 from San Francisco. It's The Cube. Here is your host, Jeff Frick. Hi, Jeff Frick here with The Cube. We are on the ground at the San Francisco Marriott Hotel in downtown San Francisco at Location and Context World 2014. It's an interesting show, kind of small, intimate, which is fun when shows are first getting started that way because there's a lot of interaction. People are really sharing ideas and doing a lot of business. So we want to come out, get an update on what's going on, and I'm joined here on my next guest, Miguel Gamino, the acting CIO of the city and county of San Francisco. Welcome. Thanks for having me. So what brings you down here? We had Mayor Ed Leon briefly at Salesforce. He was giving away three million meals with Benioff for Thanksgiving, which is terrific. But what are you doing at this show? Well, I think public Wi-Fi was what we're here to talk about, and San Francisco has prioritized that as a core public service. And so we've done a lot with SF Wi-Fi in the last 12 months. Mayor Lee's one of his priority initiatives. And as it relates to the location and context, Wi-Fi and connectivity in general is a core requirement for those location and context apps. So that's an interesting point of view that the city of San Francisco would at least specifically feel that public Wi-Fi is a real priority. Yeah, absolutely. We launched 32 parks recently in partnership with Google. And at that press conference and in the official release from Mayor Lee, he very specifically stated it as the top priority of his administration. So it's unambiguous that this is something we're gonna continue pressing forward with. And what is kind of the foundational things that he thinks that will enable that either we're not possible before or gonna enable new things that he's excited about or not just he, but the administration of San Francisco? Well, you know, it's a really wide array of things that we think connectivity and specifically free high-speed public Wi-Fi will enable. And some of that is the digital divide concept, right? So there will be people that will now be connected that otherwise were not. There will also be a segment of people that are now connected that otherwise found it to be expensive or, you know, they would be connected in a limited way because of either cost or availability. And then there's a lot of people that were connected anyway and will be high users of the system for more robust applications. So it's really the whole spectrum of citizens that we feel will benefit and enjoy robust public Wi-Fi. And then where are you kind of in the rollout of that whole process? So in the last 12 months, we've made major progress. We launched SF Wi-Fi on Market Street all the way from Embarcadero to Castro. And we've, like I mentioned, we launched it in 32, 33 parks and plazas and rec centers with the help of Google and their financial donation. And we're now actively moving forward with SF Wi-Fi in libraries and museums. And we're identifying kind of the next priority grouping going forward. But we're gonna press forward aggressively. Excellent. So it begs the question, and you're the CIO, acting CIO, I don't know what I'm the other guy, they should just give you the job. Is there a kind of a renewed app focus in the city and the county in terms of having services that are delivered via this Wi-Fi platform and really kind of a renewed focus on what that's going to enable in terms of the city serving the constituents? Well, that's one thing that I talked about in my keynote, which was, I don't think we're in the role of trying to build every app or figure out how to solve every problem. I think we are the infrastructure, the enabler to the creative people at Uber and Message Drop and other places that have fantastic ideas and talent to develop those apps. The government does play its role and we have 311 on an app-based platform so we can deliver 311 services to mobile users. We have SF Park for parking location. What's 311? We learned about 211. So 311 is a single way to access all city services. So you can dial 311 on a telephone and ask questions about any city service and they'll direct you to the right place and we're basically replicating that service on an app platform. But so there's a couple of specific ways that the government will get all the way down into the app development world of it, but largely, like I said, the apps are gonna come from the developer community that's here and my role is to talk about how I'm going to deliver infrastructure to help them enable their creativity. Awesome. Any other kind of high level initiatives you'd like to share on the technology side with the city? Well, we're actively doing a lot around open data. We're actively doing a lot within the innovation office with entrepreneurs and residents and we did a hackathon recently that actually resulted in a pretty popular application at the airport that is also location and context based that helps the blind navigate, not only navigate around the airport, but also be contextually aware of their surroundings. So it doesn't just tell them where to go. It tells them that there's a Starbucks at two o'clock and 40 feet, that there's a restroom at eight o'clock, 40 feet away. So the feedback that we've heard is that for maybe the first time, they're not just being directed to their destination, but they're aware of their surroundings. And so that's the kind of thing, it's a perfect example where we're just trying to present the challenges and present the infrastructure and the support and then let the creative minds out there help us solve those. So how did you do that hackathon? I'm just curious. So did you get together some local tech companies and you had a challenge and you brought them pizza and beer or they brought them pizza and beer probably? And that's kind of an interesting concept to use a hackathon to solve kind of a good problem that needed solving. Yeah, it was our, the mayor's office of innovation and Jay Nath is our chief innovation officer. So he spearheaded that and brought together problems and problem solvers. And what I described was just one example. There's a bunch of others that came out. Is it like an ongoing program? They do it every so often or? I think they're evaluating how to replicate it or how often to do it and that sort of thing. But the outcome of this one was pretty good. Yeah, awesome. Well, thanks for stopping by. Miguel from the acting CIO city and county of San Francisco talking about, yeah, we're live. So things happen, watch out. Talking about location and context based services in the city of San Francisco really looking at high availability, high speed, Wi-Fi as a public service. So please, if anyone uses it, hashtag us on Twitter. What's the hashtag? The hashtag is hashtag SF Wi-Fi. That's the Wi-Fi. And tell us what you think about it. We're actively listening and we want feedback so that we can continue to expand and improve the system in a way that's really meaningful to the users. Awesome. So it's in parks and it's on Market Street. All right, super. So thanks again for stopping by. Jeff Rick here at Location and Context World, downtown San Francisco at the JW Marriott. You're watching theCUBE.