “who will pay for it?” when trying to work collaboratively and break out of silos, and Peter tells us about the real reason we need walkable cities. We finish our chat discussing why Peter tries to never use the word ‘data’ when talking to people about Smart City projects, and how useful Digital Twins will be in the future for helping citizens visualise projects. At the end of our chat we also mention being in Barcelona, I’m heading off to the Barcelona Smart City Expo in November. As always we hope you enjoyed listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it.
Connect:
Connect with Peter on LinkedIn
Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community
Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube
Podcast Production by Perk Digital
Hi #smartcommunityfriends! I’m back with another bonus episode of the Smart Community Podcast sharing various guests answers to the question, ‘Where to next with Smart Cities and Communities?” And this time I’m sharing with you the answers from these guests:
Some themes that came through in these guest answers were around having more creativity and imagination in the way we think about Smart projects, keeping the customer and context of different projects in focus, and balancing that with the need for standardisation and interoperability.
We talk about the fact that different contexts require different approaches and that a mature Smart Community learns from other projects but doesn’t just think that ‘one size fits all’. While at the same time, we need more interoperability and some level of standardisation so we can actually collaborate and share data and knowledge.
As Emran says, “Once we streamline things and [have a] more standardized approach in adopting Smart technology and learning from each other, having those communications...then we can work together and have more effective pathways [for the] future.”
Several guests also mentioned the need for more creativity and imagination, but that we also need space and time for that creativity to happen. And hopefully the conversations we have here on the Smart Community podcast spark some ideas for you and prompt reflections and conversations in all of these areas going forwards.
As always we hope you enjoyed listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it!
Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community
Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community
Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube
The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital.
Hi #SmartCommunity friends! In this episode of the Smart Community Podcast, I have a wonderful conversation with David Catalovski and Louis Limnios. Now, you might remember David from way back in episode 140, which was in 2019, in the before-times. David is the co-founder of Green Be, and Louis is the Chief Customer Officer and Director of Nucleus 3. I’ve had them on the podcast together today because they are working together on some interesting projects in the area of IoT, community engagement and Smart management of resources such as water, waste and energy. After telling us about their companies and what they are each passionate about, David, Louis and I discuss the importance of measuring more than the things that have traditionally been measured when making investment decisions as a local government or organisation, plus the challenges and rewards of being a pioneer using IoT for resource management. David and Louis tell us about trends in projects they’ve been working on, including councils working together to leverage data for interoperable customer engagement and how opening the conversation to the community not only gets more people at the table but also helps find new use cases for the IoT data. We finish our chat talking about how we are finally getting away from the mentality that “deploying something is enough” and moving towards using data to measure outcomes and deliver better solutions, plus the emerging issue of data security that poses for councils. As always we hope you enjoyed listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it.
Connect with David via LinkedIn or via email
Connect with Louis via LinkedIn or via email
Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community
Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube
Podcast Production by Perk Digital
Hi #SmartCommunity friends. In this episode of the Smart Community Podcast, I have a brilliant conversation with Cheryl Desha. Cheryl tells us about her background in Mauritius and Australia, and in Environmental Engineering, Disaster Management and Resilience. We discuss why resilience, including digital resilience, needs to be part of the Smart Community conversation, and how we can forward plan for better disaster management. Cheryl tells us about ways communities often come together in practical ways after disasters and how we can continue those positive aspects of community long term. We talk about how it’s important to balance the wonderful things about technology, such as data driven decision making and digital twins helping us be agile, with the way our digital junk food diet has reduced our ability to focus. Cheryl shares with us some of the projects she’s working on and some of the great books she’s been reading. We finish our chat discussing the emerging trend of the need for Digital Resilience in the Smart Community space. As always we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it!
Connect with Cheryl on LinkedIn
Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community
Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube
Podcast Production by Perk Digital
Hi #SmartCommunity friends! This is a bit of a bonus episode of the Smart Community podcast because we are catching up with a former guest but it’s a very different conversation than we usually have. So in this episode I have a brilliant chat with Joy Taylor, who you might remember from way back in Episode 154. Joy is a banker turned Coworking Space Founder and Startup Mentor, turned Software Developer and Digital Nomad. So when we last spoke, Joy was the Community Manager of Canvas Coworking space here in Toowoomba, but in this episode we talk about how that’s changed as well as why and how she decided to re-train to work in tech. Joy tells us about where she has been travelling as a digital nomad this year, and we discuss the differences between levels of infrastructure compared to levels of community in big cities versus more regional or rural locations. We finish our conversation talking about the power of living by your values, and the importance of providing relevant, timely and easy-to-absorb information for people in order to elicit behaviour change. As always we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it!
Connect with Joy on LinkedIn
Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community
Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube
Podcast Production by Perk Digital
In this episode of the Smart Community Podcast, I have a great conversation with Engineer and Smart Technologies advocate, Dr Emran Amin. Emran tells us about his background as an engineer and academic and his passion for contributing his knowledge of Smart Technologies. Emran explains a bit about the standard for barcodes, parallels between standardisation of barcode technologies to other Smart Technologies such as printable RFID and why interoperability is so important. We then discuss what he’s been working on with the City of Casey as a Community Reference group member in the Smart Casey team, plus some interesting projects he’s worked on in his home country of Bangladesh. We finish our chat talking about data ethics shaping the future of Smart Cities and Communities, and how context really changes the way you approach Smart technologies, data-driven decision making and community engagement. As always we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it!
Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community
Connect with Emran via LinkedIn
Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community
Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube
The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital
Hi #smartcommunity friends! In this episode of the Smart Community Podcast I have a wonderful conversation with Leni Schwendinger. Leni is a published, award-winning authority on the many issues of city lighting with more than 20 years of experience creating worldwide illuminated environments. In this episode Leni begins by telling us about her background in arts and community activism, her passion for weaving those two things together and what sparked her interest in the Smart Communities space. Leni then shares with us what a Smart Community means to her, and takes us through her journey that led her to the work she is doing now, before she shares with us some of her observations and learnings of the city lighting space and some of the differences she has seen across cultures and different job types. Leni then discusses the role city lighting plays in safety, in particular for more vulnerable groups of society, and shares with us some of the projects she has been working on recently. We finish our chat discussing the emerging trends of community engagement and the value it can bring to Smart Communities. As always, we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it!
Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community
Connect with Leni via LinkedIn
Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community
Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube
The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital
Hi #smartcommunity friends! In this episode of the Smart Community Podcast host Zoe Eather is back in the hot seat! Zoe and producer Ellen Ronalds Keene sat down for a chat where she answers questions from you, the audience of the Smart Community Podcast.
We can’t believe we’re at over 312 episodes and now over 162,000 downloads. It’s been just over 4 years of the show and thank you so much for all of you tuning in! Zoe answers 5 questions today from the many that were sent through via LinkedIn. Thank you to those of you who submitted questions! As always, we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it!
Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community
Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community
Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube
The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital
Hi #smartcommunityfriends! I’m back with another bonus episode of the Smart Community Podcast sharing various guests answers to the question, ‘Where to next with Smart Cities and Communities?” And this time I’m sharing with you the answers from these guests:
Some themes that come through in the guest answers are around corridor concepts in our cities, breaking down silos and nurturing the culture of innovation, regional partnerships and keeping and retaining skill sets.
We talk a lot about embedding the Smart Communities approach, which is important to break down silos and barriers so we can move forward with our Smart Communities initiatives. We need to continue to think differently and creatively to really gain traction and start seeing some of the benefits Smart Communities can bring.
Another theme our guests are commonly finding is skills shortages in their particular regions, and really want to work on keeping and retaining those skill sets. It really is time to start uplifting our regions and showcasing regional capacity and capabilities, and educating school leavers on the many career paths of STEM to either attract those needed skill sets or retain the current talent in our regions.
As Tim Neale says, “Trying to educate early stage school leavers to the potential of what opportunities lie ahead, for the region's I think that's a massive thing we've got to do right now. And hopefully, people coming out of the cities back into regional areas, is going to drive some of those incredible skill sets that we need back in the regions to solve these big problems that we've got.”
As always we hope you enjoyed listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it!
Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community
Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community
Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube
The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital.
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