December 24, 2019 • 30 mins
With the latest advancements of networks and technology, the promise of a truly connected community is coming. A 5G world will unlock a new generation of systems and sensors available to technologically progressive cities. That enhanced connectivity—and the real-time data that comes with it—will allow municipalities to completely change the way they serve their citizens. In this episode of The Restless Ones, our host Jonathan Strickland speaks with Nicole Raimundo, Chief Information Officer of Cary, North Carolina, to learn how Cary has become one of the leading connected communities AKA, smart cities, in the nation. Make sure to check out other episodes in this series featuring: Ravi Simhambhatla, Chief Technology Officer of United Airlines and Rob Carter, Chief Information Officer of FedEx.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Restless Ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland. I've spent
the last twelve years covering technology and learning how it works,
demystifying everything from massive parallel processing to advanced robotics and
everything in between. As we stand at the beginning of
a new era of unprecedented connectivity with the rollout of
(00:21):
five G technology, I'm partnering with T Mobile for Business
to sit down with some of the visionary leaders in
tech across all industries, from companies like Fiat Chrysler and
United Airlines and many more that play an integral part
of our economy to get a better understanding of how
tech and connectivity will change business forever. These leaders are
(00:43):
the pioneers who don't follow trends. They define them. This
show is their story. They are the restless Ones. We
spent I can't even tell you weeks, probably months just
based on the meeting schedule of just talking about it,
(01:06):
and then I was like I'm done talking, like we're
gonna do something, because the moment you do something, and
it really doesn't matter what it is, you start to
build momentum. So our goal is if we can prove
this successful, then we can continue to build on. It's
like you've got to get that one thing done and say,
all right, we all do this together. Everyone's super proud
(01:27):
of the work we did. We've figured out a way
to do it. So now we've got this little playbook
and framework to work from. So doing it the first
time is hard. Second time should be a lot easier,
and then I should get easier and easier and easier.
For this episode, I sat down with Nicole Raimondo, the
(01:48):
Chief Information officer for the City of Carrie, North Carolina.
Carrie has earned a reputation of being a cutting edge
smart city. Located near the famous research Triangle of North Carolina.
The city has embraced the potential of the Internet of Things,
creating implementations to have a real positive impact on citizens
and visitors to carry. Nicole combines an optimistic vision with
(02:11):
a pragmatic approach to get real results in a world
where process and bureaucracy can be challenges on their own.
We met in North Carolina to learn more about her background,
her perspective on tech, and her vision for the connected
communities of tomorrow. She explains that the same technologies that
are changing the airline industry, as I learned from United
(02:32):
Airlines CTO Ravi Simambatla in our previous episode, are poised
to push our cities into the future. Nicole, thank you
so much for sitting down to talk with us. I'm curious,
so if you can cast your mind back to that
first week when you were taking on the position of
(02:54):
c i O, how how would you have defined what
your mission was when you first took on that role.
For me, when you talk about the first week, there
was a little bit, I'm gonna say, there was a
little bit of a shock factor in seeing that when
you go to a municipality often you don't realize how
fortunate you are in the private sector to have tools
(03:14):
at your disposal, money at your disposal, and often very
talented and unlimited resources. For me, that became the challenge
and the opportunity in public service. So it was how
do we change that mindset of the people that work there,
of the technology, of how to get around figuring out
(03:36):
better partnerships and creative opportunities so that we can make
government services much much more like private sector. Right, So,
how do you get it to think more like a startup?
How do you get to change people's lives and their
works through technology. That's fantastic. So let me ask you
about something that I know you're not crazy about the
(03:59):
terms more city, not a big fan. You prefer connected
city perhaps, But can you talk a little bit about
that and if you had to define a smart city,
at least in the way that perhaps it's spoken about
in general, what is your vision of that That is
a very true statement or there that you just said.
I like to call it a connected community because I
(04:20):
think it's more than just the technology. It's connecting people,
it's connecting the businesses, it's creating relationships. So for me,
it's all about connection, which unifies and strengths the community.
So I like to approach it that way. For me,
to make the community better is definitely leveraging technology. So
(04:41):
and it's going to be mostly far away for citizens
that they don't actually see it, So that's I like
to talk about it in a way that it's almost invisible,
and it's you know, it's our intelligent traffic system. It's
it's using text messaging, it's being able to access and
do things that you need to do wherever you are.
(05:01):
So it's sort of like a concept of pervasive computing.
Exactly something where you have that that level of access,
and not only do you have that level of access
as a citizen, then you could also say from the
flip side, you can from a city point of view,
use the technology to help make better plans for your
city moving forward. On a similar note, and we spoke
(05:24):
about this before the interview started. We talked about the
difference between private industry and the public sector when it
comes to actually rolling out technologies and implementing solutions. You
guys don't have the luxury an enormous test environment being
able to test all sorts of crazy things on any
sort of whim. Can you talk about what is the
(05:45):
process like? So we decided to leverage our campus space
here on town Hall because it has everything on a
miniature scale that's representative in the town. So we've got
a parking deck, we've got lighting, we have police and
fire and on campus, and so we started to think
about how do we leverage the space here to learn.
(06:08):
So we're going to be smart with our taxpayer dollars.
We're going to use it as a learning opportunity and
we're going to partner strategically with our vendors to help
us figure out um not only the right technology to use,
but how to use it. And so we've got some
amazing things on campus. We've learned a lot. We have
(06:30):
learned that everyone is selling a siloed product with their
own dashboard. So if you're out there, do not do that.
We don't need a thousand dashboards. Are trying to consolidate,
you know, learning about how to share data, making sure
our applications, all of open APIs they can talk to
each other, looking at security, making sure you're only capturing
(06:51):
the right amount of data and not all of the data.
So there must be a sort of a balancing act
to figure out in what ways do you need to
have a unified platform or interface to make things as
streamlined as possible, and in what instances do you need
something that's perhaps more granular for that particular implementation. Do
(07:12):
you guys go through a process when you're looking at
all these different applications and which ones should be in
a more unified UI versus something that needs to be
more stand alone. Yeah, So I mean, really we're trying
to move away from stand alone as much as possible.
We know that that's it's not going to be a
perfect world, but we will look at the data the
(07:32):
needs that come in, and we're trying to build data
standards around it. We want to make sure we've got
these data standards so that we can share out the
data in the right places. If you think about an
emergency services, if you know we had an incident, the
last thing we want to do is there be a
command center with fifty different screens of visualizations of data. Right,
So we want to make sure that we can put
(07:53):
as much of the right data into the right tools
at the right time. Well, let's talk about sort of
a specific implementation here. One of the things I read
about is how carry has deployed sensors and things like
parking spaces as well as in trash or recycling binds
(08:13):
in order to monitor their use. Can you talk about
those initiatives particularly and how Carrie North Carolina uses that
information to make improvements to citizens lives, maybe in ways
that that aren't necessarily apparent to the average citizen. Sure. Absolutely,
I think talking about the parking sensors is a great example,
and and really for two reasons. One is the tools
(08:37):
that we use. So we are using Cisco's Kinetics for
Cities platform, and we're also using Salesforce, and so we're
using that in a way that we want to be
able to tell whether one is a parking full, for example,
or the handicap spots filled and how to manage that.
And I share this one particularly because this is a
(09:00):
great way to talk about the relationships that we have
with these companies. So before we decided to do this
request sales we got Salesforce and Cisco together to help
us figure out how to build it so they didn't
have a connector, so Salesforce to not have a connector
into Cisco's platform, so they actually built that for us
and now it's readily available right so it's more cities
(09:22):
deploy Kinnectics for cities they have the ability now to
connect into Salesforce. So I think that's a great demonstration
is how we're leading the way and working with companies
to demonstrate need as well in terms for the citizen.
We're also then taking that data and sharing it out
in our open Data portal, and we have a citizen
group that will build apps around parking spaces and show
(09:46):
where there are needs, where there's openings. So for us,
we've also incorporated that with meeting the needs of our
citizens by letting them help us, so we don't need
to build an app if they're going to help do
this for us, we just need to make that data
available and so we've got a great relationship with our
citizens in order to do that. So you have a
rapid iteration as well, because again, like when your user
(10:09):
group are the people who are actually building the stuff,
it really you really see that that that kind of
open source approach almost to discovering, uh, the strengths and
weaknesses of any given approach and being able to improve
upon that very quickly, which I think is is a
fantastic model. I think that's really exciting Nicole. One of
(10:30):
the things we've talked about a lot here are sensors,
Internet of things, this idea of technologies that we can
deploy in the real world and they're either actuating, they're
creating some sort of action, whether it's data driven or
physical action out in the real world, or they're gathering data,
or they're doing some combination of both. But underlying that
obviously is connectivity. This this ability for these different pieces
(10:55):
of an overall holistic system to communicate with one another.
Without that communication scan they're they're meaningless they're they're useless
if you have to go out to the location. So
presumably the rollout of five G, where we're getting incredible
data throughput speeds, we're getting a lot of ability to
(11:15):
do things like edge computing in an unprecedented way. That
must be very exciting to you as well. By having
five G in place everywhere, you know, the ability to
build off of it and use it in places that
maybe you couldn't use it before kind of equalizes the
playing fields. Like you think about it in terms of
you know, you move right outside of carry and you
(11:37):
get fairly rural, so you think about it in farming
and all of the technology needs that they now have
that they didn't have before, and now we need to
make sure that we've provide that basic infrastructure so that
almost evens out the playing field no matter where you are. Yeah,
I remember when the Internet of Things was first being
talked about as potentially billions and billions of sensors being
(11:59):
connected to a network, and the question that a lot
of people were asking, how the heck do we support
all of that? How do we have a system in
place that can handle even the small data packets you're
just talking about, You know the basis of numbers. With
the number of sensors out there, how do we make
sure that we have the system that can support all this.
(12:19):
I think that five G is really going to provide
that for us. Let's envision that world. What do you
think the perfect day would be for you? A perfect
day for me, I'd like to be able to come
to my office no traffic. I think about the perfect
day where the technology is seamless. You don't see it, right,
(12:40):
I'm being rerouted to the right way, so I'm going
around traffic. Um. Perhaps there's an emergency vehicle coming and
I know where it's coming. I'm not looking around. Um.
You think about all those little intersections, if where a
split second can make a difference, um, in a life.
So I really think about it that way. I also
(13:01):
think about five beyond Kerry, right. I think it's really
important that we talk about it. You know, we we
see it, see the commercials for it for five gen nationwide,
but I don't think we're really talking about what that
means or how we get there. That means municipalities, states, counties,
everybody working together to build out this service solution that
(13:26):
we're all going to benefit from. I think those conversations
are starting to happen in small pockets, but I think
that's really where we need to start talking because we
can build out this amazing network, but if we're not
leveraging it to its full potential, then what's the purpose.
And I think we're at this little crossroads where we
get it on our own, little kind of micro scale,
(13:48):
but we're not thinking about it on that regional level,
and that's really where we're going to gain, um all
of the great benefits as we start to build it out. Nicole.
What I find so inspiring about your effective is that
I'm seeing two different approaches to a world that I
really want to live in. Uh. Those two different approaches
being where you feel like it's almost like reality is
(14:11):
catering to you, that things are anticipating your needs. And
on the flip side, because it's not just catering to you,
it's catering to everybody else too. It's streamlining processes in
a way that makes a group improvement. Right. It's not
just for the individual, it's for the entire community. And
(14:31):
that's what I think is so exciting about your vision
of the future. And Uh, why, like I said, I
want a lot of leaders to share that to see
that that sort of vision come to fruition. Will come
back to talking about connected cities with Nicole Ramundo of Carrie,
North Carolina in just a moment, But first let's take
(14:52):
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(16:25):
what are some of the goals that you have defined
for yourself because obviously this implementing technology is a way
of solving a problem. But what are some of the
challenges that you initially identified where the technology helped you
achieve your goal. So I've had some some big goals
of some little goals. Um, we've got challenges all over
(16:48):
the place, I think. Um, so you know and carry
we do. We do a lot of journey mapping, right,
so we think about the day in the life of
a citizen and we literally will walk through from the
moment that you get a different scenarios, whether you're going
to work or you're traveling, pass through, carry into another municipality,
and we think about where are there touch points that
(17:09):
we could make your life better. Traffic system is a
perfect example where the choke points and we know that
there's issues with lack of connectivity between communication, whether it's police, fire,
and different communities or not. And same with it intelligent
traffic system. So to start to think about a world
that is connected outside the boundaries of your community. The
(17:33):
last time I checked, Carrie didn't have any physical walls,
and so you're traveling through communities. So I think that's
kind of the next level that we all need to
start thinking about, is how do we do this on
a much broader scale. For me, that's going to be
the greatest impact. Right, So instead of it just being
kind of a siloed example where everyone's saying, man, I
(17:55):
love going through Carry, everything is so well integrated that
the experience is so seen unless it's invisible for most
of the time. But that's exactly the way you want it.
But then as soon as I leave Carry, the real
world comes crashing down. You don't want Carry to become ours.
You know, you start by thinking about you get a
break down your internal silos. So so you've got internal
departments that now need to work together. So they think
(18:17):
about the end to end process of where can we
automate systems there, Where can we leverage technology and sensors
and all of these things, gather the right amount of data,
make intelligent decisions, get everyone out of their little thiefdoms sometimes, right,
you really gotta work together. And then how do you
do that on with communities? So you start to to
(18:38):
kind of move it out. Um. You know, I always
share that. I joke and say, it's really all just
about making my life better, right, So I think we
do a phenomenal job and carry. I I personally don't
live and carry, So I drive to work from another community.
My children go to school and Raleigh, so they go
to school in different community. And then you know, like
(19:00):
the other person, I'm running them around, um to sports
activities in another community. And and I joke saying it's
about my life, but I think my life is everyone's life, right.
Very few of us stay in the community that we're in,
and so when you talk about making lives better, it's
much bigger than the community that you're in. And I
(19:20):
think and carry we understand that. So we understand the
value of that from a regional perspective, so we're really
working hard with partners in other communities. We've got a
project around stormwater that we're working regionally to come together
because we know that that's not an issue just within
our location, and we want to be able to notify
(19:41):
our neighbors of any storm owner issues and hope that
they can notify us as well. So I think we've
got a good start. There's a lot of challenges with that,
mostly around figuring out data sharing and figuring out how
to make some standardizations around that and what that looks
like and owners up of data or or not owning it.
(20:02):
There's definitely challenges there, but the opportunities far away any
of the challenges because this is not something we necessarily
see in other industries. You know, you often see in
a business where everything is you know, mostly owned within
one entity or maybe a parent company, a holding company
or something. They can get complicated, but it's not as
complicated as having different municipalities, each with their own bureaucracies,
(20:29):
each with their own list of vendors that they might
be working with, having to find out are all of
these technologies compatible. If they're not compatible, are there ways
to bridge between them. So these are the sort of
challenges you face. I assume correct on many levels every day. Yeah,
for sure. I mean we deal with that internally as well.
(20:50):
I think when I got here four years ago, we
had two hundred siloed applications, right, not a lot talking
to each other. We've since moved to a platform strap
g We've got a great start. We've got a long
way to go. But for us, you know, I talked
about the stormwater. I use that as an example because
(21:10):
we collectively decided that's what we're gonna do, and we're
going to do something together and we're gonna move forward.
And we said, I said, we're gonna do stormwater. It's
something we all have the issue with and we can
relate to, and since then everyone is rallied. Sometimes it
just needs someone to say this is what we're doing
and get things moving forward. Now, figuring out data dictionaries,
(21:31):
how we're going to share the data, all of the
details is the hard work behind it. But it's just
figuring out what is the data that we need and
then how can we share that back and forth. So
in this case, it was really the element of leadership
that was necessary to get the ball rolling to the
point where we could have these discussions. That's something I
think that is applicable across any industry, not not only
(21:53):
the public sector. Yeah, you know, and it's interesting because
there is you know, new working government. You work here
because you want to make a difference. So there is
that collective mentality of the folks that we got together,
you know, from all these different municipalities and from the state.
They want to make a difference. So it's not the
want to do it, it's the is it a priority?
(22:18):
Do I have the resources? What is any of the
political bureaucracy that I'm going to have to go through?
I can't even tell you. Weeks, probably months, right, just
based on the meeting schedule of just talking about it,
and then I was like, I'm done talking, like we're
gonna do something, because the moment you do something, and
it really doesn't matter what it is, you start to
(22:40):
build momentum. So our goal is if we can prove
this successful, then we can continue to build on it,
like you've got to get that one thing done and
say all right, we all do this together. Everyone's super
proud of the work we did. We've figured out a
way to do it. So now we've got this little
playbook and framework to work from. So doing it the
first time is hard. Second time should be a lot easier,
(23:03):
and then I should get easier and easier and easier.
But taking those first steps and just saying you're doing it,
it's hard. But I will say the commitment of the
folks that are working on it has been tremendous, and
they are doing this outside of their priority workload. We've
talked a lot about these sort of big, big ideas.
Sometimes it's hard to even talk about these because the
(23:24):
ideas are so big and they they they span so
many different concepts that the terms start to become meaningless.
Like smart cities, I would argue, becomes one of those, right,
because what does that actually mean? So, uh, what do
you think are some of the aspects of a connected
community of the way technology is being implemented that people
(23:46):
are not talking about, but you see as being particularly
interesting for me personally. It's the goal of moving beyond
the city. So I mean, I can talk about Carrie
for sure, but I think the greatest impact is going
to be when we start moving beyond the city. I
think five g's enabler for that. I think that as
long as we start to connect together, the possibilities then
(24:08):
become limitless. What people develop on these solutions yet to
be determined. I think we'll be fascinating, UM, the way
that we can partner with our other municipalities, UM, the
data sharing between us, I think will be interesting moving
away from those silos. UM. For for Carrie individually, Right,
(24:29):
we always talk about, like I think most people do,
like what is what's the Amazon experience? And how do
we how do we give that to our citizens? So
how do we we talk about how do you live
in your day to day life and interact with technology?
So for example, UM, actually even this morning, I got
a reminder about a dentist appointment, So why aren't we
(24:50):
sending out reminders about scheduling a UM inspection and letting
them know who's coming to the house and at what time.
So all of these things were so used to and
our personal life that have just become almost the commodity services.
Now I think that's the direction that we need to
go in. Yeah, yeah, I can see where that would
be a big It's interesting too, because now we're talking about,
(25:11):
you know, challenges that are are again more on the
sociological side than on the technological side. And uh, and
a lot of the people I talked to, you know,
they're very firmly focused on how do we get the
technology to work? And you're thinking also, not just on
that aspect, but how do we get it to work
in the real world, in in real use cases, in
(25:32):
a way that provides actual value to citizens and that
our value to the to the city itself. So let
me ask you. Let's say that we're looking maybe a
year ahead, a year ahead, we're getting we're getting into
that realm where five G is now available in in
(25:54):
areas you've got, you've got some new capabilities. What are
you excited about? For me? I think I'm excited about
being able to leverage the speed of five G and
the way that we'll be able to do that and
start moving away from these individual use cases that we
talk about and connecting them all together. You know, we
are actually the other day talking about flooding, and let's
(26:17):
run a test of that now, and then run a
test of that on five G right, and see what
the difference is, because I I think it'll be amazing.
And right now I don't know that anybody's doing that
with data to understand, because I think they just think, well,
it's faster. Well what is faster and what does that
mean in saving lives? And what does that mean? Um inconvenience?
(26:39):
You know, I think about we're all really busy people, UM.
So I think about the speed and the way that
we use technology. But I think it's going to be
interesting to look at like this comparison of like the
world today in the world tomorrow. So imagine you're fifteen
years in the future. I'm not asking you to describe
(27:00):
the world, but fifteen years from now, what do you think,
assuming that we get these great rollouts of various technologies,
what would be an ideal situation for you? And it
can be something small or it can be as grandiose
as you like. Interesting, that's a big question. I don't
I don't mess with the small ones. So I think
(27:22):
about tasks that I do that our mundane for me.
Even even when I think about let's say I'm still here,
folks um doing tasks that can be they can be elevated.
So I think about roles changing a lot. So I
don't know if I necessarily think about some big technology
UM impact as opposed to thinking about how folks UM
(27:46):
leverage the ability to learn new technologies to advance their
career and advance what they do. When you think the
very basic, simplistic the way we UM pick up trash
and how we can elevate skills of those folks through
the use of technology is incredibly powerful when you're lifting
(28:07):
up a whole community. And so I really see that
to me as UM. I think my aspirational inspirational fifteen
years from now, where we've got a much higher educated
UM workforce that's doing things that they never thought that
they could do possible, regardless of their educational background. UM,
(28:28):
I think it's an equalizer. I really truly believe that
technology is an equalizer. I love it. It's like a
Star Trek future where you've got the point where you
have the freedom and the opportunity and the support to
pursue things that otherwise would just be a dream. Correct.
That's fantastic. That's a lovely story. I love it, and
(28:49):
I love that we've we've really looked at this intricate
symbiosis between the technology, the connectivity, and and ultimately the
impact on people, UH in a in a very holistic
way as opposed to use the term silo. Like usually,
(29:09):
we view these insitments to fascinating. Thank you, thanks for
having much. This has been fascinating. I think Nicole's vision
for communities is inspiring. She acknowledges that implementing solutions in
the public sector can be tough, even when you can
identify the best technology to achieve your goals. But she
(29:30):
also points out that with leadership and collaboration, you can
get buy in from the community and real change is possible.
Using connectivity to transform the Internet of Things from a
buzzword into a real world asset is going to transform
not just our cities, but also industry and the future.
Five G network will provide the speed, data throughput, and
(29:53):
low latency that can turn promise and potential into our
everyday reality. In our next episode, we'll meet with Rob Carter,
the chief Technology Officer of fed X, will learn how
five G connectivity and evolving technologies are setting the stage
for the next era of logistics and transportation. Be sure
to join us for the next episode of The Restless Ones.
(30:24):
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Welcome to the Restless Ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland. I've spent
the last twelve years covering technology and learning how it works,
demystifying everything from massive parallel processing to advanced robotics and
everything in between. As we stand at the beginning of
a new era of unprecedented connectivity with the rollout of
(00:21):
five G technology, I'm partnering with T Mobile for Business
to sit down with some of the visionary leaders in
tech across all industries, from companies like Fiat Chrysler and
United Airlines and many more that play an integral part
of our economy to get a better understanding of how
tech and connectivity will change business forever. These leaders are
(00:43):
the pioneers who don't follow trends. They define them. This
show is their story. They are the restless Ones. We
spent I can't even tell you weeks, probably months just
based on the meeting schedule of just talking about it,
(01:06):
and then I was like I'm done talking, like we're
gonna do something, because the moment you do something, and
it really doesn't matter what it is, you start to
build momentum. So our goal is if we can prove
this successful, then we can continue to build on. It's
like you've got to get that one thing done and say,
all right, we all do this together. Everyone's super proud
(01:27):
of the work we did. We've figured out a way
to do it. So now we've got this little playbook
and framework to work from. So doing it the first
time is hard. Second time should be a lot easier,
and then I should get easier and easier and easier.
For this episode, I sat down with Nicole Raimondo, the
(01:48):
Chief Information officer for the City of Carrie, North Carolina.
Carrie has earned a reputation of being a cutting edge
smart city. Located near the famous research Triangle of North Carolina.
The city has embraced the potential of the Internet of Things,
creating implementations to have a real positive impact on citizens
and visitors to carry. Nicole combines an optimistic vision with
(02:11):
a pragmatic approach to get real results in a world
where process and bureaucracy can be challenges on their own.
We met in North Carolina to learn more about her background,
her perspective on tech, and her vision for the connected
communities of tomorrow. She explains that the same technologies that
are changing the airline industry, as I learned from United
(02:32):
Airlines CTO Ravi Simambatla in our previous episode, are poised
to push our cities into the future. Nicole, thank you
so much for sitting down to talk with us. I'm curious,
so if you can cast your mind back to that
first week when you were taking on the position of
(02:54):
c i O, how how would you have defined what
your mission was when you first took on that role.
For me, when you talk about the first week, there
was a little bit, I'm gonna say, there was a
little bit of a shock factor in seeing that when
you go to a municipality often you don't realize how
fortunate you are in the private sector to have tools
(03:14):
at your disposal, money at your disposal, and often very
talented and unlimited resources. For me, that became the challenge
and the opportunity in public service. So it was how
do we change that mindset of the people that work there,
of the technology, of how to get around figuring out
(03:36):
better partnerships and creative opportunities so that we can make
government services much much more like private sector. Right, So,
how do you get it to think more like a startup?
How do you get to change people's lives and their
works through technology. That's fantastic. So let me ask you
about something that I know you're not crazy about the
(03:59):
terms more city, not a big fan. You prefer connected
city perhaps, But can you talk a little bit about
that and if you had to define a smart city,
at least in the way that perhaps it's spoken about
in general, what is your vision of that That is
a very true statement or there that you just said.
I like to call it a connected community because I
(04:20):
think it's more than just the technology. It's connecting people,
it's connecting the businesses, it's creating relationships. So for me,
it's all about connection, which unifies and strengths the community.
So I like to approach it that way. For me,
to make the community better is definitely leveraging technology. So
(04:41):
and it's going to be mostly far away for citizens
that they don't actually see it, So that's I like
to talk about it in a way that it's almost invisible,
and it's you know, it's our intelligent traffic system. It's
it's using text messaging, it's being able to access and
do things that you need to do wherever you are.
(05:01):
So it's sort of like a concept of pervasive computing.
Exactly something where you have that that level of access,
and not only do you have that level of access
as a citizen, then you could also say from the
flip side, you can from a city point of view,
use the technology to help make better plans for your
city moving forward. On a similar note, and we spoke
(05:24):
about this before the interview started. We talked about the
difference between private industry and the public sector when it
comes to actually rolling out technologies and implementing solutions. You
guys don't have the luxury an enormous test environment being
able to test all sorts of crazy things on any
sort of whim. Can you talk about what is the
(05:45):
process like? So we decided to leverage our campus space
here on town Hall because it has everything on a
miniature scale that's representative in the town. So we've got
a parking deck, we've got lighting, we have police and
fire and on campus, and so we started to think
about how do we leverage the space here to learn.
(06:08):
So we're going to be smart with our taxpayer dollars.
We're going to use it as a learning opportunity and
we're going to partner strategically with our vendors to help
us figure out um not only the right technology to use,
but how to use it. And so we've got some
amazing things on campus. We've learned a lot. We have
(06:30):
learned that everyone is selling a siloed product with their
own dashboard. So if you're out there, do not do that.
We don't need a thousand dashboards. Are trying to consolidate,
you know, learning about how to share data, making sure
our applications, all of open APIs they can talk to
each other, looking at security, making sure you're only capturing
(06:51):
the right amount of data and not all of the data.
So there must be a sort of a balancing act
to figure out in what ways do you need to
have a unified platform or interface to make things as
streamlined as possible, and in what instances do you need
something that's perhaps more granular for that particular implementation. Do
(07:12):
you guys go through a process when you're looking at
all these different applications and which ones should be in
a more unified UI versus something that needs to be
more stand alone. Yeah, So I mean, really we're trying
to move away from stand alone as much as possible.
We know that that's it's not going to be a
perfect world, but we will look at the data the
(07:32):
needs that come in, and we're trying to build data
standards around it. We want to make sure we've got
these data standards so that we can share out the
data in the right places. If you think about an
emergency services, if you know we had an incident, the
last thing we want to do is there be a
command center with fifty different screens of visualizations of data. Right,
So we want to make sure that we can put
(07:53):
as much of the right data into the right tools
at the right time. Well, let's talk about sort of
a specific implementation here. One of the things I read
about is how carry has deployed sensors and things like
parking spaces as well as in trash or recycling binds
(08:13):
in order to monitor their use. Can you talk about
those initiatives particularly and how Carrie North Carolina uses that
information to make improvements to citizens lives, maybe in ways
that that aren't necessarily apparent to the average citizen. Sure. Absolutely,
I think talking about the parking sensors is a great example,
and and really for two reasons. One is the tools
(08:37):
that we use. So we are using Cisco's Kinetics for
Cities platform, and we're also using Salesforce, and so we're
using that in a way that we want to be
able to tell whether one is a parking full, for example,
or the handicap spots filled and how to manage that.
And I share this one particularly because this is a
(09:00):
great way to talk about the relationships that we have
with these companies. So before we decided to do this
request sales we got Salesforce and Cisco together to help
us figure out how to build it so they didn't
have a connector, so Salesforce to not have a connector
into Cisco's platform, so they actually built that for us
and now it's readily available right so it's more cities
(09:22):
deploy Kinnectics for cities they have the ability now to
connect into Salesforce. So I think that's a great demonstration
is how we're leading the way and working with companies
to demonstrate need as well in terms for the citizen.
We're also then taking that data and sharing it out
in our open Data portal, and we have a citizen
group that will build apps around parking spaces and show
(09:46):
where there are needs, where there's openings. So for us,
we've also incorporated that with meeting the needs of our
citizens by letting them help us, so we don't need
to build an app if they're going to help do
this for us, we just need to make that data
available and so we've got a great relationship with our
citizens in order to do that. So you have a
rapid iteration as well, because again, like when your user
(10:09):
group are the people who are actually building the stuff,
it really you really see that that that kind of
open source approach almost to discovering, uh, the strengths and
weaknesses of any given approach and being able to improve
upon that very quickly, which I think is is a
fantastic model. I think that's really exciting Nicole. One of
(10:30):
the things we've talked about a lot here are sensors,
Internet of things, this idea of technologies that we can
deploy in the real world and they're either actuating, they're
creating some sort of action, whether it's data driven or
physical action out in the real world, or they're gathering data,
or they're doing some combination of both. But underlying that
obviously is connectivity. This this ability for these different pieces
(10:55):
of an overall holistic system to communicate with one another.
Without that communication scan they're they're meaningless they're they're useless
if you have to go out to the location. So
presumably the rollout of five G, where we're getting incredible
data throughput speeds, we're getting a lot of ability to
(11:15):
do things like edge computing in an unprecedented way. That
must be very exciting to you as well. By having
five G in place everywhere, you know, the ability to
build off of it and use it in places that
maybe you couldn't use it before kind of equalizes the
playing fields. Like you think about it in terms of
you know, you move right outside of carry and you
(11:37):
get fairly rural, so you think about it in farming
and all of the technology needs that they now have
that they didn't have before, and now we need to
make sure that we've provide that basic infrastructure so that
almost evens out the playing field no matter where you are. Yeah,
I remember when the Internet of Things was first being
talked about as potentially billions and billions of sensors being
(11:59):
connected to a network, and the question that a lot
of people were asking, how the heck do we support
all of that? How do we have a system in
place that can handle even the small data packets you're
just talking about, You know the basis of numbers. With
the number of sensors out there, how do we make
sure that we have the system that can support all this.
(12:19):
I think that five G is really going to provide
that for us. Let's envision that world. What do you
think the perfect day would be for you? A perfect
day for me, I'd like to be able to come
to my office no traffic. I think about the perfect
day where the technology is seamless. You don't see it, right,
(12:40):
I'm being rerouted to the right way, so I'm going
around traffic. Um. Perhaps there's an emergency vehicle coming and
I know where it's coming. I'm not looking around. Um.
You think about all those little intersections, if where a
split second can make a difference, um, in a life.
So I really think about it that way. I also
(13:01):
think about five beyond Kerry, right. I think it's really
important that we talk about it. You know, we we
see it, see the commercials for it for five gen nationwide,
but I don't think we're really talking about what that
means or how we get there. That means municipalities, states, counties,
everybody working together to build out this service solution that
(13:26):
we're all going to benefit from. I think those conversations
are starting to happen in small pockets, but I think
that's really where we need to start talking because we
can build out this amazing network, but if we're not
leveraging it to its full potential, then what's the purpose.
And I think we're at this little crossroads where we
get it on our own, little kind of micro scale,
(13:48):
but we're not thinking about it on that regional level,
and that's really where we're going to gain, um all
of the great benefits as we start to build it out. Nicole.
What I find so inspiring about your effective is that
I'm seeing two different approaches to a world that I
really want to live in. Uh. Those two different approaches
being where you feel like it's almost like reality is
(14:11):
catering to you, that things are anticipating your needs. And
on the flip side, because it's not just catering to you,
it's catering to everybody else too. It's streamlining processes in
a way that makes a group improvement. Right. It's not
just for the individual, it's for the entire community. And
(14:31):
that's what I think is so exciting about your vision
of the future. And Uh, why, like I said, I
want a lot of leaders to share that to see
that that sort of vision come to fruition. Will come
back to talking about connected cities with Nicole Ramundo of Carrie,
North Carolina in just a moment, But first let's take
(14:52):
a quick break. You know who you are, A boundary pusher,
a big thinker in the relentless pursuit of the next
big innovation for your business. T Mobile for Business knows
that the future demands true workforce mobility and in the
new era of five G being able to assess the
needs of your company in real time could transform everyday functions.
(15:14):
The five G revolution has begun and the future of
businesses like yours will be powered by advancements in five
gene networks built to reach more people in more places
without slowing you down. T Mobile for Business can help
you realize the full potential of your business as five
G unfolds, business is changing. Learn more at T mobile
for Business dot com. The future is closer than you think,
(15:38):
and it all starts in the palm of your hand.
You've heard the news five G is here, but what
does that really mean? How will it impact you? In
this I Heart series This Time Tomorrow presented by t
Mobile for Business. Join hosts os Volition and Cara Price
as they walk us through a mobile revolution that will
start to change the future of business and the way
(16:01):
we interact with the world around us. From environmental science
to law enforcement, entertainment, healthcare, and travel, innovation is coming.
Join them as they explore how this revolution could impact
your life and give you new ways to connect and engage.
This Time Tomorrow is now available on the i Heart
Radio app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Let's say,
(16:25):
what are some of the goals that you have defined
for yourself because obviously this implementing technology is a way
of solving a problem. But what are some of the
challenges that you initially identified where the technology helped you
achieve your goal. So I've had some some big goals
of some little goals. Um, we've got challenges all over
(16:48):
the place, I think. Um, so you know and carry
we do. We do a lot of journey mapping, right,
so we think about the day in the life of
a citizen and we literally will walk through from the
moment that you get a different scenarios, whether you're going
to work or you're traveling, pass through, carry into another municipality,
and we think about where are there touch points that
(17:09):
we could make your life better. Traffic system is a
perfect example where the choke points and we know that
there's issues with lack of connectivity between communication, whether it's police, fire,
and different communities or not. And same with it intelligent
traffic system. So to start to think about a world
that is connected outside the boundaries of your community. The
(17:33):
last time I checked, Carrie didn't have any physical walls,
and so you're traveling through communities. So I think that's
kind of the next level that we all need to
start thinking about, is how do we do this on
a much broader scale. For me, that's going to be
the greatest impact. Right, So instead of it just being
kind of a siloed example where everyone's saying, man, I
(17:55):
love going through Carry, everything is so well integrated that
the experience is so seen unless it's invisible for most
of the time. But that's exactly the way you want it.
But then as soon as I leave Carry, the real
world comes crashing down. You don't want Carry to become ours.
You know, you start by thinking about you get a
break down your internal silos. So so you've got internal
departments that now need to work together. So they think
(18:17):
about the end to end process of where can we
automate systems there, Where can we leverage technology and sensors
and all of these things, gather the right amount of data,
make intelligent decisions, get everyone out of their little thiefdoms sometimes, right,
you really gotta work together. And then how do you
do that on with communities? So you start to to
(18:38):
kind of move it out. Um. You know, I always
share that. I joke and say, it's really all just
about making my life better, right, So I think we
do a phenomenal job and carry. I I personally don't
live and carry, So I drive to work from another community.
My children go to school and Raleigh, so they go
to school in different community. And then you know, like
(19:00):
the other person, I'm running them around, um to sports
activities in another community. And and I joke saying it's
about my life, but I think my life is everyone's life, right.
Very few of us stay in the community that we're in,
and so when you talk about making lives better, it's
much bigger than the community that you're in. And I
(19:20):
think and carry we understand that. So we understand the
value of that from a regional perspective, so we're really
working hard with partners in other communities. We've got a
project around stormwater that we're working regionally to come together
because we know that that's not an issue just within
our location, and we want to be able to notify
(19:41):
our neighbors of any storm owner issues and hope that
they can notify us as well. So I think we've
got a good start. There's a lot of challenges with that,
mostly around figuring out data sharing and figuring out how
to make some standardizations around that and what that looks
like and owners up of data or or not owning it.
(20:02):
There's definitely challenges there, but the opportunities far away any
of the challenges because this is not something we necessarily
see in other industries. You know, you often see in
a business where everything is you know, mostly owned within
one entity or maybe a parent company, a holding company
or something. They can get complicated, but it's not as
complicated as having different municipalities, each with their own bureaucracies,
(20:29):
each with their own list of vendors that they might
be working with, having to find out are all of
these technologies compatible. If they're not compatible, are there ways
to bridge between them. So these are the sort of
challenges you face. I assume correct on many levels every day. Yeah,
for sure. I mean we deal with that internally as well.
(20:50):
I think when I got here four years ago, we
had two hundred siloed applications, right, not a lot talking
to each other. We've since moved to a platform strap
g We've got a great start. We've got a long
way to go. But for us, you know, I talked
about the stormwater. I use that as an example because
(21:10):
we collectively decided that's what we're gonna do, and we're
going to do something together and we're gonna move forward.
And we said, I said, we're gonna do stormwater. It's
something we all have the issue with and we can
relate to, and since then everyone is rallied. Sometimes it
just needs someone to say this is what we're doing
and get things moving forward. Now, figuring out data dictionaries,
(21:31):
how we're going to share the data, all of the
details is the hard work behind it. But it's just
figuring out what is the data that we need and
then how can we share that back and forth. So
in this case, it was really the element of leadership
that was necessary to get the ball rolling to the
point where we could have these discussions. That's something I
think that is applicable across any industry, not not only
(21:53):
the public sector. Yeah, you know, and it's interesting because
there is you know, new working government. You work here
because you want to make a difference. So there is
that collective mentality of the folks that we got together,
you know, from all these different municipalities and from the state.
They want to make a difference. So it's not the
want to do it, it's the is it a priority?
(22:18):
Do I have the resources? What is any of the
political bureaucracy that I'm going to have to go through?
I can't even tell you. Weeks, probably months, right, just
based on the meeting schedule of just talking about it,
and then I was like, I'm done talking, like we're
gonna do something, because the moment you do something, and
it really doesn't matter what it is, you start to
(22:40):
build momentum. So our goal is if we can prove
this successful, then we can continue to build on it,
like you've got to get that one thing done and
say all right, we all do this together. Everyone's super
proud of the work we did. We've figured out a
way to do it. So now we've got this little
playbook and framework to work from. So doing it the
first time is hard. Second time should be a lot easier,
(23:03):
and then I should get easier and easier and easier.
But taking those first steps and just saying you're doing it,
it's hard. But I will say the commitment of the
folks that are working on it has been tremendous, and
they are doing this outside of their priority workload. We've
talked a lot about these sort of big, big ideas.
Sometimes it's hard to even talk about these because the
(23:24):
ideas are so big and they they they span so
many different concepts that the terms start to become meaningless.
Like smart cities, I would argue, becomes one of those, right,
because what does that actually mean? So, uh, what do
you think are some of the aspects of a connected
community of the way technology is being implemented that people
(23:46):
are not talking about, but you see as being particularly
interesting for me personally. It's the goal of moving beyond
the city. So I mean, I can talk about Carrie
for sure, but I think the greatest impact is going
to be when we start moving beyond the city. I
think five g's enabler for that. I think that as
long as we start to connect together, the possibilities then
(24:08):
become limitless. What people develop on these solutions yet to
be determined. I think we'll be fascinating, UM, the way
that we can partner with our other municipalities, UM, the
data sharing between us, I think will be interesting moving
away from those silos. UM. For for Carrie individually, Right,
(24:29):
we always talk about, like I think most people do,
like what is what's the Amazon experience? And how do
we how do we give that to our citizens? So
how do we we talk about how do you live
in your day to day life and interact with technology?
So for example, UM, actually even this morning, I got
a reminder about a dentist appointment, So why aren't we
(24:50):
sending out reminders about scheduling a UM inspection and letting
them know who's coming to the house and at what time.
So all of these things were so used to and
our personal life that have just become almost the commodity services.
Now I think that's the direction that we need to
go in. Yeah, yeah, I can see where that would
be a big It's interesting too, because now we're talking about,
(25:11):
you know, challenges that are are again more on the
sociological side than on the technological side. And uh, and
a lot of the people I talked to, you know,
they're very firmly focused on how do we get the
technology to work? And you're thinking also, not just on
that aspect, but how do we get it to work
in the real world, in in real use cases, in
(25:32):
a way that provides actual value to citizens and that
our value to the to the city itself. So let
me ask you. Let's say that we're looking maybe a
year ahead, a year ahead, we're getting we're getting into
that realm where five G is now available in in
(25:54):
areas you've got, you've got some new capabilities. What are
you excited about? For me? I think I'm excited about
being able to leverage the speed of five G and
the way that we'll be able to do that and
start moving away from these individual use cases that we
talk about and connecting them all together. You know, we
are actually the other day talking about flooding, and let's
(26:17):
run a test of that now, and then run a
test of that on five G right, and see what
the difference is, because I I think it'll be amazing.
And right now I don't know that anybody's doing that
with data to understand, because I think they just think, well,
it's faster. Well what is faster and what does that
mean in saving lives? And what does that mean? Um inconvenience?
(26:39):
You know, I think about we're all really busy people, UM.
So I think about the speed and the way that
we use technology. But I think it's going to be
interesting to look at like this comparison of like the
world today in the world tomorrow. So imagine you're fifteen
years in the future. I'm not asking you to describe
(27:00):
the world, but fifteen years from now, what do you think,
assuming that we get these great rollouts of various technologies,
what would be an ideal situation for you? And it
can be something small or it can be as grandiose
as you like. Interesting, that's a big question. I don't
I don't mess with the small ones. So I think
(27:22):
about tasks that I do that our mundane for me.
Even even when I think about let's say I'm still here,
folks um doing tasks that can be they can be elevated.
So I think about roles changing a lot. So I
don't know if I necessarily think about some big technology
UM impact as opposed to thinking about how folks UM
(27:46):
leverage the ability to learn new technologies to advance their
career and advance what they do. When you think the
very basic, simplistic the way we UM pick up trash
and how we can elevate skills of those folks through
the use of technology is incredibly powerful when you're lifting
(28:07):
up a whole community. And so I really see that
to me as UM. I think my aspirational inspirational fifteen
years from now, where we've got a much higher educated
UM workforce that's doing things that they never thought that
they could do possible, regardless of their educational background. UM,
(28:28):
I think it's an equalizer. I really truly believe that
technology is an equalizer. I love it. It's like a
Star Trek future where you've got the point where you
have the freedom and the opportunity and the support to
pursue things that otherwise would just be a dream. Correct.
That's fantastic. That's a lovely story. I love it, and
(28:49):
I love that we've we've really looked at this intricate
symbiosis between the technology, the connectivity, and and ultimately the
impact on people, UH in a in a very holistic
way as opposed to use the term silo. Like usually,
(29:09):
we view these insitments to fascinating. Thank you, thanks for
having much. This has been fascinating. I think Nicole's vision
for communities is inspiring. She acknowledges that implementing solutions in
the public sector can be tough, even when you can
identify the best technology to achieve your goals. But she
(29:30):
also points out that with leadership and collaboration, you can
get buy in from the community and real change is possible.
Using connectivity to transform the Internet of Things from a
buzzword into a real world asset is going to transform
not just our cities, but also industry and the future.
Five G network will provide the speed, data throughput, and
(29:53):
low latency that can turn promise and potential into our
everyday reality. In our next episode, we'll meet with Rob Carter,
the chief Technology Officer of fed X, will learn how
five G connectivity and evolving technologies are setting the stage
for the next era of logistics and transportation. Be sure
to join us for the next episode of The Restless Ones.
(30:24):
No matter what you're after, t Mobile for Business is
here with a network born mobile and built from the
ground up for the next wave of innovation from mobile
broadband to IoT to workforce mobility, and everything in between.
T Mobile for Business is committed to helping innovative decision
makers like you move your business forward with the products
(30:46):
and services you need, as well as the dedicated, award
winning service your business expects from America's most loved wireless company.
Business is changing. Learn more at t Mobile for Business
dot com.
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