Episode 0025: Ecosystem Awareness

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Municipal and Community Communication, those words sound so similar, could there be a reason why? Yes, but our Smart City does not do this well. Let´s change that. Communication, Discovery, Elevation Knowing what is happening and how each item might relate to any other, and to you, is critical in a noise-filled era where social media has taken over with their own profit motives, not yours. Old ways are great, especially when they are the basis of learning and innovation moving forward. Email is always going to be around, that is not as bad as you think. Print-style news reporting is also going to be around for a long time, that is as bad as you think. But Likes and Shares are all we need! To paraphrase a quote about heroes, If Everything is Liked and Shared, Nothing is. The noise is leading to invisibility, not aided by algorithms driven by profit motive rather than consumer utility In the end, brands are handed over to bad stewards and the fight is always on to keep up with the latest algorithmic changes and trends (and billionaire whim?) Case Study The Greater Vegas area fancies itself an Innovation Hub, relying heavily on social media and print-media-style news platforms, and then commercial social media silos, to communicate. We are participating this year in the Largest Hackathon in The World, the NASA International Space Apps Challenge. How to get that information to potential participants? Answer: we hope that people will share on their social media, and watch our event slip away due to lack of interest, or maybe lack of awareness. Smarter Smart City Elevate the Entrepreneurial Innovation Ecosystem Make use of Open Data, and add more to the datasets! Reduce insulation, avoid Conway´s Law, not everything is a Wordpress site! Innovate Locally, involve people on the ground who know where the gaps are and have ideas to close them As a Destination City hosting some 40M visitors each year (according to LVCVA), make use of that opportunity to learn from many people, many cultures, many norms. Talking the Talk is a Vegas thing, Walking the Walk is something new, the time is now.