Understanding City Innovation on a Global Scale with Alby Bocanegra

Read the transcript:

Alby Bocanegra: So I think one of the misconceptions could be that, you know, digitizing everything is better. In theory, yes. In practice, it doesn't always manifest itself as a solution, right, because then you've digitized everything, thus making the process more effective. But you also inadvertently left people out.

Ally Peters: Welcome to Bridging The Digital Divide, a Smart City Podcast from Soofa, where we explore the places where urban landscapes are intertwined with technology to see how connectivity thrives, innovation sparks, and sustainability grows.

Kiel Hauck: Welcome to Bridging the Digital Divide, a Smart City Podcast from Soofa. I'm Kiel Hauck, I lead the marketing team here at Soofa, and I am joined, as always, by my co-host, Ally Peters. Ally, how are you doing?

Ally Peters: I'm great. How are you doing, Kiel?

Kiel Hauck: I'm doing good. Feeling really good. After this conversation that we just had, with Alby Bocanegra, who you had reached out to, to join our show. He's the founder and CFO of The Urban Futurist, which is a consultancy and advisory organization, he's had a really unique background, working with both big brands and cities. 

He was previously the CTO in New York City, one of the most fascinating guests that we've had so far, simply because of how diverse his background is and all the different places he's been, people he's worked with. That all kind of ties in in unexpected ways to moving cities into the future. What stuck out to you, when you were first reaching out to Alby to join the show?

Ally Peters: Yeah, well, honestly, like you said, his background was very interesting, especially just looking at his LinkedIn too. He has so many different experiences listed on his LinkedIn, and he's always posting about the cool experiences that he's having. And I thought, wow, this person seems to be doing a lot of great work. And it'd be cool to hear about all of Alby's past experiences and how he's taking those experiences, and putting it into the work that he's doing at the Urban Futurist.

Kiel Hauck: Yeah. So I think you're really going to love this conversation with Alby. And again, it's so interesting having spoken with so many folks now working in local city governments, moving Smart City initiatives forward, and now getting to talk with Alby and getting the perspective from so many different angles of different groups that are involved with these types of projects was really great. Hope you enjoy it here is Alby Bocanegra.

Ally Peters: So, considering that you worked, in a few different fields or in a few different contexts with cities, what initially drew you to working with the City of New York or with city technology in general?

Alby Bocanegra: I've been a curious person my whole life. Usually that got me in trouble over the years, it's actually gotten me opportunities. But I was really working in the human capital world, driving executive searches and really making organizations more diverse, et cetera. And then I saw the huge need for tech talent in government. I saw that there were huge struggles with capacity, in cities, in governments. I was working at the University of Southern California, and I was on one of the task forces for the mayor of Los Angeles, and mostly it was about hiring veterans and helping, underserved populations, et cetera, get access to employment. And it always came back to technology. Like, how can we use technology to help people? How can we help people find tech jobs? How can we upskill our residents or veterans to find higher paying and usually the higher paying jobs were in technology.

So I didn't go search for civic tech. It found me really, I know that sounds a little bit cliche, but it really did find me. It kept coming up. And so I had the opportunity to go work for the city of San Francisco, on a program that I built called the Tech Talent Program, where San Francisco was struggling with capacity issues and bringing in some innovation into their hiring practices, which, as you know, cities hiring practices are very outdated and cumbersome and long. And so the idea was, how can we pilot a program that shows that we can hire with agility and recruit the best and brightest without offering them all the salaries and perks and all the beautiful things that they get with tech companies? 

So I kind of cracked that nut, happy to say. And we hired a bunch of technology workers and helped a bunch of agencies deploy a bunch of projects that were stalled because they didn't have the staff. And I just became immersed. That was my world. Living in the Bay Area, working in San Francisco, I was finding myself always at tech boot camps and training places. And people were like, tech people. Convenient. I mean, the office next door to us was Uber. Twitter was across the way. Like it was just inevitable. Tech was just in my - let's just say I didn't have a say about it. It was like, hey guy, you're in tech, you're going to be in tech. End of story. Signed, life. 

Kiel Hauck: Obviously. You know, as Ally mentioned, your background has touched so many different parts of working with cities and technology leading into what you do today. You're the founder and the CFO of the Urban Futurist, which is a consultancy and advisory organization. Talk to us a little bit about what sparked the beginnings of that. What led you to take this on as your next endeavor.

Alby Bocanegra: Yeah, like I mentioned, I had a really unique opportunity to support cities for almost four years. And that was thrilling and it was exciting, and I loved doing it. My challenge was, once we did co identify the problem, part of my job wasn't just like, City X comes to me saying, hey Alby, we really need help with our mobility or we need help with our smart lighting, whatever. And then I would just show up with a bunch of solutions and a bunch of things to throw at them and sell them, et cetera. It was always about co identifying the real problem, because sometimes you just got to get a little in the weeds and kind of reverse engineer what the real underlying issue is and then kind of go forward from there and then really identify the problem statement and then test pilot, figure out what the proper solution is and come to the conclusion that this is the path forward. 

My challenge was I could only get to that. That was the end of my engagement, right? Once we figured out, hey, here's the path forward, number one, here's the problem. Number two, here's a set of solutions that could work, it's time to test, it's time to pilot, it's time to experiment. That's kind of where I hopped off, where I got off the train, so I didn't get to go all the way forward with them and see it to the very end. The other challenge I think I was having was that there also came a point where if there wasn't a role to play or a solution that involved my employer, then that was also where I was like, okay, well, now I'm handing this to you, newly formed group to go on and prosper, right? So there was always, like, an end point for me. 

My engagement was, sure, I could still kind of shepherd it and foster it, but I didn't get to really take it to the finish line. And, then I was also limited, even though I did get a lot of space to get involved in a bunch of different types of projects, as there were a lot of things I had to pass on because, well, there's not really a role. I also can't justify giving time, effort, and resources into something that ultimately isn't going to come back and support the business case for it, for me spending my time on it, and so, again, we did a lot of great work and a lot of good stuff, but I think I was still a little constrained on what I could, get involved with and how much I could do. 

So I figured the next job for me is going to be something where I get to pick my project based on the need and not if it aligns with the business or not. It's also going to give me the opportunity to go as far as I want with it, and I can pick the best partner for it, just unencumbered, right? So I thought I kind of just was, like, agonizing over it. It's like, well, then, do I go work for a philanthropy? Do I go work for an academic institution? But then I'm like, well, I don't want to do just research. I want to do cool stuff, so then I just came to the conclusion and it was to my wife's dismay, right? I'm like, I think I want to launch my own business, my own company, and I want to consult and I want to just be able to touch everything, all things future of cities, I want to touch it. If it's tourism, I want to touch it. If it's smart IoT and smart devices, I want to touch it. If it's healthcare, I want to be involved. If it's like artificial intelligence and quantum computing, I want to touch it. I want all of it. I don't want to just be like, this guy does these three things: talk to him about payments and finance, talk to him about this or that. That's not who I want to be. I want to be like the person that picks the best projects because cities need it and people need it, not because it aligns with my business outcomes, right? So I just had to make that decision. And it was a super scary one. Freaked my wife out. 

But I'll tell you what, the Urban Futurist is going to be a year old in November. I don't know, let's just call it December 1st, whatever, but it's about to be a year old. And I'll tell you, not only do I have more work than I've ever had in my whole entire life and I've been on a plane more than I ever have, and I've been in front of cities and decision makers more than I ever have in my entire life. I have complete control of what I get to do and the partners that I get to pick for it. And I'm proud to say that all of the same people that I had been supporting over the years, from not even San Francisco, from USC all the way to until last year when I launched this, they've all come to me for some kind of support. 

So on the first day of launching the Urban Futurist, I was already employed, I already had partners, I already had work. I got called on by the Charter Cities Institute to help them with the development of new cities across the African continent, then shortly after, I had Smart Cities Council calling me to be their Futurist in Residence, and then I had a couple of startups that asked me to be on their board and take an equity position in their companies. These are all things I could have never done while having a traditional job. Like the job I had, right? Which was like, I had to focus on what they wanted me to focus on, things could potentially be conflicts of interest if I took equity positions and companies, et cetera. And now I can do anything I want as long as I do it well, right? As long as I do right by my partners. The only KPI there, is I deliver on the promises I make to the people that I work for, my clients, so I went from having one boss to having, like, five bosses, and they're all amazing. 

And the cool thing about it is everyone in my sphere that I advise or whatever, it's all people that I always think should be working together. So I end up partnering with my partners, so it's super cool how I get to interweave all the people I work with into it. It’s the dream. It's tough. I won't say it's easy because you're not on payroll or whatever. You got to bill people. And you got to remind people, like, hey, I do this for money, because people are used to me giving out free advice. That's it, man. And that's how I launched the Urban Futurist. I couldn't be happier. I could not be more lucky and more employed than ever. And here we are. We run a family business, our factory. So I get to do that too. I literally get to do whatever I want.

Ally Peters: That's amazing. Yeah. I mean, it seems like you've not only expanded your network, but I'm sure you're also learning so much more about all these different kinds of technologies and innovations going on by getting to kind of pick and choose and just kind of see everything, right in front of you, and I'm definitely curious. Do you have any notable projects from cities or companies that you've advised that have put out some really cool stuff?

Alby Bocanegra: Yeah, there's a few things. So, look, I had the benefit of meeting with the CEO and the Chief Sustainability Officer from Tonomus, who are really building the technology infrastructure for Neom in Saudi and Tubuk. But I had the opportunity to sit with the folks with Joseph Bradley from Tonomus, who's the CEO, and the Chief Sustainability Officer, and kind of understand, really look at what they're trying to build. And I was just blown away from that side. Their focus is really kind of making Neom like a cognitive city, right? To go beyond a smart and connected city to going to a city that's cognitive and can predict needs and really know their residents, sometimes even better than they know themselves through the use of technology and, informatics and data, et cetera. And really kind of the way I look at Neom, is that it's going to be like a living, breathing organism, a community, a true ecosystem that really understands the needs of their residents before the need even happens. Right? And so they're making huge investments in creating. When you think of Neom as a concept, you're like, it is one of the most unforgiving landscapes in the world. Right in the middle of the desert, where there's extreme heat, and there's just, like, everything, all the odds are against you, right? And somehow they had the vision to say, this would be the ideal place to create a city, and here's how we're going to do it. And not only are we just going to build a city, we're going to make it one of the best places for people to live and to dedicate ourselves to the improvement of the hand condition for the people that live there. 

And so getting to have a front row seat and kind of listen to the plans, that's an exciting project. I'm going to be watching them very closely and probably finding ways to get myself involved in that. Then on a smaller scale, but incredibly significant, I think, is I'm advising a company called Ecosystems Informatics, Inc. ESI, and they've kind of pioneered this new technology, based around air quality. So, like I said, I get to pick now. I don't have to say, well, I'm not a sustainability guy, or I'm not a public health guy. Why should I care about air quality? 

Now I get to say I'm an everything guy, so I do care about air quality, because air quality helps, people, cities that understand their air quality and the data behind it and get to do something with it, get to decide how they better plan their cities, how to reduce carbon footprint, and where to make infrastructure investments. And all that leads to better public health. And so ESI has created these devices that are tiny compared to what you usually have for air quality. It's usually like towers. It's more furniture, more junk that eventually has to be recycled or dealt with or whatever. So they have these tiny devices that can go on any municipal fleet. So that's, trash trucks, buses, police vehicles, et cetera, they can mount this tiny sensor, and it will detect down to, like, the billionth particle of what's in the air and give cities real time information, so cities can say we have a really high concentration of CO2 or, hey over by the factory there's a lot of metal in the air. That's dangerous, et cetera. So they can, in real time, understand how the decisions they make, infrastructure or policy, can affect the environment and the air that people breathe. Like, what is more important than the air that human beings breathe, right? And so that work is super exciting, and there's just a lot of cities right now. I saw an article and this is, like, by the way, this is not a criticism. I saw an article on Bloomberg a couple of months back saying, well, these are the five ways that cities need to start thinking if they want to be better about blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I don't agree with that. I think cities have been thinking like that. I think cities have been more experimental and innovative and all that. 

And so there's a lot of cities right now. So not even to call out just a specific project. But there's a lot of cities that are working super hard to crack the nut on procurement. They're starting to really kind of explore and experiment with autonomous vehicles and autonomous shuttles to help their communities in need be able to get around, get to work, get to their appointments, get childcare, all of that stuff. And so I see, let's just say the project I'm most excited about is whether we are all now moving, or are in an era where technology is more than centered and it's about serving people, and these are some of the specific projects ESI's work. And the stuff happening in the Neom Smart Cities Council is ramping up their task forces. Charter Cities Institute is really helping build these new cities in Africa to help alleviate poverty and help and unlock economic progress for small businesses and people across Africa. Man, it's a great time to be alive. I'm just excited.

Kiel Hauck: Well, you actually, in mentioning that Bloomberg article, it's a really great transition to the next question I was going to ask, because here on the show we've talked with cities of big cities, small cities, cities that are years into big projects and revitalizing and, revolutionizing what it means to think about technology in a smart city context and some that are just in the early stages. Now, I'm wondering, from your perspective, as you talk with cities of all shapes and sizes, different areas of the world, what are some of the common misconceptions that you hear about smart city technology and the way cities are thinking about the future?

Alby Bocanegra: Well, I think one thing that we have to, maybe it's not a misconception, but maybe it's just an oversight, is that we still tend to assess connectivity and access. We still think everyone's connected sometimes, right? We still assume people are connected, and we assume people have devices to connect. So I think one of the misconceptions could be that digitizing everything is better. In theory, yes. In practice, it doesn't always manifest itself as a solution, right. Because then you've digitized everything, thus making it making the process more effective. But you also inadvertently left people out, because not everyone has access, not everyone's connected, not everyone speaks the language. People have, disability, challenges with either their eyesight or hearing. 

So there's a bunch of that, right? And so I think one of the misconceptions is that everyone, if you digitize, everyone will if you digitize, they will come. And so I think it's important to realize that the conversation we had in Gitex in Dubai was about digitizing government services. And I just kind of took a step, asked the panelists to take a step back and say, okay, I'm so glad to hear that Egypt and Dubai and London and all are digitizing services, but what are we doing about ensuring that everyone can access that, so I think that. The other misconception, right, is that AI is going to take everyone's job. I think everyone's talking about AI. I get it. It's the buzzword, it's the cool thing. It's not new. It's just really shown up this year, and I think that it's our job as technologists, as futurists, as people who care about the future. Doesn't matter what your job is, is to make sure that we educate people and help kind of shape the narrative around the benefits and the things that AI can unlock for people. 

Obviously, like anything when we started talking about big data and the massive production and use of data, it always came with a disclaimer of some sort, right? Privacy is important, safety, security, all those things. So I think the conversation should steer more around. Here is how you use AI, here's how you properly can use AI, and here is how you can thrive and prosper by making AI your tool, your part of your toolkit and your toolbox. And so I think the whole scare tactic that people may kind of put out is used to tell people that AI is going to take their job and it's going to ruin their lives and the robots are going to take over the world. 

I think now you've got cities that are thinking that are predicting maintenance on their fleets, thus saving taxpayers a lot of money, there's some AI embedded into GRC, into risk and compliance tools that could really help cities make better decisions, so I think we should really look at AI for what it is. It's a tool, and like any tool, it's how you use it and it's if you learn how to use it and do it well. But it also kind of goes back to my first point where we shouldn't assume people just know how to access it and then have a device that can access it and all that. So it's like, AI is here, let's make sure you all know how to use it. But by the way, let's make sure everyone can just even touch it in the first place. Like, do you have a computer? Do you have connectivity? It all comes back to that. 

Other misconceptions, well, the other misconception maybe for me is when I talk about the 24 hours city, and a lot of people think I'm talking about partying 24 hours a day. And I don't think that. I think it's cities running efficiently through a 24 hour period. So you don't put as much stress on a city from nine to five, and you don't have all the public out all at the same time. But also that shift workers and people that work remotely, on other time zones, et cetera, can still get the benefits of their city, right? People can still get on a bus and get on a train, and get their bacon, egg and cheese if they want one at 04:00 a.m or go look at a museum or look at beautiful public art. Or take a walk in the park because the lights are on. Or the sensors are on and they can detect that you're coming by. All of those things. I think that's a huge misconception. When a tech person like me talks about a 24 hour city, people freak out because they're like, why do you care about this? Are you like a party guy? Are you a club owner? Are you a festival producer? And I'm like, no. 

I'm the kind of person that has seen what kind of stress we put our cities under and the wear and tear that that does to public infrastructure. And if we spread the population across, think about during COVID, if we were operating cities 24 hours a day, it wouldn't be about curfews or closing the doors to businesses. It could be like, look, if your Social Security number ends on an odd number, you can go to your restaurant on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and if it's an even number, you can go Wednesday, Friday. Like spreading out the benefits because the city is available all the time. But no restaurants and bars took a major hit, and any kind of place that operated at night took a huge hit. A lot of businesses closed down. We didn't have to get that. If we had properly run a 24 hour city, we could have just said, not everyone could be out at the same time.

Ally Peters: Right.

Alby Bocanegra: Not everyone could be out nine to five. Maybe we shift everyone and spread everyone out and then we probably wouldn't have seen such a huge hit to the economy.

Ally Peters: Yeah, that's a very interesting point. I was interested in what you were saying about cities, digitizing their resources, and that's been a recurring theme on this podcast, is just how cities can make their technology, equitable and accessible to everybody. So in the cities that you've worked with, or the city projects that you've seen, how can cities make the most of their technology even if they don't have a lot of money or a lot of resources?

Alby Bocanegra: I think that there's a lot of ways that cities could still deliver great services in a digital manner with just the staff and the resources that they have. Right. I think first they have to decide, first they have to evaluate, where the biggest needs are and where they could make the most impact with the least amount of resources, right? So if you have a small digital team or a couple of developers or even people that work in your city that have that skill set that may be working in another agency and want to volunteer, if you create these little small task forces and projects, there's a lot of people that really care about being a public servant, and they'll raise their hand when they can get on small projects and get off of the mundane tasks they're doing every day and be able to contribute to a project that includes what to digitize and how to digitize. Then the second thing is cities. Everybody wants to work with cities. There are so many startups and tech companies that are just dying to work with cities, and all they want is an opportunity to test, to pilot something, right? 

Most of those companies would even want to do it at their expense, or maybe even tapping into a philanthropy that wants to give to cities and then provide capacity. But cities have to make themselves easy to work with. And, I know that's not always a challenge when it comes to partnerships, signing MOUs, and procuring things. And so I think cities also have to understand that they're not always the easiest organizations to do business with. And so how do we unlock that? How do we leverage our economic development office, or how do we leverage our innovation shop? And if we don't have one, just how do we leverage a relationship with industry so we can kind of achieve this journey to digitizing things? There's a ton of nonprofits, a ton of community based organizations that are already providing free digital education and tools for people. So partner with them, find them, partner with them, bring them in, and have them help you. I think, right, the excuse to not do things because you don't have a budget, those days are done because there's a lot of support and there's a lot of organizations that will do this for very little to no cost, and they'll just do it because it's the right thing to do. Some of them just want to test their tech, but again, there's not a lot of vehicles for cities to bring in small scale startups to help them solve a problem. But I'll tell you what, most of the solutions are there. There's not a lot of new ideas out there. A lot of people are just perfecting the good ideas that already existed.

Kiel Hauck: Well, as we wrap up the conversation, you mentioned you're a world traveler. You were recently in Barcelona for the smart city World Congress. You've seen a lot this year, and I'm interested if there's any sort of emerging technologies in 2023 that people should be paying more attention to or things that you've noticed that you're like, oh, in a couple of years, everybody's going to be talking about this.

Alby Bocanegra: I'm probably not just calling out a particular technology, but what I am seeing a lot is more and more cities and people are moving forward towards the sustainability path. I think people are starting to really think there are a lot of people screaming from the mountaintop that sustainability is important and making even the solutions and the things we do at a city more sustainable and really kind of going through that path. And now I'm going to know. I went to, yeah, like you said, Barcelona. I went to the Smart Cities investment summit in Africa, in Rwanda, Kigali, that was in September. Yeah. And then I just went back, just got back from Kigali like Sunday, and a lot more people are talking about electrifying their fleets. They're talking about better governing and managing, like ESG initiatives, more sustainable technologies, waste reduction, technologies to better manage water usage. 

I mean, there's a lot of it, it's just a huge portion of conferences now where before you'd go to a conference, like, all the mobility solutions were there. They'd own half the conference. The other ones were like the software platforms like Oracle and Microsoft and all of the usual suspects. And then the device people, right? The IoT device people and the wireless device people were all like, and then the sustainability people were like, over there in this little corner, having some solutions and devices. Not a big stage, they didn't really get the shot at the main stage, et cetera. And now I'm seeing them kind of more front and center. So I think we're moving towards a more sustainable future in the same way that we've unlocked a bunch of things like transit, mobility, et cetera. Now they're saying, okay, let's use technology to unlock a more sustainable future. I think folks are really paying more attention to that. I appreciate it, especially like now I'm advising an air quality company, right? So all those things are important, so that's kind of what I'm seeing is a lot more focus on sustainability, and all the things that come with it. Electrifying vehicles, charging stations, reutilizing urban infrastructure to be more sustainable. All those things are like front and center.

Kiel Hauck: Yeah, well, sustainability is very close and dear to our hearts. And I think that's a great ending point for this conversation. And Alby, we're so grateful for your time and your insights today. It's been fantastic to learn a little bit more about some of the cities and groups that you're working with and some really amazing work is being done. So thank you.

Alby Bocanegra: Thank you for having me.

Kiel Hauck: All right, thank you again to Alby for joining the show. Ally, again, I thought that conversation was so interesting. He had so many really cool perspectives to share from not only the work that he's done from multiple different angles, from a smart city perspective, but his travels around the world and different cities and different parts of the world that we just haven't really had as a part of this podcast so far. But, the perspectives he was bringing to so many people, the challenges that so many different folks are facing around the globe was really interesting, and I know I use this word a lot for our conversations, but it was inspiring, I felt like.

Ally Peters: Yeah, absolutely. I know. It was interesting, too, to hear him talk about Dubai and some of the technology that is being developed there. And it just seems so advanced and so high tech, and like we said, too, we're talking to different cities of all different sizes and people from all different backgrounds. But it's cool to hear what cities are doing, especially outside the U.S.

Kiel Hauck: Yeah, no kidding. And obviously, he mentioned multiple times the move towards sustainability, which, again, we're excited to delve further into on this podcast. We've sort of talked about it here and there, but the conversation with Alby that was kind of hinting at this is where everything is heading. And then in our next conversation that we'll have on the show, we're going to get into that even further. So that was really exciting to discuss as well. So thank you for listening today, and joining us on Bridging The Digital Divide. Ally, as always, great having you along for the ride.

Ally Peters: Yeah, of course. Happy to keep it going.

Kiel Hauck: All right, that's going to do it for today, and we'll catch you next time. Thanks for listening to Bridging the Digital Divide. If you enjoyed today's show, make sure to subscribe to our podcast and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform.

Ally Peters: And then come visit us at soofadigital.com to see how we're pursuing a mission to make every city smart, social, and sustainable.