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

the value and create a dynamic space for the public and the community to grow and gather. over the course of the past seven years, we have grown the business into a number of different things, from mobile infrastructure, to the food struck events throughout the bay area, corporate catering, catering company, and more so a platform, and that is for empowering businesses and hosts and guests to unlock the value of space through authentic experiences. on the height of a given week during our peak season, we are generally between our 30 to 40 markets that we are currently operating. we are passing through 80 to 100,000 people through those markets. but i think more so what we have been about at off the grid is creating connection, creating connection through diversity in different neighborhoods,

empowering our creator, vendors to be seen as additive pieces of the community, especially when we set up a market and not a competitive entity. so, i think in short, for us at off the grid, i think we have faced a lot of the similar uphill challenges that robbie, steven and joanna have faced, and it's about finding the win-win with the partners, neighborhood, businesses, and highlight and amplify the opportunities that we are bringing throughout the city. thank you. >> now ilya. >> hi, everybody. i'm not entirely sure if the slides have actually found their way to the slide projector, goodness, they did.

so, my name is ilya druzhnikov, our company is called exit reality v.r. and we were formed around a very simple idea, which is whereas technology is, and media that came into being before, like moving picture, like photos, like cell phone, they served to isolate people because they were something that you could actually use while seated, while at home. the magic of virtual reality and immersion reality, it uses the real available space. it lets you move around, and we realized that where the place where you can actually move around is out in public. and we realized that that is

where virtual reality and augmented reality were going to get adopted. so, the company was built around the notion of taking public space and v.r. enabling it, and putting what we came to believe to be the ultimate experience machine that allows you to take any square footage, whether it's in the street, with the truck, or at hotel with a cube, at a party, as a part of an off the grid event, or at a festival or dance performance, and let people become a part of whatever they experience. so, in a fairly short amount of time we came to see virtual reality both in parties and

events but also in training for industrial use. also in drug and alcohol rehab, etc. and we are continuing to find those applications. the place where we have seen the most interest, obviously, is view innovations have showed up recently and virtual reality has taken up location. we think that virtual reality were in the same place as movies were in 1910. so, people are gathering, there's a big train on the screen, or whale in this case. the train runs into them, they are blown away, it's amazing. over the next couple of years you are going to see real application. you are going to see the equivalent of a shot, you are going to see the equivalent of a first film, you are going to see the equivalent of charlie c

chaplin and buster keaton showing up. it's going to be a lot of fun. and everyone creating venues or creating events ought to consider how v.r. or a.r. will be a part of what they create. i feel like robbie's -- i feel like silent disco is a brilliant example of virtual reality. it's where you are virtually creating a space. using only one modality, using hearing. virtual reality as it's advancing is sight and movement, etc., but that's exactly the kind of application we are talking about. imagine a parking lot with a renaissance fair or with a circus or whatever it is. so, together with everybody excited to see how it all turns out. thank you. [applause]

>> you see we have a wide and very interesting bunch of panelist, and give you a sense of some of the challenges they faced and with turned what would be a challenge into a business model. since that is sort of the substance of things, i would like to go a little deeper and ask, do any of you have another example of a challenge you faced specifically and how you overcame that, or what was really important to overcoming that challenge, and how you again took something that was a negative and turned it potentially into a positive or win-win situation, and open to any of the panelists that would like to go deeper or a specific example to share. any of you? robbie and then brandon. >> i would mention that you know, obviously i stumbled into some technology that helped solve one of the many challenges facing event producers in outdoor settings. but had i not done that, and

already when we found, or when it found us, we were deeply into the discussion trying to find other solutions. first thing we did for north beach jazz and continued for present day, to organize and talk to other event producers. because this demographic stream of people with money moving further into urban centers and displacing the arts is -- there's no getting around it. it is happening. and we as -- -- as islands in t stream, the first thing we did was to organize and the first thing, i'm actually doing some of that right now with other people facing sound challenges or reaching out to me around the country. it's interesting what happened when you start talking to people

that face the same challenge. they'll come to you with new ways of looking at it. one thing now is the noise of lawn mowers, they find detrimental to the peace and quiet in the neighborhood and we are giving them resources and work with them to find ways to alleviate that challenge. so i guess the best thing i could tell you guys, it's not necessarily about technology or finding a solution, but it's about finding your friends, like find the other people that are fighting the same battle as you are. i guarantee you if you can't find them in the area, they are out there, they are in berlin, in austin, in brooklyn, in reno and sacramento and closer to home. >> brandon. >> thanks, robbie. i think for off the grid, we had a pretty similar approach about sorts of raising the land mass. and really finding similar people, similar business, which were mostly mobile food businesses at the time. being able to aggregate

together, bring them together and help find a permitting solution, and i think for us, that was our biggest challenge and that's been our biggest challenge all along, any time off the grid has gone to open a new market or a new location throughout the city, you know, we were viewed for a period of time as a disruptive business, as a business that could potentially challenge the viability, the vibrancy of the other businesses in the community, the neighborhood, the stability, and for us and it really started with you know, basically what you said before, robbie, about empathy, and sort of understanding the neighborhoods and working to really educate doing a lot of community outreach neighborhood associations, merchant associations, going to businesses, and really advocating and showing them that listen, we are going to be here for one day, be here one day a week, a reoccurring event, we want to be a partner, we want you to be a part of your market, what can we do to partner with

you to amplify your business, your message, and it was about the community outreach. i wish i could say we had an innovative approach but we didn't. we had a very, you know, a very tactical, very ground swell approach. really about engaging our communities and that's how we have been able to grow and develop the business. work with partners like presidio trust, fort mason center, and i think we will hear it over and over again, the win-win, understand j your partner and goals and helping them grow, amplify, expand their message and something meaningful for the community you are trying to build and also the community they are trying to message to. >> brandon, that ties into another question i wanted to get to. which is well, pretty much hit it on the head. how do you get local businesses and neighbors not only invested but excited, versus resist ting

as a perceived inconvenience. can any of you share a specific technique that you used that was very helpful to help, you know, turn what might be ambivalence or inconvenience into hey, we are really excited that you are here. >> i might want to take a stab at that, i'm not sure how applicable it is to other folks. but we -- so, we built the virtual reality trucks that are supposed to be out in the wild and serving v.r. experiences to people. some of them are paid, some are free, some for just awareness. and we had absolutely no clue what the response of the business owners was. and we went to folks and said this is what we do, come on out and we would love to give you and your employees a try.

and the moment they did, we've got kind of open invitation to show up and park in front of any of the businesses that we had spoken to, and be there for as long as we want in their yellow zone. because they just realized it was the kind of circus that would attract the crowd. and that was the key. the idea of creating the circus around the entrance, and that translates to, from a tiny business to a series of events that we did at nissan dealerships around the country. again, circus attracts people and turning the sidewalk, turning the city street into a circus is i think a job of, for all of us to a certain extent. >> that's a great example. did any of you else have a specific example that you would like to share? >> jump in here. i think for us, it really starts, it's about value. it's about understanding and creating that relationship with

your partner, and making sure they understand that value that you are going to bring to their space, what you could do for them, what you are going to be able to do for the businesses, or the neighbors that they are representing. most recently for us, we partnered with the union square bid on their winter walk for this year. basically union square has been running winter walk the past i believe four years and we took this over from a design perspective this year and designed, executed the event over a course of 35 days and really for them and for us, working together was understanding the constraints and the worries that their partners had, so union square bid obviously represents a large number of major retailers in the downtown area, a large number of retailers that also have food businesses and what we were going to do over the course of 35 days, was programming a number of food and beverage vendors to really amplify the experience of winter walk,

creating a meaningful destination, a place where guests, people shopping in the area visiting downtown, could go rest, grab a drink, have some food and also find this unique experience that's not happening anywhere else in the city. and for us, working with union square bid and the retailers, it was all about working with them to help them understand that what we were doing and to partner with the bid was to help alleviate the bid's ability to not focus attention on programming this event but focus their attention on how do they bring more awareness to downtown, create the right levels of sponsorship. and that's really what it was about. it was about helping the bid create a calling card for sponsorship and advertising in the area alleviating the operational responsibilities that had fallen on their partners previously. >> any other comments on that question, otherwise i will go to

the next. >> i would just kind of reiterate creating those trust-built relationships with community and community partners is really, really important. and sometimes it takes a long time. pack to the perseverance point. sometimes things don't go well in the first year you learn from and move forward. i think most people don't want their concerns to be dismissed, they want to be heard and they want full consideration and i think that's sometimes overlooked when creating, you know, new negotiations with people. so -- >> i think that's, that rings very true for a lot of us. i remember we enjoyed burning man enjoyed great support for our street fair among all but maybe five neighbors and at one point it was deeply satisfying to have reached one person in the neighborhood who didn't want us there but said you know, you

have done everything you possibly can to address my concerns and i still don't want you here, so i have nothing else to say to you. and that was kind of ok, you know. we came to an understanding. and we still did everything that was important to her that she had outlined to us was important as a resident and i want to say that i could go to sleep at night knowing that i as a producer had done what i could to respect her as a human being and that we had established mutual respect. as another question. let's shift gears a little bit. how do you find inspiration in public spaces, what attributes of public space are important to you when you think about bringing people together socially or doing new work? >> so, one of the wonderful side benefits, besides the fact that you can have music in a space where you are otherwise couldn't, we originally, when we started doing head phone events, some of what we did was in

clubs, but it immediately became obvious to us that that's like too much mayonnaise. clubs have great sound systems, clubs have solved the sound proofing challenges and they are designed to have incredible things called subwoofers that massage your chakras when you are dancing. what place cannot have the subwoofers is the top of the mount, or ocean beach or muir woods or any beautiful place you wanted to bring your friends and have a musical experience, or a talk or a cultural event or anything that requires a seen to be not heard. we immediately realized that this modality, had the opportunity to bring people to the most beautiful places in the world and still enjoy whatever it was that they wanted to appreciate musically. one of the interesting side aspects of it as well is that once people started finding out this was possible, we started

getting crazy requests, crazy emails, you know, you name it. we have a houseboat collective that gets together in the middle of a lake, can you come help us with that. so, it's -- that has been a nice thing, getting, you know, any space that inspires you is a place you should be able to get people and music, with or without permits, with or without public censure and that's been nice to allow people to do that. >> and part of the inspiration, a lot of what i try to do is just kind of draw out the magic in a place that we think is rather ordinary. there are so many places around the city, little alleyways that are really quite beautiful and have incredible histories and stories to tell, and so i feel that's part of what i'm doing. as i mentioned earlier, i'm

particularly interested in scale. so, large, being able to draw lines and 300, 500 feet in spaces is really exciting to me. but yeah, the light, the rhythm of place, i think the story telling is really, really inspiring. and also the challenge of getting permission and which sounds ridiculous, it's very, very difficult, but i think bringing people over to that other side of understanding how to support our communities and seeing the places where they live and the situations that me inhabit in a different way, broader perspective, helping them understands things that are very, very challenging in the state of the world, and offering a lens, you know, through which to be able to see them or experience it.

so -- >> just to echo what you are saying, it's like what is really exciting is to me is that augmented reality and virtual reality is a layer that you put on top of whatever exists there right now. and the difference between virtual and augmented is simply how transparent is your experience. can you see what's happening, can you see the actual reality, or are you just seeing the virtual thing and the virtual object. so, in some ways, our stock and trade is things that are boring. that are parking lots that are all retail buildings. whatever nobody else can use. but it's also a beautiful concert, a dance performance, because the dancers can be wearing whatever you would like to imagine them wearing, they couldn't wear in the real world.

so, that's the excitement is what can we do together, take multiple people's imaginations and plug it together into a single experience. >> wild. all right. let's move on to another question. increasing insurance costs and risk management is an issue for any producer. how does risk present the challenge in your work and how have you addressed that challenge? and i know joanna, you mentioned earlier risk, i wonder if you might start. >> feel that's my life work, risk. first of all, say we spend a lot of time trying to eliminate as much risk as possible. nobody wants anybody to get hurt, and so we spend a lot of time in the research phase, researching materials, testing materials, field measurements, planning, getting engineers involved in some of the things that are high angle pieces and

very complicated in design. again working with the communities or the agencies that we are partnering with to, you know, to meet their requirements, meet their concerns is really, you know, kind of paramount to the success of pretty much everything. i think the risk management piece, we have, you know, i've been working almost 40 years in this field. so, there's somewhat of a stronger reputation, we have lots of evidence that we have been able to, you know, deliver a safe situation, but a lot of that really also depends on transparency. for the work we do, there is not a manual that fits into the standardized osha deal, usually one-off situations and they involve kind of inventing new systems in order to realize some

of the vision. so i think you know, there are certain things that are in fact, we use like anchoring systems and things like that that are particular, but again, there's no real manuals so i think being transparent about that, working together to make sure that we have pretty much crossed all the ts and dotted the is and made everything secure is important. issue of insurance, regardless to whether or not we have never had a liability claim, insurance keeps going up and we keep losing it because maybe there is an event, you know, out in the field that has happened, in the case of cirque and ka, we were studying this event but that has

a huge impact on the way insurance companies contract around delivering insurance and so that's a constant battle. i mean, again, we run a safe operation so we manage to always get that, but the fees are sometimes they feel insurmountable, they are really, really high and people are beginning to, you know, each year, not each year, but frequently people are requiring more insurance and you know, there's things to be understood about that. and then there are things that basically prohibit innovation, you know. so -- >> you know, one thing related to that i find really interesting, i love seeing skate parks. i mean, skate parks, risky activity, right? but you can have a public space that's designated for that risky activity and people know they are assuming the risk and you

don't need to overregulate it because people are willing to assume personal liability. so i look at that as if sort of interesting reinvention of space for a specific purpose that involves risk, but does not involve the cost that then inhibits that social experience. i kind of throw that out, i've been thinking, is there a way to potentially designate space as risky areas, that's what actually burning man does with our main event. anybody else had any particular experiences with risk management or safety issues that they want to share? >> i do. and it's kind of a sad story. we used to do an event called sea of dreams at the concourse, and a big part of sea of dreams was incorporating a lot of different art elements to the event, including aerial performance and we had an

aerialist fall. she -- her spotter was her boyfriend who had a few drinks, she had had a few drinks before she went up, she had a shoulder injury six months before then. she didn't tell us any of this and acted essentially unprofessionally, but when someone falls at your event, if you didn't do the things necessary to ensure that they were sober and reliable and well vetted and had an act of rigor and all those things, essentially it is your fault. and we ended up being sued, even though it was -- by any common sense evaluation it was entirely her own doing and i can't say she deserved what she got, i didn't have that much sympathy for her except from a human level, but you know, she did everything wrong and we still had to pay for it. and as a result, we stopped doing aerials. i get the hives when someone asked me for aerial performance, even though i know technically i could find a really good rigger who could make sure it's all

safe, i've been involved in projects that did that safely. but in general, sometimes limiting liability, you know, if we could limit liability all the time we would never leave our house, right? so, sometimes you have to take risk to make cool things happen. in the case of things like that, i don't allow like people to light fires at my events and stuff like that, and you as a producer and you as an event planner have to decide what you are comfortable with, and what you are willing to risk. no amount of insurance, no amount of planning can, you know, we just -- we all sat through an active shooter discussion. no amount of planning and stuff and i deny sfpd to create a completely safe event from an active shooter. it's always easier to cause destruction, easier to create mayhem than it is to protect from it. so, just remember that our work is inherently risky. we are putting crowds of people together, we are doing things that is part of the -- part of the deal.

and you need to being accept that and be ready for it and willing to understand yeah, i may have to deal with a tragedy like that poor person who fell at my event and also you may have to write a check. and some of the things can litigate us out of business. sometimes preparing these things, the aspect of having to pay for more insurance or the case of north beach jazz, all the different stuff we had to do around building, you know, beer gardens and dealing with our sound and extra security, eventually was not worth to do the event, and that's sad, and it's really sad and one of the big challenges to this culture. but you as an event producer can, you know, you are the only one who can make that evaluation. [please stand by] -- interesting

programming. i knew that was going to be a lively discussion. ok. so, what innovation are you seeing or hearing about in other cities or countries that are exciting to you about the use of public space and what do you think that we in san francisco should be doing as an international destination city? see anything interesting going on in other places? >> one thing i recently saw, it's not so much, this is a new design, i was recently in seoul, south korea, and their mayor,

whose name i'm sorry i have forgotten, a long with a big city council has put together a whole series of new public spaces that are, they call them regenerations, or reuse sites, sites that are being repurposed. the one i visited was, it's called the oil tank cultural center or place a site of six large reserve oil tanks that were built in the 1970s and were closed in the early 2000s. it has multiple exhibition and performance spaces, it has a lot of open spaces. very interactive playground spaces. they hold, you know, markets that use, you know, that have no

packaging, the purpose of this place is to support eco and sustainable lifestyle. and so it's really a remarkable place. it's completely, you know, teched out, it's got all kinds of new technologies embedded in the sites. it's incredibly attractive. each tank has a very unique redesign or integration of the tank itself. it's really, really beautiful and it's subsidized by the city, you know. government money. lots of people, i mean, i was there in january last month, it was very, very cold, but lots of people interacting with the site. it's open, i don't know if it's 24 hours but all day you can roam around in all the exhibition areas and explore. i think there is also a campsite, it's huge. but very, very innovative, very

exciting, very, very aesthetically beautiful, and just a remarkable reuse of an industrial site. >> great example. >> yeah. >> thank you. anybody else? have an example you want to share, something you have seen in another city or country you think might be of interest here. >> something somebody was speaking to me about, and i don't remember the city, but they spoke about a chain of sand box areas which were specifically designed to let people bring quickly with minimal regulation, minimal approval, technologies and ideas for public space and test them there in a fairly safe environment, fairly controlled. and that created kind of an internal ecosystem. >> interesting. >> i would say obviously what

we, you know, what we do with head phones is many people consider it innovation, but only when you consider an american innovation. the use of head phones for concerts has been used in europe for a lot longer and the adoption around the world is far beyond what we are doing here. in holland they have events that spread out across entire amusement parks where attendees will be listening to five distinct feeds of music from all over, all of them sharing the same experience but across an entire footprint. we touched on that at bottle rock 4400. it's kind of sad that that's a u.s. record, record in europe is over 25,000. the other aspects that i would mention is when you consider innovation and public space, think about like the high line in new york, which was no longer used elevated train track, and

they were going to tear it down and a group of community, a group of people in the community said don't tear it down, this gives us the ability to bring green space downtown to san francisco. a lot of you guys. >> to new york city, you mean. >> new york city. >> in san francisco, similar thing on the transbay terminal right now, which has the opportunity to bring green space and public creative space right into the heart of selma and i've met with some of the folks starting to work on it and they are, i believe, their intentions are very much aligned with what we would hope for from a downtown public park, way more so than what yerba buena has become. >> and one can creative reuse, and the other is building in multi-use into new construction. another example, i think, a group moment factory in moenz

that hard wired a plaza essentially for social engagement. so, building smart technology into plazas. they have challenged, the challenge i see with that is what do we know is the new smart technology, what's coming next? and how do we hold space for stuff that we have not yet imagined, you know, how people will want to relate. any other comments? otherwise, i have another fun question. ok. and in fact, dylan, could you put up that slide that relates to this question? can you share prediction about how people will use outdoor public urban space 30 years from now. for example, how might use change considering new technology, kinds of public space or other factors? where do you think we are going with all of this? brandon. >> well, i think with the rise

of sort of adaptive companies that are really looking at the value of space and the value of space that really has not been used in such a, i would not say aggressive way, but that makes it valuable, like airbnb, you look at the lyft of the world and off the grid, we are all companies built around looking at space in a very different way. and i think, thinking about it sort of through that lens, and then adding in the fact that like starting to think about trends, from a trend standpoint, seeing the decline of car ownership, especially in the younger audience, people are not getting their license as early as anymore, people are not really interested, millennials are not interested in buying cars, and having the app thsset use 2, 3% of the time. and over the next 10, 20 years,

especially if you are seeing it in the lens of like town and city planning, is that hopefully what's going to happen, we are going to have less cars on the road and i think that's a real opportunity for all of us as place makers and people interested in the arts, the community, interesting in bringing people together, an opportunity to take back places and probably places that have not been so desirable, they are going to be the parking lots, the alley, the abandoned malls of the world and figuring out what do we actually do with those spaces. and i think simultaneously what's going to hopefully happen, just on the cusp of seeing is that the companies that have been behind walls and high towers are going to start coming out and growing and creating more sort of integrated city towns, i think we'll see it more in san jose, i think google will step out in mountain view and sunny view and large, longer

integrated campuses and see more of that, more of integration, more being part of the community, more providers of public space, access to transportation. so, hopefully that's what we are going to be seeing. >> that's a really great and provocative view. i was in stockholm and invited to sit on a panel, all sales were online, and an old mall join today public plaza, and how can it be more lifestyle oriented, experience, and less likely to go in to buy something. it's online and digital now. >> just from our internal experience, there is this term that's floating around, retail companies, and that is retail apocalypse. which is basically the majority

of retail company, even when they don't admit it, they are realizing people no longer buy things in a store because it's what they need and it happens to be closed. everything they need they buy online. so concept that's appearing of experience mediated commerce, which is exactly what you were referring to. so, people buy things because they encounter that object in an experience, and now we have also the online companies which specialize in taking objects and literally from virtual world, magically transporting them into the actual world. right now that process takes 24 hours. soon enough that process is going to take, i don't know, minutes, with added manufacturing. so, what you are going to see, literally ability of any business to create experiences in their retail space and your

ability to pick objects from the virtual space and bring them to the real space as a purchase. >> lines are getting so blurry. even concepts of public space, online is a form of public space. i means -- i believe that you are always going to need to get people physically in the same room to have meaningful relationship development but that idea may be outmoded at some point. the thing is, people are united across distances based on values as people, and i think things are going in the direction of shared values and idea of physical space is transforming. >> i think it kills me to say this, because i like nothing more than to be in a sweaty concert hall with a bunch of people murmuring and enjoying an experience together. nothing like that. and when you consider why people go out to clubs and to bars and

to restaurants and -- it's not really just about the food or the music, it's about the chance of magic happening, meeting and connecting with someone you have never met and i think most people if you ask why they go to show, it's to meet somebody of the opposite sex, find a partner, not necessarily about the music. so kills me to say this, but i think that within, you know, within our lifetime, people will not be going out to places like this. except sort of people like my father who had opera season ticket, still went to see the outmoded 200-year-old paradigm because -- i believe this whole thing is going to go the way of officianados only, and the rest on the couch, v.r., with head phones, go enjoy silent disco

concerts either through the cell phone network or whatever chip is embedded in their arm when cell phones are outmoded. >> apocalypse. >> i think we are headed this direction, although it just -- even though it's good for my business, it kills me. absolutely kills me. because i feel like getting all these different electrons together and bouncing them off each other is the whole point. but remember that the two driving motivators of the concert industry or music industry, entertainment in general have always been technology, specifically technology and economics, and over time, technology has made it cheaper to have bands, right, and then the bands sha -- shrunk and when they figure out how to give you a virtual concert from

your own home without all the trouble of paying for security and flying the band out and all the building the stadium, as soon as they create that experience for people in a much cheaper way, it won't matter if we like getting together, it will just be cheaper and that's why the industry as it is will choose that. >> we are going to q and a in a moment, anyone have a different view or rebuttal to that? >> nah, it's going to be great. i'm just thinking about the young people out there marching and speaking up and coming together. i feel like you know, ok, i pray that we get so much invasion of our technology that people are just going to throw the stuff away and say you know, let's get back into the street, where are the -- it's sunday, hey. you know. remember those days? i -- those days exist. i still hear the brothers out in the south bronx --

>> pendulum swings. >> i think -- i think we have the potential of that pendulum swinging back. so -- so i'm going to pray for that. the idea of being kind of stuck in our homes and with our technology is, that is apocalyptic. >> horrifying. >> but i'm feeling so encouraged -- >> ilya cannot resist. >> come on, it's not -- really. for every technology, like, think about it. every technology has a home version and a public space version. you have your kitchen, but that kitchen, i mean -- even though it competes with the hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment in restaurant technology and professional, you still go out. you have your -- you have your movies on your phone, but you still, people go out to movie theaters. you have a bathtub, you go to swimming pool, for every technology. what happens is it kind of

layers out into public version, and a home version. and people love being in each other's presence. it's not going to change. >> i'm on that train. all right. we want to open things up to public questions. any of you have questions for our fine bunch of panelists here, thoughts about public space, concerns? the man in the white hat, step right up. >> hi, i'm jason brock, a singer, and sometimes actor. but my question was, you know, i like the idea of the head phone concert, i've never done one, but you know, maybe in the future but i just wonder about the interaction between the artists and the audience. how do you feel -- part is i like to be able to hear the audience. i like the noise, you know, so, how does the artist performing in that situation feel about the

inner action when it's silence out there? >> great question, and one of the common sort of fears is performing for people not being able to hear them. what actually is an artist, i got into this as a performing artist. the thing that struck me immediately was how deep the connection is with little aw-- u go to the audience. 30% is actively listening to the music you are making, the rest are talking among themselves, trying to find a date, you name it. when you go to a silent event, 95% of the people are really connecting directly with you. they can hear the exact same thing in the room and there's no sound bleed off walls, you are not hearing somebody talking about, you know, last night's, his fantasy sports team or whatever, which you know, i -- to your point, i do like hearing

people when i'm playing, i like hearing them cheering. but it's really distracting when you hear the guy talking about his fantasy football team and you are trying to get the right tune on the guitar, whatever it is. so, actually, if anything, what i've heard from deejays especially, and even bands i've worked with, how they feel the connection is directly, and when you apply this not just to the music context, but started doing conferences. conference speakers were never wanted to go back, because the first time they ever felt really comfortable that everybody in the room is hearing exactly what they wanted to say without them having to, you know, hard to speak into a microphone. so, that's -- that answer your question? >> any other questions? thoughts or comments? >> they all want drinks. >> question over here. >> what's the hardest thing you

ever permitted and how did you get it passed? joanna. i know you have lots of examples there. >> i have so many of them. well, the clock tower was pretty challenging. sometimes somebody's permission, you go through marketing, a marketing department first. i don't know why. but they often end up in that department and so you know, again i think we mentioned, finding the right person is really important. but that took a really long time digging, finding, and i can't even remember at this point, almost 30 years, but finally got to this man, emilio cruz, who went on to run muni, but he came up and said i don't know who told you no but we are gonna do this. and then that was so exciting, and then the moment we got on the clock tower the higher-ups actually saw us there, and shut

us down. and so we had to go through another round with city attorneys and, but it was such a long process. the airport of course is challenging because of the airlines and, but i think being -- it was all about being flexible there, and being able to, you know, hear them out and take care of them. >> those are such unusual places that don't have a normal permitting process. >> yeah, they are. >> so kudos to you and your work in using space that people would not think could be used for artful or social purposes. >> i would say the port of san francisco. >> yes. >> you know. >> double yes. >> as many of you guys know, there are 4 or 5 different land owners in the city of san francisco, mayor's office, there's the rec and park department, there is treasure island development authority and port of san francisco and we started ghost ship on treasure island, which really, if you --

it's like you are out in international waters. all they cared about was we did things safely and we knew our job and knew what we were doing and after a few years they essentially left us alone, and in 2014, we moved ghost ship to pier 70, which could not be, could not have been more risky. i don't think we got our permits until three days before the event. we had to deal with the port, completely different set of officials, we also had to deal with the federal department of homeland security, had to get them to sign off to make sure we were not doing -- because we were on the water. we should have been dealing with the golden gate conservancy, i believe as well, although did not come into play but they could have. but what was awesome about it, after the event, we really cut our teeth on treasure island. after the event we got a nice letter from the department of homeland security saying anybody that gave us any trouble in the

future, call us, we'll tell them how great a job you guys did. but i guess san francisco, i guess, bigger point, san francisco is a mine field for outdoor events. it's so hard to know who to deal with. ocean beach, we have, when we do our hush cast on ocean beach, we deal with the golden gate national recreation authority on the beach and rec and park on the parking lot. two different permits, two different sets of rangers, and we have to go by two different sets of guidelines for each space. so, i just -- if i had a wish, it was that san francisco could codify all the entertainment regulation under one authority for all the property. but i've been wishing that about 18 years. >> it is a challenge. where you do things in the city can affect the permitting process and all the people you have to reach out to. and pay and have, yeah, multiple

permits, multiple security requirements, etc. and it does so much of it comes down to relationship building, and once you figure it out, you never want to move because you have done all this work to cultivate that. if the city didn't give away all its property to other parties, then it would have control over it. like all our beaches, pretty much are either -- some port authority down. the city does not have much control. ocean beach a little bit because they share management, that's about it. >> and who can effectively govern and manage that property, and different groups, whether it's the port or conservancy groups or whatever, they have different staffing levels, some

casis don't have enough staff to handle large events and then they only want to deal with profitable events, does not to me serve the public benefit. dylan, i know we are running short on time, so can you just put up the last slide and say in closing, really would like to encourage the fun, the strange and joyful and thank all of you who are involved in organizing public events in san francisco and encourage all of you to think in terms of how to really lock in cultural diversity and keep a space for people to get together in person. using new technologies and all sorts of things, but hold that space for us to gather in public spaces joyfully. thank you very much. and thank you to the entertainment commission, and to everybody for your work in putting this summit together. >> thank you, steven.

>> good afternoon. welcome to the san francisco board of supervisors meeting for tuesday, february 27, 2018. madam clerk, please call the roll. >> clerk: thank you, madam president. [roll call] cohen not present. [roll call]