Special series: Inside NACo - talking collaboration, counties, and...corgis?

On this episode of Connected Nation, we continue our coverage from the National Association of Counties Annual Conference and Exposition.  We begin by posing a question to you. Do you know what a "nope rope" is? Well, you're about to find out in our interview with Lucid Software.

Also, we talk with the county manager of Columbia County, Florida about the challenges his county is facing when it comes to broadband access... and some of it is pretty unique. 

Related links:
Lucid Software
Columbia County, Florida

Special series episodes list:
Inside that National Association of Counties Annual Conference - Ep. 25
Inside NACo - what Black leaders say their communities need - Ep. 26
Inside NACo - talking collaboration, counties, and...corgis? - Ep. 27 (current) 
Inside NACo - two innovations that can make your life more stress free - Ep. 28
Inside NACo - how USDA Rural Development supports county leaders - Ep. 29
Inside NACo - from the "science of where" to casinos everywhere - Ep. 30
Inside NACo - covering what county leaders should know about AI, cybersecurity, and more - Ep. 31

Chapters

• 2:37 About Lucid Software
• 3:26 How Lucid helps groups of all sizes
• 4:48 99% of the Fortune 500
• 5:11 How Lucid is innovating with AI
• 7:45 It's all about collaboration
• 8:42 The corgis are popular
• 10:51 Meet David Kraus, County Manager of Columbia Co, FL
• 11:46 About Columbia Co, FL

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):

 On this episode, we continue our coverage from the National Association of Counties Annual Conference and Exposition Center. And I want to begin by posing a question to you. Do you know what a Nope. Rope is? Well, you're about to find out in our interview with Lucid Software.

(00:32):

 Also, we talk with the county manager of Columbia County, Florida about the challenges they're facing when it comes to broadband access... and some of it is pretty unique. I'm Jessica Denson. This is Connected Nation.

Carson Redford, Lucid Software (00:48):

Yeah. Take Corgi.

Jessica Denson, Host (00:53):

Tyler, who are you with?

Passerby - stops by booth (00:55):

Wasco County.

Jessica Denson, Host (00:56):

Wasco County. Why do you come to naco?

Passerby - stops by booth (00:58):

Lots of information sharing. Good stuff.

Jessica Denson, Host (01:01):

And you stopped at Lucid because of these Corgis? Yep,

Passerby - stops by booth (01:04):

The corgis caught our attention.

Jessica Denson, Host (01:05):

Same with me. Thank you. Obviously I'm standing at one of the exhibit booths. It's Lucid. Is it Lucid? Lucid Software? So I want to get it correct, correct. And with me are Carson Redford and Jeremy Hanks. Carson is the head of state and local government account executive, right?

Carson Redford, Lucid Software (01:23):

Yeah, on the West coast.

Jessica Denson, Host (01:25):

And Jeremy, you are an enterprise government. What does that mean? NA

Jeremy Hanks, Lucid Software (01:30):

Same position? Yeah, just we work with our government

Jessica Denson, Host (01:32):

Partners. You just wanted to a different title?

Jeremy Hanks, Lucid Software (01:34):

Yeah, it's like one of those things we have. Try to get as many words in the title as you can.

Jessica Denson, Host (01:39):

Right. Gotcha. And you guys are based out of Utah?

Carson Redford, Lucid Software (01:41):

Yeah, salt Lake City is our headquarters. We have four offices, a lot of remote workers, but most of our employees are in Salt Lake.

Jessica Denson, Host (01:50):

Yeah, sorry everybody. There's popcorn being pop next to me, so I'm distracted. Okay. So do you work all across the country then?

Carson Redford, Lucid Software (01:58):

Yeah, so let's see. So I specifically work with a lot of customers in California, Utah, of course, where we're headquartered Arizona, but we kind of covered the whole country, all 50 states that Lucid works with.

Jessica Denson, Host (02:11):

Are you global or just our national? We are

Carson Redford, Lucid Software (02:13):

Global. We also have offices down in Australia and then in Amsterdam, in Raleigh, so to cover the whole globe.

Jeremy Hanks, Lucid Software (02:19):

So we have 80 million users and yeah. So all over the country.

Jessica Denson, Host (02:24):

All over, yeah. 80 million, is that what you said? 80 Wow.

Carson Redford, Lucid Software (02:27):

Users and growing. So

Jessica Denson, Host (02:28):

Tell us a little bit, explain to someone like me who is not a tech person, a comms person, what Lucid does.

Carson Redford, Lucid Software (02:37):

So a lot of people, and there's a reason why we have at our booth here, some fun stuffed animal corgis and some stickers of Doggos kiddos, et cetera, is we have a viral marketing campaign that shows how Lucid explains the internet.

(02:55):

We do a visual collaboration is our bread and butter, so from technical diagramming and flow charting and lucid chart, how most people know us to also a popular tool called Lucid Spark, which is collaborative whiteboarding or virtual whiteboarding. We have another tool called Lucid Scale, which is automated cloud infrastructure diagramming. And so we're just a suite of products for visual collaboration needs.

Jessica Denson, Host (03:21):

And why was it important for you to work with counties or to be at NACo?

Carson Redford, Lucid Software (03:25):

Do you want to take that one,

Jeremy Hanks, Lucid Software (03:26):

Jeremy? Yeah, certainly. I mean, so we work with counties of all sizes, cities of all sizes, government of all sizes, and IT teams, HR teams, operations teams. There's a lot of different use cases and teams that use Lucid. And frankly, we have a lot of current customers that are counties and so it's been a really good fit.

Jessica Denson, Host (03:45):

Give me a real world example of how this has helped either a county or a city.

Jeremy Hanks, Lucid Software (03:50):

Yeah, certainly. So I mean a lot of examples, but in government, a lot of times what we see is their teams or agencies, even within your team or team to team is very siloed. And so especially since Covid teams have worked in a more hybrid environment. And so with Lucid, we bring it all together. We're a collaboration hub, so teams can brainstorm and ideate from multiple locations at the same time and come up with, so we talked about the Doggo and the stuffy.

(04:20):

So that was from a group of people collaborating and saying, Hey, what are some different names we could come up? So instead of a snake, it's a no broke. So that's just trying to emulate if there's anything you want to work together as a group meeting on a video call is nice, but how do you document that and how do we put that into action and add accountability to it? And that's what our software does.

Jessica Denson, Host (04:43):

Do you guys work with all sizes of companies too or is it just the larger ones in these places?

Carson Redford, Lucid Software (04:48):

Yeah, so in the private sector, 99% of the Fortune 500 uses us. But in the public sector, yeah, state agencies to the federal level, counties down to cities. We have a large variety of customers using us both in the government and outside of the government.

Jessica Denson, Host (05:06):

What is something that you're working on that we should be excited about that you could tell us?

Carson Redford, Lucid Software (05:11):

Well, we're obviously dipping our toes pretty heavily into ai, which is a buzzword right now. But what that looks like for Lucid is maybe you're in a brainstorming session with somebody in a virtual whiteboard and you need an ice breaker or you need to have sticky notes, kind of read your mind.

(05:30):

You can type in a little prompt into Lucid Spark and it can generate ideas for you for, again, better brainstorming or in Lucid chart. If you want to build out a complex flow chart or diagram, you can describe in a chat exactly what type of flowchart or process flow you want to build and it'll generate a flow chart for you. Saves a lot of time. Very powerful.

Jessica Denson, Host (05:53):

So who's just stepped up here? Another county commissioner. Hi there. What's your name? May say hi, may. Did you come over for a Corgi?

May, Passerby who stopped by booth (06:02):

Yes. Hi.

Jessica Denson, Host (06:04):

Who do you work with? May.

May, Passerby who stopped by booth (06:05):

United Healthcare. United Healthcare? Yes.

Jessica Denson, Host (06:07):

And why are you here today?

May, Passerby who stopped by booth (06:09):

I am here for the drinks, but there's no drinks today.

Jessica Denson, Host (06:12):

So just to get a Corgi. Yeah, it's a big draw. You know anything about Lucid you've ever worked with Lucid? I

May, Passerby who stopped by booth (06:19):

Do know about Lucid, but I've never worked with

Jessica Denson, Host (06:22):

You guys have got another customer. You got to get in.

May, Passerby who stopped by booth (06:25):

What's up with the mics?

Jessica Denson, Host (06:27):

This is a podcast Connected Nation. Yeah, we are in our season five and we do everything that's broadband related, technology related news. We've interviewed everybody from second grade teachers to the FCC Chairman. Yeah. And now you're my NA sound. You're what I call Natural Sound. You're my person that's come by and said hi. Yeah,

May, Passerby who stopped by booth (06:51):

I have friends that brings their mics to every party and I'm just like, stop.

Jeremy Hanks, Lucid Software (06:56):

You thought it was karaoke?

Jessica Denson, Host (06:58):

Yeah, yeah. Well there was karaoke here. I heard last night from another person I interviewed who's right next to it. He said, I heard everybody. All the great stuff. Yeah. Anyway, back to Lucid. Thank you. Nice to meet you may. Back to Lucid. So you were saying that anybody from all the different sizes can use it. And you were talking about what your new technology is. Yeah,

Carson Redford, Lucid Software (07:20):

Ai. It was ai and of course, like I said, AI is definitely a buzzword right now and everybody has a different interpretation of how AI should be used. But with Lucid it's all about better visual collaboration, better visuals of your work from documentation to better virtual collaboration.

Jessica Denson, Host (07:42):

Is there anything you're excited about Jeremy?

Jeremy Hanks, Lucid Software (07:45):

Yeah, I mean he kind of hit the nail on the head. It is all about collaboration and that's what we're known for is being the number one platform to collaborate. And so yeah, we're always working on new integrations, whether it's integrating with Microsoft products or Google products or whatever it is. We bring your teams together and we help you track in one place with one source of truth what's going on As far as our vision. He mentioned some of ai, but I think where we're headed with that is certainly the idea to be able to have a meeting going and literally have AI help listen to the meeting and help note take, and then also even build out diagrams relative to what's going on.

Jessica Denson, Host (08:25):

Oh, note taker. I'm a note taker, so I like that. Yeah, yeah. So one last question. What do you hope that, or rather, let me step back once. What are people asking you about when they're stopping at the booth? Other than the corgis?

Carson Redford, Lucid Software (08:42):

Well, the corgis are certainly popular. I think people are just looking for better ways to consolidate their tech stack, to simplify their tech stack and modernize the types of tools that they're using. So maybe getting away from legacy tools and to step into the future. I mean, our tagline is we help teams see and build a future. So we're trying to do that

Jeremy Hanks, Lucid Software (09:07):

Real quick. I think specifically with government though, we see a lot of them that a lot of government entities are using products like a Microsoft vio and typically that's something that hasn't been updated in a long time. So we're really specifically replacing a Microsoft VIO and several other products.

Carson Redford, Lucid Software (09:23):

We also see that some counties geographically are just huge. And so it's very hard sometimes to connect your fire department, your public works, I don't know, what are some other, just different parts of a government, how the government operates. And so we can help remove those barriers and silos and connect and collaborate.

Jessica Denson, Host (09:44):

Even just geography is what you mean. Yeah. You guys, yes. You're both from Utah, are there? I've been to Wyoming and the geography there is a challenge. So I can imagine connecting those different groups. Yeah,

Carson Redford, Lucid Software (09:58):

That's very true.

Jessica Denson, Host (09:59):

Anything you'd want people to take away from our conversation about Lucid?

Carson Redford, Lucid Software (10:02):

No, you can sign up for a free trial of Lucid, no Strings attached. You can see us in the AWS marketplace. We're FedRAMP authorized, which is popular for security regulations in the United States. Yeah, we have some exciting things coming in the pipeline and yeah, check us out. Lucid chart. Lucid Spark, lucid Scale.

Jessica Denson, Host (10:25):

Alright. I'll include a link to your company on the description of the podcast. Okay. So thank you Jeremy and Carson.

Carson Redford, Lucid Software (10:31):

Right on. Thanks Jessica.

Jeremy Hanks, Lucid Software (10:33):

Awesome, thanks.

Jessica Denson, Host (10:35):

I am standing at the Connect Nation booth in exhibit hall of the NACO conference and David Kraus, who's a county manager of Columbia County, Florida, you happen to come by and say, are you all about broadband? And we said yes. So David, talk about your county and what you do there.

David Kraus, Columbia Co, FL (10:51):

Well, we are a very geographically large county. We're just under 70,000 in the inner part of the city where it's got municipal services. We have plenty of broadband, we have competition. But you get out to the rural areas of county, which there's a lot. People don't realize it, but Florida is a very rural state in many parts they have no access to internet, just none. And it is a big problem.

(11:17):

 It was a huge problem during Covid because everybody was schooling from home. People that are trying to run businesses have difficulties because they have no broadband connection and there's really nobody to go to. They tried the starlink, difficult to get on, difficult to get a hookup. Doesn't really always work everywhere. And they've had other satellite providers, but they quite frankly aren't reliable.

Jessica Denson, Host (11:39):

Talk about your county a little bit, Columbia County specifically. Is it all rural? Is it partly urban? Partly rural. What is it?

David Kraus, Columbia Co, FL (11:46):

It is 801 square miles. Oh wow. It's very long. Not necessarily very wide. It has one major city, lake City, Florida, which is about 12,000. Our other city is about 600, maybe 400. Oh wow. So we are a rural county, very much agricultural based, but we have industry and we have people that would like to start businesses and industry and we have residents that deserve it.

Jessica Denson, Host (12:12):

And what do you hear from residents who don't have it? Are they

David Kraus, Columbia Co, FL (12:14):

Help us? Oh, it's huge. It's a huge issue for 'em. Now on the north end of our county, which a third of our north end of our county is a national forest, which of course has no population.

(12:27):

They electric utility, which is a cooperative, oh, I'm sorry. That's alright. Their electric utility, which is a cooperative, is getting into the broadband business and they're going to run broadband to every one of their rural, kind of like the Electrifying America days, they're going to run broadband. But we have four utility providers, so that's only the north half of our county and the central city. Half of our county, the south of of the county doesn't have anybody to provide broadband. And there's a lot of population relative for us that need it and just can't access it.

Jessica Denson, Host (13:01):

So walking around naco, are you hearing some solutions or similar challenges? What are you hearing from people?

David Kraus, Columbia Co, FL (13:09):

It's a very broad diverse group of people. There's a lot of counties here that are urban, that are large. They don't have the same problems that the rural smaller counties do, but the rural smaller counties all universally have this problem. Like I said, when I compared it to the electrification days, it's very similar to that. At some point we're going to have to treat it that way. Now, when they came out with the broadband monies,

Jessica Denson, Host (13:37):

The bead,

David Kraus, Columbia Co, FL (13:37):

They did not give them to the jurisdictions or did not allow us to do projects. All the projects had to come from the private sector, which is okay, but the private sector isn't interested in rural areas, so it makes it very difficult for us to fill that gap.

Jessica Denson, Host (13:53):

Now is your county working with the state on the bead funding at all?

David Kraus, Columbia Co, FL (13:57):

Every chance we get to work with the state, we do. The state wants to get broadband to everybody in the state of Florida. They're committed to it, but unfortunately, like I said, like I said, we got one electric co-op that would love to get into the business is getting into the business. We have another electrical co-op that has no desire to get into the business, and so they're based just is out of luck.

Jessica Denson, Host (14:20):

Yeah, connect Nation, we often compare it to electrification of the US that you have to invest even when it doesn't make the best business case because we need to all have connection.

David Kraus, Columbia Co, FL (14:31):

Absolutely, absolutely.

Jessica Denson, Host (14:32):

What do you think for your county would be one of the number one reasons to have it? Is it the need for business? Is it telehealth? Is it all of the above

David Kraus, Columbia Co, FL (14:41):

Education? Well, a lot of it is education. It really leaves a large part of your population at a disadvantage when it comes to getting education and even moving on to advanced education. And a large part of it is the entrepreneurial spirit. I mean, even if you want to go home and do your books at home without the internet, it's very, very difficult.

Jessica Denson, Host (15:00):

So has your county organized at all yet around the issue or is that one of many things that you're working

David Kraus, Columbia Co, FL (15:06):

On? Yes. We have one of our commissioners who leads the charge on it. But like I said, our frustration is given the way the funding has been passed out, the county can't be the driving factor. We have to rely on the private sector to kind of bring the projects to us and we support those projects and we don't see the private sector coming forward and saying those rural areas of the county we're going to do because they don't get a return on their investment.

Jessica Denson, Host (15:35):

The good news with BEAD is they're requiring some underserved and unserved communities to be connected. So that is a positive. You should connect with us. Connect to Nation could help. I would

David Kraus, Columbia Co, FL (15:44):

Like to. Very much so.

Jessica Denson, Host (15:46):

Yeah. It is so nice to meet you, David.

David Kraus, Columbia Co, FL (15:47):

Thank you so much. It's very nice meeting you. Thank you.

Jessica Denson, Host (15:51):

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