BONUS Building Intelligent Communities in Smart Regions, with Leanne Kemp

In this episode, I have a great chat with Leanne Kemp, the Founder and CEO of Everledger and Queensland Chief Entrepreneur. Leanne's company Everledger uses Blockchain technology to track high-value assets such as diamonds, art and wine with the aim of increasing transparency and trust with technology. As the Queensland Chief Entrepreneur, her role is to develop the state's startup ecosystem, attract investment and support job creation. You may remember Leanne from Episode 33, way back when we were called the Smart City Podcast. In that episode I interviewed her together with Louise Mercer, then Head of Everledger Australia, New Zealand, now Chief Experience Officer of Everledger and spoke to them both about blockchain, how they use it and why it's the next wave of the internet. In this episode, I asked Leanne about what has happened since she was last on the podcast, and she shared a bit about her work as Queensland's Chief Entrepreneur. We talked about the crucial differences between Smart Cities and Smart or Intelligent Communities, as Leanne calls them, and why the move toward community is so important. Leanne talked about the need to be expanding access to digital skills and technology for those that are otherwise likely to be left out, and her passion for circular economy concepts. We discussed the innovation Leanne is seeing from regional areas in Queensland, as well as having more intrapreneurs in government to be encouraging public-private partnerships. Leanne spoke about the ways we are good at collaborating but so far not so good at coordinating, and that coordination piece is the key to effective integration across disciplines, government, industries and academia. We finish our chat discussing the emerging trend of recognising that we've so far been too myopic in thinking and the need for systems leadership thinking, as well as the need for more and better public-private partnerships. Now I need to warn you that in recording this episode we had some tricky technical issues, so there is a bit of background noise in places and some moments where fragments of words drop out, so I apologise for that in advance. We've done the best we can to make it listenable and I really wanted to have Leanne on the podcast again because she has so much valuable insight into Smart Communities and in particular Smart Regions. As always, we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it. Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community Connect with Leanne on LinkedIn or Twitter @leanne_kemp Connect with me via email: [email protected] Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital.