<pre>Is smart city another word for surveillance?

What exactly is the purpose of turning a city smart?

Is it possible to witness today what a smart city is in person? Or is a smart city something that is a figment of the imagination of dreamers with a fascination with technology?

In today’s episode, we explore all that and much more.

We invited smart city enthusiast Marek Stawinski on the show to discuss what smart cities are, why the idea of a smart city was created and whether they actually exist today or are something in the far away future.

As Founder and CEO of NaviParking, he is close to and quite passionate about the topic of smart cities. His mission is to use technology to improve the lives of city populations, with the short term goal of decreasing the amount of traffic in cities and the long term goal of decreasing the necessary parking space in cities and replacing it with parks, playgrounds and other recreational spaces that will make a city greener.

“If you manage parking resources well, then suddenly you open up hidden resources to everyone. If you look around, even in Warsaw, there are plenty of parking spaces that are absolutely not accessible. They are not known. They are only accessible to a specific group of people. With our technology, we can make them visible on the app, and we can help the owners of the parking lot make money but what is most important is we reduce traffic.”

In this conversation with our host, Michal Vasquez Plewniak, Marek goes in-depth about when he first came across the concept of a smart city, how a trip to Krakow led to his decision to launch a startup specialising in the digitalisation of parking lots, what the benefits of digitalisation are and what the future of smart cities may look like.

“Parking in my vision is just a component of the bigger picture. I believe in a kind of ecosystem of partners and also in the platform economy. We are developing a platform and what we try to do is we try to build an ecosystem of partners.”

How can the digitalisation of parking lots result in fewer parking facilities in cities? And where does parking fit into the whole concept of smart cities?

Check out the full episode and find out.</pre>

Smart City Navigators is a podcast that explores topics related to innovation, sustainability and technology. It was created by NaviParking, a tech startup with a mission to use technology to have a positive impact on cities and their citizens. Featuring experts from all fields and from all over the world, it helps its listeners understand the broad concept of the smart city.

The Vision of a Smart City

<pre>Sometimes companies don’t realise the positive impact their solutions have or could have, on people. We invited Magdalena “Malina” Malinowska on our show to tell us the incredible story of how the tech startup she works for, NaviParking, found out that their solutions were helping a particular group of people in a significant way and what they decided to do after this discovery.

Malina is passionate about psychology and has a huge curiosity about the world and people with a particular interest in what drives individuals to behave the way they do, which she developed during her social psychology studies. These interests led her to join NaviParking in the role of Account Manager, in which she interacts directly with partners and clients, which is how she discovered that NaviPay, the company’s mobile application which enables drivers to have a contactless and cashless parking experience is a huge help to people with disabilities. Malina’s curiosity pushed her to dig deeper.

“The more information I got, the more convinced I was that it’s a really huge problem that we discovered as a company and we couldn’t stay neutral.”

In this episode of Smart City Navigators, Malina describes the research she carried out to widen her knowledge on this topic, including how she ended up inviting Sławek Florkowski who is a member of the Polish Without Barriers Foundation, on a tour of NaviParking’s digital parking lots to test the NaviPay mobile application from the perspective of a person with a disability, a social experiment she conducted to see whether people want to help people with disabilities and even organised an art auction called Outside the Box, including a special opening night of the exhibition to raise awareness and money to help people with disabilities.

“Everyone knows that technology helps with living. As an Account Manager, I have a vision that our application is useful for everybody because it’s easy to use. To start from opening barriers by sliding a button in the app or by recognizing registration number of your car through mobile payments which is useful.”

To find out what Malina discovered and to hear her share tips on how other organisations and even individuals can help people with disabilities, check out the full episode.</pre>

<pre>Can small tech startups have a big impact?

In this episode of Smart City Navigators, Magdalena “Malina” Malinowska tells the story of how the startup she works for, NaviParking, discovered that the parking solutions they create greatly help people with disabilities access parking lots, and what they did as a company to increase their positive impact and help people with disabilities even further.

“Everyone knows that technology helps with living. As an Account Manager, I have a vision that our application is useful for everybody because it’s easy to use. To start from opening barriers by sliding a button in the app or by recognising registration number of your car through mobile payments which is useful.”

To find out what Malina discovered and to hear her share tips on how other organisations and even individuals can help people with disabilities, check out the full episode.</pre>

How a tech startup helps people with disabilities

<pre>Are all creators antisocial nerds who hate interacting with their coworkers?

Do they just always have their head in the clouds?

Why do creators really seem so anti-meetings when all you invite them to is a quick 30-minute chat?

In this episode of Smart City Navigators, Jakub Sroka talks about the reasons behind the eternal struggle of creators who have to attend work meetings, and he does so from two perspectives: that of a creator and that of a manager.

As Chief Design Officer, Jakub takes on two roles. He is a creator who works on designs, and then he is also a leader of a team that he mentors and guides on a daily basis. At NaviParking, the tech startup he works for, a majority of employees work remotely, meaning they primarily interact with each other through video calls, which means he works with his team this way too. On our podcast, Jakub explains why meetings make work so hard for him as a creator and for other creators such as programmers and writers.

“The nature of those tasks is that they usually need some deeper focus, and they require heavier chunks of focused time, and that’s why if someone throws in a meeting in the middle of such a focused session, it may affect the whole day even for those people”.

As a manager and a member of the management team, there are many crucial calls he needs to attend throughout the day but still needs time to create. How does he make this work? Since meetings are usually 30, 60 or 90 minutes, does the solution lie in dividing up your workday into 90-minute sessions? Jakub claims that no, this is not the answer.

Still, is inviting your coworker, who happens to be a creator, to a last-minute meeting in the middle of the workday so bad?

“In some extreme cases, it may result in that in this half of the day a creative person wouldn’t achieve anything more than just attending a meeting because the rest of the time will be just destroyed by this bump that landed in the middle of the time slot”.

Watch the full episode to go inside the mind of a creator, discover how they work and as someone with over ten years of experience, what tips Jakub has for creators and why he thinks you should try the 4-hour rule that he lives by.</pre>

<pre>Are all creators antisocial nerds who hate interacting with their coworkers?

Why do creators really seem so bothered when all you do is invite them to a quick 30-minute chat?

In this episode of Smart City Navigators, Jakub Sroka talks about why creators dislike attending work meetings, and he does so from two perspectives: that of a creator and that of a manager.

“The nature of those tasks is that they usually need some deeper focus, and they require heavier chunks of focused time, and that’s why if someone throws in a meeting in the middle of such a focused session, it may affect the whole day even for those people”.

Watch the full episode to go inside the mind of a creator, discover how they work and as someone with over ten years of experience, what tips Jakub has for creators and why he thinks you should try the 4-hour rule that he lives by.</pre>

Creators at the workplace: Antisocial nerds with their heads in the clouds?

<pre>Is it possible to successfully manage multiple projects simultaneously on two different continents?

Our guest, Maciek Cichoński, claims that yes, this is possible. In this episode of Smart City Navigators, we dive into the complicated world of project management and discuss what it takes to be a successful project manager in an international company where you manage projects across different cities, counties and even continents.

In his role at NaviParking, Maciek manages projects in Dubai, Manama and throughout the entire country of Poland, all at the same time.

“Every region we need to treat a little bit separately, as we have different demands, we have a different approach, we have different stakeholders, and there are of course different cultural aspects.”

Although challenging at times, Maciek does it all with a smile on his face because, according to him, part of the fun are the unexpected challenges that come up. He has even discovered the key to managing multiple projects worldwide at the same time. The key? Human connection.

“For me, it’s not all about the task and focusing on the deadlines. It’s like you will not be successful during the project if you will not respect your teammates because a Project Manager is like the outside package. It’s like the present, right? So as I try to emphasize every time, I cannot finish the project without the people, and I just try to coordinate and help them to have everything at once.”

This human connection is not just significant to have with coworkers but also with clients and partners. And this is something that Maciek is discovering to be particularly important in the managing of his digital parking project in Manama.

“It’s not about the emails or about the video conferences. It’s about being on-site to talk with them, to shake their hands because the work is very important.”

As someone who is very open and believes you can learn something from every single person you meet, it looks like Maciek is the right person in the right place. So what tips does he have for achieving success in the role of project manager? And what does he think are the biggest differences between working with people from Europe and people from the MENA region? Watch the full episode to find out!</pre>

Project Management Is All About Human Connection

<pre>What is the most important thing a Team Leader can do for their team?

Is it help them organise their tasks? Challenge them to push themselves? Teach them new things?

These things can certainly help team members achieve the company's goals. However, our guest, Wojtek Korczyński, has a different idea of leadership.

Wojtek is an engineer with extensive experience in the IT industry. At NaviParking, he is a Team Leader of one of the two core Engineering Teams. He knows the responsibility that comes with leading a team. He approaches leadership with careful consideration of what his team needs and how his words and actions will impact them. Wojtek believes that what makes a good team leader is shifting the focus from the product to the people.

“People are the, I believe, essence of each team, of each work and of each product that we do. So, if we are talking about people and the people in terms of the role of a team leader, the main responsibility, I believe, is creating the emotional safety to all of the people in a team. So, I think that this is the core and the most important part… if people don’t feel safe at their work, I believe that they will sooner or later leave the work. And that is of course something that all of us would like to avoid.”

In this episode, Wojtek discusses what makes a good team leader, how to encourage teamwork in a remote work environment and his ultimate goal as a team leader.

“People should feel that they are somehow connected to the product they develop. Nowadays, I think that this is something that we really forget about, because all the changes that happened in the industry led to a moment in which one person does one part of a job, another person does another part of a job but they don’t feel like they are creating their own product.”

Wojtek also explains his approach to managing stress as a team leader. He explains the negative effects of stress, what good leaders can do to help their team members avoid it, how to deal with people who are causing it and how to establish boundaries with others in the company.

“As a team leader, one of my goals is to avoid team to feel that stress. I can see a role of a team leader as a kind of wall. The stress comes and pressure comes but my role is to be a wall that stops this pressure so my team members wouldn’t feel this.”

Watch the full episode to see an in-depth discussion on good leadership, and find out what tips Wojtek has for other team leaders to achieve success in their roles.</pre>

<pre>What is the most important thing a Team Leader can do for their team?

According to our guest, Wojciech Korczynski, the answer is to provide emotional safety to each member of the team. Instead of focusing on the product or the end result, the responsibility of a team leader is to focus on the people in his team.

“People are the, I believe, essence of each team, of each work and of each product that we do… if people don’t feel safe at their work, I believe that they will sooner or later leave the work. And that is of course something that all of us would like to avoid.”

Watch the full episode to see an in-depth discussion on good leadership, and find out what tips Wojtek has for other team leaders to achieve success in their roles.</pre>

The responsibility of Leadership

<pre>What can a new business do to set itself apart on the market and achieve success?

In this episode of Smart City Navigators, we tackle the thought-provoking topic of building a brand and how new businesses, especially tech startups, can do this successfully.

Our guest is Ahmed Rafiey, who works at NaviParking as a Global Brand Manager and the Country Manager of The Kingdom of Bahrain.

Ahmed believes that what new businesses need to understand is that in order to make people believe in the product they are introducing to the market, they need to fully understand the needs of the market, adapt to them and be patient.

“For them [tech startups] to become culturally diffused into any sort of group of people or community they have to, first of all, define a clear purpose based on the root cause of a problem and based on what they can actually do with their capabilities, skillsets and resources to solve that problem.”

And what our guest points out is that new businesses need to be realistic about their resources because overpromising to their clients will only have negative results.

“A lot of technology companies overpromise and possibly underdeliver. This is because they haven’t gotten a clue on what their resources are.”

Because what technology companies often introduce to the market are brand new solutions built on innovation, they face the additional challenge of gaining people's trust, who may be suspicious of new technological solutions and refuse to use them.

“We are conditioned as humans to not accept change because we’re wired for survival at the end of the day. So in order for us to, let’s say, take a sample of the population who are thinking that the old school way is better to something else, we need to show them through human experience. We need to show them what our solutions, for example, do to make their lives easier, where does it fall in their daily routine that makes their lives seamless and convenient and efficient.”

So what can tech startups do when facing this challenge?

“In the technology sector, in general, we do get resistance of new products and new solutions. The way towards that is to, first of all, go for the highest impact. What I mean by that is we push the solution forward onto a mass adaptation instead of just going for a niche group in the beginning. And based on that, we do a trial and error kind of exercise all the time to find out whether we are meeting the needs of a certain group as opposed to another, what could we do for another group that is not really jumping on the bandwagon and so on and so forth.”

Watch the full episode to get more tips from our expert and learn how to effectively build the brand of your business and achieve success.</pre>

How a Tech Startup Can Build a Brand and Achieve Success

<pre>You’re probably familiar with the phrase, “A jack of all trades is a master of none.” But have you ever heard the second part of this quote?

It goes like this: “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”

That kind of changes things, doesn’t it?

The quote perfectly ties into the topic of this episode, where we tackle the question of who is better: a generalist or a specialist.

Our guest is Estera Sendecka, Creative Graphic Designer at NaviParking, who has years of experience as a designer in different work environments. She dives into this topic from three perspectives: that of a young professional, a coworker and a boss to finally clear up this ongoing debate and give you tips on how to advance your career and stand out on the job market.

Estera believes that instead of thinking about generalists and specialists as polar opposites, we need to think about it as a spectrum. On one side, you have generalists and on the other specialists, and most of us fit somewhere in between on the spectrum. Some of us lean towards one and others towards the other.

“This whole dilemma is important on an individual level, like when it comes to career planning, when it comes to thinking about your career as an individual, whether you want to specialise deeply and excel at that or whether you want to dip in different fields and combine it to a whole new different level of value that you bring to a company.”

While working at NaviParking, Estera was part of creating and working on many projects (including this podcast, Smart City Navigators). She explains that her time at NaviParking is teaching her a lot about teamwork and what it takes to succeed as a professional in a startup environment.

“So you may think that startups would need versatile people, people with different sets of skills, different sets of experiences because they can do the job and there will be only a few of them. But at the same time, in order to stand out in a market, you need something special. So you need a specialist, right? You need people who have the sort of skills that will make you a leader in the market, and they are the people who can do the job. So basically, you need both.”

About working on Smart City Navigators, she says, “This whole project brought me so much joy, and I don’t believe we would’ve been able to achieve this on our own. Each of us brought this perfect generalist and specialist at the same time perspective to this project and that made it excellent, I believe.”

Watch the full episode to find out why Estera’s studies taught her why you need to wait before becoming a specialist, what advice she has for effective collaboration in a team and what other great tips she has for young professionals.</pre>

<pre>The key to success? Not specialising too early in your career

What you need to know before you pick a specialisation

What you need to know about success

You need self-awareness to succeed in a startup

Why you shouldn’t specialise too early in your career</pre>

Watch, listen and subscribe

About Smart City Navigators

All episodes

Let's stay in touch