Summer Series: Forever Expanding Data and Digital Law in Smart Communities, with Raymond Sun and Susannah Wilkinson

Hi #smartcommunity friends! Welcome back to the Summer Series here on the Smart Community Podcast. As you know, we’re taking a little break from new content over the Australian summer holidays, and instead we are sharing the replays of a few of our all time favourite episodes. This week we’re sharing my conversation with Raymond Sun and Susannah Wilkinson from Episode 276, which was released in February 2022.

Ray is a solicitor at Herbert Smith Freehills, specialising in technology, media and telecommunications and privacy law. Susannah is the Digital Law Lead - Australia & Asia at the same firm, leading the development of Smart Legal Contracts and the provision of digital law solutions in conjunction with the development of the Australian National Blockchain.

We start off by talking about Ray and Susannah’s backgrounds in law and their current work looking at how laws are able to adapt to the new issues of emerging technology. Ray then tells us about his passion for technology and AI, and Susannah, her passion for improving digitised processes and how that involves the law, before they tell us what a Smart Community means to them. We then discuss the importance of data in Smart Communities, the increased use of data and risks associated and therefore the importance of having legal frameworks in place. We then discuss how data leads to Smart Communities and emerging technologies.

Ray and Susannah then share with us a bit about some of the projects they were working on at the time of recording and we finish our chat discussing several emerging trends including; lawyers roles in Smart Communities and forward looking legislation, digital twin representation and accountability in the ‘real world’, more flexible and adaptable infrastructure projects, shifts in privacy laws and finally digital identity.

We will be sure to get Ray and Susannah back on the show in future for a full update about what they’ve been up to since we recorded this episode and how our thinking has progressed since our conversation. But in the meantime, as always we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it!

Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community

Connect with Susannah via HSF Digital Law Group Website

Connect with Raymond via LinkedIn

Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community

Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube

The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital