Startups, Coworking and Smart Tech, with Monica Wulff

Hello #smartfriends and welcome to the first interview episode of the Smart Community Podcast. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go back and listen to yesterday's episode which is all about why I've rebranded to expand the conversation away from just cities. As you probably know by now, the conversations always come back to the human beings at the centre anyway, so broadening the conversation to be about Smart Communities is important. Having said all of that, we will still be using the term Smart Cities, because it is a common industry term and because most people are quite familiar with it. This episode is no different, and although the first part of the conversation is very much around Smart Cities, you will see that we do shift focus to me more inclusive of the Smart Community focus about halfway. So, in this episode of the Smart Community Podcast, I interview Monica Wulff, Cofounder of Startup Muster, a data-focused company that measures and publishes the progress, challenges, and opportunities within the Australian startup ecosystem. Their 2018 report is out now and you can find it at www.startupmuster.com In this episode, Monica shares her passion for the future economic and social wellbeing of Australians, how childhood travel and her background in economics sparked her interest in the Smart City space, and she tells us about some of the projects she's involved in. We do talk a lot about technology, because that is where Monica spends a lot of her time, but we also talk about the relationship we have with our technology, the evolution of our places and how they can serve us as a community. Monica talks about the need for courage for all of us as we are experiencing a lot of change and will continue to do so going forward, and the emerging trends of coworking spaces, the sharing economy, better use of dead space and why, amidst all this tech talk, we must include the Arts in our Smart conversation. As always, I hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed making it. Find the full show notes as: www.mysmart.community Connect with Monica on LinkedIn, or as @monwulff on Twitter and Instagram. You can also head to Startup Muster to read the report or take part. Connect with me via email: [email protected] Connect via LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook @smartcommpod The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Ellen Ronalds Keene.