eWOW #44: Understanding Smart Cities- Conversation with Dr. Jonathan Reichental

Foreign. Hello and welcome. My name is Rashim Mogha and I'm your host for this Empowered Women of the World podcast. This podcast is for you, it is for me, and it is for all women who want to take charge of their career and happiness. In this weekly podcast, we'll talk about technology, we'll talk about leadership, and and we will talk about mindfulness. We will talk about how you can discover, visualize and actualize your success, whatever that means to you. We will also talk about our common opponent, the conscious and unconscious bias that we deal with on daily basis. And we'll share ways to navigate work politics. At the end of each podcast, I will share with you a tip or a resource that you can use to be successful. It's going to be a fun ride, so hop on and join me on this journey every week. Today I'm super excited to welcome Dr. Jonathan Reichental on the show. Jonathan is a multiple award winning technology and business leader with career spanning both private sector and public sector. He has served as Chief Information Officer for both Oriole Media and the city of Palo Alto, California. He is now the CEO of Human Feature. Jonathan is an educator on topics that range from smart cities to fourth Industrial Revolution and has recently released his book, Smart Cities for Dummies. Welcome, Jonathan.

Hi there, Rasheem. Great to be with you.

So, Jonathan, you were awarded the distinction of being one of the 25 doers, dreamers and drivers in the government of America. What does it mean to be the CIO of a city? What does it all entail?

Yeah, I know often when I'm speaking to an audience and, you know, talking about technologies in cities and I say that I'm the cio, the Chief Information Officer. The question I often get is, there's a CIO in a city like, you know, people are amazed that this actually exists. It's not that familiar to a lot of people. So I have to spend a bit of time, I know now to spend time explaining to people what a CIO in a city is and what it entails. So the answer is something like this. Obviously, cities today, like every other organization, use a lot of tech, a lot of tech. And increasingly I remember being in the last few years of my time in the city of Palo Alto, I would be called into almost every meeting of a new project because there was no project without technology. So it really was pervasive. So because of that, you need a senior executive, you need someone in a leadership role who's going to have a vision and have a team who can Execute and bring great tech to the city and the community. There is part of it which is you're running a data center or systems, cloud services, you know, making sure the email runs every day. In Palo Alto, we had a full utility, so we had a lot of technology related to electricity, gas, wastewater, water and even enterprise level fiber to the fiber Internet. But the other half, so one half of it was that traditional technology role, but the other half was different. You know, unlike the private sector, where I had been a cio, There's politics, honestly. And I'm not just talking about office politics. I'm talking about real elected official politics and issues. And because of that, your priorities change often. And I had to get used to that. What was important one day, the next week could be very different. So it was sort of balancing those two worlds. The world of being a traditional IT leader with navigating the structure and complexity of being a public servant in an elected government and being able to deliver what the community wants.

Yeah, I'm sure that wasn't easy. Right. With all the. Was it frustrating for you when the projects that you started with so much passion were either stalled or, you know, suddenly very urgent things became non urgent and put on a, on a, on a, you know, stall hulk mode.

Right, right.

Yeah.

I mean, there's an element of that. It didn't happen that often and you know, when we did pause something, we had, we had quite a lot of discipline to come back and pick it up. I'm a very rational, structured person. I'm methodical in how I work and how I lead. People like it because it's quite predictable. So if you're even going to deviate, if you're going to have challenges to how you deliver, you want to have a process to be able to pause, you know, pick it up, do all those types of things. But certainly, you know, one thing that I love to do, one of the reasons I'm so attracted to technology is I love delivering solutions. I actually love the deployment. Finally, after 6 months or 12 months or 18 months of hard work from lots of people, you've had this vision. You know, there's been some long days, you know, long weekends. You know, there's been frustrations, there's been moments of joy. Finally at the end, you're ready to deploy that system and it gets into the hands of users. And I really love that. So anything that delays that or gets in the way. Yes. Is a little bit frustrating.

Yeah. I mean, I didn't know about the CIO role until I first Heard you at the CIO summit in San Francisco where you spoke about the fourth Industrial revolution. And I must say, that session was so insightful for me. I still remember the discussion that we had around emerging markets like Africa. And that left me thinking, why aren't businesses thinking about this yet? And I was working for a big corporation at that time. What should businesses be thinking about and doing today? Knowing that emerging markets will determine their success.

Yeah. Well, first of all, I'm so thrilled that that session was fun and interesting to you. And you had that exact experience where you were like, this guy's the CIO of a city. Cities have CIOs. You know, you were among, you know, that broad number of people who had the same reaction. Until they think about it.

I actually expected a dated CIO rather than a so current CIO in terms of technology and everything else.

Well, thank you. That's very kind of you. I used to make that joke a little bit. You know, I. When I would do conferences and stuff, I'd wear, you know, black T shirt and jeans or something. And I think people were expecting an older person with a suit and a tie or, you know, an older person just overall, man or woman. And you're right, I kind of defy the stereotype, which is good, which is great. We should. That's healthy.

Right.

So you asked me about different markets and how organizations need to think. Think of those. You know, one of the things I bring up when I talk about this new sort of time period that we're entering, you know, you've been through three industrial revolutions right from the 1700s, you know, it was all about steam and steel and railways. And you get to the 1800s, it's about electricity and telecommunications. Get into the, you know, 20th century and you have the information revolution and the Internet and. And now we're in this next phase, which is really the sort of the cyber, the year of cyber physical. The intersection of cyber, physical world. And it's also a world of changing demographics and changing economic alignments. So it's a great period of change. That's my 1000, my hundred thousand foot overview of the fourth industrial revolution. And in there is because, because of changing economics, a rapidly developing world. You have now the important consideration of where are the next big markets? Where will we see countries with increasing amounts of disposable income, people wanting to travel to modernize their homes? And there's still plenty of that in the developed world. There's still plenty of that market. Of course, the United States, which is the biggest Market Europe and China and Southeast Asia, all still healthy, relatively healthy economies, despite some blips. But the big one that often we're not looking at is the emerging economies in the continent of Africa. And as I have gone deep into this topic, I've been just so thrilled, thrilled with the progress that's been made there and the very rapidly emerging opportunities for big consumer marketplace, significant infrastructure needs. I mean, they need support on lots of stuff. They want, you know, countries like Kenya and Nigeria and South Africa and Ghana and Rwanda and many others. Of course these countries are now in a place where they're building modern infrastructure and beautiful universities. They have emerging tech startups and incubators. So I say if you're in business today, depending what you do and where you're at, you've definitely got to consider Africa and the countries of Africa as, as potential new markets for buyers and then even invite them in to sell to us. They got a lot to offer, a significant amount to offer.

And are you already seeing that happening? I know you and I are both part of various conferences and conversations where we talk to business leaders. I haven't seen that happening much. So I was curious, what has your experience been so far?

So it's early, but there is, there is a lot of movement in this area. And I mean, I think, you know, for folks like yourself and others, you might have to sort of, you know, peep behind the curtain type thing. You might have to actually dig a little deeper to sort of figure out, you know, who the right people to talk to, you know, where is the action happening. So it might not be as obvious as maybe, you know, the work that's been done in Singapore or you know, in Vietnam, which is another incredible emerging marketplace. But yeah, no, I think Nigeria really comes to mind as a place where there is, there are tech conferences now. There's a really cool tech community, a lot of young folks getting into programming and very excited by, you know, the possibilities of new innovation. Rwanda is the great success story given a bit of a, you know, definitely a very, very sad period of history just a few years ago. They're emerging now as a prosperous, democratic, free society and they want to, they want to modernize, they want high speed Internet, they want, you know, 5G, they want to be taken seriously and they want to be at the table when, when there's opportunities. So it's there and it'll really become apparent I think in sort of the next five years, you know, eight years, 10 years and beyond, suddenly Africa is going to be on everybody's agenda. That's my decision.

Yeah. And a lot of social innovation projects also coming out of there. Not too long ago, I was mentoring a set of set of, you know, early entrepreneurs from Rwanda. Great. So concept of smart cities, it's catching up. And you just released your book, Smart Cities for Dummies.

Yeah.

Talk to me about why is it so important, important for everyone to familiarize themselves with this whole concept of smart cities.

Yeah, thanks for asking. So I started at the city of Palo ALTO Back in 2011, and, you know, there was some good progress being made in innovation. There was this idea of e government, open government. Cities were starting to open up their data sets for others to be able to use for building solutions and for decision making. Bit of a momentum, but it was kind of gradual. My focus was entirely on the city of Palo Alto. I was there to see what we could do to deliver better services and serve the community. And as time passed, lots of people, people were interested in our successes because we fortunately did have a high volume of very successful projects in Palo Alto. Everything from deploying quite a lot of apps, you know, everything from 311 app to public safety apps and emergency apps. We. We were very innovative around our 911 system and our modernizing of our traffic systems. So we did a lot of stuff. People were interested in it. And I started to go out and meet with city managers and mayors around the United States. And then later on, I was really, really fortunate to be invited to Paris and even to South Africa and Dubai to be able to talk and share our successes. And I started to see that the demand and the interest in modernizing and making cities operate better was a global phenomenon. Now cities are our home. Now they're the home to the majority of humans on the planet. By the middle of the century, we will be at. 70% of humans will live in an urban environment. It's quite a remarkable revolution given that the. The entirety of human history has been in a rural setting. So cities are growing for the most part. There are some shrinking ones, but for the most part, cities of the world are growing. They're more complicated, more congested, they have more problems. So we need solutions. We need new thinking, new ideas, bolder ideas. We've got to take risks. And as each city begins to get its head wrapped around, you know, how do we bring technology to bear on modernizing and delivering in a much more optimized way. That forms the genesis of this idea of a smarter city, a smarter, a more sustainable city. So I got this. I got exposure to this all over the world. I got excited by it and frankly, I got a passion for cities. I really fell in love with cities and what was happening around the world. And I did that for, you know, almost just a little over seven years. Loved changed me. You know, I went to the city to change the city, but the city ended up changing me. And I got all these insights and all these contacts and I did all this research and finally when I left the city, started my own little business, a publishing company, Wiley no less, a very nice big international publishing company, came to me, said, Jonathan, we really want to add a smart city book to our portfolio. Would you be interested in writing a book? And I said, absolutely. You know, now that I'm out of the city and I have some separation and I can, you know, some time to. This is the perfect time. So I wanted to get down on paper, you know what I had seen the research, I'd done, what, what works well. And frankly, I wanted to write a how to guide. You know, there are other future of city books out there. You can go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble, you can find other smart cities book, but I didn't see one that was actually how to, you know, everything. How do I, how do I create a smart city strategy? How do I, what are the different technologies that are making a difference? You know, how do I use social media in my city? How do I use data? How do we support self driving cars in the future? So I've written the comprehensive book on this topic and it came out about two weeks ago and it's a blazing success. I couldn't be prouder and more humbled by that. And yeah, you're right in your question. The topic is starting to really get interesting now.

Well, it got interesting for me two years ago, three years ago, when I heard you in that session and you mentioned, you know, the way things are evolving and the way cities need to start thinking about the infrastructure is going to be different because our kids might not even need driver's licenses. And my son was 8 years old at that time and that was a kind of shock for me, thinking that my son might not even need a driver's license.

So.

So yeah, I'm so glad that you wrote the book.

My pleasure.

Covid times. Right. People are thinking differently in terms of how businesses work. What do you think would happen to the cities? How will cities evolve after this pandemic?

Yeah, yeah. Goodness. Did you or anyone else or I think that 2020 would be like this, you know, what a great and tragic surprise. Right. I had very different plans for 2020, and of course, nature had plans for all of us. We're a few months into this. You know, it's hard to know. It's very hard to know where things are trending. We're still in the sort of the heat of, you know, the times. I don't feel, and I guess the evidence doesn't suggest we're kind of on the better side of it yet. So it's early to tell what the long term consequences are. You know, a lot will depend on how long this lasts. A lot will depend on whether we have an effective and safe vaccine. That really takes care of the mess. You know, assuming we do a lot of what this, what we've been doing is kind of this artificial environment, I think will. Will be restored to some level of normality. If it continues for a lengthier amount of time, what happens then is we start to form behaviors that we will carry on forward. There's no doubt, for example, that many companies have discovered they can operate without having people come to a building, to an office, and maybe that's something now that is more permanent. Right. So what does that mean to the commercial real estate market? That could be very frightening if you're an investor or somebody involved in that space. If big corporations start sending all their people home. You know, it's been very interesting for all of us to use video conferencing. I think we've been forced into an accelerated adoption of a new way of communicating. And it's not an American thing. This is happening all over the world. That's probably here to stay in a big way. We should see better platforms, and existing platforms will only improve over time. I think the one that jumps out to me among a lot is delivery. And so delivery was already. Delivery combined with E commerce was already changing the landscape. We were sadly seeing the end of a lot of retail, brick and mortar retail. And, you know, during 2018, 2019, a lot of big brand names shut down because they just no longer could compete with online retail. But now with COVID and so many more people adopting online commerce, you know, brick and mortar retail is even under greater pressure and many, many more will fold. So it looks like, you know, we're accelerating, we're adopting delivery to a much greater degree in every aspect of our life. You know, I didn't order groceries online before the pandemic, and now I order groceries online. It's a whole new day. What that means for cities are things like, well, of course you're going to see Retail areas have to evolve because you can't have these ghost towns, you know, forever. Then we're going to have to be able to support much greater degrees of transportation for deliveries, things like trucks, and ensure that our city arteries are capable of supporting good infrastructure for transport. You're also going to see terrestrial drones, drones that deliver things on the ground and then drones in the air are coming. We're going to see a lot of delivery from drones. So I think, you know, the last one I may throw out there just to be complete is I think health care is evolving more rapidly and that's a good thing. You know, the traditional model of having an ailment, then making an appointment, then going to a hospital or clinic, waiting, you know, going in for five minutes, leaving, going to a pharmacy, you know, that whole massive machinery that is the healthcare system I think is going to change now. One of the primary ways is of course distance or E health, the ability for us to quickly get some medical attention online or through artificial intelligence or combination of both, get our medication delivered. I really think that was happening but has been accelerated.

So.

And of course, you know, cities are the context for health care and so it's going to have that trickle down effect on various aspects of how a city functions and supports the healthcare economy.

Yeah. And education as well. Right. You and I were talking about how education is going to evolve now and our children would come out more computer literate, if you will. At least mine who are 8 years old and 10 years years old after this.

Yeah. I often say, you know, reading, writing and arithmetic with sort of the core education topics for all children. I think we can put a fourth in there now, computer programming or if I, without going that crazy, I could say just strong computer literacy is going to be that fourth essential component of core education.

Yeah, it's life skill now. Right. So between quantum computing and blockchain and smart cities and fourth industrial revolution, how do you carve out time for what, what you love to do beyond educating others? And what is that?

That's great. Well, I, I'm lucky enough to do my hobby and make a living from it. You know, I, I love what I do. I love educating now. And I always say to people when I'm giving advice or coaching folks, they want some advice is find the thing that you love and then do that. And if you can get paid, that's, that's important, that, that's a good quality of life to do what you love every day, to wake up and be excited by what you're going to do and the contribution you're going to make, that, to me is really paramount. So teaching at university, writing courses, writing books now, I love to do it. So in a way, it is my hobby and it is my passion. I like to travel. I know that's a bit of a cliche, but I've been fortunate enough in the last few years to. To see a lot of the world. And when I travel, I love to do a little bit of amateur photography. I'm quite active on Instagram. You can see a lot of my pictures from around the world.

Oh, I need to follow you over there.

Yeah, thanks. You know, I'm a musician, so I like to play guitar.

Awesome.

You know, I've played in bands in my past and I don't have a piano in my. In my small Silicon Valley apartment, but I can. I can tinkle the keys too, you know, And I do like to play music and have written music over the. Over the years too. Yeah. You know, I have quite an eclectic areas of interest. I, you know, I'm a private pilot, although I haven't flown in a while. That, you know, aviation is a passion of mine and very cool. Got. Since I came to America, I got to get my pilot's license and fly planes. So. Yeah, that's. That's a little bit about me.

I thought wine would feature somewhere in that list.

Good, Good one. I do like wine. I do like wine. And I'm not. I'm no, you know, expert on wines. I just like good wines. I just like the taste of a good wine with the right food. And I also like whiskey, actually, particularly Irish whiskeys.

You talk a lot about gin in your podcast. Find me into that, too.

That's hilarious. I think my co host, Tom o', Malley, is the gin guy. He likes gin. He likes tequila, too. Yeah, I'm more of a wine and whiskey guy. What about you? Do you have a drink you like?

You know, no, I kind of. I didn't. I started drinking alcohol only when I moved to the States and never developed a liking for that. I can do sweet wines like ports and Moscatos, but my husband thinks they're more juice than wines. He likes to say that, but yeah, you know, there's always, always a pina colada that can lift you up. I think that's right. Yeah. Jonathan, so grateful to have you on our podcast today. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much for being on the show today.

Oh, thank you. Rasheem. I love that you are doing this. I love your mission and I'm 100% behind you. If you, if you ever need anything, just please let me know.

Awesome. And today's resource for you is the link to Jonathan's bestseller Smart Cities for Dummies. The link is in the show notes, so please check it out. Thank you for joining me today. And thank you for loving, liking, supporting and sharing the podcast. Remember, sharing is caring. I love your feedback, emails and messages, so please keep them coming. Look forward to seeing you again in our next podcast. Till then, keep empowering the world.