 In about 23 years of working in local government I've gotten the opportunity to work on a number of amazing different projects but I've never been as excited about something that I'm working on as I am right now with the innovation work that we're doing in West Sacramento as a result of the Council's 2015 Strategic Plan direction and specifically the Code for America Fellows program. Code for America is a non-profit organization that's been around about 10 years and their mission is to help local governments make better use of technology. Their flagship program is the Code for America Fellows program which is like a Peace Corps for Geeks in essence. It's an opportunity for mid-career tech professionals to take a year off from their normal duties and spend that time working with cities helping them solve problems using technology. So we competed for that. The cities have to compete and the fellows that participate also have to compete and it's very competitive on both sides. Our application was done in collaboration with the Sacramento Area Council of Governments that were selected so we have three fellows if you can put up the first slide. Here they are, you're recognized Mayor Cabaldon on the left and City Manager Martin Tuttle on the right. That's Iminal, Natasha and Grant in the middle and they've been working with us. They came in February initially and they did a residency phase where they were doing all kinds of outreach and then they've gone back to Code for America Headquarters in San Francisco now where they're working on prototypes for the program. And the policy arena that they're focused on is food which is relevant from a policy standpoint both to the city and to Saekong. So they're working on prototypes that focus specifically on food access and they've got a number of different ideas for projects in that sphere. So they're working on those and we expect them to be refining their prototypes in the coming weeks and coming up with a final project that they're going to work on which we expect the final deliverable for in September. And that's good news for West Sacramento because they're going to come up with the work product will be a computer program or an app that will help us deal with food access issues in West Sacramento but they're going to design the program from the ground up to be scalable. So with Saekong's help it will be something that we can share with the region. So that's something for everyone in this room to also like. But to me the application of the final work product isn't necessarily the best part of the program. The best part of the program to me is the opportunity to observe the fellows in action and learn from these people, these private sector technologists, folks how do they attack problems and what do they do and how can we apply that to our work and local government. So if you go to the next slide. This is the fellows at an urban farm in West Sacramento and you'll hear more about urban farms. I could have picked any one of a number of different pictures for this though because the purpose of this picture is to talk about how we didn't know when we started with this project what the work product was going to be when they're done which is a really unusual thing. When you think about we're paying to participate in this program yet we're committing to do the program without knowing what the work product is going to be. And I think that's been an interesting ride for those of us that are used to the normal way of doing things where you do know what the work product is at the end. But it shed some interesting light on the question of procurement practices in general and I wonder when we do an RFP, when we do specifications, when we do a scope would it not make sense in some instances to give our consultants these experts that we're hiring for more degrees of freedom to actually iterate and work like the fellows to come up with the best possible outcome that they could for us. So next slide. Another important idea that we're getting from the fellows is they have a really close adherence to a philosophy called design thinking which is way too big a topic to talk about in one sitting here but they really like the idea. They sit down with their user groups. This is actually a group of food insecure folks that was put together for us by the Housing Authority, Lisa thank you. This was a great meeting. You can see the look on the women's face. There was a lot of engagement, one-on-one conversations and what the fellows did is they used these kind of interactions to get insights into their user group's needs and then they go back and build their prototype. They come back and talk to the users again. They sort of induce early and frequent failures in an effort to basically drive towards the most relevant useful work product that they can. So basically rather than running away from failure, they push it and encourage it and use that as an educational tool. I think there's a big takeaway for us there. Next slide. This is the last idea that I want to share. This is Natasha explaining to City Council member Mark Johansson and some others at a SACOG meeting how the project works. And you notice the sticky notes in the front. Another thing that we're taking away from these fellows is their amazing alacrity with ideas. They take ideas and put them on sticky notes. They put them on flip chart paper. Basically they're using office supplies that you could pick up at OfficeMax and using these incredibly sophisticated yet inexpensive techniques to elaborate their ideas. And basically you can count on if you're in an ideation or brainstorming session with these folks and you say something, it is not going to be lost. It's going to be captured. It's going to be prioritized, sliced, diced and utilized. So all that user input that they get doesn't get wasted because they utilize these techniques. And to me that's a huge takeaway that we can also use. So in conclusion, we're really excited about the work product that we're going to be getting at the end with this application. We're also looking forward to taking the lessons that we learned from the fellows themselves and kind of systematizing those, turning them into some training materials or other materials that we can use internally in West Sacramento and then ultimately put in some form that we can share with all of you all. And so we can all hopefully take a little bit of that private sector sort of tech startup DNA implanted in our organizations and use that to make ourselves more efficient, more effective and to deliver better outcomes for our communities. John, it looks like you're going to be rewarded for being willing to start something without knowing how it's going to end. And it goes back to Bill's idea of being prepared to fail if you need to fail so that you can advance forward.