Sharing real stories and facilitating Smart Community conversations, with Charlie Hamer

Summary: In this episode I have a fascinating chat with Charlie Hamer, the CoFounder of Public Sector Network. Charlie tells us about his background in computer science, environment and events, and how he ended up starting the Public Sector Nector community platform. He has a passion for technology and the environment, and for facilitating connections so he tells us about why he started PSN and the reasons they expanded from Australia to the US, Canada, New Zealand and soon the UK as well. Charlie tells us what sparked his interest in the Smart Community space, and we discuss what the terms Smart City and Intelligent Community mean, as well as how the movement has been maturing over the last few years. We cover how Charlie sees Australia embracing Smart concepts, and what he's seen in Canada as a result of the Smart City Challenge that was run by the Canadian government there. We discuss how to balance funding and marketing with the real substance of Smart Community projects, and the importance and power of sharing real stories and giving a voice to smaller, regional projects. We finish our chat discussing the emerging trends of privacy, data security and the waning trust in government, which is even more relevant now than when we recorded this a few months ago. Charlie's episode was the last in my bank of interviews recorded before the pandemic began really impacting the world, so in the weeks to come, we'll start sharing a mix of quote unquote "normal" episodes where I ask guests all the usual questions, the audios from some of the previous guest Covid-19 update interviews I've been doing on YouTube - By the way, remember to head on over to our YouTube channel to catch up with what previous guests like Ryan McManus, Debbie Reynolds, Sally Illingworth, Jonathan Reichental, Rachel Smith and more have been getting up to in the last few months. And of course like Charlie and I discussed in this episode, if you have a real story to share about a Smart Community project that's making a difference, particularly if it's a smaller project or from a regional or rural area, I'd love to hear from you. Get in touch at hello@mysmart.community As always, we hope you've enjoyed listening to this episode as much as we've enjoyed making it. Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community Connect with Charlie on LinkedIn or at charlie@publicsectornetwork.co Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital.