On this episode of Davood For Thought, we sit down with Dr. Jonathan Reichental to discuss the importance of having a plan for resiliency, technology advancements in the future, and highlight the areas organizations typically overlook. Dr. Reichental grew up with a peculiar interest in technology due to the creativity that comes along with coding. As his career developed, he worked within a variety of companies including roles as CIO and founder of Human Future. Most recently Dr. Reichental has devoted his time to education and the writing of his new book regarding the future of money. Stay tuned for his opinion on the 4th industrial revolution along with tips and tricks to make your work feel like leisure.
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;23;11
Narrator
We're in an era of rapid change where resilience is vital. The devout for that podcast dives into the most important topics in government and technology today. Our host, Davood Ghods, sits down with his vast network of colleagues to dish on the tech challenges that affect us all. Follow this podcast on your favorite platform and join the conversation by sharing it on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.
00;00;23;13 - 00;00;48;10
Davood Ghods
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Direct Technologies, the Davood for Thought podcast. I'm Davood Ghods and I will be your host today. The way I stay up with the pressing topics of tech and government of today is to tap into the panel of experts I've had the honor of connecting with over the years. Today we have Dr. Jonathan Riechental on the podcast.
00;00;48;12 - 00;01;20;25
Davood Ghods
Dr. Jonathan Reichental is the founder of Humans Future, a global business and technology advisory, Investment and education for his previous roles includes senior software engineering manager, director of Technology Innovation, and he has served as chief information officer at both O'Reilly Media and the City of Palo Alto, California. In 2013, he was recognized as one of the 25 doers, dreamers and drivers in government in America.
00;01;20;27 - 00;01;56;09
Davood Ghods
And in 2017, he was named one of the top 100 CEOs in the world. Dr. Reichental is a recognized global thought leader on a number of emerging trends, including urban innovation, smart cities, sustainability, blockchain technology, data governance, the fourth Industrial Revolution and digital Transformation. A perfect guest for our podcast. He holds several degrees, including a Ph.D. in Information Systems.
00;01;56;11 - 00;02;32;05
Davood Ghods
Is an adjunct professor in the School of Management at the University of San Francisco and instructor at several other universities. He is a popular global keynote speaker and writer, including authoring a bestseller on the future of cities called Smart Cities for Dummies. Very catchy name. I met Dr. Reichental. I am ecstatic to welcome you to this episode of our podcast and would like to ask you to tell us more about your extensive background, what you have done and what you are working on currently. Welcome.
00;02;32;07 - 00;02;57;26
Jonathan Reichental
Well, thank you, Davood, and thank you for such a wonderful, generous introduction. I'm thrilled to be part of your podcast and to have a conversation with you today. I'm a technology guy for sure. You know, I fell in love with tech at a very young age, and part of that was because of my older brother and he brought a computer home to the house, you know, 40 years ago.
00;02;57;29 - 00;03;16;12
Jonathan Reichental
And I can't believe it. And, you know, I watched him program and, you know, learned stuff. And I was able to then do my own little programing and write games and things and got hooked. You know, it just was like, this is cool. You can you can actually write code and make amazing things happen on the screen and engage people and educate people.
00;03;16;12 - 00;03;39;25
Jonathan Reichental
So, you know, from from an early age, you know, literally ten or 11 years old, I was I like this. This is cool. And a lot of my career is, you know, where I work for organizations. I have a technology role, you know, and I've done you know, if if a technology role exists, I've probably done it enough.
00;03;39;25 - 00;04;09;05
Jonathan Reichental
So I've crimped the end of cables, you know, with the co acts I've, you know, crimped Cox cable, I should say. Scuse me, I've pulled cable through ceilings. I've, you know, been a network administrator and and anyway, work through all the different roles over over many years and finally have the have the sort of the top role that the chief information officer role and the chief technology officer role at a couple organizations, including the private sector and also the public sector.
00;04;09;05 - 00;04;36;22
Jonathan Reichental
I ended up just a few years ago working for a city as a head of tech, and that was quite the experience. And I went in 2000, 2011, I think November 2011, I joined a city and well, I anything I get involved in, I'm all in, right. It's like 100%. And I thought, Hey, I'm going to come to the city, I'm going to leverage new technologies to deliver government services differently.
00;04;36;24 - 00;05;01;18
Jonathan Reichental
And yes, we did that. My team and I did a lot of neat things, thinking differently. But the the miracle of it all was that instead of me changing the city entirely, the city changed me and I ended up having a getting a a a deep appreciation for cities and a love of cities and and sort of that changed the course of my life.
00;05;01;18 - 00;05;26;07
Jonathan Reichental
Now, in the core of all that, there's still a passion for innovation and new technologies. But it was in the context now of of cities here in the U.S. and finally I started to help and advice cities around the world. And I took me to starting my own business and doing this pretty much a full time. So I have this this little Silicon Valley business right now.
00;05;26;09 - 00;05;48;06
Jonathan Reichental
You know, I like to think of it this way. I kind of do the work I want to do. You know, I don't do you know any type of job that, you know, doesn't interest me or does not value or, you know, I want to do work that matters. And so I'm very judicious about who I work with and and and the outcomes we we aspire to.
00;05;48;08 - 00;06;27;15
Jonathan Reichental
And then the other kind of thread of both my life and my current work is I'm really passionate about education, that that really turns out to be my ultimate sort of, if you like, way in which I am adding value, I suppose, to the world and in the short time I have here. So, you know, I'm teaching at the University of San Francisco, as you said, Menlo College and Pepperdine University, and I teach online and I'm helping corporates, you know, corporations and enterprises of all types understand the role of tech and develop strategies around how to deliver better experiences and better products and services.
00;06;27;15 - 00;07;04;12
Jonathan Reichental
Generally. What I'm working on right now, I continue to do a lot of work with with different governments around the world, helping them figure out how are the going to implement a smarter and more sustainable strategy for for the future. I continue to teach a lot on a whole wide range of topics and probably the most kind of interesting, most current, if you like, or novel thing I'm doing right now is my next book, which is well underway, which is a book about cryptocurrency or like I like to I like to think of it this way.
00;07;04;14 - 00;07;24;04
Jonathan Reichental
I'm writing a book about the future of money and and it's due to come out in March 2022, and it's progressing very quickly. And that's I'm learning a lot in the process. I was already quite deep and knowledgeable about the whole crypto space, but this is of course forcing me to, to really go deep and wide on this topic.
00;07;24;04 - 00;07;51;00
Davood Ghods
Excellent. Wow. You have a very extensive background and you're a perfect guest for a podcast because the kinds of questions that I have for you you'll be well qualified to answer regarding Codex cables. I've done that too, and I've done it even for blitzing clients, if you remember what those are. Many people don't because these were under the floor kind of cabling that needed to be done in the mainframe environment.
00;07;51;02 - 00;08;15;18
Davood Ghods
So I don't want to age myself, but that's what I share with you. So my next question is about emerging trends. What trends are you seeing, Jonathan, in the item business fields that we should all be paying more attention to in your opinion?
00;08;15;20 - 00;08;38;03
Jonathan Reichental
There's there's a very long list, of course, of technologies that organizations and individuals need to pay attention to. Now, something you said in my intro comments, which I, which I really appreciated, was the fact that we are in what appears to be the opening years of a fourth industrial revolution. And and this is happening even despite the fact that the third industrial revolution is well underway. This is like the electronics age, the information age, information technology.
00;08;38;06 - 00;09;07;08
Jonathan Reichental
But it looks like in terms of new technology, which is enabling both the manufacturing base but also products and services across the economy and our, you know, experiences in life to evolve in unexpected ways and also change it rapidly. You know, just the way we attain education right now or even do our jobs, you know, virtually lots of is happening.
00;09;07;08 - 00;09;28;15
Jonathan Reichental
But in that context, there's there's two areas that I immediately think of, and then it's sort of a third bigger picture, one, the first is this the sheer scale of of this thing called the Internet of Things, which everybody's sort of reading about, learning about, you know, you can't overstate actually how big this is is going to be today.
00;09;28;15 - 00;09;47;19
Jonathan Reichental
We think there's about 35 billion connected devices on the Internet. What's interesting is you know, you can only ever connect the number of people around, right? There's a there's an upper limit to it, but there's no upper limit to the amount of things. And it seems clear now that we are going to connect. Something can be connected. We're going to connect it.
00;09;47;22 - 00;10;09;23
Jonathan Reichental
And so we're up to about 35 billion. But what really becomes interesting is by 2025, the number looks like it's going to hit about 75 billion. So just in four years we will double the number of connected things. Well, why is that important and why do I think we need to pay more attention? Number one is, wow, talk about an opportunity.
00;10;09;23 - 00;10;34;19
Jonathan Reichental
Right. There's a lot of sales involved in that. That's a lot of volume of devices. Secondly, there's going to be a heck of a lot of new services that go with all those Iot devices. There's going to be data analysis because all of these Iot devices are generating zettabytes with a zettabytes of data. So we need to figure out how do we leverage that and find the the signal in the noise.
00;10;34;21 - 00;11;16;18
Jonathan Reichental
And and so, you know, as the years then progress after 2025 that it seems like that's only going to get larger. So this looks to be in over the course of perhaps a decade or so a multitrillion dollar opportunity that provides the opportunity for businesses and providers, but also will shift a whole lot of different ways in which we, you know, engage with the world, how we run our factories with the industrial Iot, how do we run our cities when we when we have the environment is replete with all sorts of connected things and sensors and connected cars and, you know, everything else that goes with it.
00;11;16;18 - 00;11;47;16
Jonathan Reichental
Our homes are becoming connected right now, increasingly connecting and creating smart homes. So Iot would be an area, not exactly novel, I know for an answer, but I think the scale and the opportunity is worth bringing attention to the second one, which is maybe a little further out that enterprises aren't yet paying attention to, is the what looks to be the the upcoming emergence of quantum computing as an actual service for all a whole variety of organizations.
00;11;47;18 - 00;12;15;13
Jonathan Reichental
So you know, the journey, you know, to where we are in terms of quantum. It's been a few decades coming, but we are passing some major milestones right now in terms of making it practical. It started off very early on as sort of theoretical and the, you know, the quantum physics or the physics department of academia and research is right, but it's trickled into industry now.
00;12;15;16 - 00;12;41;21
Jonathan Reichental
All the major big tech firms like Microsoft, Google, IBM and others have working quantum computers. In fact, you know, one of the most popular questions I get a lot of the time is when can we use this stuff? When when will it be available? And I have a good answer right now. Right now. So you can actually go to the IBM Kiska site or go to Microsoft.
00;12;41;23 - 00;13;01;14
Jonathan Reichental
Microsoft's Quantum is your site and use it. You can actually use quantum right now. It won't be something you'll get in a smartphone or on your laptop, but it will be a cloud service. So you'll you know, you'll you'll you'll develop some sort of job on your computer and you'll send it to the quantum cloud and it'll get processed there and come back.
00;13;01;14 - 00;13;19;16
Jonathan Reichental
Now, what some people might be hearing about this for the first time, they're like, Well, who cares what what is this about? Since it seems rather abstract, huh? Well, I want to kind of bring your attention to a couple of things. Most of the world today runs on what we call classical computing, and classical computing has served us well.
00;13;19;16 - 00;13;46;28
Jonathan Reichental
It's the stuff. It's the microchips, you know, the semiconductors that are inside your laptop and in your computer and your screen and your TV and your refrigerator and your smartphone. Okay. All that's doing good stuff. It's doing amazing things, right? You know, it's it's transforming and has transformed the world. But sometimes we lose sight of the fact that it's possible that we will be reaching sort of the upper limits of classical computing in in the near future.
00;13;47;01 - 00;14;06;26
Jonathan Reichental
Now, we're going to squeeze a lot more out of it. We are. That is sort of some clever trick we can do with that with the high performing microchips. You know, we've we've better software. So look, don't tweet me or send me an email saying, you know, classical computing is about to stop. Or, you know, we've got a ways to go.
00;14;06;28 - 00;14;26;12
Jonathan Reichental
But it's it's something that we need to pay attention to, and it will plateau at some point. And part of the reason for that is that we do reach sort of a physical limit. There's this The physics of semiconductors means that, you know, there's only so many transistors you can squeeze into a, you know, chip the size of a quarter type thing.
00;14;26;12 - 00;14;55;27
Jonathan Reichental
Right? So the question then becomes what happens after that? It's not like we're going to say, well, you know what, we've enough power. We've we've enough computing performance. Let's just call it a day. No humans. We want more and more computing power. We want faster, faster systems. So and by the way, you know, even outside of the fact that we we want faster performance, we need it if we're going to, for example, create better medicine, right?
00;14;56;00 - 00;15;20;09
Jonathan Reichental
Chemistry has to improve and we need fast computers for chemistry if we're going to optimize, you know, for example, understand in climate, we need much faster computers that we have today to to simulate and and work on the climate emergency that we have. You know, all sorts of optimization problems exist today that are very hard to solve with existing computing.
00;15;20;15 - 00;15;41;13
Jonathan Reichental
Plus, by the way, we can do some of them, but it takes a long time, like weeks type thing. Quantum computers have the ability to be many, many times faster than the fastest fast food computing. So in the short term you might say, well, it's going to be hundreds of times faster, maybe in the medium term, thousands of times faster.
00;15;41;16 - 00;16;03;28
Jonathan Reichental
In reality, what we're looking at, if everything goes well, every phone, little caveat, they're all going well. Quantum computing will be and will be millions of times faster than the current system. So, you know, the same ways we look back 30, 40 years ago, we think how slow computers were. The computers we have today, when we look back a decade or two decades from now will seem really, really slow.
00;16;04;00 - 00;16;31;15
Jonathan Reichental
So last point on this, because it goes back to your question, why should enterprises care? Why should organizations care? Because when compute, quantum computing does move into a very practical phase, which seems to be imminent, it may result in a complete refresh of the world's information stack. I mean, just imagine the scale of that, right? We won't happen overnight.
00;16;31;15 - 00;16;55;02
Jonathan Reichental
Of course we can't afford it. But over time, every major organization and government organization will start to tap into quantum computing. It'll work in concert with some classical computing components. But we'll need to write, we'll need to have a lot more new hardware and we'll have to have a lot of new software. Wow. Talk about a great future for software.
00;16;55;02 - 00;17;14;12
Jonathan Reichental
So I think those are the two areas. The last one I'd say, which is a bigger which is a little bit bigger and I'll wrap here because I realize there's more good questions coming is I don't think organizations are paying enough attention to cybersecurity. Right. You know, if you're in tech, you sort of you think, you know, I get tech, I get cybersecurity, I'm going to, you know, make my investment.
00;17;14;14 - 00;17;46;25
Jonathan Reichental
But, you know, generally we're underestimating the threat. We're underestimating the cost of what's happening right now and the risks that are just around the corner. So I would suggest that's the third area that organizations need to pay much more attention to. Right.
00;17;46;27 - 00;18;13;14
Davood Ghods
Thank you for that. Comprehensive answer is scalability, quantum computing and cybersecurity. Those are the areas. But, you know, when you were talking about quantum computing, I thought the future is now. We are living it. We can use it. And I went back to the name of the organization that you founded, Human Future. So that's why that's exactly the connection. Yes. No, I got it. Very good. Thank you. I listened to your talk with Renato de Castro, who is another smart city expert on an international level, as you are.
00;18;13;14 - 00;18;47;00
Davood Ghods
And heard you two discussing. The next topic that I'm going to ask about in detail. I think you would agree that adjusting to the pandemic was challenging for many organizations, and now everyone is thinking of what the next major disruption like the pandemic is going to be. And how can we better be prepared for it. So resiliency, which is a service we offer at direct technology resiliency as the service is a big topic of conversation these days. What are some examples of resilience you've seen in the past year, year and a half now? What is the one thing organizations should be doing to improve resilience?
00;18;47;03 - 00;19;16;06
Jonathan Reichental
Yeah, it's it's a such an important space and has been neglected, unfortunately for for far too long. It it, it always reminds me of insurance. You know we so reluctantly buy insurance for our, you know, home or car.
00;19;16;09 - 00;19;33;02
Jonathan Reichental
You know, we do it, of course, but we kind of say, you know, this is like paying money for a waste of money. But, you know, when you need it, it's pretty cool when you need it. And then if you have good insurance, you'll be sort of like, thank goodness I have good insurance. You know, resilience is a little bit like that.
00;19;33;02 - 00;20;03;14
Jonathan Reichental
You know, your your your, your building, the ability to bounce back, that's really what it means. But you don't know when something's going to happen. It may not happen. So there is a bit of sort of sort of speculation and anticipation to you know, to to to the likelihood of of resilience. You know, cities are the really the epicenter of what needs to happen relative to this idea of resilience.
00;20;03;14 - 00;20;28;09
Jonathan Reichental
I mean, you bring up, of course, the example of a of the steadily terrific pandemic. We have, but it also includes things like climate, the climate change. You have significant flooding now happening in major cities, especially on the coastline. You have natural disasters that are happening more frequently. And when they happen, they're they're worse than they were were in the past.
00;20;28;11 - 00;21;11;17
Jonathan Reichental
And, you know, then there's cyber attacks. Cities are getting attacked a lot. They have become easy targets for the for the bad guys, particularly when it comes to something like ransomware. So across the board, cities are taking resiliency more seriously. That's good news. More needs to be done. By the way, I'm quite critical of the insufficient investment, for example, in cybersecurity in cities, although with a few of the examples of Atlanta, you know, Baltimore, New Orleans and others that got attacked and found, for example, that the city could not operate for a week or two, you know, that that maybe we should pay more attention to that now and invest more money.
00;21;11;19 - 00;21;38;26
Jonathan Reichental
So part of it is going to be making resiliency more of a primary or core strategy. I think that applies across all across sectors. It's not a unique to public sector. The private sector does too. And again, I would reinforce the idea that in private sector, I hope you're paying attention to your cybersecurity needs in your cyber hygiene, as we like to say these days.
00;21;38;29 - 00;22;03;12
Jonathan Reichental
Are you training your staff? Are you investing in sufficient hardware and software? And if an attack does happen, do you know do you have a plan for resuming services a rapidly, You know, so I'm kind of switching backwards of sorts here between private sector and the public sector going back to the public sector. The other area, of course, is attacks on our on our major utilities.
00;22;03;14 - 00;22;54;09
Jonathan Reichental
Can we recover quickly from attack on our electricity or water systems? More broadly? Might we see disruptions to things like the food supply chain by a nefarious actor? So these are areas that perhaps haven't had the attention they need and now they're finally and should be getting more attention. Right now, as you and I are speaking today, the supply chain, we can see the incredible challenges we're having when there is disruption and, you know, magnify that a few more times and it gets uncomfortable quickly, you know, So, you know, back to the private industry with regard to resilience again, first of all, it's it's a it's across the board type approach.
00;22;54;09 - 00;23;41;21
Jonathan Reichental
You can't look at it just in terms of some of your software based targets. But what about your physical infrastructure? What about major disruptions to supply chain? What about major disruptions to your market? You know, resiliency might also include being able to respond quickly to a competitive threat and, you know, having agility baked into your operating model. So, you know, I think if I was to kind of sum up maybe the advice I would give here and the advice I'm giving to a lot of entities is, well, have a plan at a minimum, You know, have a if somebody asks, what's your what's your plan for resilience, have a document or an online resource that
00;23;41;21 - 00;24;01;13
Jonathan Reichental
you can point to and say, this is what we do and this happens, this is our plan and be confident in that. And by the way, test it. You've got to test your plan to, you know, on a periodic basis. The time when you use your your resilience plan or see if it was appropriate is not when the disaster happens.
00;24;01;15 - 00;24;45;08
Davood Ghods
It's it's it test it when when before the disaster. What? Yep. Thank you. Absolutely. I'm glad you mentioned natural disaster utilities, but we recently witnessed civic disobedience and what could be caused disruption where we experienced that some public offices had to close because of that. So that could also be another event that could happen, that could disrupt. You know, you mentioned this in one of your talks, and I had read that also that they there was a report after 911 that why did this happen?
00;24;45;11 - 00;25;06;10
Davood Ghods
And one of the reasons one of the reasons was lack of imagination. So we need to imagine the worst and be prepared for it, have a plan. And that's what a resilience as a service provides. Developing a plan, testing the plan, making sure you address all the angles. Thank you. Yeah.
00;25;06;11 - 00;25;37;21
Jonathan Reichental
If I could just add to that. I'm so glad you bring that up. That's such a fabulous point. You know, we're going through a horrific pandemic right now. It looks like we'll get to the other side. We will eventually. Now, the question is, what should we be worried, you know, coming down the pike? And we almost need to assume there will be more pandemics and they might be worse. And one thing I just want to mention is we we actually as a civilization, as a planet at a point in time, we've done really poorly in responding.
00;25;37;23 - 00;26;05;13
Jonathan Reichental
And, you know, we got lucky. Well, most of us, I read with great respect to those that didn't succeed during this pandemic, and that's the horror story is imagine this was worse, right? I imagine this was more deadly. We didn't do very well. And and so there's a lot of lessons to be learned from this. You know, how how do we I hope that when this is over, we just don't move on and forget about it.
00;26;05;13 - 00;26;31;22
Jonathan Reichental
I think it's the most important thing we can do as a society. And certainly our cities, my focus area is to learn from what happened and begin to think about a sort of a an improve approach that might be needed should another pandemic come our way. Thank you. Yes. We're going to switch topics on you. A little bit of direct technology.
00;26;31;22 - 00;27;14;16
Davood Ghods
We always talk about how you're going to get the project done, but we also ask why we are doing what we're doing. What's your why? In other words, what motivates you in your work central to my life and my work is positive social outcomes.
00;27;14;18 - 00;27;36;25
Jonathan Reichental
I want what we do to be beneficial to the most amount of people. You know, part of human future is investing in social impact companies, companies that are, you know, committed to a better life, a better planet, or better cities. So so that so that's a very key part of how I think about the work that I do. I'm I'm in the very fortunate position right now, although I have had a 30 year career where I've worked really hard to be able to select the work I do and to do the work that matters. I'm very privileged in that respect and I recognize it.
00;27;36;28 - 00;28;02;26
Jonathan Reichental
What I would like to see from more people is that they wake up every day really passionate about what they're going to do that day. An awful statistic that I read from a credible organization recently was that about 50% of Americans would like to change their jobs. You know, I think there's a little over 150 million workers in the United States.
00;28;02;28 - 00;28;35;06
Jonathan Reichental
That means about 75 million workers are not necessarily happy, if you like, or they have a desire to do something else. And to the extent that you can or, you know, take take the bold risk where it's possible, I would encourage it. I you know, so there's there's something very gratifying and important about waking up and doing work that matters, work that makes a positive difference, work that you love.
00;28;35;08 - 00;29;05;22
Jonathan Reichental
Because, by the way, when you when you actually do work that you're passionate about and love, you'll never work another day in your life. And so I learned that a few years ago. And I, I joked that I stopped working. You know, I just started doing stuff I love. And, you know, the success came and the the income came, you know, the things that people seek overtly, you know, as I focused on what mattered, those other aspects just came along with it.
00;29;05;25 - 00;29;36;23
Jonathan Reichental
So I think what drives me the what is really what positive impact can I have? What's the the legacy that I can have? You know, there's another very important quality here, which is a early recognition that life is short. It it really is. It really is short. And, you know, you don't have time to waste years just doing nothing or, you know, regretting, you know, making decisions, make them do them.
00;29;36;23 - 00;30;00;23
Jonathan Reichental
It's not you know, you know, I joke that, you know, prove me wrong. Maybe there is another life after this one. We just don't know. Right? So I'm making the assumption that, Oh, I'll go with what I know for now and then maybe I'll be surprised that there is a lot. But anyway, kidding aside, you know, make it matter, you know, make your life matter.
00;30;00;23 - 00;30;22;13
Jonathan Reichental
And I think that's what is the what is what I do make it better than you found. It is. Yeah. Really what model my mother has been. Also, make your street better. Make your community better, Make your city better. Make your state, country and the world better than what you found. And people, by the way, have more power than they think.
00;30;22;14 - 00;30;44;27
Jonathan Reichental
Yeah, no, they're small. They're. That makes a difference and makes a difference. You make a difference. Everyone makes a difference. Everyone is listening to this right now. Yeah. No matter what your role is in life, what you doing? What age you are, wherever you are? That's right. Don't underestimate the absolute significant power you can have to change the world, even in a tiny, tiny way.
00;30;44;29 - 00;31;18;20
Davood Ghods
That's important, though. No, Jonathan, I think you should be teaching philosophy to. But one comment that you made regarding what is your why and the number of jobs and 50% of job seekers want to change their jobs or people in America want to change their jobs. I have Nigerians for them. Quantum computing, coding, cybersecurity, 5G, these are all new areas that they can get trained on and we need help.
00;31;18;20 - 00;31;45;02
Davood Ghods
We need resources in those areas and these are the areas that they can get educated on. And you got you got a good advice. Now, I know innovation is huge to you. And more and more I've read and listened to and you've been very innovative at City of Palo Alto and elsewhere. So what inspires innovation on your team? You've had teams large and small. How do you inspire them to be innovative?
00;31;45;02 - 00;32;07;11
Jonathan Reichental
Yeah, I'll tell you a couple little stories here that will kind of weave this together. When I joined the city of Palo Alto, where I became the CIO and CTO, I asked my team, for example, when we had a job opening, how many people applied?
00;32;07;13 - 00;32;36;05
Jonathan Reichental
And the answer was, you know, we're lucky if we get two or three people applying for the job, because first of all, you know, cities are often hard places to recruit. They don't pay the big bucks. There is. There's definitely a stigma attached with often with city life working in a city and, you know, and then and then it's magnified in Silicon Valley where just down the road we have Facebook and Google and LinkedIn and Tesla and, you know, political companies.
00;32;36;07 - 00;33;02;06
Jonathan Reichental
So, you know, we're competing with technologists from those areas. And so I said, you know, well, we're never going to compete on salary, You know, whenever the city will never compete with one of these big companies. If you need a database administrator or software engineer. So we got to sell something else. And I found that what we needed to sell was was meaning meaning right.
00;33;02;08 - 00;33;27;25
Jonathan Reichental
So how do you get to that? Meaning whether you have to develop a vision that people believe in that's aspirational, that's bold, and has some excitement to it, like, wow, I can be part of something that is important. I can be part of a mission or vision that can, for example, redefine how certain aspects of a city are delivered.
00;33;27;27 - 00;33;48;29
Jonathan Reichental
So, you know, first of all, I made the big vision very early on in my tenure that Palo Alto aspired to be the number one digital city in America. It's funny because I use the word digital city Back in 2011, Smart City hadn't quite cut the you know the branding it does today involved. Yeah, it did. It did evolve.
00;33;48;29 - 00;34;14;18
Jonathan Reichental
I mean we still say Digital city. That's cool, but that's what we use at the time. And then I was very public personally in talking about the possibilities of how you could reinvent city life and how we could use data and sensors and artificial intelligence and apps and yeah, all sorts of new tech to redefine what's possible. Well, you know, people noticed.
00;34;14;20 - 00;34;37;16
Jonathan Reichental
And so I'll tell you, about three years into my tenure, first of all, Palo Alto became the number one digital city in America. We were named by every public up in the Sacramento, you know, and we stayed in the top five digital cities for the rest of my time there, you know, for another five years now, when we had an opening for a tech position.
00;34;37;23 - 00;34;59;13
Jonathan Reichental
Remember I told you that beginning it was two or three people. We were getting 100, 150 people applying. Something had changed. Right? Right. So the they they the people who are who are applying, you know, more often than not and, you know, it definitely sounds like a humblebrag. I apologize. They were they would say in the interview we want to work.
00;34;59;13 - 00;35;32;12
Jonathan Reichental
I would say why do I want to work here? And they said, we want to work for you. Right. So leadership and vision can inspire innovation because now I had the opportunity to pick great people who had lots of choices. You know, people are not getting the satisfaction they wanted in life from one of the big tech companies and I said this thing also, this sounds so, so unoriginal, but it actually is quite original is you don't have to come and work for me for the next 20 years, come and work for me for two years, you know, make a difference in the world, and then go work for one of the publicly traded businesses
00;35;32;12 - 00;35;59;07
Jonathan Reichental
and make, you know, make a fortune. You won't make any money with me, but you will get up every day excited about the work. So that that was a key parts of the second. You know, just a story that I wanted to share was getting maybe deeper into your question about how do you how did I and my team sort of groom or develop, I should say, a in innovation culture when you create this vision.
00;35;59;09 - 00;36;23;22
Jonathan Reichental
And so we have this at the top level. You know, we wanted to become the number one digital city in America and you codify that into everything. And and so you say, for example, the beginning of meetings, you know, how what have we done to get there at the in interviews you ask, what can you do to contribute towards that?
00;36;23;25 - 00;36;48;27
Jonathan Reichental
And and of course, you know, the way you get there is not by repeating the behavior of the past because that clearly was not working. It's creating new value, which is by definition what innovation is. And and so, you know, you keep doing this, keep doing this, and you show results. So we would start to say, well, you know, for example, it used to take us on average nine months to to deploy the average technology project.
00;36;48;27 - 00;37;04;21
Jonathan Reichental
Now we do it in four months, you know, but but our goal is to, you know, deliver every project and X amount of weeks. And so you have metrics around this. And finally, you know, you push and push and then you get to this point, hopefully you're successfully you're ranked somewhere. We became the number one digital city in America.
00;37;04;28 - 00;37;30;19
Jonathan Reichental
So you actually deliver on what you promised, and that gets people pumped up and gets them excited about the work and creates that innovation culture. Now that's just one example and there's many more. But I'll but I'll defer to, you know, of course, I'm sure you created a test environment for them to go and play and fail and get up and play again and get up again. So that inspires innovation.
00;37;30;22 - 00;38;06;11
Davood Ghods
You know that Those are great answers and great stories to tell from your days of CTO and CIO at Palo Alto City of of you know, we call ourselves the human side of tech to direct technology. And we do these podcasts just to learn about different roles and different leaders in the community. And my next couple of questions are related to that about the person, about the guest. What is something that would surprise people about your background or interests?
00;38;06;14 - 00;38;39;25
Jonathan Reichental
Well, I have a few. I've look, I'm a very transpired person. I'm very public. I don't have anything, you know, hidden. But sometimes people when people haven't done the homework, whatever they're surprised to discover. I'm a musician. Music is a very, very big part of my life, right from being a child very young, you know, six or seven years old, learning the piano later on as a teenager, picking up the guitar.
00;38;39;27 - 00;39;03;04
Jonathan Reichental
And I became, you know, a songwriter. And I played in bands. And, you know, by the way, I was born and grew up in Ireland. People are trying to figure out the accent. And and so, you know, the garage band was the it was sort of the career of every teenager in Dublin where I lived. And so, of course, I had my I had many, many garage bands.
00;39;03;07 - 00;39;30;24
Jonathan Reichental
But the difference is with one of my bands that I was in, we had success. We actually broke out of the garage and toured and had records and, you know, we we had fans. And so I don't think people realize that probably if I'd said, you know, I'm not an innovation technology, my emigrating to America is not my interest.
00;39;30;24 - 00;39;46;20
Jonathan Reichental
I might have been in the music business right now. Wow. And so, you know, you take you take a tour and you make a couple of big, bold decisions and life changes, hopefully in a positive way. And that's what happened to me. Now, music is still a huge part of my life today. I still write a little bit.
00;39;46;20 - 00;40;15;03
Jonathan Reichental
I still play just for for fun at home. I don't play public settings really anymore. A very, very, very rarely. So yeah that's that's what instruments. Well, my, my, my the instrument that's easiest, the most convenient is just my guitar, my acoustic guitar, but my semi acoustic guitar actually. So I can pick up a guitar and jam out a few Beatles numbers or Bob Dylan or Rolling Stones or something.
00;40;15;05 - 00;40;40;26
Jonathan Reichental
But but the instrument that, you know, I, I'm able to compose something some bit more complex, maybe more of like a classical piece would be a piano, you know. So I, I have a I love I love I don't own a piano, believe it or not. But anytime I'm in a in a place in a friend's house or in a hotel or by the way, I was in I was in an airport, I think it was Chicago.
00;40;40;29 - 00;41;06;02
Jonathan Reichental
Yeah. About two weeks ago. And I'm walking between the gates getting my connecting flight. And there was a piano. All right. Public then. And I said, I got to sit down. I sat down and played a tune. One more quick story, actually, on that note, I was in the oh, South Korea I was in. I flew into South Korea in the middle of the night.
00;41;06;02 - 00;41;29;01
Jonathan Reichental
I guess I was headed to Malaysia or something. It was a it was just a stopover. But the flight from the U.S. lands, you know, 2 a.m. or something, and the connecting flight was at 6 a.m.. So the terminal, it was empty in the South Korean major terminal. It's beautiful, brand new. And there was an area like a vast terminal empty with a grand piano on a platform.
00;41;29;04 - 00;41;50;03
Jonathan Reichental
And it's like it's again 3 a.m. at night. I walk over and I played piano for about an hour by myself. This massive terminal sounds great too, with the alcohol in the That's wonderful. Maybe you can do one of your future podcasts with some music too. If you if I do that, it will be a first. They should grab my guitar and do that.
00;41;50;03 - 00;42;13;09
Davood Ghods
Yeah, hopefully we'll invite you back and you can accept my last question, Jonathan. Where can people find you and keep tabs on what you're working on and how can people support your work now?
00;42;13;11 - 00;42;43;18
Jonathan Reichental
Thank you for the opportunity to. Answer that question. I'm very, very accessible. I really am. You know, in the 21st century, you can't really hide. But I'm you know, I'm all over the Internet, of course, I'm on I'm very active on Twitter at RYK until just, you know, my last name are age entail. You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. I have my own website and get this right and Telkom Ryk, it's very easy, very original. So you know, there's a lot of videos and articles and tons of tons of really, really cool stuff there.
00;42;43;24 - 00;43;04;17
Jonathan Reichental
So I would certainly encourage people to connect with me. I think they'll be wonderful On LinkedIn. I have a newsletter. I know not the most original thing in the world, but I try to add value every every week or so. It's called Postcard from the Future. And you got to if you're looking to member, it's free. Just click on Subscribe.
00;43;04;20 - 00;43;30;27
Jonathan Reichental
I have well over 7000 people now who who have subscribed, and that's a way that you can keep tabs on media. It's easier words, but I'd love to hear from your audience and I'm very quick to respond. And anything you heard today or you'd like to talk more about, I'm here. I'm I'm here.
00;43;30;27 - 00;43;55;07
Davood Ghods
Thank you so much. Thank you for accepting our invitation and joining us today. Dr. Reichental, thank you to all the listeners out there for joining us as well. We will see you all in the next episode of The Food for Thor, where we will shed more light on the human side of.