Dantia chief Joshua Sattler's plans to drive population growth and prosperity in Lake Macquarie hinge on data and youth

"I'm thinking 10 years, the contract is for six, but I want to make generational change," the 47-year-old ex professional league player says. "It's a great lifestyle and why not contribute to local community and the economy? This place will look very different in 10 year's time and if I can enable that I've done my job."

Mr Sattler's last role was as deputy CEO at the City of Darwin and he and his family, including three school-aged children, are settling in Lake Macquarie after he was head-hunted to drive Dantia.

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Raised near Wollongong (his dad was a builder, his mum worked in hospitality and the family ran food outlets), Mr Sattler went to school in Sydney then trained to be a chef.

"I climbed the tree very quickly, I was an executive chef at 26, looking after properties in South East Queensland ... I was straight into a corporate hotel and tourism structure where you have to apply sustainability into everyday, solution-based thinking," he says.

Later, Mr Sattler completed a degree in Environmental Management (Social Sciences) and by 2018 was working as a senior economic development officer for the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, charged with helping businesses become competitive to win Games contracts.

"There was $2.2 billion worth of [Games] infrastructure spend and it needed to be dispersed across local economy," he says. "At the end, 86% of contracts delivered were by local businesses, and that result it didn't happen overnight."

Moving to the Northern Territory for the role of general manager (innovation, growth and development services) at City of Darwin (where he later took on the deputy CEO role), Mr Sattler steered the capital's Smart Cities' agenda. Switched On Darwin, a $10m investment in LED smart lighting, free Wi-Fi network, smart parking technology, environmental monitoring systems, wayfinding kiosks and mall audio facilities, was the driving force behind the introduction of e-bikes and e-scooters, helping to reduce congestion and increase micro-mobility.

The "real time inputs" and live data from these initiatives created what Mr Sattler labels a "digital twin", giving the community insight through explainable transparency, and building trust in the process.

While he won't use a "copy and paste" approach to his Dantia role, Mr Sattler says Lake Macquarie can nonetheless benefit from his past experience, particularly in Darwin, where these initiatives have gained national recognition and, he says, earnt him a reputation as a pioneer in the Smart Cities landscape globally.

"A lot of digital twins look at longitudinal data sets. The ones I want Lake Macquarie to focus on are rapid data sets... for example, identifying where pedestrian movement is at different times, what shops people linger at, overlaying it with WIFI presence reporting, and many other layers to provide insight," he says.

"The critical part of digital twin is having a single pane where the data comes in to give critical information to multiple users such as business cohort, councils and government, to inform decision-making, to change pathways toward education and investment. We are great in government at collecting data but not knowing what to do with it, but digital twin opens it up for cross-pollination.

"Dantia needs to be that mechanism to collect the data, to then visualise it and to provide insight: for example, 'Do we have a micro-mobility issue because no-one is using parts of the shared path network, or are there parts of this network that need rectification, or how can we influence the night time activity in a public space with lighting?"

"Why wouldn't Dantia want to be the vehicle to provide this insight and enable the solution, accelerating community participation and enabling productivity and investment?"

Mr Sattler believes Dantia's 2018 Economic Development Strategy, with its vision of making Lake Macquarie one of the top 10 most liveable cities in Australia by 2038, is a "guiding force".

He also believes that Lake Macquarie needs to build its identity.

"It has been invisible. I have been looking from afar, Newcastle and the Hunter are out at front and Lake Macquarie seems the connective tissue fibre rather then promoting what it has," he says.

"We have to flush out business doing great stuff. Dantia needs to do that. It needs an implementation plan that is a bit shorter, but the Strategy still resonates. We are doing work just to pivot and create an action plan for the next three years as to where we go."

Mr Sattler says Lake Macquarie is unique with its natural environments and is crying out for promotion - the trick is how to do it without it changing too much.

"Liveability is health, security and lifestyle, it is already here, it's about unlocking it. For me it's a beautiful recipe we just have to blend it and mix it. It's already here," he says.

"The locals already know it. The biggest issue is, do you want more locals, and I guess education around why we need more locals is part of our role."

In fact, Mr Sattler hopes with more innovation and "bold thinking" under Dantia, that by the time he's done in the role, the population of Lake Macquarie will be far larger.

"That is a real driver for me, for me to make a bold assumption and say 'I'll contribute to increasing the population of this area in the next 10 years' ... Population and productivity are critical enablers and if we can join the dots and make it a place where younger placer people want to put roots down and create roots of their own, then we tick the box. We have to apply 50-year thinking, not just four years in political time."

To make a start on that goal, he wants to reach out to high school students on a creative, innovative level.

"Yes, we are good creating engineers working on blueprints, but music, photography and the arts we are not great getting into the ecosystem, so that's one area that we are looking at, because they are the next cohort to put roots down and create families and stick around," he says.

"We don't and haven't that in Australia really well and took that from experience in China, they educate creatives and enable mistake-making as part of the innovation process. That's something I will look forward to rapidly putting in place."

Mr Sattler believes that Newcastle's progression will enable that of Lake Macquarie, just as Brisbane "enabled" the Gold Coast.

"It's the way it works, it takes one to push forward and others step up, the beautiful synergy is there," he says.

"It's not one competing with the other, it's about collaboration to make sure we all join the dots and move the region forward, region-thinking is one of the clear changes."

Though acknowledging the pressure of COVID-19 on business, he believes it has driven the development of technology in business.

"In Asia, QR codes are the number one ID driver, so all of a sudden Australia is thinking they are good. All this contactless innovation should have been here," he says/

"I think it's been fantastic from an innovation perspective and people getting to know their own region because we can't travel and localities are banging their chest loudly."

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