Listen as Laurie talks with Ken DiScipio from Tavistock, on what technologies exist in the smart city of Lake Nona, FL and why people want to live there
Listen as Laurie talks with Ken DiScipio from Tavistock, on what technologies exist in the smart city of Lake Nona, FL and why people want to live there
Speaker 0 (0s): Podcasting from great gate studios. It's time for Connected with Laurie tune in every other Wednesday to learn about the future innovation of technology and advanced tech trends. Here's your host. Laurie Caruso
Speaker 1 (15s): Hello, and welcome to Connected with Laurie. I am your host Laurie Caruso on our show. We try to highlight the future innovations of technology, and I am so excited to have my guest who is going to do just that on the show today, we're going to be talking about us connected smart city called Lake Nona and that's located on Orlando, Florida. And I'm super excited to have my guest here to talk all about it. Mr. Ken DiScipio from Tavistock. Hey, Ken, how are you?
Speaker 2 (47s): Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (48s): Oh my gosh. Thanks for being here. As I mentioned, it's so important for me to highlight innovations, future technologies. And I got to say, every time I talked to you, I am so intrigued at what you're doing and you know, I've got so many questions. I am just so excited to be able to present that to my audience today and go through what kind of innovations you are doing today at Lake Nona, I'd love to get a little bit of info from that and what you're doing, what do you do?
Speaker 2 (1m 19s): Yeah. You know, and, and, and for me too, every time I call you back to Tavistock and Lake now that I'm excited to see what we're doing, you know, 'cause, you know, we are changing so quickly. We're adding technology. A lot of what we're doing is, you know, we're, we're building a City right. We're building a smart city from the ground up. And we are looking at all of the different areas of life, whether it's education, it's healthcare, it's, you know, how to cope organizations operate from their space. You look at the platforms and the pillars and what they're trying to achieve.
And it's about efficiencies. It's about performance, but its also about recruiting and it's about retention it's culture building. And what we've done is we've sorta taken, you know, what technologies can we add to enhance that experience for the occupiers of Lake Nona whether there were a residential occupier or there were a commercial occupier
Speaker 1 (2m 8s): So and you hate it. When I think of Lake Nona I mean clearly in Orlando you think of Disney, right? So it was a little bit different for that. But when I think of Lake Nona I think future, I think like a, a, a 5g performance, the, the innovations that you just can't understand and to, to understand what you're doing today and having these conversations. I'm so excited to present that because I know that, you know, just to have some sort of incubator testing facility, to be able to see what technologies can ride in exist.
That's the exciting part. Now I know that people live there. Right? So you're working with homes and people in those homes. They're Connected all the time. Talk to us a little bit about what that looks like from a residential perspective and we'll get into the commercial side too. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (3m 1s): Absolutely. And Laurie, you know, what's funny, as you said, when people think of Orlando and they think it Disney, and so when you get off of you're playing in Orlando, I'm going to see a giant billboard, you know, throughout the airport. And it's going to say, you don't know the half of it. Right? It's because people think of Orlando as being Disney, which is a big part of, of Orlando. But then if you look at the other half and it's a capital of simulation and you think of all of this technology, you think of NASA, you think of all these things that have ended up in this space coast, and it's really sort of led to, you know, this explosion of technology back in the sixties, but it's happening again.
Right. And so like no-no, when you think of, you know, what will talk about the residential, you talk about, how do we enhance that user experience, right? How do you enhance the, the experience of the people, you know, where they live, but what we've done is we've taken all those different areas of living and building homes. And we said, you know, how can we enhance that in the first major move we made was back when we started developing Lake no-no we put, we were a Cisco, it was first iconic one G right? So everyone had tremendous bandwidth and, and through the bandwidth and, you know, and with COVID, we'd now been able to sort of validate those movements that we did back in 2007, 2008, where people are, are able to work from home.
So you'll look at going into the VAR pre virus, about 29 to 30% of the people living at Lake Nona were working from home or operating a business from home. And you look at all of a sudden under COVID you look at people who had to be forced to work out on a home, but they have these tremendous resources. And so then you start moving into, you know, we experiment with a lot of technology from a sleep habits and everything. We try to do it. We try to take from the technology, what we're experimenting with.
We try to relate it back to how does it enhance the, the, the, the life of the occupier, but, or The the resident, but how do you enhance the, the, the user experience back in the office too? Because that's generally how we pay for a lot of things. And so when we do a sleep study, we look at it as for improving the life of the resident, but we're also improving the efficiency and a productivity of that resident buy, getting a better night's sleep. There are more productive before noon the next day.
And so we kind of look at everything from, from different angles. So that sort of thing. So when you look at it, in terms of a UV sterilization, we've been doing this for years, four or five years now, and now it's sort of on everyone's mind now because of COVID. When we started doing it, it was enhancing like let's reduce sick days and the office, but also let's make, make our residents the healthier. And so we were installing and experimenting with UV, the sterilization and the kitchens and the bathrooms. And so there's a long list of products and materials. And how do you use those materials?
So what's the best materials to, so we've really kind of take it from the standpoint of, we have an innovation team that evaluates things and we are living laboratory, and we're going to go, we'll go with this too, is we're doing a lot in the form of telemedicine, right? 'cause we have a number of major hospital's right at Lake Nona. We are able to experiment with ch children's, telemedicine, seniors, telemedicine. And then you start looking at, in terms of 72% of our residents are sharing a wearable data and medical data, eating habits, exercise habits, and we're able to take that information.
And then what's called a live study, and we are not telling you to evaluate and, and, and, and really improve the quality of life of those residents and answer then you are looking for, but I'm trying to cover the gamut there.
Speaker 1 (6m 45s): And I have a feeling too, after this podcast, we'll have several more because there are so many other features every day, like I said, I talked to you, I've learned something new, or you learn something new because there's so many of the innovative products that are coming on the market that work well in your society, so to speak. But I have your quote Lake Nona was recently called out as the most sophisticated example in the world of what master planning have for wellness can accomplish So. And it really hits it there because, you know, if I'm a resident and I'm living in this community, I am wearing this watch or this wearable device.
And it's, Connected all the time to let me know what my body's doing, how it's doing. Am I going to get sick? What's going to happen next? And I have health advisers there helping me throughout to make me healthy. I mean, why wouldn't I want to live there, right.
Speaker 2 (7m 43s): But I'm not going to argue with that. But what do you know, it's interesting that you say that, you know, there's so much technology out there that what I think we're really good at doing is helping sort of introduce the technology, improve, maybe the usage of the technology and find ways to monetize it. Right? And if you start looking at, you know, you started going down a path where the technology that is a new technology, not many have heard of it, but I think everyone will be wearing it fairly soon.
It's from the founder of Jawbone that help the company, the product is been renamed, that all health. And if you think about a wearable that has a 94% accuracy of forecasting, but you have COVID right by looking at your biometrics, comparing yourself, your sleep patterns. And you start looking at, in terms of this could be the passport, how we get back into space, because it looks like people are going back to hotels and staying in a hotel right now, people are going back to eating in restaurants.
People are slowly going back to the office, but there's a comfort level that we haven't met yet. Any of you started thinking about a health certificate that not only was, it was good. COVID introducing us to get back to space, but it's also good for linking to a reservation system to say, Hey, you can't come to the ER at that hotel today because you have signs of COVID or you can't go to that, that restaurant reservation, or don't come to school today. We are going to get a COVID test. The usage goes far beyond code COVID.
So we are seeing these technologies and experiment with these kind of technologies and have, and have a weekly interaction with these companies. Because what we're trying to do is be an example of a place where people can try things out and those things could be monetized or scaled elsewhere as well.
Speaker 1 (9m 35s): So true. So we talk about smart cities and clearly I feel this is one of the smartest cities out there. I know The also Tavistock. And I'm curious how Tavistock got into this to begin with, like, where are the goal was what it was, you know, obviously you were talking monetization, but are you growing? Are you expanding? Are you going into other parts of the country? Are you doing this in parts of the world? What's Tavistock doing with us? You know,
Speaker 2 (10m 1s): So Tavistock is focused on Lake Nona as really our center of excellence. And so when you look at, in terms of the growth, but we still have a lot more girls to happen in we now that, but when you look at Lake note and what we're doing, I'm, you know, we're, we're, we're exploding in terms of where the residential, you know, we built this, this medical facilities called a medical city, which has a children's hospital that Cisco uses for it to showcase their technology.
You've got one of the most advanced and newest VA. I think now that has been one of the VA opened, but it was the newest a BA in 50 years. If you think about when the VAs we're built in the fifties, they were geared towards men. And how do you have 40% of the women in the service they need to get their, their healthcare needs met as well. So we have this VA, which is a showcase of medical. We have the national SIM SIM SIM Learn center, which is a showcasing in terms of teaching our, our, our best doctors at the VA system procedure's and honing their skills.
Now we've had HTA building in adult teaching hospital on, then we also have to first a, a medical school. You, you see, as a medical school, it was the first medical schools are built since the 1999. So you think of this cluster of what's happening at Lake Nona and the things we can do with this, with this volume of cluster, and now having five G and having these incubators that are geared towards health and wellness and sports, 5g incubator, it's a, it's a joint venture with a Verizon. You think about what we can do in this cluster.
And so, yes, we are expanding and Tavistock has as over 200 companies that are in the portfolio, we're doing things I'm, you know, around the world and around the country, you know, we've, we built one of the, with the most advanced, from a technology standpoint, stadiums of the world, a, you know, we have a, we have a, a, a sports team called Tottenham spurs will play out of this thing, and then outside of London, which, which actually can accommodate football as well. You know, there's an interchangeable a field, but it's not just, doesn't just stop it.
But it's also having this struggle as the, the, the, the fan and how do you, how do you provide them the amenities of going to a stadium, but doing it efficiently? Right? So we take a lot of the technology, whether it's wearables, it sensors, it's cameras, and we incorporate those things across all platform.
Speaker 1 (12m 27s): Any particular reason why you picked Tavistock picked Orlando?
Speaker 2 (12m 32s): You know, it, it, it really developed out of the availability of land. The Lewis family was based in Orlando at the time. Unfortunately, the citrus crop was suffering at the time and a bit too, to some, some diseases that spread the citrus crop got wiped down. Mr. Lewis had the ability to buy some large chunks of land. The land happened to be contiguous. This is probably the most important factors of, of Lake no-no the land is contiguous to the Orlando airport.
So you think about every major city has been built around in a, either a Seaport on a bus terminal or a train station. If you think of it, if you think of these transportation, these places that have built these cities. Now, you think of the future of transportation is aviation, or do you think of being, you know, in the proximity to the airport, the Orlando airport has named it, but there are calling it an air. Tropicalis write this joint venture between us and in the airport. And you think of what's happening. What's coming soon. You think of a, a passenger drones is you think of all of these and these possibilities.
And, and that's the reason that, you know, were, were in Orlando. We have this opportunity where a link known as 17 square miles, about two miles from Lake no-no. We have a, a smart city called <inaudible>, which is about a hundred square miles. And so you look at the possibilities of building these cities, look on the East, cities are popping up across the country, but what's, the challenge has been, is that San Diego is producing great technology or trying to incorporate great technology for the better of our residents.
You look at what Miami is doing. When you look at New York, you looked at these cities and you can go on and on about the cities, but what's happened is there's always an election. There's always a lack of capital, and no one wants to be a first mover. And so we don't have those constraints. We got a very good relationship with the two mayors of Orlando, the mayor of Orlando and the mayor of orange County. We have patient capital through Lewis family. We, we have to figure out a way to make it successful, but we also can be a first mover.
And then the city can come along with us. So, and a lot of ways the city might give us direction on what they're seeing. The cities are producing great white papers that, that smart cities, but because of those other three constraints, we can be a first mover and then pull the city along with us.
Speaker 3 (15m 4s): Very exciting. And I can't wait to get into on the second half, some of the different things that you'd see while you're walking down the street at Lake Nona. So I'm going to take a quick commercial break will be right back after these messages. Montgomery technologies specializes in riser management for commercial office buildings. Montgomery's award-winning riser services are provided at no cost to the building and include 24 by seven, by three 65 access screening, cable management and enhanced tenant services and liability protection.
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Hello and welcome back. I'm so excited again, to have my guest Ken DiScipio from Tavistock talking about Lake no-no and all the exciting things that go on within that community. And Ken before the break, we were just talking about what things I'd see if I was walking down the street in Lake Nona, that would be different if I'm walking down the street in this community. Talk to me a little bit about what I've see that
Speaker 2 (16m 42s): There were a Laurie, you know, at first glance, when you're walking down the street are driving through Lake Nona, you know, you are going to see a quaint new city that's being built. And when you start to peel back the Curt, the Curt in a little bit again, and then to start that all of a sudden going to pass an autonomous shuttle, right? And I'm going to see this on top of the shell. Goodbye, you have that, you know, there's a, there's, it's, it's the first shuttles and the country that are in a mixed use, a two way traffic. So, you know, we're working with department of transportation to help set the standards and create a facilities management platform for these autonomous shuttles.
But you're gonna start to see in terms of your going to see a high school, and you're going to C, you know, ball fields, but what you, when you start to dig in a little deeper to these things, and you're going to see very creative ways of how these things were financed and how they were put together and then technology and infrastructure, and that was overlaid I'm, you know, glancing at the, you know, the, the commercial structures that Lake, Nona, you're going to see these buildings that are, you know, very, very, very beautiful windows, but those windows are Smart windows at smart glass, you have an IP address in every pane of glass, a pane of glass, and turned into a 5g or a 4k monitor.
You start looking at the taking of air quality sensors, and you start looking and all these things, and you dive into a little deeper, right? So, you know, look, you're not gonna be, you're not gonna be shocked and see this technology glaring attitude. You get to see a very beautiful city that has an amazing golf course and amazing facilities that makes the schools restaurants, but a lot of art that's sprinkled through like Nona, you know, that were, were, were overlaying. And that's part of being Smart is overlaying culture. But when you start to peel back, you're going to see a lot of smart things done.
You know, what are the, one of the things that struck me? And then I moved to a big no-no from Silicon Valley five years ago. One of the things that struck me was the ability to build a culture, right? You think of everyone that like Nona is new. Everyone has moved from somewhere else. I'm from Brooklyn, New York. It's not like your generations of family members from Brooklyn, and you move there, there's embedded culture. And what Tavistock has been able to do with our partners and a big help from the city of Orlando is they've been able to build culture through programming.
You look at Laureate park, which is, which is a one neighborhood in Lake no-no. And you look at the ability for Laurie and park to create over a thousand events a year. And what does that do? It gets people to come out and it gets people to bond. That's what you're going to start to see. And when you see a sense of community, you know, and it's a really interesting, you, you look at these studies that have been done about the deterioration of communities in the United States, but why were communities successful? Why our community is successful?
And you can trace this back to KPMG as a white paper from 2018 September, you can trace this back to communities in the 1970s at the peak of successful communities in the United States, it was because people were around their infrastructure. They grew up in this neighborhood. They didn't go further than an hour or an hour and a half away from their neighborhood to go to school. And then what happened in the seventies, people started going venturing out past, you know, an hour, hour and a half to go to school.
Companies started transferring residents. People started to be moving away from home, and it sort of was the deterioration of the, of the family. And so what Lake know I we recognize that. And we do things when we build homes that requiring a, you know, it was one neighborhood. Everyone is a front patio, it was on his furniture on the front patio. Everyone is a glass door, all the homes are near the sidewalk. And you see these areas when people are extremely close to each other and a successful bond.
Speaker 1 (20m 28s): So incredible. And you know, you were talking a little bit about smart glass, and I'm also curious when you go into the house, what happens? What do I see beside smart glass? That sounds great.
Speaker 2 (20m 43s): When you go into a home on leave, knowing that you are going to see a well, if you go into the smart home at Lake note on it, which is the example of technology, you are going to see a lot of these things and explanations on a why that's going to help your health a bit better materials. You know, you go in and you'll see a, you know, a cork floors and you're going to do it. Not that we were saying that every home should have a cork floors, but you are going to see that it's better for someone
Speaker 3 (21m 8s): ] Yeah, I can't. I mean, you know, clearly outside now we're inside. Tell me some of the other things that I'd see inside a house at Lake Nona.
Speaker 2 (21m 23s): But if you go on to a home at Lake note, specifically, if we go to the smart home, Lake, no-no what you are going to see. As you want to see a lot of examples broken down by category, by room of things you can do inside of your home, right? It gets people thinking about in terms of what's the future, how do I become healthier? How do I know how to increase my quality of life? How do I increase my bandwidth too, to work from home? And there is even if there's even exercise examples in rooms of X exercise, facilities, equipment, you can put on your home, but what you are going to see is your going to see example of when you first walk in, have a corporate a floor, right?
And we are not saying that everyone should have a cork floor, but what we are saying is like, I have asthma and allergies. And what we're saying is that it might be a better materials for you to put it down on your floor. All right. So what we're showing you, examples, you are going to see, you're going to see, ya know, walls of plants. She's going to see Lance growing and refrigerated, refrigerated cabinets. M you're going to see the latest innovation in delivery from Amazon, where you have a lockbox, that they can a, they can, they can enter it through the outside and put your packages inside.
And you can retrieve them from the inside. You even have a retrieval systems that are refrigerated. So you get your groceries, right? You are going to see these examples and, and what it is is just to get you thinking, right? But the fundamental infrastructure is the fact that the residents now I have two gigs under a coven, and we've increased the bandwidth for the homes. People have two gigs. It allows them to efficiently work from home and allows them to have these materials in their home. I know that, you know, my, my second home that I have been in a Lake Tahoe, we suffer in bandwidth.
I might have a a hundred megabytes. I get, I can barely survive. You know, all of cameras systems. So you know what it is, is an example of what you can do. And then on the whole other side, there's a certain lead of a minimum level of sustainable products that you are required to have a right. So you are required to have the better windows in a better appliances. The things that's the that's the bare minimum at Lake Nona right? So you start going into the homes and then you see what people have done with this, right? Like, look, we can set the tone of Lake Nona but you see what are the people that wear they've taken It the culture.
When it talks about culture building, we can the example, but we are, the culture is grown to, it was unbelievable. I've had, I, I have to tell you this story, but we've had multiple examples of people going into there's a restaurant called canvas its right in the heart of a residential area. That's a little removed from some of the commercial and in canvas, very neighborhood restaurant, a very good restaurant, multiple examples of people sitting alone at the bar area at a table and people from the neighborhood.
Cause everyone's new have come over and said, Hey, look, I don't know if you're new or not. Or you're you're in a neighborhood are eating alone, but we have a group of people over here. We want you to come join. It just happens all the time. 'cause people have had their very proud of this culture. That's been set it like NoDa. And it's an example of through programming and then through enhanced sort of nudging of people to, to be social and get to know their neighbors and get those fundamentals of back. When I mentioned, why, why neighborhoods we're successful in the seventies?
We've sort of given the nudge and people have carried it forward and it's developed its own culture.
Speaker 1 (24m 52s): So what kind of people live there? I mean, you have the families, is there a certain median age that that's attracted to this? Who would I meet there?
Speaker 2 (25m 3s): I have to be careful to answer this question cars in the past have come out of the game, giving demographics. And you know, when I will lead by is there is something for everyone. All right, great. He is in terms of M you know, there's homes at the country club that are a state Holmes, there are two very nice homes circled around like a, Laurie a park and apartments for everyone, for their micro apartments. The other, such a neat concept of a micro apartments where it's something you'd find in New York city or San Francisco on market street or Austin where they're micro apartments with a great coffee shop in a community center, the bottom and a built in rideshare program with a Tesla.
But you are going to see something for everyone. And that's, what's unique about Lake Nona. Now I'll talk about meeting and sort of, you know, the median age, the average age is 36, but, but here's, here's, what's very interesting is that the average household income in the United States is around $59,000 a year. Average household income in Orlando is around 44, $42,000 a year. The average household income in Lauria park is a, a $165,000 a year. So you think about this average age of 36, 30% before the virus were working from home with this average median income that the household income of a 165 people have moved there because they are technology oriented because they're there, if it becomes successful, but to do something for everyone, right?
I'm just taking one area. So you think it, the reason, the reason I mentioned that is because I think, and we think it's because we embedded the technology with Ling 25,000 miles of fiber. And with that 20,000, that's why we have a thousand miles of fiber. We've created a work environment for people to work from home, to incubate this as an incubation environment. So it sorta like we're proving out these examples of how to build a neighborhood, how to build it, how to build a community.
Speaker 3 (27m 12s): So you talk about all of these, you know, innovations and I keep going back to that word because it clearly is that you must have some sort of attraction to other companies coming in, are moving in because they are so intrigued with what you do. And they're also thinking, wow, I can make some money here. I have products that would be suitable here, plus a workforce of, you know, healthy people coming to work flows. Talk to me a little bit about what you are attracting there, as far as the business,
Speaker 2 (27m 42s): You know, when we were attracting it, you know, we are open to attracting anyone. If we just hear it in, on sectors, of course, healthcare, telecommunications, sports, you know, because there's certainly some like, you know, in terms of, when you look at a, a simulation, of course, there are certain categories that, you know, obviously like aviation and aerospace that we want to develop as a cluster, but you can, you could make the argument two is that by giving these companies, any company, great resources and great ability to build a culture, you can attract any one and helped our business grow.
Right? If I go back to this fundamental there's key fundamentals, our, I want to be able to recruit good people. I want to retain those good people, but also want to give them the ability to be efficient and, and more productive. And So, you, you look at what's happening, we're attracting all different sectors,
Speaker 3 (28m 43s): You know, and I saw it too on your website in a few other locations. I mean, you have some pretty important people visiting Lake known as well. And having them, you know, on stage doing panels discussions, I think Sanjay Gupta was doing a moderating a panel there. Talk to me a little bit about that attraction too, of all of these, you know, large key players, people coming to Lake, Nona getting to know the area. Talk to me a little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (29m 11s): You know, you, you, you can set one up quickly. It's a living laboratory for people to try things. And then there's the community. People don't necessarily move there because they're healthy. You might have athletes. There's a high concentration of athletes. People move there. 'cause, there's this feeling. I think they can move across the street and live in a community across the street. But we have a waiting list of Lake Nona of, you know, people that are out there, you know, waiting to get in. And we try to build those homes quick enough, but it's, it's a traction to be a part of this community in the culture that it's build.
You know, I it's, it's tough. It took me a couple of months when I got there to find the right words or, or describing it and look up and do a site selection for 30 years all over the world for the biggest companies in the world, for them, for the biggest, you know, I'm a real estate companies and I couldn't pinpoint it. I knew within two hours of going out to Lake Nona that this is a plan.
This is a place that like no other, you know, spending 11 years in Silicon Valley and working all over the world and working in Australasia and seeing these, these plan to communities are built in China and traveling the world, there was something different and it's took a while to pinpoint it. And I think that that's why it's special. 'cause you can't pinpoint it. You can't just walk in and say, I'm going to use examples, but if you can't just walk in and say, Hey, this is successful because of this, because there are so many things that are successful because they are intertwined.
And they talk about these, these 24 platform to intertwine, whether they're health and wellness, there are sports there, all these different things. It's the, it's the overlapping gray areas that make it successful. And that that's the best way to explain it because it's not one thing it's not just because we have five G and we're doing a Verizon 5g debater. Its not because we laid 23,000 miles of fiber. It's not because we have these, these phenomenal facilities to work from. And he's an opportunities to incubate from.
There are places that you'd have to go to Silicon Valley or New York city or Austin to get. But they're in Lake of this area. That's 15 minutes, 20 minutes South of downtown Orlando adjacent to the airport. And this is so much you can do there
Speaker 3 (31m 37s): So much. You can do the lifestyle is definitely key. And the fact that, you know, like you said, you would use that example that everybody wants to, you know, be friendly and it, it, it it's just as a society that people want to, or are there they're attracted too, so to speak. So I'm curious, you know, when I look at something like that, with all of the offerings, everything that I need want to be successful in healthy, what is something like this cost? I mean, is it just the same? I can buy a house fairly, you know, its expensive these days, but what does it look like?
What does it look like from a cost perspective?
Speaker 2 (32m 14s): Well, we are the average home in Laurie park has around five 25 M you can get, you can get a, a micro apartment for about $3 a foot. You could get a, a, an apartment that's a very standard, a nice with a, with a lot of amenities. Cause it's like, no, no there's amenities everywhere. A apartment for about a, a dollar, a foot. Mmm. It's very affordable, right? It's a, it's a place, but its also the amenities, you know, our tremendous amenities.
You think of it. Everyone is a place to work out. Everyone is in place to swim. All of the communities have community centers. You think of the importance of swimming in Florida, especially, you know, you think of its the only sport that can save your life. If you know how to do it, think about that as much as you want. But if you can't swim, you just take it right to the bottom. Right? So you think about everyone as the ability to work out, everyone is the ability to exercise and, and I, you know, the apartment living where the community living, I relate it back to a very similar to being at a nice resort, right.
That when you walk into the pool areas at like Nona, whether you're living in an apartment rent or you're living in a, in a home there's cabanas, there's food service at the pool, there's volleyball courts as a basketball. And if you have this feeling of your on vacation, but you know what, Oh yeah, this is your home. And so it's really important to, again, I haven't said this yet, but if you think the biggest factor in the United States, the two things want to get over here is the loneliness, which is really is a piece of the mental health.
And do you think of going in to the virus, the coronavirus, you think of all of the people that are trying to get out of New York city or to get out of San Francisco, they've been cooped up, you know, you think about mental health and loneliness and the connection to family. And I'll relate this back to you. When you talk about it, you talk about Sanjay group done Deepak Chopra, dr Oz, and some of these other figures that are very involved in Lake Nona as advisors to Lake known that, but you think of the importance of mental health. You think of the importance of loneliness, go back to build and culture.
And you think a lot of these things come together. If people love where they live, they're going to be healthier. You know, you think of like So we told me the other day and I, and I believe in them because of their credentials as a family. Good. But they said that, what do you think the key to longevity is once you're over 50. All right. And so think of this you're over 50 years old, what's the key to longevity. Is it continuing to work out really hard? You know, that, that that's going to help is to continue in, to eat healthy.
That's going to help the most successful thing to like keep the longevity on to living a lot longer is the connection to having a family infrastructure and a friend infrastructure. It, you know, you, you think about that. And at first that was kinda like, well, you know, hopefully you've done a little bit eating and exercising up to this point, but you think about going forward, that is, that is the deciding factor, right? You know, you know, you think about this. So you go back to mental health, we all struggle with maybe family problems or challenges in the workforce workforce.
If it's so easy, everyone would have the same jobs, right. It's not easy. It's stressful. So you need a place to go in a sort of de stress. And I think that's where we've done a very good job of creating this infrastructure in the community that relates back to the workforce because at the end of the day, and we pay for a lot of these things cause of the commercial tenants. And as we continue to develop the commercial tenants, which is vital, it's a building with Nona because you know, every time we get a commercial tenant, it's another, you know, it's another, a group of people that, or that are, that are there working on that can be studied, but as well as, you know, we can try new things and offer new things and they bring new culture to us as well.
Speaker 3 (36m 22s): Wow. It's just incredible to know that yes. You know, from a, a social standpoint, how it does absolutely affect your longevity and couple of that with you now, all these other metrics, whether it's, you know, being, you know, obviously athletic and getting out there and working hard for fitness eating, right. But there's also some aspect to have information so where people are wearing devices or there Connected all the time.
There are also making sure from, you know, the university that you're next year on the medical side, that people are connecting to you saying, OK, you probably shouldn't be doing that, do this instead. But that information is critical as well. It's like being at a doctor's office 24 seven in your home. So they can absolutely be on you just to say, okay, maybe it's change your habit here,
Speaker 2 (37m 19s): But, but do you know, what's funny is you say that and you know, what I haven't dove too deep into is, you know, what we're finding is that technology hinder improve almost anything. If you take example of the USTA who built their national campus of a a hundred plus courts at like Nona through the overlay of technology, it it's, it's, it's a technology that came in Israel that was a military technology. They're able to now improve the quality of tennis by really using a camera systems that really MAPP your body that are looking for trends in your body.
It's looking for your weaknesses, looking for your own, it's a SWAT analysis. Right. And that's what it is. And so, you know, we think about how important it is to do squat analysis as in the business that overlaying this technology. But they wouldn't of been able to do it if they didn't have this infrastructure, at least know that. Right. And then you take a look at, you know, UCF medical school. When you, you know, look, you can go on and on of examples that every building it like NoDa and How either, you know, culture, technology influenced better outcomes.
You know, I like to say, you know, the, the shorter version of our mission statement that I love to say is it's place to data and technology. It could be the best version of yourself, right? It really is whether you are a student, you're a, you know, you're operating a business. If you're given the right tools, you can have better outcomes. And that's what we try to provide you with the better tools.
Speaker 3 (38m 53s): Absolutely. And talk about, like I said, innovation right here. We have it here. So one last question I'm going to leave you at. And I'm curious, we talked about the pandemic, all of the things that we've had to change. I am so curious whether personal or professional, what was your pandemic pivot? What are you doing today that you didn't expect to be doing today as a result of the pandemic? I'm curious. Why are you,
Speaker 2 (39m 22s): You know, a couple of things that, you know, from a, from a work standpoint, I think we've all taken advantage of the technology that we had at hand and a very easy transition into something that I've done. I've been preaching for me for 15 years in terms of having the ability to work from the road, having the ability to work from home on a personal standpoint, it's really been amazing to be, you know, around my family more and really seeing them grow, see the little things and, you know, my son's learning and had to play the piano and he's, and he's that he's growing like a weed.
So he was playing more sports. And, you know, the two of my kids are on the weekends. It's the teaching him how to stand up paddle, but really I'm teaching them how to surf, how to surf, you know, but, you know, it's really sort of, you know, having been one of the club back some time still be efficient, still, you know, put the hours in and the productivity and be efficient enough to club X and time to spend time with the family
Speaker 3 (40m 25s): So important. And that's absolutely key. So I am excited to somehow get down to Lake Nona I know you and I have been talking about this, but I want to bring what is actually happening to the audience. And I'm hoping that with the things, you know, hopefully changing and eventually Ken travel, I will be down there and I will make sure that we have some, some takeaways from, from our discussion here. But I also, in what we are looking forward to having you, I know I'm excited and we're going to continue these podcast conversations with you two, because I know you are going to have so much more probably within the next couple of weeks, given the fact that you have innovation on a constant basis.
Ken DiScipio, I am so happy to have you on the show and I'm looking forward to the next. Thanks for joining
Speaker 2 (41m 12s): Me. Thanks for having me
Speaker 4 (41m 15s): Interested in being part of our show or advertising on our podcast, contact us at info, a fifth gen media.com for more information, we'd love to be a part of your success.