 Welcome to Coast to Coast. My name is Lily Weinberg and I'm here joined by my colleague, Lily and Crow. Hey, Lily Ann, how's it going? Good, Lily, how are you? I'm doing well. I was kind of in shock when I saw, this is episode 25 of Coast to Coast. So we've been doing this for a while, really looking at the trends of cities, the rapid change that has occurred as we think about informed and engaged communities and really what the future looks like and what does recovery look like in our cities? Last month, we looked at public spaces and we had some really rich information from that evaluation that we released. And now we're going into your expertise around digital engagement within communities and within municipalities. And so I'm really excited for this topic. So what are your thoughts and what are you excited to dig into? Well, I'm really excited to dig into three cities that are working through the challenges of digital engagement. As you and I know, it's been a really, well, as everybody probably listening, because it's been a really difficult year, and cities have to not only move their own operations to a work from home, more digital environment, but then they also had to really keep up with the difficult job of connecting with residents and keeping that connection alive and going. And it just reminds me, the communication between government and residents is a core part of our democracy and it can't be something you sort of forget about, right? And so what I'm excited about is these three individuals have really been pushing on that, both helping to advance their city's digital strategy, but then really like leaning on to like, what is the best way to keep that connection alive and going? Because we know that it's something that's not, that hasn't been mastered by any one sector per se, right? Like a lot of different industries, government just being one of them, if you consider sort of like an industry, like everyone is struggling to figure out how do they keep that digital touch? And authenticity, empathy, trust is such a critical part of it. So today we're really gonna delve into more than a year after the COVID shutdown, how is government maintaining that connection? What are the practices that are changing the way that it's sharing information, engaging residents, and building trust? And that to me seems like a really great media discussion. And that trust piece is just, is really interesting to dig into. Like how do we do that? Like how do cities build that trust, during a rapid change and in a digital nature? So I'm really interested to hear what our guests are gonna say. And especially because we know obviously, we didn't start from a place of trust either, right? And so it's like, and now you have to do it through this medium that in many ways is really, is filled with information. Some of it correct, some of it not. And it's also much more distant. And so, yeah, how do we build that in person? So let's welcome our guests. So first joining us is Ryan Handskin from the city of Boulder. He's an engagement specialist there, leading one of their key programs. We have Emily Yates, who is the smart cities director in the city of Philadelphia. And Catherine Estrada, training officer for the city of San Jose. Their invitations are in, excuse me, their bios are in the invitation and on the website and folks can learn more about them. And the way that this is gonna work is we're gonna, you and I are gonna lead this interview, right? For about 25 minutes and then we're gonna take live questions. So for those of us joining, for those of you joining us live, well, please put your questions in the chat box or through Facebook or Twitter using the hashtag night live and we'll be able to get those questions and share them with our guests. Perfect, yeah, great. Well, welcome and let's get this interview started. It'll be rapid fire for the next 25 minutes and then like Lillian said, we'll open it up. So first I wanna start with some context setting and really understand, you know, get some background from each of you around what you've been up to. So let's start with Ryan. Tell us a bit about Boulder's Community Connectors Model. How did this idea emerge and how has it been employed during the pandemic? Absolutely, thank you. And we really appreciate the opportunity to elevate the work of our community connectors, you know, which is entering its third year here and really focused on supporting a culture change within our city and really looking at elevating voices of underrepresented community members and co-designing engagement, you know, that build trust and increases two-way dialogue. And so this model really features community members partnering with the city and community connectors are paid for their dedication, their time and their expertise. And, you know, coming into, you know, last March, you know, we really saw that the need for the model in emergency response and after devastating floods in 2013 area saw big gaps in engagement and inequity and wanted to make sure to have a model that was sharing accurate updates and basic needs resources as well as surfacing issues from community members as well. Fantastic. And I think you make a really, I mean, there's a very basic point that you made, Ryan, around paying community members too, to participate, which I think is a really important point that we can dig into. But thanks for that context setting. I want to move to Kat. So please tell us about your work part of the Emergency Operations Center for the city of San Jose. What have been the modes for sharing information with the public and what have you learned are the most effective ways of engaging the public? Absolutely. And thank you for the question. So just for a little context setting for those who might not know, San Jose is an incredibly diverse city, over a million residents, dozens of languages spoken at home. And we have this capital full of the Valley moniker, but we're also a hub for recent immigrants of all walks of life. At the beginning of this pandemic, we knew we had a key role to play in amplifying all sorts of public health messages and to do so in relevant languages. Website updates, press releases, social media posts, you've been somewhere on the growing track of it. And with those, we really saw that we had highest engagement when we had straight talk messaging, right? You know, if you are this age, this is how you make an appointment. You are eligible, make an appointment. So just really simplifying it down to what is actionable, readily accessible and in relevant language. We also had mixed success in asking local influencers to record and share safety messages, best practices, encourage people to get tested, et cetera. We're very excited about an upcoming effort in partnership with Knight Foundation to leverage even additional messages within our community who have more of that trusted touch outside of the existing city communications mechanism. In terms of answering the question of what's been most effective in engaging our residents, I can't tell you that there's one silver bullet. I think it's just recognizing that we have a community that has different needs, different connections and how do we try to, you know, have that array of tactics that addresses many of those cross sections and reaches many of those cross sections of the community where they are at as possible. That's great context setting and really excited about our partnership and we'll dig into that more, but certainly a complex issue, like you said, and crosses so many different fields. So let's move on, Emily. You are leading Philadelphia Smart City's work in the Office of Innovation. And while you're not charged with managing public information, you're playing a critical role, a critical role around the innovation piece. So tell us a bit about what you're doing and start by describing this challenges of the city and what you're trying to address when it comes to information sharing and engagement during the pandemic. I know that's a big question, but would love to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah, absolutely. Well, first, thanks for having me as part of this conversation. We would not be on this journey if it wasn't for Knight Foundation support. So always glad to participate in these really critical conversations. In terms of kind of where we're at in Philadelphia, so to help set the context as well, we are a population of 1.5 million, growing city, but also dealing with some challenges around socioeconomics, a quarter of our population lives at or below federal poverty level, which really plays into how we think about engaging our communities. It's definitely a challenge because there's also a fair portion of our population that doesn't have access to appropriate technology or connectivity. And so when COVID hit, we were really just everything that we had been dealing with was amplified. It highlighted even more so the social inequities in terms of where we saw COVID clusters of COVID positivity. And then we also really amplified that digital divide. And so it shifted the way that we as a city wanted to engage our communities. We knew immediately that we needed to develop a digital divide project and we've been working really hard on that and that's been successful, but it's also adjusted our lines of how we engage. And in terms of the smart city space, when this happened and the Black Lives Matter uprising happened, there was a lot of conversation which was awesome to be a part of around, well, what does smart cities mean? In this post COVID Black Lives Matter uprising space where we are seeing these social inequities and it's not about the shiny objects, but really how can we be more thoughtful? And so we've deployed a lot of projects that address either social inequities, building trust with our government and community or budget, to be honest, because that's also something that affects all of our citizens. And so we've got a few projects, two large credit to Knight Foundation for supporting those, but one of the ones we're focusing on is collecting data at a granular level. A lot of cities don't have Black by Black level about the built environment and the impact that that has. This is what I'm excited about because we're trying to have a conversation where we take this data and engage the community to co-create interventions for their neighborhoods and specifically targeting two of the zip codes that have the highest levels of homicide and violence because we know improving the quality of the public space can actually reduce the levels of violence and homicides. And we wanna bring the police into this conversation. To help co-create, to build that level of trust between the police and the community and really shift that perspective of defend the police conversations that are happening. And that's a really unique way of engaging the community. We clearly aren't there yet, but that's our intent with collecting this data that's so granular. We have a project that we're deploying around real-time video translation of over 200 languages and dialects, as well as American Sign Language that is being taken onsite. So we're partnering with our community action team out of the fire department to really connect with the individuals that are dislocated, or dislocated, that's not the correct word, but they're going through an emergency where they can't go home and they need to access city services and they might not speak English as their first language. And so we wanted to make sure that we're able to connect with them effectively, develop trust in that way. But then we're also working with our rebuild team to use these in community meetings where they're going out into communities to determine how to improve our parks and rec spaces or our libraries. And I think there was a feeling that they were not getting quality information or the community wasn't feeling heard because they couldn't speak in their native language. And so it was much more disjointed. And then the last one that's much more internal facing but has a massive impact on our community is partnering with a company called Zen City to track the sentiment of our city. I think when COVID hit, we were seeing a lot of chatter and these were internal conversations where we're seeing chatter around disappointment in our trash collection and communication around that, disappointment in the vaccination strategy and how we initially started to roll that out. And what we saw was an opportunity to utilize technology and innovation, in this case, AI, machine learning to collect sentiment across the internet. It's all publicly available information and kind of track it and determine how our messaging is hitting the community and either being proactive in terms of messaging that we launch or using it to take feedback into policies that we're developing or messaging that we've already issued and use it to readjust our messaging a little bit more. That's a great, that's a great in-depth, you know, understanding of how a city can take that already publicly available data and do something with it, Emily and be proactive about it. Let's jump off of that to talk to Ryan and Kat about, you know, your work is really focused on, you know, engaging, working with actual residents to push the messages out. So once a city has access to all this data, perhaps all this sentiment and now wants to message out, working, you're in both of your models, you're working with the actual residents to push the information out. We've talked a lot about trust. Can you tell us more about in this digital environment where there's so much information, right? Information overload and there's constantly changing information, right? Especially around the vaccine, around COVID. How do you build trust with those messengers and preserve it as all of that is shifting? And then perhaps as you're answering that, just, you know, maybe tell us a little bit more specifically about how you're working with those residents so that we all have a good understanding of what your program is. Ryan, why don't you take it away? Absolutely. I think a big part of that is really meeting community members where they are. And, you know, if folks need access to an internet hotspot then let's help distribute those. You know, thinking about digital engagement, you know, if that is, you know, a bilingual texting platform that has to a communication. If that's Spanish first Facebook page, you know, if that's making sure that information is, you know, in graphics and JPEGs that are really easy to share by text or by WhatsApp or other social media platforms. I think a big thing that we really found was making sure that we could offer emergency response connectors and community members, you know, little nuggets that we could boil down all of this information was coming from the city and the county and the state and the federal level and really have, you know, these are the bite size pieces of information that's gonna help protect your family and help share, you know, access to resources. And I think one example that we saw of really building trust, you know, was last April when city council voted to have a mask mandate, you know, across our city. And we heard from so many families that said we don't have access to masks and we're not able to afford the fabric for making the masks ourselves. And, you know, the city was able to invest and contract with a community organization to employ out of work community members to make those masks. And then looking at disparities within our Latinx community really make sure that those were distributed with an equity lens to community members who needed those most. And I think that really opened the door to demonstrate that the city has your back and, you know, we want to continue engaging in a few of these other ways as well. Kat, you're on me. I say that I'm in awe of just what Boulder's doing. That's awesome in terms of building trust and really putting the actions there. I think our focus in San Jose has really been on that, you know, leveraging the trusted messenger and being the support they need to feel confident that yes, their voice matters in this conversation that they are a leader in their community or looking to them for information and they are a trusted source of information, providing that it's an expectation of we're asking you to share this message which has been vetted by, you know, public and official, et cetera. And, you know, we're not asking you to take on trolls or to address every myth or, you know, every bit of, you know, misinformation that might come across you, but also being a support in the event that you are getting those questions, you're feeling like you should be able to respond to but you're not sure. So I think it's like being kind of a coach or a parent to an extent and that providing the structure and the support and this is what we're asking you to do. Don't feel like you need to take this on. Also has been part of our message in working with trusted community partners to help spread the message. Great. Emily, in your program, it sounds like, first of all, you're all talking about not just communicating out, but actually like as you hear something taking action which is very different from like a public information option, you know, sort of action, right? It's you're hearing that masks are needed or you're hearing that Wi-Fi is an issue and then you're going and addressing the digital, you're helping to connect and address the digital divide as part of your overall engagement strategy. So that's really interesting. And then it sounds like you're also creating a feedback loop that is both pushing information out, hearing back from the resident, taking the action. And as you're hearing that, you know, and taking that back into the organization, Emily, in a program like yours, how are you accounting for a lot of the kind of variation in data and feedback that you get, right? People always talk about like you look at YouTube comments or Facebook comments for the city and it just is such a wide variability of things that are constructive and how does your work try to make sense of all of that? And in some ways, I guess my question is some of those trolls are just as valid, I mean, they're residents of our cities. They have just as valid a point of view in many ways as someone who is offering some concrete, you know, constructive feedback. But as a city in this digital environment, how are you making sense of that and dealing with all of that? So I think that's where it's been great to partner with Zen City. Their platform looks at such a broad variety. We're taking in so many data points that we can really start to look at the trends and aggregate the data a bit more so that it removes kind of the random peaks or the random point of data and really tracks where a large point of feedback is, I guess. So it's not, this isn't, we're trying to present it as part of a broader toolkit where we are noticing these trends, we can set up projects where if we know we're going to be launching, you know, another effort around our K through 12 digital divide, we can track what we're seeing as it positive, as it neutral, is it negative? And then we can start to drill down on the data if we see that there's like a peak in negative data after we've launched that messaging and then use that with valuable insights from the Zen City team to really try to readdress what the messaging we're getting out. And I think the key thing for this is that by doing kind of the trend, the hope is that we will reach a large amount of people and let them know that their voice is being heard. Whereas before, they were just kind of going off into the web and not really being heard. If we're saying we are consistently hearing this, we either need to redirect our efforts or this is in line with what we're already doing, I think that that helps build the trust that the community wasn't feeling was happening as much early on in COVID. Thank you, that's a great answer. I sort of have a quick followup, which is how quickly do you have to act, if you will, in order to retain that trust? Like so people talk, people say something, you're aggregating that data. I mean, how quickly are you in some ways responding so that they feel heard? Is there a sense of that? I wouldn't say there's a sense of that. I think we're always trying to respond as quickly as possible as a city, but it depends on what the action is that we're doing to address what we hear. If it's a policy, it takes a little bit longer, but we have to go through the proper mechanisms and protocol, but I think part of it is also saying, we've heard, this is what we're hearing and trying to use the time between hearing and policy development or project development and kind of having a feedback loop with the community or trying to pull more data, in my opinion, that's kind of the ideal way to do that. Great. I think this is a good opportunity to kind of shift into a bit of a post COVID direction, which is, because we're sort of at that period where we're starting to transition in some ways out of the COVID response and into recovery. We talked about the fact, you and I have talked about the fact that there is a sense that the pandemic has shifted service delivery to kind of a digital-only strategy. And you've rightly corrected me that that's not entirely true. And so can we talk a bit more about the misperception or the feeling that now we've gone digital and digital-only can or should be the way to approach communications and engagement moving forward? Yes, absolutely. And thank you for asking the question because it's definitely something where we know it's the low-hanging fruit. We know it's instant and it's easy to put things online. But we also know that at best, in San Jose, which is a pretty digitally connected city, we're talking to maybe half of our households via all of our different platforms and all of our different reach, which means we have half a million people we're not directly talking to. And so we can't just say, oh, because they didn't come find us, then that's enough. We have to figure out how to reach people where they're at and that we need to recognize that digital communication isn't the silver bullet. We have different people with different levels of understanding of what San Jose has to offer for them and what services are available and how to access them. We need to make sure that we're still keeping some traditional means regarding direct mail and slit drops or even phone calls or knock-and-talks, just making sure that we create those avenues that are particularly seeking to make sure we're communicating with our recent immigrant populations, our older adult residents, many of them still aren't online or haven't had that opportunity to have access. So just being able to be sure that we're not purposely leaving people out and how we design our communications is definitely very important. Great, Lily, I know we're starting to get some questions from the audience. I don't know if you wanna maybe share one of those with our guests. You're on mute. Zoom bingo. You know, you would think I would learn. I think this builds upon the last question. Can you touch upon this a little bit? But there is a question from the audience around what kind of demographic information do you find you're most successful and reaching with your efforts? What do you think contributes to those differences? So, Kat, you wanna? Yeah, I can do the first thing at that. So I would say a couple of factors. One, that San Jose kind of has this like biggest small town era about it. There are a lot of people who are connected to the city already, just, you know, long-term family history here, connections, et cetera. So you kind of have that aspect. Then you also have, again, there is a tech divide that is still real. You have a wealth divide that is still very real. And so you're finding that, you know, our more affluent residents tend to be the ones who are most connected to the city mechanism, right? And so our goal is to let's help get others online as well. So we do have a whole, you know, digital implementation strategy and, you know, connectivity type of programs. But we're also recognizing that that's still not getting to everyone. And we definitely need to be very conscious about, you know, are we still utilizing traditional means of communication and engagement to have opportunities for residents to talk with us and to, you know, know what services are available. Brian or Emily, do you want to jump in with any of your thoughts? Sure, I'm happy to. I think it's, you know, really about a whole suite of opportunities to engage digitally and otherwise. And, you know, whether that be the Be Heard Boulder platform where folks can share their thoughts on upcoming projects and share their perspectives, you know, to many social media channels, to other community newsletters and ways of getting information out. But knowing that some of those want to make sure to co-create with community members because they may know best, you know, what is going to work with engaging Nepal or Nepali community, right? Or what will be most culturally relevant for our Latinx communities. And so really putting a focus on making sure that community member voices, a big part of designing and evolving what's coming up. Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's right. And so Emily, I want to pivot a little bit and go a bit deeper into the recovery piece and how cities are just fundamentally going to potentially be shifting. We heard from Pat, not everything, but there are going to be some shifts. And so I'd love to dig a little bit deeper and share with you and your thoughts there. So every city, you know, has had to pivot towards a digital first approach over the last year. But what do you think you've gotten right? And what are some of the, the I would call them hard lessons learned over this past year? So I think, you know, everything that Ryan and Kat said was spot on and they're things that we're experiencing here. I think we pivoted quickly and really worked hard to get a lot of our critical services digital. We also really tried to engage with the community early on to understand what was needed. I think some of the hard lessons that we learned were that even if it's digitally provided, it doesn't mean we're getting the results or the engagement that we want that we really have to have a broad toolkit of ways to engage the community that don't always necessarily include digital. So there's still value in going out door to door or sending mailers out to engage. I think when we were deploying the K through 12 or when we were still deploying it, but the K through 12 efforts, we thought, okay, well, as long as we call these people, we'll be able to get them signed up really quickly. And what we ended up finding out was that if it had multiple steps or required multiple kind of phone calls, that that was not as successful for the communities that we were trying to target. So we tried to simplify the process and we still didn't have a massive uptake of it as much as we wanted to rather because people don't have the time or the hours of availability didn't work with their hours outside of work or whatnot. So I think just the hard lesson was that it's not, there's no simple fix that we really have to be innovative, which was probably a great lesson learned to be honest. The city became realized how innovative we can actually be in a short period of time. But I think being innovative in how we engage, it doesn't only mean text messages or emails. I think that there are also, and this is something that the Knight Foundation has been really kind of leading, is thinking through creative ways. Is gamification a better way to engage certain demographics that wouldn't be interested in responding to text messages and emails. And so kind of just lessons learned or we have to continue to learn. Yeah. Yeah. That is a good lesson learned. I do just have a follow up with that, Emily. How are you thinking through, I mean, there's a massive amount of infrastructure dollars that are pouring into the rescue act and then of course, future infrastructure dollars. So how are you thinking about those dollars and linking to some of your agenda items that you have around smart cities and digital engagement? Man, is this the conversation of the hour in cities right now? Yeah. Everybody's buying for it. Everybody's got an infrastructure project. I think the way I'm looking at it is what are some basic systems that we need to improve internally that would really help engage and make life easier for our citizens and our residents. But I'm also looking at better, I think one of the areas that I wanna focus on in the next few years in this position is better connecting departmental efforts for efficiencies and recognizing that if we're doing things in the smart city space that they have economic impact and that they have environmental impact and bringing those people more into the conversations and really trying to find creative ways to develop partnerships to drive this innovation, this collaborative innovation. So we're talking, I'm trying to kind of begin an innovation hub here where we start to look at challenges that every city faces around climate, mobility, food systems, circularity and whatnot and really kind of create a hub where we bring in all of the resources that we have in this city around the universities, our private sector, our foundations and whatnot and try to drive innovation in that space. Yeah. Yeah, it's the multimillion dollar question every city's thinking about. I would love to invite Kat, if you have thoughts on that, how you're thinking about linking to infrastructure dollars and Ryan too. So Kat, do you have any thoughts? I completely agree that it's the multimillion dollar question right now, right? Of kind of how do we smartly invest those dollars that we know are coming and building forward our communications infrastructure. So I don't have a good answer. Definitely just wanted to echo that it's definitely at the top of mind for so many cities right now. Yeah. There's a good related question here in the chat about city budgets. I think Emily, you started with throwing that out as city budgets that are often overlooked as a way to impact change. Is any of this communication having any impact on the allocation of city funds? Do you see the potential to actually create that connection back, especially with data programs? So maybe I actually will throw it to Ryan cause I know your program is actually three years old and has been sort of trying to create a lot of the mechanism for feedback and change. Yeah. Thinking back to our initial test of the community actors model was funded externally. And once we were able to approve that model, we did see investment from inside the city and now we're seeing other departments seeking their own communicator teams for some of the engagement that they're doing. Maybe that's part of working groups but really seeing that we're able to build that and increase the proof of concept and really show that look, this is having different results than we've really had in the past and we're hearing from different voices and community members who have been hard to reach in the past. And are you seeing elected leadership or leadership of the city being responsive to, again, the priorities that are coming through from that engagement? Or do you think it's still that next piece of investment and changing in the way we allocate city funds? Is that still, we still have a ways to go there. I think we really have seen our elected leaders be really supportive of this work. And for example, our council just reviewed their priorities, 12 or 13 priorities for this year and then, community connectors really reached out to community members and say, okay, of these topics, which are gonna have the most impact on communities of color? And then taking those top five, we were able to say, all right, as we're piloting the city's racial equity instrument, those are gonna be the top five that we are starting with. And so really making sure that we're lifting up those voices and saying, yes, like we are listening to what our community is saying and we're putting that into action right away. Great. And there's actually a link out to the description of the community connectors program on the web for folks joining us to see the last question from the audience is very related. Not all elected leaders are interested in hearing from the voice of their, or hearing the voice of their community. How can people in other cities bring these programs into the cities? I don't know your reactions to the question, but maybe any also advice on how to start up these kinds of initiatives. I mean, I'll start with just first expressing my disappointment that there are elected leaders who don't wanna hear from the people they represent. And I think that there's some mindset and some training and some shifting of culture that can happen there, even just within the mechanism. So I really hope that there's opportunities in these communities where you're experienced in that to really highlight the value of engagement with your community and highlight examples of success such as what we're talking about today. So I would say that's a key first step, but also that ultimately, just really talking with your electeds about, this is helping your community. These are ensuring wins for your community. This is better serving our public and reconnecting them to that value is something that would be my first conversation. Brian, I think you're in for me. To, can you hear me now? Okay, to add to that, I think really making the case that the city is gonna make better decisions when the voice of community is centered in that and how can we make sure that we're centered with experience so that we can make those better decisions. And I think another piece of that too, maybe many elected leaders in many communities hear from many frequent flyers and frequent participants who know how to navigate systems of community engagement already and how can we work to reduce those barriers to community engagement so that more community members are able to share their voices and bring different perspectives into the room as well. And I would just add, I think elected leaders are oftentimes very risk adverse. They're very comfortable in their positions and so if you can identify an internal champion and start small or big on pilots and Philadelphia for that reason, but if you can prove the value of what you're doing and align it with what their priorities are, I've had a lot of success in moving forward projects in that way just because your message is not your, let me rephrase that. Your intention might be to better hear the voices of the community, but there are other ways to pitch it to your elected officials if that becomes a problem that still gets you the result of getting other people's voices at the table as well. Yeah, that's a great, yeah. The aligning priorities, that is really a great point. So I wanna ask, we're close to time. We still have roughly about another five minutes, but I wanna ask a looking forward question and what we'll do around Robin on this. So his latest research shows that just 20% of U.S. adults say they trust the government in Washington to do the right thing. So 20%, just about always or most of the time. From our perspective, can this greater emphasis on digital increased access to government information and trust and what needs to keep improving the public's perception of government? So I'd love to start with you, Kat. Sure, I absolutely think that this needs to be part of government's platform moving forward and for it to be successful. It has to be dynamic, it has to be timely, it has to be straight talk messages. I think that what you'll find is local governments will have some pickups and actually keeping up with the speed of information in that we're usually fairly thinly staffed in our communications mechanisms. And as we increase these engagement efforts, we have to be able to keep up with the speed of conversations. I think there's gonna be some learning in that for local government. But back to the budget question, is it the priority to continue engaging? Hopefully it is. And we continue building up those mechanisms in which to continue meeting our community in real time with straight talk messages. Okay, so you feel optimistic? I feel optimistic, particularly at the local government level can definitely understand where, but percentage might feel a little bit lower with federal government for recent experience. Ryan, you wanna go next? Sure, absolutely feeling optimistic. And I recall a conversation with a new connector a few months back and who said, I moved to this community 20 years ago and this is the first time that I've felt listened to. My community has really felt listened to. And I think we're really just beginning and continuing along this road. And making sure that two-way dialogue is a part of this process. And I think another piece of that is really ensuring that we are closing the loop with community that when we're asking for input, we're sharing how that's gonna be used. We're sharing, if that wasn't used, why? But really being clear about, here's the next steps after you've engaged with your local government. Yeah. Emily, do you wanna jump in? Yeah, no, I think I wouldn't be in this position if I wasn't excited about the future of digitalization of city governments. I think the challenge and the tension is always going to be that there's that disconnect in human connection when you're using technology. And so how do you maintain the authenticity and the transparency and that feedback loop and doing it in a way that allows people to feel heard? I think the other challenge with it is that cities are not the best at claiming when they're wrong. We don't wanna be wrong as cities, but I think that there's a human component to that, right? And I think that there's value in cities owning if they make a mistake. And I think that that goes a long way with the community as well, especially as we move towards a more digital and a fast-paced life. So those would be kind of my thoughts on that. Great, well, what a fascinating conversation. I'll just pull up a couple of points and then thank you all for joining us. I mean, it definitely sounds like, the age-old model meet people where they're at. That's a real critical piece here. We're meeting people where they're at and that you're really looking at communication, not just you communicating out to the public, but you really engaging your residents in sharing information and them being part of that dialogue. That seems to be a strategy that's really working. And then the last piece, I think you just mentioned, Emily, around authenticity and the feedback loop, right? Like you can't really be authentic if you're not gonna do anything with that info. And you have to kind of deal with the barriers of digital to build that authenticity. But I think investing in it and being willing to innovate, to risk, to try things seems like a great opportunity to kind of move that two-way dialogue forward. So thank you all so much for your time and thanks to everyone for joining us. Lily, I don't know if you wanna say anything else. Yeah, that was the perfect closing. I mean, and it's not complicated. I mean, it is complicated, but the things that we think about doing engagement in person need to be translated also for digital engagement. And so meeting people where they are, just what you said. So thank you so much, Ryan, Emily, and Kat, and Lily, and I'll see you next month. See you next month. Bye, everyone. Thank you. Thank you.