Miguel Gamino CTO of New York City

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Today, we are talking to Miguel Gamino, the CTO of New York City, and we discuss taking a people-centric approach to technology, how New York's smart city aims to set an example for the rest of the world, and the importance of having a free and open Internet to promote growth and innovation. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:38) We were actually listening to Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind" as our pre-show warm-up.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:00:44) Oh, you should definitely use that as the intro track.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:48) Oh, for sure. Do you use Alexa?

(Miguel Gamino at 00:00:50) No, I don't.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:52) We were using Alexa to play that. Do you use any of the voice assistants?

(Miguel Gamino at 00:00:56) I'm starting to play with Google Assistant.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:59) Nice. Nice. Are you liking it? What do you think about it?

(Miguel Gamino at 00:01:02) Well, I use it with a G Suite account, not with a regular Gmail account, so it was a little tricky to get it started. But what I will say is Google support is on point.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:13) Oh, it is?

(Miguel Gamino at 00:01:14) I'm dialed in now, so now I'm just starting to really flex the muscle.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:19) Nice. Yeah. We're all new to it. I got my first one for Christmas this year, so three months ago, and I kind of fell in love with it.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:01:27) I don't use Alexa, but what I do use is Amazon has this Amazon Fresh wand that you can scan barcodes on things that you want to add them to your shopping cart, but you can also talk to it. So it's not controlling the house, but it adds things to my Amazon Fresh shopping cart.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:48) And it's called an Amazon wand?

(Miguel Gamino at 00:01:50) That's what it is. I don't know what they call it, but it's this little wand with a button on it and a laser scanner. And it's magnetic, so it sticks to your fridge. It's cool. When you're about to finish the carton of milk, you just scan the barcode and it adds it to your shopping cart.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:08) It's a way more effective version of the button, kind of.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:02:11) Yeah, because the button is specific to a product, and this you can scan whatever. Or talk to it—there's no barcode on an apple, so you look in your fridge and you want apples, so you just push the button and say "apples" and it adds it to your shopping cart.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:26) Isn't the future beautiful, Miguel?

(Miguel Gamino at 00:02:28) Yeah, absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:29) A hundred and thirty years ago, we were just getting electricity, and now we can just wave an Amazon wand and get apples.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:02:37) A hundred and thirty years ago, we had to go pick our own apples.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:39) That is true. Yes.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:02:41) And that was a bummer. That was a bummer.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:44) Now we have drones. We have drones picking apples.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:02:47) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:48) So I'm really curious. How did you fall in love with technology? What got you started? What was your first experience with technology?

(Miguel Gamino at 00:02:55) Well, you asked a contradictory question. You've assumed that I fell in love with it when I first engaged with it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:03) Oh, nice catch.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:03:05) My first engagement with tech was in high school, and it was the most god-awful experience of my life. My class, we spent the entire semester programming away just to make the cursor bounce across the screen. It was terrible. And I remember coming home and telling my parents that I wasn't yet sure what I was going to do when I grew up, but I knew for sure it would have nothing to do with computers.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:35) That is the most original. I love this one. I love the perspective. So how did it change? What happened next?

(Miguel Gamino at 00:03:42) So I went to college, and the truth is what changed was the essence of what the computer was doing changed, right? I went to college, and around that time, you had Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Steve Jobs had emerged as these pop culture icons almost. At that time, it was still counterculture, but all of a sudden you had the ability to visualize what that opportunity might look like. And so that really drove inspiration into, like, wow. Not only can you do well just in terms of business and wealth and whatnot, but you could really start to see then—or at least I could start to see then—how that technology could do something way more meaningful than bounce a cursor across the screen. So it was like, "Oh, wow. This is transforming the way business is done"—AKA the spreadsheet and the personal computer. And it was changing the way design and art was done in the early Apple days, right? And it changed the way we thought about—Dell in a lot of ways was the computer version of Henry Ford and the way that they changed the manufacturing and distribution process. And so I started to recognize a deeper opportunity there.

And so I was at college. I went to University of Texas, El Paso—go Miners. And I was debating what my major should be. It's a whole different story, but I got prodded into accounting by an accounting professor who I'm forever grateful to. But I also had this suspicion that computers were going to be something special, and I should think about that. And so I went to the advising office and I said, "Hey, I want to do a double major. I want to do accounting and computer information systems." And they said, "Absolutely." They said I was crazy because accounting was the most difficult and CIS was the longest number of hours. That was literally combining the worst of both worlds and putting them together. And so they tried to discourage me, which anyone who knows me knows that all you've got to do is tell me it can't be done. And so that was it. I decided I was going to do it.

And so I was—I don't know that I was the first—I think in my graduating class there ended up being two or three of us that graduated with that double major that were the first in that university to do that. And that was the beginning. During that time, I also started my own—inspired by Michael Dell, frankly—I started my own computer company, kind of a pay-for-college type business. And so I never count that as one of my startups because it was never going to be a growth company, but I did learn both a lot about technology and a lot about entrepreneurship and serving the customer. And towards the later years of my college time, that was my job. I had a business. We built computers and laptops. We installed network cable infrastructure and network electronics for some businesses locally. And yeah, and then the rest is history.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:16) So that's how you fell in love with technology. You've got Jobs coming out, Michael Dell doing his thing, and you saw that you could visualize what that opportunity looked like. And then they were kind of leaders for, "Hey, this is an option." Now I know you've got an awesome plan for the smart city that you're dealing with and the IoT strategy for New York City. Are you doing that or looking at that as a way to set an example for the rest of the world, the rest of the cities in the United States? And now you're being Jobs and Dell saying, "This is what the opportunity looks like. Copy us"?

(Miguel Gamino at 00:07:49) Yeah. I think, you know, there's a couple things. I've been blessed to experience this public sector chapter in a very special way. I got talked into doing this in El Paso, and I was the CIO there. And then I got recruited to San Francisco and ended up being the CIO there. And then I got recruited to be the CTO here in New York. And looking back at that trajectory, I learned a lot from each of those cities, including how important technology is to transforming all cities, because each of those cities is very different from the other, but the technology opportunity was just as strong in any and each of them, right?

And so I think while I wouldn't compare myself to Jobs or Dell or any of them, I do think that the opportunity that we've created by really being willing to be in the thought leadership category along the way—insomuch as that it's always been about doing good for the city I was in, but also sharing that with everyone else that would listen or that was interested. So all the way back to El Paso, it was—one of our big accomplishments in El Paso was a shared services model. So that principle of sharing dates back all the way to that time.

And so now in New York, where the stage is much bigger and the lights are much brighter, it has certainly come to the precipice of that opportunity. And so everything we're doing here, we recognize is not only a beneficial opportunity for the city of New York, but has been very clear to us that it's an opportunity to share that with cities so that they can enjoy the same progress and benefits. Of course, there's nuances and things that change from city to city, but I think we are—we have been in a position to offer quite a bit of thought leadership and resources to our partner cities, not just in the United States, but all over the world.

The Council of Global City CIOs is an organization that I helped found, and it is built on the premise that no matter where these cities are, no matter what language is spoken or what continent they're on, many of the core issues are similar and many of the core opportunities via technology are very similar. And so we've found that there's this huge opportunity to share. And I've often said publicly that I've kind of coined this phrase that the superpower of the public sector is this ability to share and collaborate that the private sector might never enjoy quite the same way that we do. Yet we've been underutilizing that forever. And so part of my side mission, I guess you could call it, has always been to better organize cities together to really serve as a catalyst for this collaborative conversation so that we each help each other progress further, faster, so that we have maybe a chance of catching up with the pace of change with regard to technology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:11) Yeah. And you say you're not like Dell or Jobs. Dude, you're a textbook visionary, right? You say that, "Oh, if it can't be done, you're going to do it." That is what lights the fire in you. You're connecting people and identifying opportunity, and you're clearly a leader. And the most important thing is that you care—you genuinely care about the people enough to do all of your normal duties and then also feel a responsibility to do your side hustle of putting together this global city of CIOs just to help the rest of the world, right? I love it. Why? Because it's Tuesday.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:11:47) When you put it that way, okay. Yeah. I don't know. To be honest, it feels almost a little bit embarrassing, but yeah, it is about that. It is about—you know, the other thing I think that is really important here beyond the sharing principle is that we're also, I think, really driving home this notion that it's got to be people first. And the tech industry at large is also beginning to really recognize that in a more authentic, holistic way than I think it has in the past. And so I'm also proud that not just me, but my teams in each of these cities—and even back to my startup days—I think we really consistently had that as part of our core mission back before it was popular. And now that it's really surfacing as a recognized best practice, if you will, I think we are now in a great position to help lead that conversation forward.

And the way I describe it is it's not just—you know, the continuum, if you will, of this people-centered approach, it starts with user-centered design, and lots of people have been talking about that for a while. And you've had really great products and really great services and progress made by this. But while it does take into account the user or the customer, it only takes into account the user or the customer most often. And so then you've seen this gravitation towards a wider stakeholder input, right? And so then you get broader community engagement or a holistic people-centered design, which is just to say that the customers of a particular product aren't the only people that are affected by it or interested in it in some stakeholder type of way.

And so you're seeing some technologists in and out of public sector begin to really recognize that and take into account this broader community lens. And I think we helped lead that in a lot of ways by really pushing on this community-focused engagement with some of the work we've done with NYCX and other things. And now what I've started to do to kind of continue to push this effort down the continuum is introduce this notion of culture, which is just to even further recognize the nuances and the differences within a community of stakeholders. That if you're paying even closer attention to the essence and the culture of that community, you're going to get even better at hearing what they're trying to tell you and delivering something that is truly meaningful and impactful to that community, which might be a set of diverse cultures within that community. So it's—in some ways we've been for many years trying to push down this continuum of depth in terms of what we believe it means to really put people in the driver's seat when technology is being thought of to help solve their real problems.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:00) The diversity, right? So as you dive in, you find subcultures and microcultures, right, as the different layers of the communities. And, man, I love what you're saying about putting people first. If you ever want some really good ammo, right, for diversity conversations, check out—watch a documentary on the rainforest. I know it sounds silly, but the reason why the rainforest survives is because of its diversity. Its diversity is what keeps it alive. So it's really interesting if you watch some information on rainforest.

And I was actually watching that and seeing the diversity, and you know, inclusion of everybody in the technology world has been a hot topic. And it was in my personal life too. So I just had my first baby girl. She's six months old.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:15:47) Congratulations.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:48) Thank you. Do you have any children?

(Miguel Gamino at 00:15:50) I have a one-and-a-half and a two-and-a-half year old, so I feel you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:54) What, boys or girls?

(Miguel Gamino at 00:15:56) Two girls.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:58) Oh, I've got something for you, my friend. I'm going to send you something.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:16:02) I've got a list of lessons for you too, my friend.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:10) Oh, man. No. No. So my—we decided to do a charity, my family. And so I wrote these children's books because I was having a daughter, and I thought it'd be really cool to read my child a book that we wrote, right? And so one's called "The Princess Physicist," and it's this princess that gets stuck in a tower. But instead of a guy coming to save her, she finds a book on physics under the bed and saves herself.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:16:34) Nice.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:35) Yeah. So we've got the best illustrator. We contacted the company that does all the Disney children's board books. We order them, and then we give them away. So we gave 10,000 away to homeless pregnant women shelters, foster families, and just in-need children and their families. Because just like what you were saying earlier, when you see something's a possibility and you see what an opportunity looks like, you have the ability to act on it.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:17:01) Yeah. That's amazing. So I'm going to—can I buy it somewhere?

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:07) Oh, I'm going to send you a couple copies. But yeah, we just wanted—I'm not an expert at running a charity. I really know pretty much nothing about it. But last year, my mom wasn't feeling well, went to the hospital, found out she had leukemia, and passed away in six weeks.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:22) So my brother and sister and I—my brother's a doctor and my sister teaches middle school science, and then I'm obviously a technologist. So she left us less than $50,000, and we said, well, we could either all just put it in our bank account or we could do something cool with it. And then we're all having kids at the same time. So we said, well, let's write these books in honor of, just to remember, so that way we can read the books to our kids and then bring up the conversation of their grandma and stuff like that. So we're not really sure what to do with it, but I still have a pallet of books in my garage.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:55) And so I send them away here and there. But yeah.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:17:58) That's awesome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:59) I'm gonna send you a couple.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:18:00) That's awesome. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:01) Yeah. We thought it was kind of cool. Kind of something different to do, you know? Why not? It's Tuesday.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:07) Or it's Monday. Sorry.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:18:08) Right. So, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:10) We're all about the diversity and everything. I really love—I just want to say I love what you're doing with the work and you speaking up on net neutrality. Obviously, I was just blown away about what happened. Like, how is that even possible? But so thank you for that.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:18:25) Yeah. No. That was, you know, that's the core to all of this. We keep talking about technology and its opportunity to create opportunities for people and include—like, we're talking about all these things that we really do care about, but none of that's gonna—I mean, it's all counter if we don't ensure everyone has equitable access to the platform in the first place. Because if access is discriminated in any form, then the opportunities that are created in the digital world by definition will only be available to some people.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:19:05) So when you break it down like that, there's nothing more important than access to broadband and that that broadband be both open and nondiscriminatory—AKA not completely controlled by a few organizations—and two, that people's privacy is also properly acknowledged and protected and communicated. Otherwise, we're gonna create a situation where people are forced into that environment in order to participate in modern society, but are going to have to sacrifice some things that they shouldn't have to in order to do it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:46) Correct. Yeah. This is the issue to stand up on. Like, I don't—I rarely—first of all, I'm not in politics at all. I don't know why. I just—I like to do other things. But when with this whole net neutrality thing, it just got me really pumped up to want to do something because, man, it's such a slippery slope. You start by throttling a little bit and then you end up with just completely shutting off access and then you end up with a class tiered internet and it's just, you know, I got my start. My father was a programmer and I got my start by having open and free access to the internet. My parents had to pay more if there was some restrictions or if there was any sort of throttling, and it would have discouraged me. It wouldn't have allowed for the experience that I had, you know?

(Miguel Gamino at 00:20:31) Yeah. Yeah. The same with me. I built my startups. My first startup, we took a voice over IP system and put it in a data center and served it up as a multi-tenant service, which today you would call the cloud.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:48) Right.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:20:48) Yeah. We did that, but we did that before—the reason I say it that way is we did that before the term was coined. So we did this in early, early 2000s. And, you know, I was a small business getting started. We were bootstrap funded, you know. If there was—the transport costs were my biggest barrier already. And if I would have had to pay a premium to compete with someone else who was maybe better funded in the marketplace, I just never would have had that opportunity.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:27) Right. It would stifle innovation for sure.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:21:30) Absolutely. So it really does hit home for me too. Because I can think back to my startup days and say, wow, if I had to pay for a fast lane, you know, we were so lean at that time as it was, that might have tipped the economic—the business model—upside down.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:47) For sure.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:21:48) And so it really does—beyond kind of in my current role, obviously, I'm thinking of it more broadly and thinking of it as a societal impact and, you know, thinking about it as an impact on democracy and everything. But I can very quickly boil it all the way back to, you know, 2003 or whatever it was. And as a startup guy, you know, scraping it together to do something we thought was innovative and really important, it would have been much harder and potentially impossible for me to have launched that business.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:26) Well, thank you so much for standing up for the net neutrality and setting such a fantastic example as the city of New York, which is a strong, powerful city for all the innovation you're doing and how you're connecting people. And I'm just a highly efficient, highly productive person, and I can see that you are too. And I just genuinely enjoy when I run into people like this.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:22:51) Thank you. I really appreciate it. And, you know, the mission isn't over. We're gonna continue to—

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:58) It's just getting started, Miguel.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:23:00) That's right. That's right. We're going to be taking kind of this mission to—is to your point about cities around the world. I'll be much more focused on that very soon.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:12) Well, Miguel, just so you know, anything I can do to help you at all, let me know. We have our listener base is 70,000 active CTOs, lead developers, technology type people, and we are worldwide. We're primarily in the United States, the UK, Sweden, and Brazil. So if you need anything at all from us to blast any messages or anything at all, just let me know.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:23:36) Nice. Yeah. I don't know if you caught the news, but recently, I announced I'm leaving this job.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:40) Okay.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:23:41) So that should happen. I mean, that so that's been officially stated that I'm leaving. But I have not yet been able—I'm kind of in a spot where I can't quite share exactly what I'm doing next.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:55) Okay.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:23:56) But stay tuned. It's gonna be very much on point with everything we're just talking about.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:02) Yeah. We had Rand Fishkin on the show. He was like SEOMoz, but big marketing guy. And he said the same thing, and then like two weeks later, he put out this press release, and I'm like, oh my god. I can't believe he's doing that.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:24:13) Timeline might be about the same. Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:16) So I'll be in New York at the artificial intelligence conference, April 29th. Are you gonna be hanging around there or no?

(Miguel Gamino at 00:24:21) Yeah. I think so. Cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:23) Well, if—I'll probably message Kathleen or whatever the best way is just so I can get a high five and a quick picture or something. We can put it on our site and put it with the episode, all that good stuff.

(Miguel Gamino at 00:24:33) Yeah. For sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:33) All right, man. Thank you so so much for your time. Thank you so much for listening to the Modern CTO Podcast. Share this. Get the word out. Thank you guys so much. I couldn't do it without you. I appreciate it. You guys are the absolute best.