In this episode of the Smart Community podcast, I have a brilliant chat with Ryan McManus, the Founder and CEO of SHARE Mobility, a mobility company that helps organisations and cities solve big transportation problems with mobility-as-a-service. Ryan and I met on my trip recently to Columbus, Ohio, which was in January, 2020. I met Ryan at a meeting with Smart Columbus where I learned about the work they're doing. Now obviously, this episode was recorded before the corona virus became a pandemic. Currently SHARE is repurposing their shared transport network and customer support staff to serve the needs of the people who are staying at home.

On the topic of Covid-19, I just want to give you a little bit of an update of what our team is doing to respond. Our My Smart Community team was virtual already and will remain this way. We are following the health advice and following hygiene and social distancing precautions. For now, the podcast will continue as per usual while the situation continues to develop, but down the track and once there's a bit more data, we anticipate and doing few episodes on this pandemic. In the meantime, we will continue to provide you with regular podcast content to entertain and educate you. If you're finding yourself with more time on your hands than usual, remember we have a wonderful back catalogue of episodes for your listening pleasure!

Now, more than ever, it's time to be Smart and make our technology work for us so that we can stay human. We use it to work as we need to, for us and our teams and be able to adapt as the needs change. We can use it to consume credible information from credible sources and stay up to date with the latest advice and switch off from the channels that aren't serving us right now. We can use it to be kind, understand that we may need to do things differently for a while and reach out to those who might find themselves isolated, or vulnerable. To be smart, so that we can stay human.

In this episode Ryan and I discuss his interest in cars and innovation, and how he brought concepts from IoT and automotive industries together to create SHARE. We talk about how SHARE works and the gap they are fulfilling that is different from both public transit and from what ride-sharing companies were providing. Ryan tells us what a Smart Community means to him, and how we can integrate mobility into our communities. We discuss some of the projects Ryan has been working on, the different ways organisations are working together in Columbus to solve mobility problems, and the benefits of working in the Smart Columbus ecosystem. We finish our chat talking about the emerging trends of the opportunity for improvement when it comes to insurance in the mobility space, as well as the ever-important topic of data being used for public good. As always we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it.Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community

Connect with Ryan @rynmcmns on Twitter or via RidewithShare.com

Connect with me via email: [email protected]

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The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital.