Hi #SmartCommunity friends! This is a bit of a bonus episode of the Smart Community podcast because we are catching up with a former guest but it’s a very different conversation than we usually have. So in this episode I have a brilliant chat with Joy Taylor, who you might remember from way back in Episode 154. Joy is a banker turned Coworking Space Founder and Startup Mentor, turned Software Developer and Digital Nomad. So when we last spoke, Joy was the Community Manager of Canvas Coworking space here in Toowoomba, but in this episode we talk about how that’s changed as well as why and how she decided to re-train to work in tech. Joy tells us about where she has been travelling as a digital nomad this year, and we discuss the differences between levels of infrastructure compared to levels of community in big cities versus more regional or rural locations. We finish our conversation talking about the power of living by your values, and the importance of providing relevant, timely and easy-to-absorb information for people in order to elicit behaviour change. As always we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it.
Listen here:
What we cover in this episode:
- Joy’s background as a Banker turned Coworking Space Founder and StartUp Mentor turned Software Developer and Digital Nomad
- What is a Smart Community to Joy
- How Joy learned to be a software developer and why she wanted a ‘day job’ after years of running organisations
- Where Joy has travelled this year as a digital nomad
- The differences between infrastructure and community in big cities versus more regional or rural locations
- The benefits of travel and some of Joy’s best travel tips
- The power of knowing and being conscious of your values so you can make better life decisions
- The importance of providing relevant, timely and easy-to-absorb information for people in order to illicit behaviour change
- Joy’s data-driven approach to her side project
Quotes:
“For me, it’s about people who really consider the environment that they’re in and the best ways that they can manage that. That could be environment in terms of physical aspects, or it could be even more of the emotional state of how an environment or the space makes you feel….So if there’s a little bit of tech that comes into it, that’s good. But sometimes it’s not that and when you’re in an environment where everyone can be engaged in a way that suits them, I think that really is a Smart Community.”
“I wanted something that was going to let me work out a bit more independently, certainly work remotely, because we wanted to travel, that was always the goal. And whilst running our businesses is great, sometimes you just need a “Nine to Five”… I didn’t want the responsibility of having to market my services and invoicing and all that stuff. I wanted that shift. So the goal of learning to code was so I could actually get a job.”
“Everyone looking for work knows how important it is to have a good network and I have an awesome network of people. So I got a job pretty quickly as a software developer.”
“I reevaluated what I wanted to do, and then was really specific, and applying for roles that really suited me with companies that I found had a really good alignment on my values. I was fortunate to get a couple of offers, and then chose one. And I’m still working for them today.”
“The Netherlands is obviously quite well known for being logistically superior to a lot of other countries. The buses and trams and trains and things are super efficient, and you can get around really easily… But then on the community front, we were house sitting [within] a row of townhouses. We barely saw or met anyone, the cars were there at night, the cars were gone in the morning, and they were off to work.”
“Infrastructure wise [staying in cities is] good. But it becomes more challenging to engage in community when you don’t speak the language. And that we’ve found a little challenging.”
“We can be conscious that if we want to encourage others, we’ve got to put the information where they’re seeing it at the time that it’s relevant for them to actually absorb it. And in such a simple way that it doesn’t require any effort for them to absorb it.”
Links:
SCP E154 Working and Learning in Remote Communities, with Joy Taylor
Producer of our Podcast Ellen Ronalds Keene
Coworking Bankso in Bulgaria
TechStars and StartUp Weekends
App Happy Cow https://www.happycow.net/mobile
Joy’s new website https://enjoylifeadventures.com
How to Save The World Podcast by Katie Patrick http://katiepatrick.com/podcast
SCP E234 How to Save the World with Data and Humans, with Katie Patrick
Connect:
Connect with Joy on LinkedIn
Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community
Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube
Podcast Production by Perk Digital
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