Special series: Inside the National Association of Counties (NACo) Annual Conference

On this episode of Connected Nation, we kick off a special series that takes you inside NACo's annual conference and exposition. NACo stands for the National Association of Counties and there are representatives from all over the nation who attend.

In this series, we'll talk to everybody from national black community leaders to those who are doing some innovative things with AI for county leaders.

Related links:
Meet Claudia Rico
Finley Engineering, Inc.
Agile Fleet

Transcript

Jessica Denson, Host (00:02):

This is Connected Nation, an award-winning podcast focused on all things broadband from closing the Digital Divide to improving your internet speeds. We talk technology topics that impact all of us, our families, and our neighborhoods.

(00:16):

Today we kick off a special series from NACo, which stands for the National Association of Counties. They're holding their annual conference and exposition in Tampa, Florida, which is in Hillsborough County. In this series, we'll talk to everybody from national black community leaders to those who are doing some innovative things with ai.

(00:37):

We begin today by speaking with somebody from Finley Engineering about how they're helping some of our most rural counties and someone from Agile Fleet about how they're using technology to improve transportation at the county level. I'm Jessica Denson, and this is Connected Nation.

(00:58):

 I am live from the NACo Exhibit Hall, which stands for National Association of Counties. They have an annual conference and exposition every year, and it's in Hillsborough County, Tampa, Florida, and I am with Claudia Rico who is with Connected Nation. Claudia, explain your role that you have with cn.

Claudia Rico, Connected Nation (01:20):

Yes, thank you. I work actually as the director of the project management office. My team leads and manage every project and program that we are working with organization across the United States. We have currently more than 20 states active projects. We work directly with broadband offices, we work with counties, we work with ISPs. We work with anyone that needs information or support or consulting services for broadband.

Jessica Denson, Host (01:50):

You really lead the team that makes sure those important details get taken care of. Correct? Correct. How difficult is it to wrangle people from people like groups in Alaska all the way to Texas to back to New Hampshire, I think is a new one we're getting right?

Claudia Rico, Connected Nation (02:06):

Yes, absolutely. So every time that you're working with a new community, you need to understand their community. You need to understand their needs, what motivate them, and what are the requirements After you know what really they are looking for, you can start connecting with your stakeholders. That is the first step. It is challenging if you don't have the possibility to mirror them personally because as a best way to connect. But my team is really prepared, really experienced, and they know how to connect with individuals from different parts across the United States. We have experience working in numerous states, as you say, and different backgrounds as well that make us really effective in what we do.

Jessica Denson, Host (02:44):

And why is it important that we're at NACo this week?

Claudia Rico, Connected Nation (02:48):

We work and we focus in rural communities. Connected Nation is a nonprofit. We do this not for the money behind. We do this because we care about the people. Rural America is probably the most disconnected part of the communities in the United States. So NCO is our opportunity to talk to the county leaders, to talk to the communities that really need our services. So this is an opportunity for us to actually tell them, this is what we do, this is how we can support you, and we can work with them in anything related to infrastructure, affordability or digital equity, which is what make us so special.

Jessica Denson, Host (03:25):

So I know we're just at the start of the conference. You were just here for just a couple hours yesterday and the exhibit hall just opened about an hour ago. At this time, it's Saturday, July 12th for us. It'll be a little later when people are hearing this, but there's a little commotion down in the end of the hall. Things are starting to really get going. What have you been hearing so far?

Claudia Rico, Connected Nation (03:46):

A lot of interest in all our services. Digital equity has been one of the main topics that we have been asked for. We've received lot of leaders from small communities. We talk to people from Alabama, from Idaho, from Oregon, some people that have heard our name before and they want to use to come and learn more about our organization. We found some people that talk to us about our mapping and how they're using our maps to decide or to make decisions or plans for broadband. So it has been actually really impressive how much our name is recognized by other people in rural communities as well.

Jessica Denson, Host (04:27):

When I walked up, I kind of eavesdropped a little because I'm pretty good at that. And one gentleman was talking about his county's very low high poverty rate rather. Correct. And what kind of programs that CN can offer for that?

Claudia Rico, Connected Nation (04:40):

Correct. So I talked to him about that. I told him these are the kind of communities we want to work with. Again, as a nonprofit, we are not here for the revenue, we're here for the people. I explained him. We have numerous digital equity programs, including things Tech that is one that is sponsored by at and t. And he was very interested because in this case, we are bringing the resources without expecting any support, financial support from these communities. He was very excited to understand that we work with them and that they are our target audience and stakeholders.

Jessica Denson, Host (05:15):

And all of us at CN, were remote. 90% of us are remote workers. I work in Kentucky. You work out of Texas, but you do have a little bit of an accent explain. So which is good. It means you're multilingual.

Claudia Rico, Connected Nation (05:27):

Correct. So

Jessica Denson, Host (05:27):

Talk a little bit about your background and what brought you to

Claudia Rico, Connected Nation (05:29):

Cn. Absolutely. I am Colombian, so I'm bilingual in Spanish and English. I'm illiterate. I graduated as an engineer in Columbia and I graduated from my master's in project management in the United States. I work in the oil and gas industry for many years until I have the opportunity to work in education for a couple years. And I saw how much need is out there for people with the right skills in organizations like Connected Nation.

(05:55):

When I found Connected Nation found actually my calling, this involves everything that I care for. It has the engineering aspect. It has of course the education aspect because we do a lot of digital equity and the most important, it has a mission. We are going for the people, we're working for them, and we are impacting the communities that needed. That is the most important part for me.

Jessica Denson, Host (06:17):

And I can attest to the fact that you have a great team. I've seen you keep people on task, which is needed. I need a few reminders sometimes as well. Anything you would hope to see happen while we're here at NACo.

Claudia Rico, Connected Nation (06:30):

I just want people to continue coming here and talking about how they know about us, what they know about us, and to allow us to offer all the other areas and all the other services that we have. We have developed a really great portfolio of services that we are releasing and presenting today for the first time. And I feel that we are in a place where we have so much expertise in different areas that we can actually influence in a positive way, numerous communities. So having more people coming to us is the key.

Jessica Denson, Host (07:01):

All right. Claudia Rico, thank you so much.

Claudia Rico, Connected Nation (07:03):

Thank you. Jessica.

Jessica Denson, Host (07:06):

I'm still at NACo, the National Association of Counties Annual Conference and Exposition. I've been roaming the exhibit hall and I came across Sam Tennant, who's assistant director of Finley Engineering Company, and he kindly agreed to talk to me for the podcast. Hi Sam. Hey,

Sam Tennant, Finley Engineering (07:20):

How's it going? Good. How are you doing? Doing well. Thanks for having me.

Jessica Denson, Host (07:23):

You were telling me last night where your booth is. There's a little karaoke going on.

Sam Tennant, Finley Engineering (07:28):

So at the hall itself, right across from our booth was a full dance party, karaoke happening, hilarious songs, but everyone did pretty good. That's good. It was not fun to talk over the music, but very entertaining engineering. Yeah, super entertaining. Yeah,

Jessica Denson, Host (07:44):

Too bad you couldn't be judged. Judge them have one through 10, who's the best

Sam Tennant, Finley Engineering (07:49):

Karaoke?

Jessica Denson, Host (07:50):

Point them

Sam Tennant, Finley Engineering (07:50):

Out when you say, my favorite was someone did do the song tequila and just stood there awkwardly and committed to the bit

Jessica Denson, Host (07:56):

Tequila. Yeah, no, Peewee Herman dance.

Sam Tennant, Finley Engineering (08:00):

There was a lot of Peewee Herman dance. Yeah, not him.

Jessica Denson, Host (08:03):

Yeah. Okay. Well, let's talk about why you're here. Finley Engineering Company. Tell me what that company is and what

Sam Tennant, Finley Engineering (08:08):

It does. Yeah, so Finley Engineering is a full service broadband and energy engineering firm. We have multiple offices throughout the us, primarily in Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Kentucky. But right now we're at the National Association of Counties because we help local governments apply for broadband grants with the upcoming bead grants coming up. We do full service assistance in the front of the application to submission. And then we also do a lot of work with providers themselves. So anything from feasibility studies for a county to figure out how many people actually have broadband, who's unserved, who's underserved, and then we'll do a full fiber broadband network design to really see what it's going to cost to get everyone to close the digital divide.

Jessica Denson, Host (08:56):

So do you work in an area of the country or all over the nation?

Sam Tennant, Finley Engineering (09:00):

We're all over the us, primarily in the Midwest. I will say our focus is in rural broadband. That's kind of just where all of our heartstrings are kind of attached to. We relate.

Jessica Denson, Host (09:10):

Yeah,

Sam Tennant, Finley Engineering (09:10):

We have a lot of background in economic development as well, and that we just see a lot of growth for the rural areas in that. So a lot of the funding is kind of geared towards them as well. So yeah, working with a lot of rural clients counties to see what it's going to take.

Jessica Denson, Host (09:26):

And your partnered booth said he'd just come from the state of Missouri, correct? Yeah,

Sam Tennant, Finley Engineering (09:30):

Yeah. So we have a lot of prior state broadband officers. So I know in x, Wyoming, Illinois, Missouri, a lot of folks that have been inside to see what it's going to take for the counties to put in their applications.

Jessica Denson, Host (09:44):

How important would you say now, how important is it now, especially with bead and those types of things coming out, to have people that really understand the broadband space, not just somebody who's moved into it from elsewhere.

Sam Tennant, Finley Engineering (09:57):

Super important. I also think it's unfortunate that some counties are being forced to become broadband experts. All of a sudden we spend eight hours a day learning these things. They have many other things on their plate to worry about and just to be told like, Hey, you're going to get X amount of money, make it happen. We love being that third party of experts to come in and really be the middle between what the public wants and needs are and what the providers themselves can bring to the table.

Jessica Denson, Host (10:26):

And of course, one of the reasons I pulled you over is because you said, Hey, connected nation, we know you. Tell us why you know us. Yes.

Sam Tennant, Finley Engineering (10:34):

Y'all put out some of the best public information. We love your bead trackers, we love your stats on service and cost and things like that. We'll often use your public maps is sort of a first pass before we get county information and GIS data to start really poking at it.

Jessica Denson, Host (10:53):

I love to hear that. Yeah, absolutely.

Sam Tennant, Finley Engineering (10:55):

And your articles are great too.

Jessica Denson, Host (10:57):

Oh, well, thank you. I write those in my team, not just me. Awesome. So tell me what you love about it. Why are you the assistant director of Finlay Engineering?

Sam Tennant, Finley Engineering (11:07):

For me, it's about serving folks. So we're all kind of obviously love serving the people. We come from rural towns, like I said, that we saw transform. For me it's fiber, bringing fiber or broadband to an area is really allowing folks to enter the digital economy. So even during covid, I saw a lot of my towns in Missouri unable to do homework at home, unable to work at home. The community had to rally together to put hotspots and buses for everyone to pull up and get things done. So really as it comes from economic development, workforce development, people being able to do school at home, even for online school, universities and things like that, fur, that's it. Just quality of life, being able to collaborate across the nation and do things online.

Jessica Denson, Host (12:00):

Is there anything technology wise that you're excited about that you see the future? I know everybody's talking about ai, but is there, I mean, it could be ai, is there something else or anything else that you're excited about?

Sam Tennant, Finley Engineering (12:09):

Yeah, so I love what broadband is doing for precision agriculture, for healthcare, being able to do telemedicine, things like that. Obviously online school, I was able to attend a university from a different state just because I had good connection and things like that. So maybe outside of ai, just, yeah, those few topics.

Jessica Denson, Host (12:32):

Okay. Well, I will include a link to your company, Finley Engineering Company, and Sam Tennant. Thank you so much. Yeah,

Sam Tennant, Finley Engineering (12:39):

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Jessica Denson, Host (12:41):

You did fantastic. I am still at the NACo conference, and I decided to talk to one of our neighbors who I was sitting here watching everything you guys were doing across, it's his agile fleet. So standing with me is Mike Hicks. He is the VP of Sales and Marketing, correct? Right, yeah. And tell us a little bit about Agile Fleet, what you guys do.

Michael Hicks, Agile Fleet (13:00):

Yeah, yeah. So Agile fleet's been around for 24 years. We help with vehicle sharing and fleet management. So if you have a motor pool and you want to share vehicles and provide folks the ability to make reservations and check those out securely, that's what we do.

Jessica Denson, Host (13:17):

And you were kind of explaining it to me, there's a whole system that the county can set up, correct?

Michael Hicks, Agile Fleet (13:23):

Yeah, that's right. Really, half of our customer base is federal, state, local government. And so the counties, if they want to get a handle on what their utilization picture looks like, because there's an awful lot of waste in fleet, it's a great tool to gather that data and understand that picture a little better.

Jessica Denson, Host (13:42):

So it's really people who aren't here. I'm just going to describe it for a moment. There's a little kind of like a tablet and a little box next to it, and you put in your information who you are, what you're allowed to do, and then the box will open up and only certain keys are I can pull

Michael Hicks, Agile Fleet (13:57):

Out. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Jessica Denson, Host (13:59):

And why was that? What we were talking about? It was kind of a safety issue.

Michael Hicks, Agile Fleet (14:01):

Yeah. Yeah. So it's profile based, so nobody wants me out there driving a dump truck. So we can set it up in such a way that only vehicles that I'm authorized to drive can I actually access. And there's all kinds of policy and sort of risk management that counties have to think about.

(14:19):

So we can use that to communicate and enforce policy. We can make sure that we have a full audit trail of who had what vehicle should something go wrong. We can also do the risk piece of things too, so that accidents inevitably happen. We can capture all that data and make sure that everybody's compliant.

Jessica Denson, Host (14:37):

So you said that it also, you kind of mentioned that a little bit, what you're talking about with the GPS, it helps track. So how is that helping? Can you give us an example maybe of how that's really helped the county

Michael Hicks, Agile Fleet (14:50):

Improve

Jessica Denson, Host (14:50):

Its efficiency,

Michael Hicks, Agile Fleet (14:51):

I guess? Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, efficiency is really what we're all about. So what happens in a lot of cases is people suspect that they have more vehicles than they actually need. But until you have hard data on that, it's hard to go to the powers that be and say, look, we're spending a lot of money and we don't need to.

(15:12):

And so basically with this data, the GPS, the checkouts from our system, you can say, Hey, look, this vehicle hasn't moved in three weeks. And you multiply that times hundreds across the fleet, and it's an incredible amount of waste. So it really helps from that standpoint, just right sizing your fleet, getting the right type of vehicles in your fleet. That's kind of what we're all about.

Jessica Denson, Host (15:33):

And I know your badge says Virginia. Is that where you guys are based or you work all over?

Michael Hicks, Agile Fleet (15:37):

Yeah, so we're nationwide. Our headquarters is based out of Chantilly, Virginia, which is about eight miles west of dc but we have employees all over the country.

Jessica Denson, Host (15:48):

Does everybody say C CLEs when you say that?

Michael Hicks, Agile Fleet (15:52):

Yes. I had to be one too. Yeah, this a little extra the first time I've heard that. Yeah.

Jessica Denson, Host (15:57):

So you're the VP of sales and marketing. What have you been hearing from people, or what do you hear from most of your customers?

Michael Hicks, Agile Fleet (16:03):

Yeah, yeah. I think what we hear from people is they suspect that they have a utilization problem. And people will try anything from putting pennies on top of tires to just seeing how many come in with flat tires and dead batteries because they haven't moved in months. And I think what we hear from them is they feel vindicated right now. They have the data to show, Hey, look, this thing that I've suspected for a long time, it's true. And I can show you in black and white, and

Jessica Denson, Host (16:33):

You can see where also the need is, right, where they may not have enough to.

Michael Hicks, Agile Fleet (16:37):

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, converse definitely happens. What happens in a lot of cases is they'll find out, oh, we have 50% more SUVs than we need, but we need a lot more EVs as an example. So yeah, it can kind of prove that out too.

Jessica Denson, Host (16:51):

So at Connect Nation, we deal a lot with broadband access, adoption and use, especially in rural areas. How important is there to be a connection for these counties, do you

Michael Hicks, Agile Fleet (17:00):

Think? Yeah, I think it's very important. Really, with our system, we can serve anybody from, they have tens of cars to tens of thousands of cars. And when you think about the need for broadband to support rural communities, the vehicles need to be everywhere. So it's certainly important. Yeah.

Jessica Denson, Host (17:20):

Alright. Well, is there anything that you would want people to take away about Agile Fleet or how they would contact you if they were interested?

Michael Hicks, Agile Fleet (17:27):

Yeah. Yeah. So I obviously go to agile fleet.com. We have some great tools on there so that if you want to understand what your savings might look like, we have some 10 year fleet savings calculators and things like that. It's a great place to get started and figure out what do we stand to save if we got a hold on this picture. So

Jessica Denson, Host (17:46):

Alright, we'll include a link your company in the description of this

Michael Hicks, Agile Fleet (17:50):

Podcast. Yeah, I'd love that. I appreciate that. Thank

Jessica Denson, Host (17:52):

You Mike Hicks,

Michael Hicks, Agile Fleet (17:52):

I really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks Jessica.

Jessica Denson, Host (17:54):

We'll continue our coverage from the National Association of Counties Annual Conference and Exposition Center. In our next episode.

(18:01):

I'm Jessica Denson. Thanks for joining us. If you like our show and want to know more about us, head to connected nation.org or find us on all major podcast platforms.