Digitizing Our Cities with John Lockhart, Lead Sustainability Technologist, Global Digital Cities at Dell

How will edge technologies and AI shape the future of our cities? In this episode, Bill sits down with John Lockhart, Lead Sustainability Technologist, Global Digital Cities at Dell, to discuss all things digital cities. They dive into how city leaders can approach digital transformation and tackle the problems in their cities, and discuss digital twins and the impact of AI. 
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Key Quotes:

“What's happening at the edge from an IOT perspective, as well as what's happening in the data center, they're able to really drive insights from the value they're gaining at the edge. And then that in turn delivers on the outcomes that leaders are providing their, whether it's constituents from a city perspective or whether it's shareholders from an enterprise perspective."

“Cities have really been dealing with a lot of different technology challenges as they come across a problem over the past 30, 40 years, they'll apply a solution that solves a particular problem. But that's really like putting a band-aid, rather than trying to find the root cause and see how they can drive different results.”

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Show Timestamps:

(01:05) How John got started in tech 

(03:26) Applied IOT in digital cities 

(05:46) What makes a smart city smart? 

(08:56) Where can city leaders begin?

(10:23) What obstacles do city leaders face? 

(13:53) John’s work at the live lab incubator 

(16:48) How do cities decide what problems to tackle? 

(20:45) Greenfield versus brownfield

(26:31) Digital twins in cities 

(29:57) Understanding ROI in digital cities 

(38:42) How will AI change our cities? 

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Sponsor:

Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with edge solutions. From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi-cloud environment, we’re here to help you simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting dell.com/edge for more information or click on the link in the show notes.

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Credits:

Over the Edge is hosted by Bill Pfeifer, and was created by Matt Trifiro and Ian Faison. Executive producers are Matt Trifiro, Ian Faison, Jon Libbey and Kyle Rusca. The show producer is Erin Stenhouse. The audio engineer is Brian Thomas. Additional production support from Elisabeth Plutko and Eric Platenyk.

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Links:

Follow Bill on LinkedIn

Connect with John Lockhart on LinkedIn

Artificial Intelligence and Gen AI in Smart Cities, white paper by John Lockhart