I recently visited Providence for the first time on an impromptu business trip. I hail from Kansas City, Mo. and my visit was designed to gauge the level of interest that the city of Providence has in a new product and service that was recently created by my technology company, Ulytic.
Our products are small devices that can be placed on streetlights, buildings and even homes to serve as a fitness tracker for urban health. These fitness tracking devices measure pedestrian, consumer, bicycle and vehicle traffic throughout streets, sidewalks, intersections and neighborhoods, in real-time. These devices also take air quality measurements concerning levels of Carbon Monoxide, Nitrogen Dioxide cigarette smoke, and ground-based CO2 emissions and can even track weather metrics. Ulytic’s mission is to help foster smarter, more sustainable cities through Urban Analytics. Being able to affordably collect this sort of data and easily analyze it regardless of technical or statistical skill set is a new concept, due to the very recent development of hobbyist sensor technology. However, by my second day of meetings with municipal and community leaders I realized that there was something different about Providence when it came to both entertaining and consequently recognizing the value of new information, regardless of whether or not the technology had hit mainstream markets. And by the fifth and final day of my stay, a simple explanation for this willingness and ability to recognize the value of new ideas and new information became clear: it was the mindset of people. The people of Providence seem to harness an intuitive interest in progress that is unique to the city.
As an entrepreneur who has been told by many city leaders that the most important thing for Ulytic to do is give up a share of the company in order to receive a round of investments, the leaders and citizens of Providence provided a much needed breath of fresh air. Instead of holding interest solely in the amount of financial support that we have, or in our mainstream market appeal, the people of Providence were interested in the ability to use our technology for the unique insight it can immediately provide into building smarter cities. I’m not sure how the citizens of Providence have fostered such a place where open-mindedness and common sense cohabitate so seamlessly, but it has created a novelty that I have yet to experience elsewhere. A novelty that I don’t think Providence has committed to leveraging. However, if and when it does, I believe that Providence will create a coveted position for itself as a catalyst, a collaborator and a convener, in ways that others cities cannot.
There is no doubt in my mind that if there were a statistic for citizen ambassadorship per capita, Providence would rank amongst the elite. Providence ambassador Andy Cutler convinced me to come to Providence by setting up nearly 20 meetings with local leaders, not to mention offering me a place to stay and breakfast every morning. These local leaders were certainly the proud ambassadors of Providence that you would expect. However, it was the random acquaintances that I made, the several staff members at Brown Engineering school, the cab drivers who took me to many meetings, the baristas and fellow coffee shop patrons, and the Pecha Kucha crowd that showed me that nearly everyone is in the business promoting and improving Providence. The passion with which so much of the city pronounces its desire to be enhanced is something that I have already begun preaching in my return West.
To my surprise, the people of Providence were able to create a city ambassador out of me. I came to town with the goal of helping the city of Providence in my own, standard way. By selling it a product and service that can make it a more efficient and self-aware city. However, I left with a desire rather than a goal. A desire to be one of the many ambassadors of Providence, who can not just provide new technology to a city that is hungry for enhancements, but one who can provide an outsider’s reassurance that Providence is important for many of the reasons that its citizens proclaim. And for many others that they may be too modest to recognize.
Billy Martin is co-founder and CEO of Ulytic, based in Columbia, Mo.
