contain joe smith in that room, we can deny his access out. so, contain, that's an example of remote lockdown. [please stand by]

who are responding so they can contact maybe the security guard has him pinned down in a certain area. maybe he locked himself and he could see what he was doing and have an officer walk up there. floor plans, again. keys. please don't give us keys like that and i'm trying to rifle through that and i have to get through an area and take 15 tries to get through. the one over here on the bottom, that is the one i'd like to have. two, three keys. basically master key. and then if you can, put them into a kit. have a set floor plans laminated. put them in a kit. as soon as we get on scene and there is an active shooter incident, you can go here you go. it will have keys and hopefully a charged radio and floor plans and we can sit there and start

looking and make contact and make our plans from that area. ok. so, when it actually happens, call 9-1-1. first and foremost. so, right when i was making this powerpoint up, i contacted a dispatcher and asked him how does 9-1-1 work because before it used to go to vallejo. now if it goes off at cell towers, but the cell towers being busy, that phone call will be bounced back to the c.h.p. so you have to give them what's going on. the minute this is happening, people are getting hurt. if you can try to programme this number in, 553-8090. put it under san francisco dispatch. that is the emergency line for civilians. this is already preprogrammed. call s.f.p.d. and lit go right to them. don't assume other people are

calling law enforcement because often people don't. the more calls we get based off this, the more it tells us this is legit. this is going to be something big. if we get five, six, seven, eight calls on this. one more. so this is information to give to the 9-1-1 operator. location, physical description of the shooter, and number and type of weapon held by a shooter and the number of potential victims at the location. you don't have to tell me for the weapon, the glock nine. it's funny because that is what everybody always describes every single handgun that we come in contact with. the guy shot him with a glock nine. ok. can you tell me was he holding it with one hand or two hands? two hands tell me it is a long gun or rifle of some sort. handgun -- one hand is obviouslily going to be a hand gun. and then number of potential victims. try to tell us how many victims

are need aid. he hit 15 victims and that els us how many ambulances we need to respond as well. sorry. delay. ok. again, what used to be -- this is the -- if you are actually in the area where the person is shooting and you potentially get hurt yourself, it used to be just lock yourself down. that was the original way of responding. now there is an option base. it's hard to fight. this is for if you are actually being pursued or if the shooter is right next to you, right room next to you or so on. it's run, hide, fight. run, obviously just find whatever quick access you have. and that is one thing you should be thinking about even before this happens. think about the exits that are coming that are near you. anytime you're in an area, in a building you are typically in. think about the exits that are near you and have a secondary exit and then run to it. know where it goes and try to get people at it as you can. hide. if you can't run for wha*fr

reason, hide. -- for whatever reason, hide. turn your cell phones off or your vibrators off. hide and barricade the door. put tripping hazards, barricade the door with a copy machine or desk, tables, bottles of booze. and then fight. and get ready to fight. so if that person does get you your barricaded room, fight. have a mind set that you are not going to die today. use anything for a weapon. bags, purses, chairs, more bottles of booze you can use and probably a bottle of booze for after. [laughter] but something to think about when you do it. think of any type of improvised weapon. again, going out with a fight. you want to act as aggressively as possible. throwing the items. improvising any weapons. yelling at the person because sometimes aggressive behaviour can prevent the person from

communicating on. don't hesitate. just do it. come up with a plan, fex saitz on that plan. -- fixate on that plane. -- fixate on that plan. and co-ordinate with others. when law enforcements arrived, so the purpose of us to stop the active shooter, as soon as possible, we're going directly toward the last shots were heard. we're going to bypass everything. that person ran that hallway and up the stairs. we have to stop that person. we don't want anymore victims wounded. the first responders -- that is what happened back east at the school with the elementary school. officers stepping over 6, 7-year-old kids. that is very tough thing for thome do. but they haed to get in their mindset and stop that shooter t. first thing they want to do

is render aid. you have to stop the victims. excuse me, stop the shooting from more victims for happening and following officers will help out to put on first-aid and escort e.m.s. personnel. ok. when we do arrive again, remain calm. follow the instructions. don't just come running at us because we don't know who we're encountering or who the threat is until we get the description. put down any items in your hand. in fact, you shouldn't be carrying any items at all. just leave your bags or phones and leave everything. run out and come back and get it. don't ask officers for directions. don't try to stop them. let them push through. let them get to that threat to stop that shooting from happening. and raise your hand, spread your fingers. the thing for us is we always know -- hands is what's going to kill you. we don't know what someone is holding in their hands, in their pocket, in their back and

waistband and so on. keep your hands up. it helps us be a little more at ease. ok. don't forget, the shooter wants to inflict as much damage as possible. do whatever it takes to stay alive. act without hesitation. police response time is critical. it comes in actions and response time may be more critical. and you have what it takes to survive at this point. so i want to thank maggie and the members of the staff of the independent for letting me come up and talk to everybody here. [applause] >> thank you. all right. so now we'll have about eight to 10 minutes of q&a with sergeant garden and we'll invite up rob smus, the deputy director with the department of emergency management as well as mary shay with the san francisco fire department. so thank you all so much. and feel free to start heading

up to the mic if you have questions. >> hi. thank you very much for the presentation, sergeant gardener. i'm going to ask, are there any good system security plans specific to street festivals. you know -- >> well, that is typically something that if we knew a street festival -- i know there is the how weird festival that happens in the summer along with the beta breakers and all that stuff. there are plans that we can typically -- it all depends on the training as we call it, where everything is at. access points, exit points. i remember during the halloween festivities when the parties were still up in the castro, that used to be a big mob. and then there was a number of incidents that happened during it and it was hard for e.m.s. to come in, and basically they reorganized to have it. and it will be based on terrain

and what the event looks like. that is something that if you know what event you are going to have, you can come up and say hey, what is a good plan for this and we can help you out with that. >> thanks a lot. appreciate it. >> hi, there. yeah. i recently heard an interview with scooter brawn who's the manager for ariana grande and he was talking about the manchester shooting at her concert there and how they had a good degree of active shooter training before the incident because manchester had previous terrorist incidents and they essentially set up a security perimeter around the venue, within the venue to essentially keep anybody out of it. they had metal detectors and yet the terrorists in question waited until the event was over, until there are huge streams of young people coming out of the event and that is when they attacked. i'm curious. you know, this obviously -- this formula could work against any of us that put on events and i'm curious if you thought

about that. are there ways to harden the exit-entrance process? thank you. >> there are different ways you can harden down the entrance-exit process. as chief scott said, there's -- if you are looking at, say, for a vehicle attack, if there is someone using a vehicle to hurt you, you can put large planters. if you see in downtown, they put the large planters in front of the area. even at the ballpark at the candlestick. sorry, going back to the '80s. what is it called now? at&t. [laughter] they put large planters in front of the -- where pedestrians typically come and walk around the park because we all know after a ballgame, the sidewalks are crowded. so that helps out with any vehicle attacks. when it comes to actually trying to get people out of a pedestrian and worried about the active shooters scenario, someone using a firearm to do something, it is basically trying to get everybody off the sidewalk. trying to get these large

groups or small pods of people out. it is easier said than done, of course. because we all know what happens after a concert. people linger around, exchanging phone numbers and try to find out what the next party s so on. but basically, especially for in front of your own event, try to have your security staff say, all right, time to go, time to leave. and try to get them out as quickly as possible. try to encourage them, i should say, to get them out as quickly as possible. i hope that answers your question. >> hi, thank you for that. i work at stern growth festival, the large outdoor event. and we are doing a lot of work to prepare for this. and my question is, our partners said that we should initiate communication with the department probably through the terival station s. that the proper way that we should work with them and then reach out to you guys as a tactical unit? >> yeah.

i grew up right there in san francisco and i remember everybody going to the parties and large crowds of people coming that way. that popped in my head because my parents still live out there. the best thing to do is get in contact with the -- with your local district station which is the terabel. our units are comprised of about four sergeants and 30 operators and so we're city-wide. so, if something were to happen, we're responding kind of secondary. we'll hear it but we may be on one side of the city. especially in the terabel district on the west-south end. but the district stations are going to be the ones that are there first. you can come up with your plan with them. and then they can run it by us. and then we can come up with some type of, i guess, cohesive plan that can come together and come one a good, coordinated plan from there. >> thank you very much. >> no problem.

>> i guess i have a lot of questions today. do you have a cohesive social media person when an incident happens, we all use social media whether we do it well or not. and it is important for an investigation -- ongoing investigation and also for our community's response that as soon as something happens, social media is activated. i know i get notifications from the police and abc 7 like when the shooting happened above the hospital. i got something right away on social media. i feel like if we don't have something like that in place there needs toable a person on it right away to keep people out of the area so people know what's going on. why are there cops over there? there needs to be somewhere we can go to get the information or some sort of push. do you have that? >> there is something like that. s.f. alert. and, again, i want to make a plug if you text s.f. alert to

888-777. just wanted to make sure i got that right. that will give you the information about avoid the area for police incidents, for fire incidents, rum which -- ruptured gas mains and all that stuff. that is coordinated through the emergency management division. and 9-1-1 shares the information and we send out that information for going beyond, avoid the area. our department will co-ordinate with the police department's public information folks to be sending out information that's determined by the incident commander on the scene. so whatever -- and that will vary tremendously based on what the information is and what information is useful to be sharing that. e that will happen as well as an incident unfolds. >> the -- and the fire

department has a informations officer. and i think he is pretty good with his devices. he tweets and might even have a facebook update. so, reach out to him and see what he has. >> great. thank you. >> hi, i manage the mezzanine down there on jesse street and as far as soft targets go, we vushl a line there on the sidewalk that we have to keep as a public access. is there any advice on how to national convention a harder target or is this -- >> you can have -- i think that is tenderloin now, correct? >> yes. you can reach out to them and say we have a large event today and packing calls which means officers will frequent that area. the high visibility of the officers and being nearby to

help mitigate any type of incident that happened. i know it is a time-consuming process to get people in. you know, checking them in if you search and everything else. it takes a long time for people to get in and so it's almost unavoidable unless you can have another entrance opened up to try to do that. but i know that those buildings are pretty old down there and a lot of times there is only one way in or one way out. having the officers down there, that is the thing, have them do the passing calls and they constantly come in and drive by it. i know the war field reaches out to when i was at tunnel and southern because that was the border and we used to roll by if there was a large concert at a venue that would come through and they would say oh, yeah, yeah, come on by. and we constantly do. laps in front of it or post out in front if we have time. talk to the security guards out there. >> cool. >> i'd just make a plug. thinking about active shooting is. -- i encourage you to think about it the same way that you

encourage people to think about an earthquake or any other thing. there is a benefit to as much planning as you're able to do. but start at the basics. and then work up from there. and some of the basics, i imagine those of you who are here are not the type of venue operators who are doing things like putting chains on your fire exits and, you know, do it yourself sound insulation that can be a fire hazard or something but obviously start with that and make sure that you've thought through and are not doing that time of thing. make sure that the pictures that were shown about what the exits back here look like, just think through that.

it's not just for about active shooter but for fire incidents, anything else that might go wrong. just taking that time and thinking through really can be critical in these incidents. and i encourage you to do that as much as you can. >> ok. we have time for one more question for our lovely panelists. and if you have anymore, you can come up and approach them during the break. >> i just want to add that with fire, our main problem is exiting. every time we go to one of these venues, it is always exiting. for some reason there is always some storage temporarily stored there. whatever you store there could become a tripping hazard and slow down exiting.

thank goodness the active shooter hopefully is very, very seldom, but for sure i know exiting is a problem all the time. so that is one thing i would like to think about when they're open for business. >> one more question. anybody have a great one? nobody? ok. thank our panelists. give them a big round of applause. [applause]me and take a seat. we're going to go ahead and start our next presentation. this is on harm reduction. i'm going to let these lovely women introduce themselves. enjoy yourselves. if you still need to use the restroom or get anything, feel free to do it as quietly as possible as this gets going. so*ij laura thomas, the vice president of the entertainment commission and i want to thank all of you for coming here.

and i work on promoting harm reduction and health-based approachs to drugs instead of criminal justice ones and i'm really -- well i'm excited to be up on the stage because i've seen so many great acts in this venue up on the stage. the last time i was on the stage was when it was still the box. which dates me. yes. but i'm grateful to be able to put together this panel, you know, as i think we all know, consumption of substance and enjoyment of entertainment and night life have always gone hand in hand and whether that is alcohol, cannabis, other substances, much of the ways that we interact with entertainment and night life is connected to the ways that we

interact with substances, legal and otherwise. and none so far these substances are -- none of them are neutral. they all bring us enjoyment but they can create significant harm. that is where harm reduction comes into play and we all practice harm reduction every day. you know, having free water out at bars is a core part of one of the harm reduction things that is already built into this industry. having ear plugs available at bars. those are already things that we have done. i'm excited about this presentation because it is the opportunity to showcase two different, very different interventions that are part of how we can bring harm reduction into the entertainment and night life industry in

particular ways, both to keep everyone in the industry. our staff as well as participants, fans, customers, community members, neighbours, safer and healthier. with that, first up is going to be jan hecht, the senior director for programme strategy and evaluation for the san francisco aids foundation, talking about the cheers queers intervention and then crystal marshall the drug overdose prevention and education minister with the harm reduction coalition. so i hope that you can get some new strategies or tactics or partnerships out of these intervention and i'm looking forward to continuing this conversation as we go forward. with that, i want to turn it over to jen. >> thank you, laura. >> good afternoon. thank you for asking me to be here. i'm going to talk a lot about a

research project i worked on called pace. and some of you might be wondering, i'm here representing san francisco aids foundation, what does h.i.v. have to do with alcohol or night life and really there is a lot of factors that affect h.i.v. risk and alcohol is one of them. in fact we know from data compiled by our san francisco department of health that is one of the factors in driving h.i.v. in san francisco. there is an opportunity to think about how we can work and partner with venues around alcohol. we know that particularly among gay men, binge drinking is very common and really over 50% report binge drinking twn the last month. these are things that we just want to pay attention to. there's also a long history of partnership between gay bars and h.i.v. organisations and many of the gay bars are owned by community members, community members affected by h.i.v. that really care about the community and want to do something and

that is taken a lot of different directions. venues have spaces for fund raisers and condom distribution. a little while back, we started thinking about other ways we may partner with venues. we do outreach on the street. we've been doing outreach outside of venues for many years and we would offer free condoms. we would give information and referrals. and, you know, we -- we do h.i.v. testing but we realise there may be other opportunities really while people were still in the bars and instead of intervening after people left the bars. what we did is interviewed and talked to and surveyed some bar patrons and asked about what are some mechanisms that they used to take care of themselves. people drink with -- they have a buddy that looks out for them. maybe they say i'm going to take x number of dollars with me to the club but leave my

wallet at home or make sure they're drinking water throughout the night. there is lots of strategies that people use. when we talked to them, they also said we're in a place where there is a lot of bars. the happy hours are long and it is hard for us to maintain our limits. so we thought about what are some other options we can do. we reached out to bar owners and came up with ideas as well. laura mentioned having free water. that is a project that we worked and we actually tried to measure that, to see what if some bars offered free water and did some messaging around that. how would that make a difference? so i'm going to talk about that in in a moment. as part of that project, we did something called normative feedback. basically that means we created an app where when people came outside of the bar, we said hey, want to participate in a study?

if they were eligible and consented and enrolled, we did a breathalyzer there on the street and we said here's where we are relative to the other folks participating in the study and normative feedback gives people who are way at the upper level, it gives them a cue like maybe i should be paying attention to the fact that i'm way drunker than the other folks. so that is one of the things that we did and we tried to make it fun and playful and we also had celebrity parodies on the app and just ways of making it fun. but really people reported to us that it was helpful to get that information so we wanted to keep doing that kind of work and i'll talk about some of the ways we utilized that moving forward. when we compared the bars that we worked with who installed free water and had some messaging in the bars, we found that after comparing to the folks that didn't do that, we

saw lower b.a.c. levels among the bar patrons and also lower reports of binge drinking. so we think that this is something that works and can make a difference. and really we followed up with the study in several different ways. the first thing is on the policy side, there is a bill coming out from scott weaner, sb-905 that is about helping bars stay open late sore we worked with his team to find out if we can include access to free water in that bill. that is something that we're following up on. and we created a marketing campaign. it's called cheers queers and the idea is to -- yeah. [laughter] wave to the folks from the aids foundation. the idea is to raise awareness about binge drinking and really give harm reduction tips in a really positive, fun and playful way. [please stand by] [please stand by]project progra

accepts everyone. it's not an abstinance only program by any means. the staff at this program, they are focussed, they understand the night life and the balance that people want to have, they want to have a good time and figure out how to have a good time and stay healthy, and so

that's really what we do, goals with the staff. to, really participants and staff working together to create those goals. with wanting to come up with the best for the well-being of that individual, but also for the whole community. so i encourage you to talk to rich and ed and see if you have any questions about the program itself, they are here and available for you. and finally, i just want to say, you know, if you walk out of here today and you work at a venue or own a venue or thinking about how you can partner in helping to maintain safety, i would say a few things. number one, is you can offer free water at your establishment, if you are not already doing so. encourage pacing and messaging like cheers queers, we have on the website, cheersqueers.org, different posters that you can printout and put up in the venues. train your bartenders to keep an

eye on the patrons, and make sure your bartenders know about resources that are available inp the city. you can use tokens for two for one, instead of two for one, give people an opportunity to space out drinking a little more. and also, i can't sit here and not mention roofies, it just came up so much in the interviews. the interviews were focussed on alcohol and that came up a lot, and it was concerning so i want to raise awareness around that. and think with the happy hour specials and the way they impact customers, and in particular, younger customers who have less money and less experience taking care of themselves. so, a whole bunch of different things you can do. know that we are very interested in partnering with you, so please feel free to reach out to us, and i think there are so many ways that we can work together to create situations where bar patrons are healthy, having a great time, and we are not affecting the bottom line.

>> thank you. thank you, jen. next up is kristen marshall. >> thank you, laura. my name is kristen marshall, i'm the dope project management, drug overdose prevention and education and appreciate how that acronym turned out, and my job is to ensure that the people who need it most, or the people at highest risk for overdose have access to this lifesaving drug, this is narcan or naloxone. if you have been paying attention at all to the media and anything, any conversation, period, you have been hearing about the opioid overdose crisis and that's what i'm here about to talk about today. people have been using opiates for a long time, always at risk for overdose. we are at kind of a really crucial point in that crisis wherein the use of opiates and

opioid antagonist or analogue are so widespread it is impacting every person you can think of. not just the folks outside who are injecting drugs, these are people like you and me, people that are your neighbors, your customers and patrons. opioid overdose is the number one leading cause of death in this country. that happened last year, 64,000 people died. they died 100% preventable deaths, and not just because they were using drugs and if they didn't used drugs they would have lived. because narcan can reverse an opioid overdose. so what i'm here to talk about today is how that fits into the work that you all do and the communities that you all serve, and that it is relevant to you. so, folks who are on opiates look like anyone you know.

it's a very common drug that people use. and we know that people are highest risk, highest risk for opioid overdose when they are mixing drugs. not just one drug in the system but multiple. opioids are a depressant, when you add other depressants, it may increase the risk ten fold, so alcohol and opioids make for a very, very, very powerful cocktail and folks who mix those are absolutely at risk for overdose, as well as any drug stimulants, so powdered cocaine, anything that people can get their hands on did increase their risk for an overdose. the other thing i want to address is that people have, if you've heard of the opiate crisis you are hearing about fentanyl, fentanyl, which is a very, very, very powerful synthetic opioid that has found its way into pretty much every street drug in san francisco.

we test drugs on the regular coming out of clubs, coming out of bars, coming off the street, and consistently are getting positive test results which means that drugs that people assume are safe are not, and are causing overdoses as well, pay attention to the news, we lost three people in the haight last week to fentanyl overdoses while they were consuming crystal meth, which means that the crystal meth, a stimulant, was cut with fentanyl and they did not know. recently in the last few days we have had two samples of m.d.m.a. or molly come back positive for fentanyl. so, as this crisis kind of increases as we hit a real point here in san francisco where fentanyl and opiates are impacting everyone, it becomes even more crucial for people to recognize the signs and symptoms of an opioid overdose and know

how to respond. so what i do on the daily is make sure people have what they need, and are prepared to respond should an overdose occur on-site. so, this is narcan. you administer it at the onset of an overdose so when people stop breathing and become unresponsive, all you have to do, it's so easy, is right up the nose, one click. that's it. and that is the difference between, and while you are doing that, right, you are calling 911, your security teams are responding, trying to stimulate people, keeping people back, and what that one click for that medication up someone's nose is the difference between life and death during that 12 to 15 minutes it takes for an ambulance to arrive on scene, and that's a pretty standard call time for just that, for a dispatch of ambulance. and so part of my job is to ensure that y'all have access to this, and also that you know how

to use it. and so what i wanted to offer today, too, was that if this is something that you are interested in, i will come out and train your staff, i will give you the narcan for free, i will make sure you have a policy in place. we have a policy written, the stud bar -- anyone from the stud here? no, not today? the stud bar has had their policy set up, staff trained, they have narcan on-site, it's behind the bar and with their security team. they are ready in the event of an overdose in the bar or on the sidewalk outside. and so for me when i think about the communities that i roll in, which are a lot of the venues and places that you all work, i want people to understand that those communities are just as at risk, if not more so, because they are not accessing the education that a lot of our street-based drug user are accessing, at syringe exchanges and outreach workers are

reaching out to them. so, people are at risk, they are coming to your venues they may be more at risk while consuming alcohol, and having narcan on hand, the difference between not only a lifesaving and very easy and there is no liability involved in administering narcan, which i can address for sure, so even if someone is not overdosing and you give them that, it will cause no harm. if you give them that and they are overdosing, in 2, 3 minutes they will respond and breathe on their own. so, ultimately narcan or naloxone and having that on scene and your staff trained and ready to use it is the difference between a headline that reads that someone died in your bathroom or your staff are heroes and they saved someone's life at your venue. >> thank you. [applause] >> so, we have time for

questions if there are questions, comments, interests in partnership, ways that people would like to incorporate any of this. i know that you know, for many entertainment venues and so on there, is often been a reluctance to engage in harm reduction around drug use aside from alcohol, in part because of concerns that it is acknowledging that elicit drug use happens. i think while that's a concern, no one has ever lost their license because of having harm reduction services available in their venue and i think that you know, as these two folks are pointing out, harm reduction around alcohol is just as necessary as harm reduction around other services, and in fact, when it comes to things like opioid overdose, it's often alcohol that is the precipitating factor. so, you know, when it comes to

taking care of our customer base and our staff and so on. but with that, are there any questions or comments? ok. well, thank you all for listening to this. there is some, in addition to the cheers queers material that's back there, there is -- we have some, from the drug policy alliance, we have the flyers about recognizing the signs of an overdose or another drug-related emergency, if anyone wants more copies of these, let me know, because we have stacks of them. and thank you to the entertainment commission for letting us have this panel. >> if anybody is interested in getting trained or having your staff trained or just having narcan on, like at your bars,

let me know, i'll be hanging >> hi, we are going to get the next one going. everybody -- we are on part three. almost to the happy hour. i'm dylan rice, senior analyst at the entertainment commission. thanks so much for coming here. my job is focus on supporting outdoor events, especially community and cultural events. and real quick, so, this next panel is a part of an initiative we launched last year called the sf outdoor events network. initiative is, it's an opportunity for networking and training and promotion for the outdoor event industry. we are going to be doing these events quarterly, so, please come talk to me if you want to be added to the mailing list. the next panel topic is in

response to a challenge that many of you outdoor event producers are facing, how to create and promote the idea of social space in an urban environment with increased development, population density and changed demographics and these speakers are truly practitioners and experts and they are addressing these challenges and really in an imaginative creative way and looking at things like neighborhood compatibility, not as barrier but opportunity to sustain their work and to sustain their craft and their event. so i want to thank $teven ra$pa for being a wonderful collaborator, and the panelists for being here today, for the time and expertise. and reminder, stick around afterwards for the happy hour, and thanks to the independent for letting us use their venue,

and take it from here. >> thank you, dylan. start with slide number one. so, how many of you out there love outdoor events? parades, street fairs, make some noise. [cheering] well, they certainly are unique part of our city and culture. the 2014 report by our city economist indicated 3.3 million people attended outdoor events in san francisco. festival, parades and street fairs, and generated 1.1 billion in economic activity. outdoor events support over 9300 private sector jobs, including retail food, hospitality, entertainment and transportation. they certainly add to our quality of life, and support diversity of lifestyle in san francisco.

and they certainly have artistic and cultural benefit and add that dimension to our public spaces. many of our street fairs rely on volunteerism, get people in the streets meeting one another, their neighbors, and foster a sense of community. they also add to the identity and celebrate the identity of different neighborhoods. and also can build community resilience, helpful as well in times of trauma or disaster. and many have charitable and other social benefits, dimensions as well. and let's not forget fun. a city without animated public spaces really is not a living and fun city to live in. so, clearly we love all of our public events and they are serving a vital part in the cities that we live in.

both economically and socially. developed and rapidly developing cities around the world are dealing with some very common challenges. and the last couple of years i've had the good fortune to speak in european capitols, a wide variety of cities, you hear the same things over and over again. by the year 2050, it's estimated that 75% of the world population will be living in cities. increased population density is leading to some challenges just related to things like sound complaints, people that move into new areas don't necessarily want to be bothered by sound if they have to be up early in the morning. rising rents are leading to displacement and to changing the demographics of cities.

and rising real estate prices exert a negative influence on green space and social space. here in san francisco i've been really grateful to see the rise of park lifts, a really helpful urban prototype, officiallized in the city. over 50 park lifts and i think it's the experimentation helpful to preserve and create social and green space in urban centers. so, major cities that are developing very quickly are really risking losing what makes them unique. their soul, their cultural diversity and vitality. this is real. and long-term i think that that runs the risk of cities becoming less innovative and aging, you

can tend to lose your young work force because young people can't afford to rent and live directly in the city. so what i also see is that many cities have adopted the strategy of simply moving arts and culture and social engagement further and further outside of city centers in concentric rings and i would argue in a way that calcifies the city from inside out. it can stag nate the city centers, more and more expensive to live in and less and less flexible to use as social or public gathering space. at best, maybe a city that goes and pushes too far to the extreme becomes a museum to the former cultural relevance, and the worst, high priced tourist traps that really are not alive and vital. i'm not a fan of, by the way, of concentric ring approach to development.

i am a fan of embedding places for arts and culture and social space, and figuring out how to lock in permanent spaces for the flexible or for use of space that we haven't even yet imagined. next. so, how does this manifest itself on pressure on outdoor events? the slide on the right is the burning man 2002 street fairs on indiana street, we were there for, gosh, i don't know, 17 years on indiana street. when we first moved there, it was quite industrial and there were maybe 140 residents at one point. more recently, 500 more residents who moved in and about 800 more on the way. we worked very effectively with neighbors to fence off delicate new gardens or private property, reduced the sound locations we had, redirected speakers, we even cut back on some of our

programming. and we enjoy very warm relations with the neighborhood. but as of last year we decided that we would move to private property on pier 70 and this year we'll move somewhere else again. so, sometimes you outgrow the area. to the left, you have howard street fair and they moved their location once and behind it you see one of the new office constructions there. now, things that helped. certainly outreach to local businesses and relationship building with neighbors is more important than ever for all of us. we can't just think that we can continue doing what we are doing if the new neighbors come in, we have to meet them. i think providing cultural context for new neighbors and welcoming their participation is especially important. figuring out how to create win-win situations.

new technologies are improving helpful as you will hear shortly in a couple examples the panelists will hear, open minded, solution-driven and imaginative, and tenacious, not giving up. so, we are going to share with you some stories, some challenges, some success models of how people have turned in some cases a challenge into an operating business model successfully, and that brings us to our wonderful bunch of panelists. i'm going to have each of them introduce themselves and share a little of what they have been doing in about 3, 4 minutes each. to my left is robbie kowal, creative director of hush concerts and some of his experience working with sound. joanna haigood, artistic director of zaccho dance theater, public space, reclaiming space you would not normally think of, wonderful to

have you here. we have brandon gillis, vice president of business development for off the grid, and i think what's really cool and interesting about off the grid is that it brought together people who i normally thought of as competitors and turned remote locations or parking lots or spaces that were not being used at certain times of the day into destinations. and we also have ilya druzhnikov, co-c.e.o. of exit reality v.r. and excited to have him join us, interesting meeting place between virtual reality, augmented reality, gaming and public spaces and how people are using them. so, rich and interesting bunch of panelists to share what they are doing and then i'm going to be asking them some questions and we'll open up for q and a at the end. robbie, share a little about

your experience with us. >> can you hear me? great. so, my name is robbie kowal, san francisco resident since 1997. and what i, before i moved here i dreamed i would move here and see carlos santana play in a public park some day and sure enough i -- sure enough, two years later i was part of a group that brought carlos santana to the top of the tower, to the top of the hill to perform a performance of electric miles davis at north beach jazz fest and indicative how easy it was in the 1990s to make things happen outdoors at spaces. coit tower, single ingress and egress, thousands of people, and the neighbors were happy we did it. so, north beach jazz is in washington square many years, a jazz festival.

who could have a problem with a jazz festival? apparently there were a couple neighbors who had a problem with the jazz festival and after about, i think it was 14 total years of operation we started running into neighbors who simply did not want the nuisance of having us around and they looked at various different aspects of the city code and the first one that made sense for them to use against us was the idea of nuisance, and you got the nuisance by calling music noise and noise nuisance. and the public complaints started and then they started tacking us through our liquor license, people drinking in a public park became illegal and pretty soon -- pretty soon that festival was actually canceled because they made it too expensive for us to operate freely. around that time i also started working with some other folks, including andrea lundquist here, to find another model, another way to do it. started looking at spaces where we did not have to deal with

neighbors. started looking into the for gotten industrial areas of san francisco, we got, started working on treasure island, started ghost ship halloween, obviously is still going. eventually moved it to pier 70, also worked on sea of dreams in the old concourse. what all these spaces have in common, they are all no longer available to event producers. around that time, i was also touring deejay and in 2005, i was asked by bonaroo, america's first silent disco. after initial hesitation saying no, i need a sound system, they convinced me and i tried the first head phone concert in the united states and it was there. and what struck me was the potential for the new technology, the modality way of doing things to solve some of the problems i was starting to face as an event producer. i think it's even mentioned,

this noise being nuisance, being fulcrum from which residents can push the hearts out of public spaces is not specific to san francisco, this is a worldwide phenomenon. something that's happening as people with means choose to live in cities instead of suburbs. so, silent disco set off the light in my head and within a few years i had started, i had taken my concert production company and devoted most of our resources to silent disco to the point where last may we set the united states record 4,400 head phones in one concert. also done thousands of events around the country and we have a stable and great business because of it. we are hiring people. all is good in our world, but the thing i'm most proud of, over this time we have gotten calls from people all over the country and in other countries

who are dealing with the same question of the arts and public space. and we have been able to help them solve those problems for at least one aspect of the problem, we can't help them with traffic, we can't help them to be good neighbors. we can't always teach them how to treat people with empathy and how to run their event safely. but for simply the idea of making their output of sound something that doesn't affect those around them, we have been able to help a lot of people. so, we are proud and i guess i would leave you with the point that all of your potential challenges and problems as event producers, there are solutions out there. may not be what you think, but they usually start with empathy. usually starts with seeing the problem from the perspective of the people who have the issue with you and find a solution with them. thank you. [applause] >> thank us, robbie. joanna haigood.

>> hi, everybody. i don't know the order of my slides here, but -- ok. here we are. i'm a site choreographer, based in san francisco since 1980. i'm the director of a company called zaccho dance theater, baby hunters point where we have the studio and youth program for the local youth. a lot of the work i do is kind of, starts with this notion of place. how we define place. how does history and memory form those definitions. i've had the great pleasure of doing pieces in many different parts of the city, this is on market street, which taking away the noise piece made it very, very easy. we've had similar problems that robbie has mentioned, several different types of ordinances. some of them very peculiar, like air space rights and a lot of

the work i do is also, has an aerial component, very interested in creating the work in a more dimensional way so there's an aerial, and flight and suspension that has brought about a lot of -- brought up a lot of issues around, of course, risk and risk management. i've also done large scale work at places like the airport, dealing with both intersection of the arts commission, for instance, and also various airlines and concerns around their patronage. i used my cheat sheet, got lost for a second. what else, i've done lots of work at the ferry building, at port point, and also in places

around the united states, like grain elevator, some of those, i think we will talk about this later, but some issues around volatility and risk around explosions, i think as a choreographer it's been challenging in that i am really interested in scale and doing things at a very, very large scale, and so getting permission to actually fulfill or realize some of these dreams has been really challenging, but what robbie was saying, persistence, not giving up, or i think maybe you said, has been really, really key in the success of realizing some of these works. being at the airport, for instance, not something, you are not really prepared to see aerial dancers moving in and out of the ticketing areas, and of course they were not imagining that either. but, you know, with lots of planning and lots of proving

one's self and finding the right people at the right time, strategies become really, really important and making the impossible possible. >> thank you, joanna. i'm brandon gillis. [applause] i'm the vice president of business development for off the grid. i'm also suffering for a little bit of name tag envy, looking at $teven ra$pa's name tags with the dollar signs. i wish i requested that but i didn't. so, off the grid started with a humble goal. it was really to make street food happen all the time. our first market was in fort mason center, started off with seven trucks. really built around developing a community through food, finding unused, unwanted space, unlock