Smart Community Standards & Future Government Planning, with Chris Rowlands

In this episode of the Smart Community podcast, I had a brilliant conversation with Chris Rowlands, the City Innovation Officer at the City of Greater Bendigo in Victoria. Chris and I discuss his background in Town Planning and why he's so passionate about making liveable regions and communities. We talk about why Smart City standards are so powerful as principles that can be applied to communities of any size, and as a great platform to start the conversation with communities about what they want their city or town to be in the future. Chris also covers the importance of having many people involved in the conversation and especially of getting children and school students at the table, because it's their future we're planning. Chris then tells us about the projects he's been working on at Bendigo, including the Clever Weather IoT project which is a collaboration with La Trobe University. He also shares a great story about how transparent conversations help the City of Bendigo's Garbage Truck IoT project get buy in from the garbage truck drivers, who are now big advocates for the project. We finish our chat discussing the advantages and opportunities for Bendigo being in the 'Goldilocks zone' for collaboration, and the emerging trend of focusing on the boring, foundational pieces and Smart City standards in order to enable the tech trends. 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 Chris on LinkedIn 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.