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Intro:
This is another episode of On The Grid by Zpryme, love your energy.

Dylan Lockwood:
Hello everybody. Welcome to Zpryme On the Grid. Still under quarantine, but we’re making do with our digital media. I’m your host Dylan Lockwood. Joining me, as always, is my cohost Erin Hardick. Erin, how are you doing down there in Austin?

Erin Hardick:
Doing well enough, Dylan. How are you?

Dylan Lockwood:
Well enough is exactly the way to describe it. As we’ve discussed a lot, we’re sort of stuck in our own areas, which means that the respective of how we’re seeing things develop is coming through the lens of our own areas and so to talk about cities and how they’re sort of, how they’re dealing with this new reality, we have with us, Chelsea Collier, the founder of Digi.City, a platform designed to inform, inspire and connect leaders as cities advance in the digital age. How are you holding up Chelsea?

Chelsea Collier:
Hi, I’m doing just fine. Thanks for creating this opportunity, Dylan and Erin.

Dylan Lockwood:
We’re happy to have you. Chelsea, on your website, on Digi.City’s website right now it says the Digi.City is providing their platform to celebrate those who are contributing their smart city solutions to support communities in the era of COVID-19 so can you tell us what that means and what the work you’re doing right now is?

Chelsea Collier:
Sure. As all of this was unfolding, it’s hard to believe it was just a couple of weeks ago, but I just thought, in this time of crisis, this is a chance to look at what we can do and what we have, what tools do we have and how can I personally help? I’m not going to be in a hospital saving lives like so many of those brave first responders, but I had an online platform and Digi.City is all about connecting people and sharing information. And so I thought this is what I can do. This is how I can help. And couple other things just to help our local community and restaurants and local businesses, but at the same time, people all around the world are hurting. If I have an online platform and I know how to connect people and showcase different solutions and bring people together, at the very least, just communicate that there are so many people doing some really positive things in a really, really challenging time, then that’s what I can do. Just trying to show up.

Dylan Lockwood:
That’s a great step forward. What are some of the things you’ve been most excited to share?

Chelsea Collier:
I’ve been really inspired by the way that everyone just kind of dropped everything and said, “What are we going to do?” And they moved very, very quickly into action. Whether that is government and city leaders just completely overnight, rearranging everything to meet the needs of the most vulnerable in the community and respond to the crisis. It’s so inspiring. And everyone’s doing this. Private sector, major corporations, start ups who have fewer resources than many in the private sector, community groups, nonprofits, everyone has just realigned the priority. And I’m seeing people work together in ways that I had only hoped would be possible, but now they are not only possible, they are happening. And so, this is just one of the most challenging things that I’ve ever seen in terms of COVID-19. There’s a lot to be scared about. But there’s also a lot to look at and say, “Wow, we really can’t do this. We can rally and mobilize across all different levels of government and focus on helping people and serving our communities.” And that’s a positive thing.

Dylan Lockwood:
Yeah. You cover a lot of the spectrum of city development, especially smart city development, because we’ve had you on at our City of the Future conference back when conferences still existed.

Chelsea Collier:
You also did a great job at that conference by the way, that’s one of my very, very favorites and I go to a lot of conferences. Well done, you.

Dylan Lockwood:
Well thanks and well done, you. We’ve really appreciated having you on to talk about these issues. But since you’ve kind of been involved with a lot of sides of that, the government side, the business side, the startup side, what do you see as the relationship between smart city programs, smart city development and the systems needed to respond to crises like this virus?

Chelsea Collier:
Yeah, it’s a really good question. I’ve been thinking a lot about this over the past couple of days. What is the role of a smart city? And I think it’s easy to think about smart cities just in terms of technology and devices, but at its core, a smart city is simply a system to solve problems. And technology is just the enabler and a catalyst to solve those problems. If city leaders have more data that’s being collected by connected devices, then they have actionable information so they can make better decisions.

Chelsea Collier:
And that’s the kind of ones and zeros parts of it, but also a smart city, the people who were really moving forward in this world, they’re having to work across departments and across sectors. They’ve already taken the steps to overcome bureaucratic barriers. They’re really focused on solving problems, and again, the technology, the connected technology is just simply the enabler to do that. I think government leaders and private sector leaders and community leaders and everyone who’s rallying around this smart city concept, they’re already well positioned to solve the challenges. And here we are in the midst of the biggest global challenge of our time.

Dylan Lockwood:
I think that makes a lot of sense, especially in conjunction with what we talked to last week with a Joyce Deuley from Geekdom. I believe you’re familiar with her and she was…

Chelsea Collier:
Awesome. I love what they’re doing.

Dylan Lockwood:
Yeah, she is awesome. We really appreciated having her on. And she was kind of mentioning how she felt that San Antonio specifically was really able to have a fast and effective response because that information was able to easily be shared between necessary parties and of course with the general public. To have kind of a collective response like you said, which is a lot more optimistic than honestly than I’ve seen up here in Washington and certain places. I think seeing that difference speaks to what you just said about how that technology can enable that preparedness.

Chelsea Collier:
Yeah. I’m really glad that you brought up the example of San Antonio because one of the most frequent questions that I get is, what’s an example of the city who’s really well? And it’s easy to talk about Singapore, they’re a decade ahead of where we are here in the US, but I also talk about San Antonio because while they may not have the resources that Singapore does, they’ve done the hard human work. And to your point, they’ve learned how to come together as a community and say, “Hey, who are we as a city? Who are we as a government? What solutions do we really want to collectively solve together? And what solutions do we want to discover that may be unique to our own department, but we can leverage the data in a way that is ethical and safe and everybody keeps their data private, that needs to be private?”

Chelsea Collier:
But the overall collective can be used to solve community wide challenges based on shared values. And they’ve just done that work. Now that we’re in the middle of crisis, it’s go time. And they already have that platform. Those relationships. They can pick up the phone and leverage the work that they’ve already done. And it’s what I created Digi.City to do, is to share the stories of cities who are really doing it well because not everyone is going to be able to move at the same time. But having examples of people who are doing it, I think not only gives hope to other city leaders who are trying to get there, but it provides maybe a framework or a blueprint or a game plan.

Erin Hardick:
I think one of the interesting things about San Antonio that’s kind of put them in this position, which we actually talked with Joyce about, is how kind of close knit that community is. It’s a very big city, seventh largest city in the US, but they have this kind of feeling of everyone being very connected and you know everyone and they have this very close knit community feeling given how big the city actually is. And I think it kind of inspires the citizens to be active in government, in startups to kind of help facilitate these relationships that put them in this position to respond to this crisis in a better way than some other, maybe larger cities are handling it.

Erin Hardick:
Which kind of leads me to this next question, which is, with this crisis currently on our hands, it really affects everybody in various ways. How has it kind of highlighted weaknesses in city planning or systems? The crisis for a lot of cities has highlighted broken systems and lack of communication between different stakeholders on trying to implement solutions to make smart city solutions or to make these cities more livable and equitable and functional for everyone. How has this crisis, Chelsea, kind of highlighted some of those challenges or kind of some of those broken pieces of these systems?

Chelsea Collier:
Yeah, I think it’s a really good question. And to me it all comes down to what is the collective priority of the community? And the pathway to implement a smart city can be ubiquitous. It can be the same no matter if you’re a large city, a small city, a rich city, a poor city, none of the qualifiers that we use to determine and rank cities are immune. To me, it’s the communities who come together, who really love working together and who know how to solve problems together, they prioritize doing that. They prioritize, hey, how can we get everybody involved? Because we have these challenges in our city and we need everybody on board to solve them. And I think San Antonio’s done a really nice job of that. In other cities, maybe their priorities are more in just the block and tackle of kind running government.

Chelsea Collier:
And I’m trying not to be critical here because I have a lot of respect for what it takes to run a municipality or a county government or state government. These are not easy things. But again, other communities just prioritize the connectedness of community. And I think those who have done that are now able to move quickly. And when you’re looking at smart cities and just the overall sector of that smart city world, you have government and then you have departments within government and different layers of government, local, county, even regional, federal of course. And then you have private sector and you have all sorts of different levels of private sector. You have startup, you have academia, you have community groups. And it’s very easy to kind of stay within that safe place of what you know and fall back on, these are the rules, these are the systems. And it’s much easier to say no when you’re in your own protective silo.

Chelsea Collier:
And I know everybody rolls their eyes when they hear the word silo because the word is a bit overused, but it’s the best analogy that I can think of right now. And I think those communities who go outside of that protected safe space and say, “Gosh, I have this challenge. I don’t know how to solve it.” And you have to have a willingness to say, “I don’t know how to do this, but here’s what I’m willing to be vulnerable and say, I don’t know and who can help me?” It takes a certain kind of leader to be able to do that. And again, those cities who have that collective leadership, those are cities who are smarter and it’s always interesting as we talk through this as a kind of collective smart city group, we always end up talking about leadership and how leaders are showing up and very, very rarely are we talking about the technology application. And the technology application is important, but it all comes down to people and how they prioritize how to get things done.

Erin Hardick:
In your experience, what has been the priority for kind of crisis management solutions within the overall smart city project context? Have you been seeing smart cities projects trying to really account for crisis management solutions? Or do you think that may be something that will start to arise as we kind of hopefully come out of this coronavirus pandemic? Do you think that that will maybe become more of a priority when city leaders are starting to evaluate smart cities projects?

Chelsea Collier:
It’s a good question. And I grew up in southern Louisiana, in Lafayette Louisiana, where that entire area and that entire community is always primed for a crisis because we live in the world of a hurricane. Some larger and more devastating than others. I’ve seen some smart city solutions, including one in Lafayette Louisiana, that’s all around disaster response. And I think Florida and some of the southeastern states really have systems and solutions set up around how to mobilize during an environmental crisis. But of course I don’t think any community was really prepared to mobilize around what we’re seeing now.

Chelsea Collier:
And Dustin Haisler with e.Republic Gov Tech is the website or the portal that most people know that brand well in the smart cities community. And he made the point the other day that even in an environmental crisis, there is a game plan. You know what’s going to happen. And so you could move into action and implement that kind of plan. But if you would’ve asked a city leader six months ago, hey, how are you going to mobilize your smart infrastructure for this level of crisis? No city leader would have been prepared for that. I think everyone is just obviously caught off guard and trying to do the best they can.

Chelsea Collier:
And what I think is really challenging too is taking care of the most vulnerable in our cities. There was a response right away, right when all of the sheltering in place started happening around the community that does digital literacy, specifically around seniors and the elderly. If you already don’t have number one, broadband access, number two, digital literacy, number three, even the equipment and you’re ordered to shelter in place. That’s a level of isolation that is really critical and saves or harms lives. I think cities are appropriately just trying to prioritize the most vulnerable while also mobilizing and trying to take care of small business owners. And to your point earlier, there’s nothing that this disaster doesn’t touch.

Erin Hardick:
Right. And normally I would be in Austin, but I’m actually in Houston and Houston is one of those cities that’s been affected by plenty of hurricanes and environmental disasters. But nobody was really prepared for this type of crisis. What are the opportunities for solution providers to provide the most relief or do the most good given kind of everyone’s lack of preparedness for this type of crisis?

Chelsea Collier:
I’m so glad that you brought up Houston because there’s a group led by Jeff Reichmann and they work really closely with the city of Houston. Jesse Bounds over there is the innovation officer who’s in charge of the smart city effort. And it’s another example of people who work really well together. And so because all of those developer communities are already active solving problems, now they simply switch to, okay, how are we going to solve challenges around COVID-19? And has seen that entire community just mobilize. And it’s again on the top list of the most inspiring cities and inspiring communities. But it’s not just people trying to show up. It’s also companies showing up. You see overnight whether it’s a grocery store or whether it’s an internet service provider or a cable company saying, okay, this is a new day. How are we going to rally our resources? And how are we going to show up and be supportive? I’ve seen lots of examples of that too.

Dylan Lockwood:
Taking it back to something you said a little bit earlier, just about how cities are kind of having to balance doing what’s necessary immediately to help the most vulnerable, which of course should be their top priority. And then also trying to help alleviate the stress that the quarantining, that the social distancing is placing on communities, what have you seen in terms of people working hard to make sure that their cities and their communities are going to still be intact on the other side of this?

Chelsea Collier:
It’s a really good question and I think it’s a bit too early to know. I think we’re just in the very beginning days of triage and how people respond quickly to that is one thing. And there’s a marathon and then there’s a sprint. And so I think again, those city leaders who can balance those two things because you can’t just sprint for a long time and if you’re doing a marathon, you got to kind of gauge down and go for the long haul. And it just requires different levels and different speeds. Different teams are going to have to come on board at different times. And my hope is that city leaders will be pliable enough and kind of flexible enough to adjust as different things are needed at different times. This is not going to be just kind of a couple weeks and then life goes back to normal.

Chelsea Collier:
And the world of smart cities, it’s interesting that where we are right now in terms of everybody’s online, we’re looking at telehealth solutions, we’re looking at tele-education and of course remote working. And our lives have shifted online in a very, very new way. That’s not unlike where we were going before, but now the timeline is just condensed to a couple of weeks as opposed to a few years. Everything that communities and cities and companies and individuals we’re preparing to do, now they just have to do really, really fast. There are going to see some things that break in that process.

Chelsea Collier:
But I also think there’s going to be a lot of things that get built and that’s where the startup community comes in. And again, that’s where people just work differently across sectors because there’s no time to lose and there’s no time to write a 10 year strategic plan. You just have to get going and you have to try whatever works. And if it doesn’t work, you have to pivot very quickly. It’s almost like we’ve all become community entrepreneurs overnight and it’s going to be messy. But I’m hopeful that a lot of really good foundational pieces get put in place.

Erin Hardick:
Chelsea, you mentioned this transition, this accelerated transition to our lives being more online, working from home or online to communicate with our colleagues. There’s online learning now for the children who can’t go to school. And I know that we wanted to talk about broadband in this episode and kind of the role that it plays in crisis management. And then probably overall as we move forward in our daily lives after this. When we were getting on this, I was mentioning I’m having some connectivity issues. You’re having connectivity issues, I’m sure everybody at some point is having connectivity issues because our bandwidth just isn’t set up to hold this massive amount of activity. What are you seeing around broadband challenges and how that’s kind of affecting both community and maybe the ability to get solutions out there and working?

Chelsea Collier:
Yeah, and back when I started setting the smart cities and really looking at all of the different layers, the connectivity piece of it, if you think of it in terms of the triangle, connectivity is at the bottom of that triangle. It is the most foundational piece of smart cities. It’s the long, hard, slow work. And obviously connectivity is at the front and center of this conversation. And so as we’ve moved our lives online, of course the networks are feeling the strain and in the early days of Digi.City again, I just saw this, that cities were moving pretty slowly in terms of adding capacity to their broadband infrastructure. And I saw that as really alarming because I spent a week in China and I almost kind of like stepped into the future and I saw what was coming and then I came back to the US and I’m like, oh gosh, we have to move much, much faster.

Chelsea Collier:
And again it comes back to this conversation as cities working with private sector and sometimes that’s really challenging to do for all the reasons that everyone understands. Right now as we’ve moved everything online, for the most part, the networks are holding up well but not in all cities. And broadband now, they just put out a report and they analyzed 200 US cities and again, most are doing okay, but sometimes you’re seeing significant degradations, by more than 40%. And when it comes down to it, at this point in time as we’re all -roll sheltering in place, our lives are online. That is not something that anyone can afford to do. It doesn’t matter what part of town that you live in. And again, could be an example of something, I don’t want to say maybe positive. I would hesitate to use the word positive in the middle of a global crisis, but perhaps something that we can learn moving forward, is a better way to say.

Chelsea Collier:
Is that is possible for telecoms and cable companies and broadband providers to work closely together with cities and overcome some of the challenges. Of course there are challenges there, but you have to address them and you have to understand them and you have to work through them because the goal is adding capacity and we have to add capacity citywide to everyone and that is not one organization’s job. It’s not just the city’s job. It’s not just the private sector’s job. There has to be an overlap of here’s what we have to provide and here’s how we can make this easier. How can we work together? Because we have to provide more robust connectivity and we have to do it now. It’s an imperative. We simply can’t wait. There’s no choice to not do it. I’m hoping that there’s some new relationships made between city leaders and private sector. I’m hoping that new solutions come to light because we’re proving that it’s possible and that’s something that we can work towards.

Dylan Lockwood:
Yeah, I think you’re right. Especially if you think about the more of a city that we digitize, the more processes and business we can digitize, the less of an impact this kind of, this specific kind of crisis where people have to stay away from each other, the less of an impact that can have. Being able to onboard all of that interconnectivity is absolutely critical. Especially when it comes to things like education and of course, disseminating important information. When we’re thinking about the ecosystems of a city and how businesses are sort of reacting, you’ve worked closely with startups, you’ve got an article on your website right now about startups to look to during the crisis. How have you seen some of the startup businesses handling the situation? Are something just going under due to an inability to conduct business? Are there opportunities being seized? What have you seen out there?

Chelsea Collier:
I haven’t heard of any startups folding quite yet. Unfortunately not saying that that won’t be the case. There’s a lot of activity and talk out there as funding levels are being decreased, and of course as the conferences are canceled, that has a negative impact on startup’s just ability to network within the ecosystem. Venture capital is flowing a bit slower obviously. But at the same time, I haven’t heard fear from the startup community. What I’ve seen is mobilization. Startup founders are like, “Hi, here’s what we have to give. Here’s what we can do. Help us get the word out. How can we help?”

Chelsea Collier:
And a couple of the startups that have showcased, one is called Blitz. They have a mobile app that basically does promote tech support, so he did a lot around just in field tech support and kind of virtual tech support, but now they’re looking at, okay, how can we help cities who are trying to care for the most vulnerable and maybe somebody has a question about how a piece of equipment on a respirator works if you’re in a hospital system. Or teleworking questions for people who aren’t quite used to working out of their homes to even things like working side by side with seniors and doing some digital literacy training that you can’t be side by side. The mobile interface can help with some of that.

Chelsea Collier:
Urban Leaf, which is a great startup out of California. They basically opened up their platform and said, “We’re doing this pro bono. We are going to share and disseminate as much information as possible.” And cities like Smart Columbus, they’ve mobilized so quickly and they have a 1,000 people and from their developers, to city leaders, looking at ways that they can come up with new solutions. And now all of that information is being shared on Urban Leaf. The beautiful part of this is we are connected and we can share best practices really, really quickly. My hope is that startups, because they are nimble and they understand how to pivot very, very quickly depending on whatever the challenges is in the light of this challenge, that some will be able to bolster their offerings and provide value and still build a viable business.

Erin Hardick:
In Austin, and you know this, Austin is a very small business community, a lot of startups, a lot of innovation, but we know that people are struggling, small businesses are really struggling and feeling the impacts of these things. But they, startups, small businesses, they are nimble. They have the ability to innovate quickly, to help out in ways that maybe bigger corporations can’t really address because of how big they are and they just simply can’t pivot. This is more just a thought. They’re creating so much value, but it also feels like they are almost suffering the worst as well.

Chelsea Collier:
Right. What I love about working with startup founders is that there’s always a willingness. There’s never a hesitation. There’s an energy and an excitement and they just get busy getting the work done. And I think, there’s such an example for all of us, we don’t have time to wait for permission. We don’t have time to wait for five levels of signature sign off on some idea to move forward. We don’t have time to manage up. We have to get going and move and create. And not saying that all of that will be successful, but I think it’s just going to inspire everyone no matter if you’re a startup entrepreneur, city leader, you’re a global corporate leader. We’re all the entrepreneurs of our own lives and we’re the entrepreneurs of our own community. And those cities can create platforms to leverage that energy and that willingness and that support.

Dylan Lockwood:
Chelsea, to sort of bring it all to a head, kind of lay out a thesis here. How do we build cities that are more resilient and better able to disseminate necessary information during times like this? How do we learn from the failures of the moment and the successes of the moment?

Chelsea Collier:
I think at the end of the day, cities are platforms. And those cities who can create platforms that allow everyone in the community and maybe even everyone around the world to plug in and say, “Here’s our solution. Here’s what we tried. Here’s what we learned. Here’s what you can do.” With that sort of mobilizing framework, cities can really be the solution providers for everyone and that’s what I’m hoping happens. To do that, you have to be willing to be a platform and not just be the answer to every single question. And to be able to do that requires a willingness to invite other people onto your platform. Some of which you’ve never worked with before. Some of which maybe you’ve worked with before, but haven’t really enjoyed the process. Some of which we don’t even know what will happen in the next five years and what technologies will be created. My hope is that cities learn how to do that more effectively and learn how to be a supportive platform that invites everyone to co-create solutions.

Dylan Lockwood:
I think, that’s a great message for cities. Chelsea, I want to thank you for coming on and talking about this. We really appreciate you bringing some clarity in these uncertain times.

Chelsea Collier:
Well thanks. I appreciate the opportunity to chat and just offer whatever I can to support you all and to support everyone out there.

Dylan Lockwood:
Stay safe out there.

Chelsea Collier:
Thanks, you all too.

Dylan Lockwood:
Erin, thanks for chatting with us today.

Erin Hardick:
Thanks Dylan. And thank you, Chelsea. I think this, the really the end of this conversation has me thinking about really what role do startups play in our cities? And what role are they going to play moving forward given their ability to respond to this crisis, maybe faster than other types of organizations and entities? And that’s probably going to be top of mind for me now. You’ve raised some really good points and it makes me wonder, how are they going to be valued and treated? And how are partnerships going to hopefully continue to develop at a faster pace with some of these startup organizations because of their ability to respond to crisises and be a little bit quicker and more nimble? It’ll be really interesting to kind of watch that play out over these next few years as we hopefully, come out of this crisis and find some of that silver lining from it.

Dylan Lockwood:
Well put Erin. For everyone else, you can find our research and media zpryme.com. You can find us on social media @DUILockwood, @ErinHardick, @Zpryme_research. As always, stay safe. Stay home if you can and look out for one another. My name is Dylan and we’ll see you all next time.