 We are very fortunate to have with us for this session in terms of talking about community strategy, somebody who also had a run-in with transportation, right? And so to start off this session is Mike Kennedy, who is the president of the Maryland Energy and Sustainability Co-op. Thank you. This will take some getting used to. Thanks for coming. We're part of the show to talk about the local solutions to sustainability and energy solutions. I've been doing this since I got laid off about three years ago and was very interested in energy and sustainability. Before that I was a real estate developer and so I thought it would be very interesting to get into this field and started doing it at the level that a lot of the other exhibitors are here or at, which is a much bigger level, sort of a policy level, even internationally. And in a lot of those conversations what I thought was missing was local solutions to the big problems we're facing. And so about two and a half years ago I started talking to people about what would be the best way to actually get these things done in our communities, to actually get first, of course, energy efficiency and then maybe even some renewable energy into our community. So we would create more of a distributed energy grid and not have to worry about all the smart grid and big power plants. So we did some research and we asked people what they wanted, which is a good thing to do when you're trying to figure out how to do something. And we were told by residential homeowners and also by small businesses that they really wanted an easy way. This energy efficiency and sustainability is pretty new to everyone and so they wanted an easy way. They wanted us to provide that for them and they'd also like to have some discounts if they could please. So we originally thought we were going to go into this and actually become the energy auditors and the weatherization people and create a kind of a worker co-op. I should explain the cooperative. We thought a lot about different forms of business organizations. To make a long story short, I went to a national cooperative business association meeting and was really taken by the principles that the cooperative businesses operate under. In the cooperative community, when you talk to others in the community, they first ask you, what can I do for you? I wasn't used to that and so that was kind of appealing. And I like also the aspect that cooperatives are local. Part of our mission is to create jobs on Main Street by promoting small local businesses and growing them so that we create healthy economies locally. So we formed our cooperative and we were going to then hire people and have people come into the cooperative and do energy efficiency upgrades and weatherization and solar and all that sort of stuff. Luckily, I had a smart board of directors who said, isn't that an awful lot to do? Those are like all these new business startups and by that time I realized that there were actually people in the community who were already doing these things. There were energy auditors who had licensing and insurance and all those things and there were weatherization people and solar people. So we decided we were going to be sort of the middleman between the suppliers that already existed in the community, the small business people and the consumers of those sustainable goods and services. And that was kind of a unique form of cooperative to have the suppliers, the people, the businesses who are actually doing all this work have to join as members in the same cooperative with consumers. The reason the suppliers come in now to our cooperative and we have 20 suppliers at this point. The reason the suppliers come in is to have access to our green-minded consumers. We kind of are a marketing arm for them and they also are required to offer discounts that are special to our consumer members. So that's our value proposition to our consumer members is that we have pre-selected consumers from their community that we have pre-screened and really certified as the best in the community. And then the discount that comes along with that. So that's the two things that our suppliers or our consumers join the cooperative for. We want to save time and the hassle of going out and looking at different solar providers and different appliance suppliers, for instance. And they also want a discount. I came into this with a real sort of zeal for the earth and a hope that people would join the cooperative just because it was a good thing to do. And really it learned that people want to do good things, but in this kind of economy you have to return, you have to provide a return on investment. You have to create a value proposition. So that's what we've done. Almost anything you can think of to do to your home to make it, to take advantage of the opportunities that exist to be more energy efficient and sustainable and save money. We have a provider for it. We've got a new, so we have supplier members. We also have consumer members who are individuals. One minute, okay. And I've said that they come in for the discounts and for the peace of mind. We've just established a new consumer membership which is for bigger corporations to come in. And we're having a lot of success with this. So a corporation like Marriott that just joined our co-op locally. They joined and we can provide their employees now with a discount membership so that they can come in and take advantage of the co-op benefits for all of their employees. The newest thing we're doing, I just want to say two last things, we're rebranding ourselves as green savings co-op. Our mission is really to become the AAA of sustainable goods and services around the country. We're creating a replicable model locally that we hope can scale around the country, otherwise it wouldn't do as much good. We're also, we're rebranding ourselves as green savings co-op. And we're also bringing more suppliers at the request of our members for things that people do every day like green dry cleaners, green cleaning supplies, green maids, green movers, restaurants, organic restaurants, all those kinds of things. So that's a new growth model for us. So I don't know if there's time for questions. Well, since David's not here. Okay. David is here. Oh, he is. Okay. Good. I think what's also really important though in terms of what you've just heard is again the variety and the kinds of small businesses that are generated at the community scale in terms of really bringing people together to help make this as easy as possible. So now we are going to hear about another strategy. And we're very pleased that David Sklar, who is the CEO and founder of Star Island Bahamas, is here to talk about that. Thank you. I apologize if there was any lateness. We had some timing issues. Anyway, thank you for being here today. Our project called Star Island is Star is just an acronym for sustainable terrain and resources. And this really speaks to what we're doing. We currently have this island in the Bahamas and we are using it as a platform to create the world's first totally clean energy carbon neutral island resort. And the idea is that people will be able to come experience a very desirable lifestyle and essentially take this sustainable test drive to see what it can really be like in a very real world and tangible way. Currently, we don't have a lot of examples of different places that we can go and experience clean technologies, sustainable operating practices and other elements that people associate with being green in a very easy way. It's not typically very user friendly. So our mission is to create a place that people can come and experience in a very real and tangible way these elements. And so what we're doing in specifics is we're utilizing solar technology, wind technology, hydro energy, biofuels, biomass, a blend of all the technologies that are available today and integrating them together in a fashion where we're creating zero energy independent buildings and then we're putting them into a very small micro grid where they are able to interconnect and work in tandem. The idea is that when one's not being used it's still generating energy for the others. The result of this is actually the elimination of conventional utility bills and the ability to have a stronger grid because the more that we grow and add these buildings, these energy independent energy producing buildings, the stronger our grid gets. It's the inverse of a conventional. So clearly it's something we're very excited about and we're fortunate that we've got a beautiful platform to showcase this. And our feeling is that a lot of the mainstream public doesn't have the opportunity or the time to really understand what's available to them and there is a typical association that there's a sacrifice involved in implementing these technologies or this type of lifestyle that it requires some sort of sacrifice or a huge introduction of capital. And our mission is to show that that's merely a myth. And as people come out to our island and are able to experience it firsthand, they'll be able to see that. Thank you.