speaker-0 (00:01.262)
Okay.
speaker-0 (00:10.606)
I'm Jodie. Surprise.
speaker-1 (00:12.206)
Okay, you ready?
person.
speaker-0 (00:20.142)
You gotta do hi on Malia and I'm gonna do hi on Mike. And then you're gonna say what we're gonna talk about. Okay.
speaker-1 (00:28.088)
Hi, I'm Malia Grigsby. And today we have the wonderful opportunity to actually be in person as we talk about what does it mean to be an emerging leader in technology in this world that we live in now.
speaker-0 (00:30.03)
I'm Mike Gridsby.
speaker-1 (00:42.414)
So if you want to kick us off, you've been in this space for almost over a decade now. Not to date you, but for over a decade now, give us just the basics. What do we need to know about technology, specifically in the public sector? Kind of where, what's been the trajectory? Where are we at now? Where has it started?
speaker-0 (00:52.142)
Absolutely.
speaker-0 (01:05.678)
So I guess my earliest entrance into public sector technology was 2005. I wasn't a practitioner on that. I was more of on the user side of it. But within two or three years, I was very much on the management side. It was my background before. So I didn't come into public sector technology green. I had a technology background before and
tell you what was really interesting. At the time, I was a police officer and technology was not near as important or as essential. I think that's probably a better word. As essential as it is now. In fact, the computer that I had in my car was used with the laptop lid closed and I would write my reports on top of it. was the effectiveness of technology back then. Great adoption. Great adoption.
But very quickly, we started seeing kind of computer background and background checks and things along those lines. But more broadly, this thing around 2011, this thing called Smart Cities showed up. And at first it was really about design and kind of the user experience of it. But that quickly spun off into the technology side. How could we get more?
Smart cities is a term that's been around for a long time and a lot of people immediately equate it to technology but really it's about gaining intelligence for your city to make better decisions. So I like to always say it's faster pattern recognition, smarter resource allocation, awareness plus action. That's the way we think about smarter intelligence. I think the challenge now is from 2011 to where we...
2026. The technology curve has taken a kind of a hockey stick trajectory and it is happening so fast. It is being introduced so quickly that a lot of us and especially on the back end of COVID, COVID was super challenging both from an adoption standpoint and an implementation standpoint but
speaker-0 (03:15.018)
It is so challenging right now, iconically said that, you know, your city leaders today are reluctant co-CTOs, chief technology officers, because they typically went into their public administration role thinking they were going to balance the budget or have better schools or fix the pothole issue. And now they are.
making era-defining decisions around perpetual SaaS contracts, defining what data sovereignty means, looking at and understanding the implications of cybersecurity. they have no visibility. Most of them have no visibility, now that's the leadership role that they have to take on. And it's super challenging.
It is super challenging from a standpoint of what part of this tech am I supposed to know? Do I need to know how to stand up a server? Do I need to know how to do full stack development? Do I need to know how to do all these kind of deep, deep dive granular tech tasks? Or do I just need to know how tech works and what the solutions are?
So that's what I get to do now is I've been on the practitioner side, I've been on the advisory side, and now I love being able to go out there and work with cities to help them, not just on the like introduce and implement technology, how do you adopt it? How do you get both your internal teams and your residents to embrace this brand new thing that their taxpayer dollars are paying for?
speaker-1 (04:46.67)
100%. So if you can't tell, we're a little bit nerdy about this subject. So it happens when you're immersed in it for so long and you grow up with a dad who's been immersed in it for so long. Too fun. yeah. Well, thank you for giving us that background. So what does it mean to be an emerging leader in this now?
speaker-0 (04:58.638)
There's a
speaker-0 (05:11.662)
I'll actually ask you that because last year I had a wonderful hashtag proud Papa moment. I've been in this space for well over a decade. I have been going to conferences, I've been on the speaking circuit, I have been out there and done that and this one particular conference that I've been going to, Smart Cities Connect, I've been going to for over 10 years, for 10 years now.
Last year you got to come.
to that it was the second time you had attended the conference. But it was the first time I was not on stage and you were on stage. And you got to be part of the keynote panel with Women in Tech. And that was so exciting for me to see. And one, I'm exhausted so it was good to pass the baton off to you. But I want to ask you, what did that moment feel like? Because your first one, you were a lot younger going through.
what it did feel to be recognized at such a young age.
speaker-1 (06:18.062)
You know, it's surreal is like the only word I can really think of. So yeah, my first Smart Cities Connect conference, I was 14 and you played the cool dad card and you're like, hey, let's get out of school. Let's come meet some people, see what I do, whatever.
And I just, I ate it up. I loved it from the very first session. And it was, it wasn't necessarily like, it was a cool thing. We got to bond over it and I loved that. We got to go to a new city, but it was really like, I could see myself being part of this, this world. And it was almost like a pipe dream. That was like, that would be so cool. Like sometime, maybe by the time I'm 40 years old, I'll get there. It was by the time I'm 40 years old.
But it was so cool. one of the people that I met along the way after that conference had invited me to be on the Smart City, Smart Women panel. And not for all of my credibility and the work that I've done and everything, but just kind of my expansive perspective when it comes to women in tech and also the younger generation in tech.
to me it's getting to be kind of the speaking voice for this younger generation coming up. You know, most of my classmates now are graduating college, getting into the workforce and everything. And to get to be that empowerment for them is a huge, huge honor. And it was really intimidating on stage. It was like, my gosh, all of these people have their masters and doctorates and I like...
Do they send it to the wrong person? Like, but it's, and I think that's something that I actually want to highlight is the fact like this imposter syndrome gets really real. know that it's, it's only really talked about when you kind of get to a certain stature and everything. But I think that's something to kind of give yourself grace for when you're starting to kind of get into these new spaces, these new industries and everything that.
speaker-1 (08:36.014)
Monster syndrome is, you have to kind of get, do away with that in that understanding you're not supposed to know everything. You're not supposed to even really feel like you are supposed to be there. You are, you absolutely are supposed to be there, but it's a, you're there to be a sponge. You're there to learn, to grow. One of my mentors last year talked about what does it mean to be in your early 20s and what are your
20s actually four and it's literally it's supposed to be you job hop it's supposed to be you meet new people it's supposed to be you get way outside of your comfort zone and say my gosh I'm never doing that again in my entire life you couldn't pay me enough for that and it's to find like find what you love do you really like knitting okay great build that into your schedule and do you love being at home with your dog okay say I'm gonna go at home for lunch every day because I need
It's understanding what your priorities are and understanding who you are. I know that's getting so off topic of the original. just, think that we, it's, so easy as you're kind of coming up into this new space and a lot of people, you know, kind of give you all of like this power and empowerment.
speaker-0 (09:39.246)
It's on topic for, you know.
speaker-1 (09:56.27)
this encouragement and sometimes it can be like taken as my gosh there's so much pressure on me that I have to uphold all of these different things and like my gosh you think that I'm like this great amazing person I've never done a cool thing in my entire life like I don't know but I want to kind of help to strip that
is underneath this shell.
speaker-0 (10:19.438)
I think it's important. That's why I said I think it's definitely on topic because Presently we have a lot of discussion around High support you do you need to feel encouraged you need to feel empowered in fact we're gonna build messaging around empowerment and encouragement and mental health and things along those lines I think it's good to be deliberate about those things, but I think you said something just a little bit ago that I think
is really important, especially for anyone listening to this that's coming up, you're not supposed to know all of the answers. As you come into this, there's not anybody that's always had it all together and ready to go, right? Everybody is making this up as we go, and the people who look like they know what they're talking about only look like they know what they're talking about because they've had 1,001 data points over a decade long or two decades long or three decades long career.
where it sounds reflexive as opposed to kind of a manual putting together. You know, I think the other thing too that is really important, I'll go back way, way, way, this is before tech, this is definitely an analog story, but when I went into the military in the late 80s, I had my recruiter tell me, don't volunteer for anything, just keep your head low, lie low, get through the thing. And I remember in my mind thinking,
That's the dumbest thing because how do you get any experience if you don't volunteer for anything?
didn't try to volunteer for everything, I just did. It was kind of a see a need, meet a need, and I just stepped up to do it. But what's interesting is that attitude of see a need, meet a need, put me into positions where leaders were paying attention to see who stepped up. I didn't know what I was doing, I just stepped up. And then they were like, okay, you have the internal makings of a leader, so here's some more opportunity.
speaker-0 (12:18.608)
great exposure to it.
speaker-1 (12:20.206)
Totally, and I think my encouragement out of that is we've gotten this messaging of don't be afraid to fail. And that's 100 % correct. Don't be afraid to fail. But I think that still is focusing on the end goal or the end report. I think an even better message that we need to start, especially for emerging leaders, but a better message that we need to start putting out there.
is don't be afraid to struggle. Things should not come easy. And it's through the struggle. through the, you volunteered for this position of it's literally I have to turn on the vehicle lights or whatever to make sure that they're running or whatever it is, right? But you don't know where the button is. Well, you're gonna ask whoever your supervisor is and not being afraid to ask, to say, I don't know, can you show it to me? The willing.
to learn is what gets you further not the information that you already obtained.
speaker-0 (13:15.598)
I think we forget that we are not here for what we've already done. We're here for what we have yet to do. And all of those failures, all those bumps, bruises, scrapes, and cuts are kind of the raw material that you build your future out.
We these cool names just because we're into labels. We call them a leader. We call them an emergent leader. We call them a senior leader. All of these things are really about a person's faculty and ability to take disparate things, mold them together into some other deliverable that benefits the organization or benefits the people around them.
Kind of now going back to the tech side of things, I think that's an essential point of this. I said earlier, you know, as leaders are becoming these co, these reluctant co-CTOs, they don't need to know everything about the tech. There's a really important, a famous guy, Zig Ziglar, he used to say, he was a motivational speaker and he used to say, last year there were a million quarter inch drill bits sold. Nobody wanted a quarter inch drill bit.
but a million people wanted a quarter-inch hole. And as leaders start to think about what are people trying to accomplish, they need the whole drill, not the drill bit. There's a whole segment of society that will geek out about.
Is it tungsten carbide? Is it diamond tipped? Is it cross cut? They have conferences about drill bits and all kinds of stuff. At the end of the day, people just want the whole thing. And if you can learn the language of use case, if you can learn the language of what people are trying to accomplish, I think that's the first thing, that will give you a step up or a step into your leadership role. I think the other thing too is you have to understand like,
speaker-1 (14:52.226)
Yes.
speaker-0 (15:13.964)
not just what are you trying to accomplish, but what's the problem, the never-ending problem? If you think in terms of being problem-centric as opposed to solution-centric, that will also give you seat at many tables that you wouldn't otherwise.
speaker-1 (15:31.054)
100%. 100%. Well, thank you. I think, can we close out with one parting thought? What's your call to action for any of our listeners?
speaker-0 (15:46.05)
Don't, what's way to say this, don't try to get the label. The label will come. Try to get the experience, try to get the exposure. Volunteer for things, step up to things that scare you. Find ways to struggle and then look at what that struggle taught you.
Okay, Edison, 10,000 ways he found that the light bulb didn't work, okay? What's your 10,000 reps of finding something that didn't work? That is good fodder for where you're going next.
speaker-1 (16:21.228)
I think my parting thought is think about who you look up to in the industry that you are kind of coming into. Think about who you look out up to and either reach out to them, ask them, what's your story? How'd you get started? Or think about the qualities within them that it's so admirable and see how you can work towards mimicking those qualities. Wonderful. Thank you for sharing your time today.
speaker-0 (16:45.23)
I like it.
Thank you for sharing your time. This was good.
speaker-1 (16:50.648)
Wonderful. Thank y'all.
speaker-0 (16:54.214)
you
