Hi #SmartCommunity friends! In this episode of the Smart Community Podcast, I have a wonderful conversation with David Catalovski and Louis Limnios. Now, you might remember David from way back in episode 140, which was in 2019, in the before-times. David is the co-founder of Green Be, and Louis is the Chief Customer Officer and Director of Nucleus 3. I’ve had them on the podcast together today because they are working together on some interesting projects in the area of IoT, community engagement and Smart management of resources such as water, waste and energy. After telling us about their companies and what they are each passionate about, David, Louis and I discuss the importance of measuring more than the things that have traditionally been measured when making investment decisions as a local government or organisation, plus the challenges and rewards of being a pioneer using IoT for resource management. David and Louis tell us about trends in projects they’ve been working on, including councils working together to leverage data for interoperable customer engagement and how opening the conversation to the community not only gets more people at the table but also helps find new use cases for the IoT data. We finish our chat talking about how we are finally getting away from the mentality that “deploying something is enough” and moving towards using data to measure outcomes and deliver better solutions, plus the emerging issue of data security that poses for councils. As always we hope you enjoyed listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it. 

Listen here: 

What we cover in this episode:

• About Green Be and what David is passionate about
• About Nucleus 3 and what Louis is passionate about
• What a Smart Community is to David and Louis
• The importance of measuring the intangible things when making investment decisions as a local government or organisation
• Keeping the focus on serving the public and making sure they have a seat at the table 
• The challenges and rewards of being a pioneer using IoT for management of resources like energy and water
• Examples from some of the Smart Metering projects David and Louis have been working on
• Councils working together to leverage data for interoperable customer engagement and the side-benefit of talent attraction and retention 
• Opening doors to the community to be involved in the the IoT conversations that also helps find new use cases for IoT in their organisations and industries 
• The emerging trend in Australia of involving First Nations with Council resource management projects
• Getting away from the mentality that “deploying something is enough” and moving towards using data to measure outcomes and deliver better solutions
• The emerging issue of data security that poses for councils

Quotes:

“My passion is digitizing water authorities and regional councils to better engage the community and ensure precious resources like water is better managed, and we have security for the future.” ~ Louis

“The Smart Community to us is a community that has largely a lot of services and data that are digitized, that are delivering value to its customers…and obviously, connecting that back to the customer or to the actual citizen and how they can make their lives better, be more sustainable, more water efficient, perform positive behaviours, and participate in programs that will hopefully improve the experience within the community.” ~ David

“For us, it’s about creating a service offering that drives outcomes and digitizes an organization through data driven decision making.” ~ Louis

“In the first two devices that we connected, we identified 50 litres of leaking per four hours or it worked out to the size of an Olympic swimming pool per week being lost in those two premises. And it’s interesting when you visualize it like that to a homeowner, it’s amazing how that behaviour of water changes.” ~ Louis

“That’s one of the difficult things around Australia and talking about Smart Communities, and Smart Utilities, Smart Municipalities, Smart Water, you know, we have examples overseas where sensors and Smart Metering are largely the normal. We’re talking about in the millions and in the tens of millions, and years of data. Whereas we are in the tens of thousands.” ~ David 

“We’re seeing a real trend in terms of Smart Metering being deployed across Australian local government areas. But we need that data to then wield it, and power all these customer facing solutions…it goes back to the old saying, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. So that trend is exciting.” ~ David

“It’s also understanding the relationship and the behaviour towards that natural resources…and then what we do through technology. [First Nations] communities have been doing it for thousands of years. And applying those learnings into a potential technology use case, and a campaign that we can deploy using technology is really, really powerful.” ~ Louis

“We’re getting away from the mentality of ‘deploying something is enough’. I think that kind of mentality is very dated today. So future trends, I think, is everything is going to be measured… we’re really going to be focusing on on hard data, and how we can actually deliver outcomes, to look at our failings, and see where we can do better. And then we can deliver better solutions.” ~ David

Links: 

Greenbe Website 

Nucleus3 Website 

Connect:

Connect with David via LinkedIn or via email 

Connect with Louis via LinkedIn or via email 

Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community

Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube

Podcast Production by Perk Digital