 Apologies for the slight delay, but thank you very much for your patience. My name is Ian Wallace. I am a senior fellow here at New America and I direct the Cybersecurity Initiative. My job today is to welcome you here and then pretty much get out of the way and let Chris introduce the panelists. Before I do, I just want to say three things about why New America is so excited to host this conversation. Firstly, Smart City's technology is core to what so many of our programs do. From the hubs that we have in New York City, in Chicago, Indianapolis, Phoenix, California, to the work of our public interest technologists, Open Technology Institute, Future of Work or Worker's Technology team and of course the Cybersecurity team that myself and Natasha work in. Also because New America is all about storytelling. So when we find a good story that we can tell, we want to give a platform so that others can hear it. But third and perhaps most importantly, New America particularly in recent years has all been about American renewal and particularly renewal that's taking place outside of DC. What we found is that often that renewal is the subject of public-private partnerships. So it's a great opportunity to see that work in practice and to give some perhaps inspiration, certainly some guidance to other people who are working in this space. So enough from me, let me introduce Kristin Muslin who is the Senior Editor at Smart City's Dive and I'll let her to introduce the rest of the panel over to you. Thank you so much and thank you all for being here and for New America for hosting this discussion. As Ian said, my name is Kristin. I'm the Senior Editor of Smart City's Dive which is a digital publication covering the Smart City's industry here in DC. And I'm so excited to be joined today with the exact leaders that are exemplifying what it means to create a Smart City specifically in Houston following the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey which struck the city in August 2017. So on my far left here we have Tony Towns-Whitley who is the President of US Regulated Industries at Microsoft. To my immediate left we have Natasha Cohen, a Cybersecurity Fellow here at New America. And to my right we have Sylvester Turner who is the Mayor of the city of Houston and has been at the center of the city's rebuild from the hurricane. And before we get started on this discussion we have a quick two-minute video to show you all that will help stop the stage. One of the first questions is, you know, what is your purpose? Why are you here? What purpose have you entered this world? We have an obligation that as we move forward, that we don't try to restore what used to be, we build forward to make their communities, their neighborhoods stronger and more resilient. The reason we wanted to do a Smart City initiative here, you know, every city has its own fingerprint and this one is very unique. It is one of the largest, most diverse cities in the country as well as having had natural disasters with Hurricane Harvey last year and that's something that we really wanted to help people here and focus on. Three most promising solutions that we're working with Microsoft. One of course will be disaster recovery and response. Whether it's police, fire and medical staff having the same view on where people are in need or where volunteers are located to help those people, this platform gives on-the-fly access to real-world information and allows communication between those involved in the recovery effort. We want to make buildings and schools safer for the millions of people that live and work here every day. Essentially it allows first responders the ability to identify and address threats to the community more quickly by leveraging desperate pieces of data collected across multiple systems throughout the city. With connected buses, we can not only get people access to the internet that may not have had it in the past or make workers more efficient on their way to work, but we can also make the bus drivers safer. The thing I love about working in IoT and smart technologies is it's about improving people's lives. When we come to a city like this, I think about, hey, what would I want my family have access to? In the event of a natural disaster, how would I have wanted the cities to prepare for my kids or for my wife? This city is a testament to what my mom said, tomorrow will be better than today. Wonderful. So to start us off, I'm going to have each of the panelists introduce a little bit of what they do for work and explain to us their definition of a smart city. So Tony, can you start us off? Okay. Well, I manage regulated industries for Microsoft. That includes all the work that we do in the U.S. federal government, state and local government, which is obviously their focus for today. Education, K-12 and higher ed to include financial services. I've got all the Wall Street and the banking community and insurance as well as what we do in healthcare. So every regulated industry that touches every citizen, it's my responsibility of my team to start to infuse Microsoft technology into the answers and how we empower these organizations around the U.S. Smart city. So now segue into smart city. I would define a smart city as a city that pervasively and comprehensively leverages emerging and modern technologies in its public infrastructure all the way through to its private infrastructure that creates that collaborative web that will drive not only the efficiency of its citizens, but the empowerment and the enhancement of their day to day lives and hopefully and most necessarily an inclusive way. I would say the most mature smart city is a resilient city because being a smart city with a device or some profile of technology can be temporal. Being a smart city with a connected infrastructure and a connected citizenry is the resilience that we really define as the most mature aspect of smart city. Natasha. Great. Thank you. So I'm Natasha Cohen. I'm a cybersecurity policy fellow here at New America where I lead our cybersecurity work that is on the state, city, local level, tribal territorial, on SLTT area of cybersecurity. So that's sub federal level and that deals with not only how these organizations are working on the challenges of cybersecurity internally, but also how they're working with partners, whether that's at the federal level or cities that how they work with their states, how they work with counties, and also how they work with the private sector. And when we look at, you know, a smart city and what that means, it's the use really of information and communications technology that improves efficiency, improves operational effectiveness, enable cities to share data and do so securely and also improve the quality and the availability of services, which today are becoming more and more digital in everyday life. Good. Mayor Turner, I'm sorry. How would you describe a smart city, especially now after Harvey? Let me, let me just say good afternoon to everybody and I'm an employee of the city of Houston. I will get their pleasure. Let me just say the city of Houston is diverse and many would say the most diverse city in the United States. You've had three 500 years of storms and three consecutive years, that kind of last year. So we are seeking to be stronger, more resilient, more sustainable. So the way I would define a smart city in the context of the city and where we are going is that we are trying to connect that diversity so that it can be much more inclusive. And we need to have a more connected infrastructure as we move forward, utilizing, agreeing, emerging technologies where we can share data, not only across my 23 departments, but across the city, both in the public and the private sector, to operate much more efficiently and to be much more futuristic, to build a much more stronger, resilient and sustainable community using the technologies that are coming about. So can you walk us a little bit through the post-Harvey recovery process and how you saw that as an opportunity to not only rebuild, but to rebuild smarter? Well, we would be making a serious mistake, but we were trying to rebuild, put things back the way they were. That doesn't provide, make a resilient city. And so what we've said is that we want to build forward. We want to build stronger, resilient, more sustainable. And bear in mind, you all have cost constraints. So how can we improve our efficiencies? How can we operate so much better? Which means we've got to take advantage of all the emerging technologies that are coming about to connect our infrastructure so we'll be better prepared the next time around. We have to deal with, for Harvey, for example, that was, how can I put it? That was, we deal with our stresses and shocks. That was a chronic shock, but we have to deal with our chronic stresses and we have to do it in such a way that regardless of what comes our way, not only we want to survive, we want to adapt, we want to thrive, we want to grow an economy, and we want to be able to pull people together as we move forward. Good. So what were the challenges of getting decision makers on board with that and to not only address immediate recovery needs? Well, when you become, when you're so diverse and that's not, I'm just not speaking in terms of ethnicity or language of all of that, but you're the diverse in so many different ways. So the Houston is 640 square miles. There are a lot of people within it and a lot of industry as residents themselves. So what's important is how do you pull it all together and how do you do it in such a way, where you have limited budgets? Okay. Uh, and I think what we, what we were saying to people in the city of Houston, whether you were a residential homeowner or a renter or a business person, these events are going to keep coming. So how do we protect our, our persons and how do we protect our property and then how do we continue to grow and thrive from an economic point of view? And in order to do that, we have to, we have to work in tandem collaboratively. I agree with Tony had to say, you know, if you don't work in tandem with one another, if you don't utilize all of the technologies that are coming on board, if you're not innovative, okay, if you don't create that infrastructure that can withstand your stresses and your shocks, you are not going to be that city of the future. And so for us, um, we can't just talk about being the energy capital of the world or the largest medical center in the world, Johnson Space Center and stop. That won't, that won't get it for tomorrow and for the days after. So we have to become that smart city, uh, where we are utilizing technologies in such a way that we are stronger or that when things happen, whether in schools or transportation or the environment, we're getting information that's needed and we are sharing that information across multiple departments for the benefit, not of the city, but the people who live in our city that we're enhancing their quality of life, um, and that we are, we remain highly competitive, not just in state of Texas or in the United States, but competitive on a global level. And you can only do that, uh, when you are creating what we are defining as a smart city. We are competing against London. Okay. And I've talked with the mayor there and he said, you know, mayor, we're creating the city of AI. I said, well, you know, so are we, you know, and so the question, the question is who, who's going to get out front. And we had a wake up call, you know, there was one company that, you know, passed us by, I'm not going to mention their name, but you know, they're very grateful for the Microsofts of the world who recognize, um, gifts and talents in the city of Houston. Um, but we work, but when it comes, when it came to venture capital, uh, for the city of Houston, we were not in the top 20. We were like 31 in the coffin foundation and we are the city of Houston, uh, and we said that, that will not work. That will not work. And so in order for us, if we play together collaboratively with all of what we have in the city of Houston, we win. But if we, if we have these silos and everybody is doing their things within their own sector, but we don't have an integrated robust ecosystem, then we're not going to be competitive. And the people in the city of Houston decided this is not for a particular industry. Okay. This is not for a particular sector. This is not the energy area. This is not the healthcare area. Uh, we needed to come up with a strategy and approach that would benefit the city as a whole and could together and let's work together to advance city of Houston as a smart city and utilize everything that we have available and partner with others who can help move us further down the road. So we decided to play. Tony, can you talk a little bit about Microsoft's role in this strategy? Yeah, so it's interesting as you listen to, uh, Mayor Turner speak, you could almost do a side by side comparison in the architectural blueprint of Houston in this plan and the actual technology blueprint that we use there. It's very similar thematically, uh, after obviously, uh, a debilitating, um, disaster there, there was an opportunity to pivot, uh, and that opportunity, uh, the mayor took and then went down, uh, an approach that said, we're going to use a single platform. We're going to enable with cloud technologies and we're going to use internet of things, sensors, and we're going to use artificial intelligence and some of these emerging technology, but technology is always a means to an end. So when we start with the end, the end was this vision of a fully integrated, connected, uh, infrastructure and a set of citizens and stakeholders that were connected. And so when we understood that particular outcome and tried to listen particularly keenly to where the mayor was going, then the role of Microsoft was to say in that frame, what then can the technology do and more and maybe I think even more importantly, which, uh, might be, uh, surprising for you to hear from me more importantly than even the, the quality, which I think was amazingly high of the technology we implemented was us bringing our entire partner ecosystem because that was how we matched the mayor's vision. We have one of the largest partner ecosystems in the world. We identified about 150 partners and then culled down from there based on the sectors and the, if you will, areas of focus. As you heard about emergency and disaster recovery, you heard about smart buildings and safe buildings and safe schools. You heard about connected transportation. We went down through our partner ecosystem to identify where we're the best in class that can service this capability, even all the way to bringing it from Israel. I think we brought the, the organization, uh, the partner organization that came to help underpin how would we get citizen sentiment, I think it's called Zen City, but how would we capture citizen sentiment so that the mayor and all of his stakeholders would be current real time with the citizens? And so I, I would say to you the technology was around in lieu of just trying to do point solutions, which I've been in this city, city next, uh, discussion for two decades and we haven't made two decades of progress, if we're honest and we haven't because we haven't taken into account some of the challenges that cities face, the municipal challenges, the budget challenges, the sort of stratification, uh, old and legacy systems that they have to, uh, a very small discretionary spend. So what we focused on was, and the mayor with the mayor's help was we were going to put a single cloud platform, but then do integration touch points across multiple agencies, multiple functions, multiple sectors, and we would bring in partners that would then buff it this entire, uh, uh, operation and bring in new expertise in that space. That was, I think, what turned this from, and when we look at this project or program relative to some other cities that we've done work in, that's the differentiator. It was how collaborative it was the fact that we were moving in multiple dimensions at the same time and the fact that the infrastructure was supporting that and continues to support that in these sort of multiple sectors, uh, framework. And so, uh, for Microsoft, we are beside ourselves excited by what this means. Uh, and we're not just excited for Houston, as excited as we are for every customer, you are our favorite city. Of course you're our favorite city. At the same time, that's exactly it, and I'm on, I'm on record and I'm sure I'm on record, but you'll hear, and I'll have a different outfit on when I say a difference to you possibly, but I'm on record for Houston. But what we love about this experience is that there are repeatable patterns. There's insight, there's learning about how other cities who have struggled to get to this place that have their own profile, how they can do this as well. And we hope that this becomes a call to action for cities around the country. And so for cities that are looking to these investments to become smarter, to become more secure, how do you strategically think about ROI? Well, you can do more but less by creating smart cities. And when you, every city has its budgetary problems. Every city, I don't care who you are. And you're always looking how can you increase your operations, increase your efficiencies, and how can you do more with less? Because cities are growing, the needs are there, and you're trying to make things work. And when you're able to utilize emerging technologies, create this connected infrastructure, then you're able to meet more needs in a much more efficient fashion. I mean, for us, smart cities, transportation. You know, we're trying to get people out of their vehicles, okay, to use public transit. And so you have to make it attractive. And the Wi-Fi connection and all of that will help to make it more attractive. Public safety, that's another critical component. But we're looking at creating smart cities. We need to look at the environment. From Hurricane Harvey, we're testing the air. Okay, they are testing the ground. There are a lot of things that are taking place, even post-Harvey. So we're using sensors and others to help in the environmental quality, all of us important. Even in my public works department, we're using sensors to determine our sanitary sewer discharges. Metering, we've had smart metering for a long, long time, which leads to even more innovations. Okay, so we can do a lot more if we are creating this smart city where you're utilizing this technology over multiple, I agree, over multiple strategies, multiple departments. And it's not just for the city itself. You know, in terms of City Hall, it's for the people that we serve. And then on top of that, you know, we've got institutions like Rice University, for example, that are stepped up and they are building this innovation hub, they're spending well over a hundred million dollars and other colleges and universities are joining in to make that happen. And we're establishing out this innovative corridor. And all of this is connected when, when I first came in, in May of 2016, and I announced that we were going to, that I was going to create this task force dealing with technology, innovation and startups. And then we went to Israel in June of 2016. They have more startups per capital than any other place in the world. And what they were looking, you know, we went there to learn from them what they wanted from me were the energy companies and the healthcare delivery system that we had in the city of Houston. And so what we decided, you know, we had many of the other elements, but we were not operating in an integrated robust fashion and creating this ecosystem. And then, you know, I'm very thankful for Microsoft for stepping in and being a critical component and not just Microsoft, but the community of partners that Microsoft had to offer. So it takes all of that and more to move the city forward and other cities can learn from it. There's no question about that. It's not unique to Houston, although I would tell you that there is no place to be then the city of Houston. And so wherever people may be today to the extent they come to the city of Houston and see what we are doing in a very innovative and creative way and the diversity that exists in our city, I think people will be impressed by what's there. But it's building a city for the future, not for yesterday, not even for today, but building a city for the future that will enhance people quality of life and pull their diversity together in a very inclusive fashion that meets people's needs. Right. And as our cities become smarter and more technologically advanced, cyber security becomes an issue. So how does cyber security, how do you think about that with ROI? Yeah, absolutely. And I think this goes back to the concept that, you know, a city is a service provider and they're responsible in some way for the security of their citizens. You know, that extends beyond just the physical world and more and more into the digital world as more and more services and systems are becoming digitized. And so the three primary concepts that I like to think about when talking about security and smart cities are, you know, privacy, access to data, and then also availability of services. Because those three concepts touch on the key challenges that we're looking at. First of all, how do you do informed consent in a city environment? You know, these are everyday services. These are systems that people aren't coming in contact with by living their daily lives. How do you enable citizens to opt in and feel confident in the security of those systems that their privacy is being protected? You know, the aggregation of data, the correlation of data, is what makes these systems so beneficial. That's where we get the ROI, right? It's through that amalgamation of data. But then who has access to that data? From the public sector, from the private sector, how is it used? How is it, you know, differentiated? How is the privacy, again, of citizens protected through that data and through the controls that we can put on it? You know, if you have any time you have a large collection of data, you become a target. So what does that look like from a city planning perspective, from a strategy perspective, if you have all of this data, what are you going to do with it, what can you do with it, and who else might want to get access to it? And then the third part of that is availability. You know, as more and more citizens become dependent on these services, and especially when you look at the economic stratification of cities and who relies on city services, this becomes incredibly important. You know, if you're reliant on city Wi-Fi, just to give one example, you know, to connect yourself to the Internet, you may not have a smartphone or, you know, mobile plan, maybe you go to public libraries to access the Internet, those, you know, that service goes down, or the, you know, the proper security aspects to that system were not configured. This is a huge problem. So how do we use availability, you know, to our strength? How do we take all of that technology, make it resilient, you know, use that as saying, these are the services that you were able to, you know, benefit your citizens and increase the quality of life for them as they go about their daily business. Right, so you bring up a lot about benefiting the citizen, and as you are creating a smarter city, how do you keep your finger on the pulse of what the citizen needs? Well, it is important for us to to interface with them very carefully. For example, when I did come in, I created the Mayor's Task Force and that brought people from the academia community, from just coming everyday citizens to the table, people from city home, members of city council, for example, gave leadership to it. So that was the first step. We partnered now with the Rockerfella Foundation. We're doing that. We've been working, for example, with the Greater Houston Pondorship, which was just like our chamber. And we decided, for example, we had this Houston Technology Center that has been around for many years, but it wasn't moving us what we needed to be. And so we kind of shut that down. We formed what we call the Houston Exponential, with a number of stakeholders and partners. And then on a only monthly basis, for example, I sit with a slightly digital council, many of the industry leaders, and I'm at the table myself, and they are advising me on what are the additional steps we need to do. You don't raise the venture capital or get the investments unless you are connected. And so we've started, we've started doing that. And then it's been very important for us to connect the different sectors. There's a lot of innovation that's taking place in the energy sector. There are a lot of innovations that's taking place, for example, in the healthcare delivery field. But there are ways that we can partner in one area benefits the other. So now the Texas Medical Center, for example, it has TMCX. And they're moving forward. Life Sciences, Texas Medical Center, is scheduled to grow in size by about a third. It's already like 110,000 employees. The economic impact could be as much as five billion, about another 30,000 jobs. So now with, you know, touching bases with all of these different stakeholders and seeing the movement that's taking place, working with companies, you know, Microsoft has been an incredible partner of horizon has come in and has been an incredible partner as well as others. Now the Houston Business Journal refers to the city as Silicon Bayou. Okay. You know, we're not trying to duplicate what's happening with Silicon Valley. We're not trying to duplicate what they're doing in Chicago with 1871. But what we are trying to do is to design a city, a smart city, that is uniquely Houston, taking advantage of what we have to offer that can move the city forward in a very transformative way that will be competitive with cities all over the globe. And you can't do that without talking to people and working with them. And and quite frankly, I appreciate the relationship that we've established with Microsoft because now they are working with us and embedded in almost all of our departments. And Natasha, how would you say in a general sense, cities are embracing these partnerships with private entities or semi-private entities? Yeah, you know, the public private partnership phenomenon has exploded over the last few years, has gone on around cities, you know, in states across the country. And really they're looking at it from the perspective that, you know, not everyone can do everything. There's there's, you know, so much that is brought in by partnerships, whether that's, you know, nonprofits, other forms of government or private sector, you know, each of those bring a perspective, you know, whether that's how technology is used and how to, you know, implement that new technology, whether that's information, whether that's, you know, discussion and policy, whether that's workforce, you know, if your partner should, you know, partnering with universities, you know, that just as an example can be incredibly beneficial, you know, you have access to talent, you also have access to folks that are going to do analysis or could do analysis on data that are going to be, you know, formenting those ideas and pushing them out. So whether that's in, you know, the cybersecurity space, whether that's in, you know, development and innovation, that's some of the most exciting things that we're seeing cities and other local governments pushing to is these partnerships between, you know, city government and private nonprofit, you know, federal government, state government to really take what they're doing and augment it in a way that is exciting for the citizens, is exciting for the policymakers and, you know, is creating so much more value across the board. Good. So Tony, looking at Microsoft's partnership with Houston, what are you most excited for and say the next 10 years? Well, I'll say this. When I look at the framework that's been developed to date, you've got to love this mayor. When I look at the framework that's been developed today and the mayor started to touch on it there in his last comments, you know, when we look at how, and my definition of smart city was pervasive and comprehensive emerging technologies that connect public and private infrastructures, the reason innovation begets innovation. And so when we talked about ROI earlier, when a city like Houston can show this integrated connected infrastructure, can show connectivity real time for its citizens sort of all day anywhere, it brings other partners, it brings other innovation. And so the ROI component is really less linear, it becomes pretty exponential once you get to this real understanding of what, where do developers want to be? Where do, where does venture capital want to go? How, where does, how does innovation actually occur? And it generally doesn't occur directly looking at the specific industry. It's usually cross industry and this innovation is occurring cross sector and that's why the model of Houston for us is not only a repeatable one to cities around the United States and the world, but it's also one that's going to build upon itself a new innovation hub, this conversation about where do you want to innovate? So I can anticipate that many more and maybe non- traditional industries that are not right now front and center in Houston will be attracted there, you will find developers attracted to that space and we want to be there part of building and helping to build that ecosystem and, and furthering some of the technologies that we've spoken to. You know, the citizen sentiment analysis that has been part of capturing how are citizens engaging? A lot of this is technology where we're pulling, if you will, using artificial intelligence and other capabilities to pull from social media, social feeds, 311 systems to really give the municipal leaders a sense of where their citizens are. And I think if you look at just, let's just say just the spirit and tenor of where we are in this country, the idea of listening to citizens and really understanding where they are, we believe is going to have a pretty significant arc going forward. Listening, interpreting, translating and getting that real-time sense that citizens are part of their government and that the city is more than just the sum of its parts. As we look forward, and I haven't pitched this to the mayor yet, but you guys can be my first pitch feedback. You know, the mayor went to Israel, one of my favorite places to watch the startup community. It's also one of my favorite places in Tel Aviv, what they call a digi-tell citizen platform. They created, for those of you who know the luxury and hospitality business, this club-med kind of feel, what it is to be a resident of Tel Aviv, where the citizen decides how much data they want to give to their government. But in exchange for that, they get, if you will, a curated experience, they get information about where's the closest child care, what's the best route to work, if your parent is aging and living with you, what would that look, you can design your life with inputs that have been aggregated across the city. So now, to be a Tel Aviv resident, it actually, they call it club-teleb, you're like a member of the club. Club Houston. To start to think about what it means for citizens to feel good about and to feel included in and a member of the club. And so, there's a lot that the rest of the world, London, we've talked about, there's so many great examples what we're also doing in Atlanta and different parts of this country that we want to bring to the Houston experience going forward. But we think this may be one of the most solid and really almost future-proof because of the way it's been constructed, sort of digital platforms that we've seen around as an example. So, real excited about further investment. Good. And what would you say you're most excited for? And do you ever think that you'll get to a point where you say Houston is now smart? We can sort of put our hands down here. If I ever said that, then we are done. Let's put it this way. We're always striving to do better and to be better. And I think that's just a smart approach. I don't ever think that you reach that destination when you say Houston is smart because things change every minute. They change everything. Technology is changing everything. But we have to define what our needs are and then use technology to help advance our needs. What I would say to you with regards to the city of Houston, in the 80s we were known for all in gas. That was Houston in the 80s. Now we are 40 percent dependent on all in gas. We have diversified. So we're moving forward. We looked up one day and we said we were talking about all of the past accomplishments of the city. But from a futuristic point of view we were talking about all of the past accomplishments of the city. And we said that that won't work anymore because every city wants to be first. OK. And so now we find ourselves not having not walking but we are spreading. We're spreading because we recognize that so we have a we have a long way to go but we need to get there for the benefit of the people that in our city. We also said that if we don't create if we don't innovate if we don't move to create this smart city we'll lose our young talent and they'll go someplace else. And then all of these companies that exist within the city these businesses they will look someplace else to find that talent. So we we want to keep our young talent and bring young talent from D.C. and Seattle and Chicago and London and all these other places to Houston. We want to attract more businesses. So we have to create that that connective infrastructure. So there's a lot that we need to do and we're trying to do a lot with the budgets that we operate that we have but I'm very optimistic about the future of city of Houston because what we've decided we're not going to just play from an individual perspective. This is not just City Hall. OK. This is the city of Houston as a whole. And just like you know what these analogies that we have used the Astros won the World Series because they played as one. The Rockers have prevailed in the past because they played as one. The Houston Texans. Well they're learning to play as one. But when we play as we say in the city of Houston when we play as one working with our partners we win. And like my mother said tomorrow will be better than today. But you got to keep pushing at it. So for the cities that are looking at Houston as a model of what they can implement what advice would you give them. I will say you know look and see what look at the assets that you have internally and then quickly look at partnering and leveraging what you have with others on the outside and recognize that if you're just standing still you're moving backwards. If you want to be a stronger city you have to move to be a much more resilient city and much more sustainable. And cities have to constantly innovate. Twenty five years ago Houston was not nearly as diverse not nearly as diverse as it is today. Today one of four Houstonians is foreign born. People are coming from all over the globe. So the city has changed quite a bit. And then you have to give people what they're looking for. As my daughter reminded me when I ran for mayor she said dad don't just build a city for people your age. And she said you know bear in mind you know build a city that's not only current but build a city that that people want to come to they find appealing. And I heard a very loud and clear so which means that when I'm pointing people to boards and commissions I'm I'm pointed the head of a board of commission that was like twenty seven years old. When I said to her your job is to put people in these boards and commissions that will move the city forward and push us forward. Well the same thing is with relationships you have to build relationships with people companies businesses that can advance you forward. And that's why you know you know they have a lot of favorite companies. But you know Microsoft you know you get you really love those who really just love your back you know you know a folk who don't give you any love don't spend too much time with them you know when people show you who they are as my Angelo said believe them. And in this case Microsoft Microsoft has shown itself to be a friend and as a passionate mind said either shows himself to be friendly is your friend. So I appreciate that. Great. How about you guys what advice do you have for cities. You know cities are the closest to their citizens. And I think that provides them an enormous amount of opportunity that goes along with some of these challenges as the world becomes more digital. And so you know use that as an opportunity to get this right. This is a time when we're instituting new technologies we're renovating the way we think about technology and implementation. Think about privacy and security you know from the outset build that in. That's that you know this can be a first time that we get this right on the implementation of a technology. So that's what I'd like to see. So just maybe building off of this amazing mayor here on the platform. I agree look is the first. We've got to look at the assets of your city look at your profile look at where you're strong and you don't need a natural disaster to start reimagining who you are. You know Detroit's reimagining not based on a natural disaster of moving from their core industry. Seattle's reimagined twice from aerospace to tech to now cloud. So look at what you have and then learn. You heard the humility of we went to we went to Israel to learn. We went if you have every answer then it's a very quiet conversation. Right. So there's a learning of an a willingness to learn and adopt and to get past the not invented here mindset. Learn from others that have learned that have brought best practice or insight to it. Then this whole idea of leveraging I mean this Houston is a perfect example of what I would call as an economist train the perfect leverage model. You're leveraging the agendas admittedly the agendas of many different stakeholders that are all triangulating towards a vision and they have enough of that vision in their agenda that they're willing to buy in. You've got to create a vision that brings everybody to the table. Of course everyone has an agenda private sector has an agenda public sector. But all those stakeholders if you can find enough in that Venn diagram you can leverage. And then finally there's nothing there there just is not an algorithm for courage. You just have to take a leap. At some point it will never be fully thought out there will not never be a 95 percent blueprint. You won't have some perfect algorithm or machine learning bot that's going to tell you this is the exact time and this is the right stakeholder. You've got to have political courage and leadership courage to take the leap. So from look and listen and learn and then there's just got to be some leaps that happen and I'm just so thrilled to be part of this one with Houston. Great well Houston has definitely been one of my favorite cities to watch especially in the last couple years. And I think as we move forward it's definitely going to serve as a model for other cities that are hoping to become smarter and I'm excited to see how the partnership plays out in the future. Unfortunately that's all the time that we have. Let's give a round of applause to our panelists. Thank you all so much for being here. Enjoy the rest of your day.