Breaking Through: Using Technology to Serve the Community

An interview with Urban SDK's co-founders on the need for better data management and innovation for the public sector.

Urban SDK co-founders Justin Dennis and Drew Messer recently sat with Florida Trend to discuss the state of technology within the public sector, the need for innovation, and why Florida has become an incubator for new technologies.

You can watch the full interview below.

Video Transcript

Current roles and responsibilities

Drew Messer: We aggregate data from the physical world and turn it into usable information.

Justin Dennis: 99% of the world's data has really just come online is the last few years.

DM: And that's through the emergence of IoT devices.

JD: Connected vehicles. Everyone has a cellphone. That data is often "noise" without a platform like ours. A lot of time data management can be very unapproachable; you need sophisticated people. Our goal is to make it intuitive.

DM: What our customers — whether that's a government customer or business customer — are wrestling with is how to use that information to drive business decisions.

Technology and serving the community

DM: As government agencies contemplate infrastructure decisions — specifically when this infrastructure bill was passed in Congress — they need to know where the priorities are within our state to locate new roads, bridges, etc.

JD: We can tell you which roads are more congested. When [they are congested]: instantly, daily, hourly; without these older processes, or needing to deploy more hardware.

DM: And so what they can use from us is "critical data" to inform those decisions, making sure that the infrastructure we build in our communities is going to advance that community.

Delivering innovation across markets

JD: Data and information from the world has never really been as widely available as it is now.

This is a new space.

There are entire underserved markets of professionals and businesses that are going to have a strategic advantage by their ability to turn data into action, in their day-to-day execution.

We're making data more accessible, so there's less work to put into action. We're making it easier to see; we're making it more affordable to buy.

Especially in the government sector, who often need it today — need it most — and have been widely, widely ignored from a technology perspective, because everyone is focused on business ... and yet the government is sitting here, needing to innovate just the same way [as the private sector].

Why Florida is important to Urban SDK

DM: Over the last couple of years — because our lawmakers have kept the state of Florida open — it's been a tremendous advantage.

It's exciting to grow a business in an environment where it feels everyone is moving toward. Florida is the hottest state in the country right now, as far as growth.

Enterprise Florida: they've been a tremendous partner for us as we've looked for capital. We have a unique set of government leaders that are innovators. They're looking to test new solutions; they're looking to be best in class.

That allows us to really tackle top problems that somebody else hasn't tackled, figure out how to scale that in a product solution, and then bring that to market in other places.

Learn more about how Urban SDK can help your organization make informed decisions using critical data. Contact our team here.