Good morning and a big thank you for our federal and state regional local partners as well as many distinguished guests For lending your valuable time here today and your expertise as we come together and try to shape Vermont's future I'm Josh Hanford. I'm the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development at least for a few more weeks Many you already know that after a fairly lengthy career in state government over 18 years with the department I've accepted a new role with the Vermont League of Cities and Towns to be their director of intergovernmental relations and it's You know it's been quite the journey Throughout my time at the department. It's been an honor and privilege to collaborate with some of the most talented individuals in our state Most of you in this room You know as I embark on this new exciting chapter. I carry a lot of these experiences and lessons with me a lot of Friendships and relationships that were forged over that period And I might be biased, but I think some of the best some of the best and brightest in the state serve at ACCD You know while while commissioner I watched the agency surmount many obstacles initiate deliver essential policy changes Funding programs and it consistently exceeded the limits of what I thought was possible I want to give a special thanks to the collective expertise the dedication creativity and collaborative spirit That enables the community planning and revitalization team here today. They hit well above their weight.  In fact, if there's any former or current DHCD staff in the room also, please stand up It's a few how about any former a CCD staff? I know there's a few so thank you It's been a pleasure and honor to work with you and As I leave I want to extend, you know the deepest gratitude each of you for your unwavering support your dedication guidance and friendship It really has meant a lot and seemed like a second family Rest assured even as I transitioned to a different role my strong commitment to advancing the quality of life in Vermont remains steadfast Well, my approach will change from top down to bottom up my dedication to Vermonters and ideals We all share in this room will not I'm genuinely enthusiastic about the opportunities ahead and eagerly anticipate today's conversation on ways to strengthen Vermont's communities My shift to work directly with Vermont's communities and this conversation about the future of Vermont's designation programs Couldn't have more overlap or be more timely This significant work was initiated by the legislators foresight and Allocating funds to bring natural experts to assist us in renewing and enhancing our state's Designation programs, so I want to offer a thanks to all the legislators in the room I know there's many of them for Enabling this and thinking ahead to what's next I'd also like to give a special thanks to the downtown board members who commit their time and expertise every month to maintaining Vermont's historic development patterns I've served as chair of the downtown board for the last five years and I can tell you this group works very very hard behind the scenes hours of application review short turnarounds and So I also want to have them stand up any of the board members that are here. I know there's several In a special round of applause goes to Mike McDonough from Bennington who's been on this board since its inception in 1991 I don't think he's missed more than one or two meetings in all those years Reviewing the state's designation programs beginning long before the July rains flooded downtowns and villages washed out roads and bridges Submerged homes and businesses and halted commerce in many of our communities The floods washed away personal possessions and the livelihoods of too many Vermoners Families have been separated from their communities and daily routines upended The stress and anxiety brought about by these events can't be underestimated From downtowns and village center businesses the impacts range from the cost of building repairs to service disruptions closures inability to transport goods and services temporary or permanent unemployment for workers The broader economic impacts have a crippling effect on the tax base when you add in the infrastructure Repairs that need to come to bear You know I witnessed this with Irene in my town at the time of Rochester and being cut off for a week and sawing How that really threw the town for quite a loop for a number of years and it just seems to keep happening Step-by-step we've made incredible progress and have showcased how Vermont strong resourcefulness self-reliance in a sense of community spirit Again is alive Well Vermont faces many climate risks from high heat drought Flooding still remains our most significant and costly economic threat you can look at the data and Years after Irene I still served on the hazard mitigation grant selection committee the state's Assessment of our vulnerabilities and flooding by far is our most a cost our most costly natural disaster year after year the ripple effects and Damages to individuals businesses homes roads utilities extend throughout the local regional and state economies While climate adaption and resiliency were always part of the scope of work I want to also express a special thanks to the agency natural resources in their climate action office For their leadership and contributions to this crucial conversation They kicked in some extra funding to really explore this as part of the designations going forward And that just happened a few days after the floods for for this deeper dive of Rebuilding with climate change in mind while still balancing the importance of what we love about Vermont Preserving our working lands our floodplains our open spaces and the character of our historic centers So much of what we cherish about Vermont is shaped by the thoughtful development patterns Vibrant villages and downtowns abundant agriculture working lands robust network of forests and recreational assets For over 25 years the Vermont state designation program have left their mark on nearly 260 municipalities The designation programs encompass five programs village centers downtowns neighborhood development areas growth centers and new town centers These programs have provided vital benefits such as tax incentives grant funding technical assistance Regulatory relief to help villages in downtowns thrive across the state We have so many success stories from our smallest villages like Hancock to our larger downtowns like St. John'sbury Their their work and their vibrancy stand as a testament to the positive impacts of this program Yet we must acknowledge that many of our villages Many of our communities are built near the water on the water and face increased risks and challenges This demands that we ask them hard questions How will we adapt to climate change? The intense housing pressure are evolving demographics and equity needs. What will Vermont look like in 25 years from now? Today we have a unique opportunity to contribute to this conversation so that in 25 years When we or our children or grandchildren look back and wonder how and why Vermont changed so much or why it didn't change enough From the place we know and love today It's what we're here for to discuss and talk about So here are some of the questions we might explore today to guide this conversation How can we enhance accessibility and address equity barriers for diverse communities and users of the designation program? How can we better align programs with regional plans and future land use maps? How can we modernize simplify and streamline administration to increase program efficiency? How can we enhance the program's ability to address emerging Vermont priorities such as housing climate change transportation demands and changes equitable state investment and more We welcome all of your lived experiences and big ideas for the state designation program We invite you to share your feedback your concerns your dreams What you think will help shape Vermont's future? One village in one downtown at a time With your support, I'm confident Vermont will take the steps to ensure our community's businesses and people can quickly bounce back and not break When the next disaster strikes Together we'll continue to build a bright future for Vermont and I'm grateful for the privilege of having played a small part in this journey And I want to thank you all for being here today I think almost know more than half of the room and have worked with you and that's been a privilege Now is the time where we roll up our sleeves minor already up and we get to work And so I want to Invite our colleagues up today, and I'm excited to introduce our consultant team led by smart growth America and community workshop Smart growth America as many know as a national nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing sustainable equitable development Specifically promoting better connectivity between land use and transportation We're delighted to have the mission-driven approach and their knowledge of nation's best practices and policies on our team Community workshop is a Vermont based consulting firm specializing creative community engagement planning Placemaking design and facilitation Community workshop is led our engagement efforts and has done a fantastic job designing and engaging strategy for this project Community accumulating in today's event and so without further ado I want to invite Katharine from smart growth America to come up and get us kicked off and just thank you for being here and being Part of this Vermont's future depends on you Thank you so much Commissioner Hanford and thank you to the entire DHCD team for all your Collaboration and commitment to this project, and I have to also recognize this is a really incredible group of state leaders Thank you so much for joining us today, and we feel so lucky to have your expertise your perspectives and your energy To collaborate with all of us to determine strategies to take the designation programs to the next level My name is Katherine Burgess, and I lead the land use and development team at smart growth America As you've heard smart growth America is a national nonprofit focus on sustainable equitable development And our North Star is a country where no matter who you are or where you live You can enjoy living in a place which is healthy prosperous and resilient and on the ground We envision these places to include housing of a range of types and costs good transportation choices Easy access to jobs civic facilities and shopping without reliance on a car And this is a vision that is really in line with the potential and the goals of the designation programs But unfortunately, it's countered a standard development practice across most of the US Which typically favors single family residential and separated commercial and institutional uses So our organization works nationally, but I'm especially excited on a personal level to be a part of this project because I live in Montpelier We've also greatly enjoyed partnering with community workshop, which as you've heard has led our Creative and exciting engagement strategy culminating in today's event So first before we get started I want to make sure that you're aware of everyone on the team All of whom are here to be a resource to you today really excited to share more about this work and to also get involved in the collaborative Discussions and can folks on the team stand up, please You know our core team includes Jerry mincer who's backed by the resource table She has managed the project adeptly with many moving parts in a quick timeline Our research director Michael Rodriguez who you'll hear from next who designed the research strategy to assess the impact of the designation Program so far and Rebecca stone who has led the community and stakeholder engagement process We also have a group of key advisors who brought a real depth of knowledge both of national state policy best practices and of Planning here in Vermont. This includes Chris Zimmerman. Who's a up in the very back Who's a longtime smart growth America staffer who also was an elected official in Arlington, Virginia known nationally for its smart growth policies We've been joined with but joined by two Vermont base planners as Advisors Sharon Murray as well as Faith Ingalls root who had a long tenure at DHCD and knows the designation programs extremely well Finally, we also have a pro bono advisor Jim Tishler a redevelopment leader in Michigan who spent time practicing in St. Albans and got to know the designation programs then Now before we begin it's really important to ground our discussion in where we are and the many generations before us So please join me in reflecting and acknowledging the following about Vermont First we acknowledge the traditional unceded homeland of the Western Abinaki people We acknowledge the home heritage and history of Vermont, which is especially relevant to us today given the designation programs focus on historic preservation We need to acknowledge that none of these things are equitable or equal and that historic and current racism and other barriers have presented have Prevented equitable land ownership and access which are key to wealth building and generational opportunity and Finally, thanks to climate change Vermont is warmer and wetter and in the opening remarks You know, here's some reflections on the traumatic and damaging events of this summer And so we must acknowledge the increase in climate impacts facing Vermont and Vermonters as well as the rest of the country So with that grounding we're eager to move into today's Project and agenda and to give you a quick overview into the work that we have been doing over the past few months and to Set the stage to get your input today So reflecting on both the nature of Vermont and the many start challenges before us, you know We're looking at the designation programs and what the opportunities are to Improve and reform these programs to effectively meet state goals So first I have to acknowledge that coming from the national perspective We really see these programs as unique nationally as models of how to encourage Compact vibrant settlements which foster local character and economic development opportunity and preserve the broader landscape You know, we were really excited as an organization to have the opportunity to Assess and learn from this program because it's unique nationally and we really think that this reform presents the opportunity to take it to the next level Notably, we think it presents a fantastic opportunity to develop strategies to To address some of Vermont and the country's most pressure pressing challenges This includes the housing access crisis and inequitable access to housing and the climate crisis So I'll start with a very high-level overview of the designation programs as they stand today Recognizing that within this room we have a range of amounts of exposure to the program Some folks work on this program day in and day out others are more familiar with it at a high level Our teams here to be a resource to you during the interactive portions of today And we also have a large team from DHCD here, which of course knows these programs intimately So I think it's incredibly important to start by acknowledging that this is a program that has been around for about 25 years And it has grown and expanded over time and all of these expansions have occurred You know on account of different goals and the different contexts of the different points in time at which the program grew All of these programs seek to advance smart growth But at different scales in different contexts and with different types of tools available So first I'll start with the downtown designation program Which is probably the program that the most folks are familiar with and we have heard the DHCD Describe it as the top shelf of the designations So there are 24 downtowns located across the state believe in just about every county aside from Grand Island Essex So this program has been extremely successful in terms of economic development Revitalization and has been a key part of the redevelopment story of a number of towns such as Bristol Key challenges however for the downtown designation include establishing boundaries and also the required Participation of a downtown nonprofit which can present capacity challenges for smaller communities Next you have the village center program, which is by far the most prolific with over 230 village centers involved This is the easiest designation to get but the benefits are the most limited and notably we've heard the most positive feedback about the tax credits Next new town centers were established to support communities which lacked a downtown to establish a new mixed-use walkable center And this is the highest capacity program for local engagement because it requires a big vision infrastructure planning and also you know a large site to potentially deliver this vision and you know There's only three across the state South Burlington has made the most progress with this Then the final two programs are considered add-on designations They are for communities which already have one of the prior three designations So first there's the neighborhood development area Which is an add-on for infill and housing to encourage housing in close proximity to a traditional center This is the fastest growing of the designation types and it's the most recent program Then finally there's the growth center designation Which is intended for planned growth in close proximity to a center to reduce sprawl And this can include other types of uses which are not found in a traditional downtown such as large-scale Institutional potentially industrial and there are six growth centers across the state So all of these types of designations offer different benefits and the dhcd team Abley advises municipalities and communities regarding the you know the eligibility and the different combinations of benefits As I mentioned earlier by far, you know, we've heard rave reviews about the tax credit opportunities Also a lot of positive feedback about access to the downtown transportation fund in order to improve transportation options You'll also see a wide range of other types of benefits from fee reductions and exemption of land gains tax to Act 250 benefits which offer arguably the highest potential for impact So of course the act 250 benefits, you know present the opportunity to promote and support housing development And our team has spent the past few months intimately getting to know the designation programs and we're aware You know of the many intricacies complexities and intersections with act 250 also, you know High and it's of course highly relevant to look at the potential to of reform to act 250 as well Notably, we heard very positive feedback about the 50% fee reduction in neighborhood development areas Pictured is when you ski cited as a success story in terms of the form-based code and the The act 250 benefits which supported new multifamily development So where are we now? We're now at a really opportune moment to revisit these programs and their purpose and determine whether they're meeting state goals And it's also exciting because the state has 25 years of a body of work And this complex portfolio to learn from and to assess And so we see today's event as an opportunity to step back And to think about the goals and how these programs can more effectively meet them and be more effectively designed Both to achieve some of these these big picture goals. We've discussed and to provide a smoother experience for users You know, it can't be underestimated What an uh the increase of capacity that is required to deal with a program Which is now, you know, some have described it as more unwieldy So, you know, we're both looking at the big picture and what the opportunities are to Make it every day more user friendly So I'll quickly share some framing thoughts before you hear a more data-driven analysis from our research director michael We uh having gotten to know the programs and spent a lot of time speaking with stakeholders this summer culminating in today's event Two topics really rose to the top The first is the housing access crisis and we're at a moment when the state team is ready for reform of these programs But more importantly, we're at a point where reform is desperately needed We have to recognize the current housing access crisis in the state and the potential for designated areas to play a key role In producing more housing, which is well located for quality of life and reduced reliance on cars And without producing more housing designated areas run the risk of becoming increasingly expensive and inaccessible Especially to households that could really benefit from having reduced transportation costs And evidence of the housing crisis access crisis is almost everywhere. We look in the state I know many folks in the room are leaders on this topic and You know authored some of the analyses that we read as we began this project I think everyone's aware that the cost of housing is skyrocketed rocketed and A number of tragic statistics show the stark divide in the small state Notably the high homelessness rate the low vacancy rate and the problematic racial home ownership gap A few quick illustrations are here and again, you'll hear more from michael in his remarks We have both that left and a depiction from the house of ramon housing finance agency Of the recent rise in median primary home sales prices Which again has skyrocketed since 2019 And then at right, you see an analysis from the national low income housing coalition Which puts together a state by state analysis each year And showing how this housing access crisis is hitting low income households the hardest And you know their analysis found that more to the 87 percent of extremely low income households are cost burdened in the state But this is a daunting challenge But we feel that the designation reform is really poised to contribute to addressing this It's an opportune moment given the recent passage of s 100 Given investments across the state in bylaw modernization And the current level of political will after the floods And with that i'll share the second big theme that has really uh risen to the top in all of our analysis As we've gotten to know the designation programs You know, we see them as really having the potential to support firm honors in addressing the climate crisis And since those tragic floods, there is an increased awareness of and commitment to resilient building And rebuild rebuilding is already underway for many damaged homes and businesses So we know that flood events like this will continue to be more frequent and more intense And unfortunately that low income firm honors stand to lose the most given the burdensome cost We think that policy must address this to support safer rebuilding And direct future housing and growth out of harm's way as well So we hope to work with you today to address many of the tensions Between supporting safer development in beloved downtowns and as you'll hear from michael many of these designations are Located in vulnerable areas. That's um, you know easy to come to that conclusion knowing the number of historic communities on riverfronts And many are at risk due to their location So talking about that tension between supporting safer development in beloved locations and encouraging safe future growth And we also know that flooding is one of only many climate impacts which will impact for monitors and designated areas in coming years So we're here to brainstorm with you about solutions how the designation program can address the climate crisis through both mitigation and adaptation And you know, historically by focusing on denser development that reduces reliance on cars You know in their dna the the designation program is already developing strategies to reduce emissions So let's also look at strategies for adaptation how to direct development to more prepared sites And how to ensure more prepared approaches in historic centers And the image outright is of the mont pealier transit center Which was you know lauded as being an example of new construction that fared relatively well during the flood in this case There's a pretty flood ready ground floor use and then the housing is located above So thank you again for listening to kind of some of our big picture findings and goals for today I'm really excited to introduce michael briefly in a moment and to also walk you through what we're here to accomplish And what to expect you have agendas on our table on the tables So you'll see after starting with the grounding in our assessment will move into two different deep dives one before lunch and one after lunch Keep in mind that we're going to start with defining key outcomes Talking about the purpose and scope and thinking about the places that we hope to see the designation programs impact And then in the afternoon, we're going to roll up our sleeves We've already heard at least one of our attendees has his sleeves rolled up already And look at opportunities for reform and designing those solutions To remind you you remind you where we are in this process We are about halfway through what has been a really rapid fire project We started in may did some pretty significant research and planning for the whole process And then spent the summer with both a deep dive evaluation And as our stakeholder engagement process which then brought us to here today for the statewide workshop After the workshop will be developing recommendations, which should be ready in draft form in late october Final report will be ready by the end of the calendar year with the goal that everything is ready for the next legislative session So again, it's been a quick project But we're really thrilled with the opportunity for impact and are really excited to leverage all of your knowledge And passion for this topic and for vermont communities here today And with that I'd like to introduce my colleague and our director of research michael redriguez. Thank you so much, michael yep morning everyone So as resident data guy and economist here I get the great privilege of presenting a lot of charts and graphs And then hoping that your eyes don't gloss over But I have a feeling a lot of you like this kind of stuff. So I think I'm in good kindred spirits here This morning. I want to talk in detail about the program evaluations very specifically This was a program evaluation that we're doing and we've been doing and continue to be doing and In the 20 or so minutes I have with you to go over specifically three things I hope I accomplished by the end of this conveying what our findings are out of this So first I want to explain what our method was and the actual process of what it is that we did I want to go over two very important topical themes. I think that katherine Previewed some of them and then overall talk about our findings of the Oh, it's then might not Yeah All right, I should know better. I have a fancy mic in my in my home So I want to talk about four of the key program evaluation findings that we that we have at least for the purposes of this morning As we continue to do this project So here's some of the steps of the process looks a little bit like the slide we have before But the point here is that we spoke to many state officials and many people at the hcd and throughout the communities We reviewed State documents so a lot of document analysis that we actually did digging through the actual language there and Here we're moving towards the end of the process As you see in my slides, I'm going to have some quotes here. I want to be clear The quotes we have throughout here are not my quotes or our team's quotes They're the quotes of folks that we heard say things throughout our interviews or throughout our surveys Now here's some key highlights again in the actual methodology Mostly some stats of what we did you can find the website here and I want to Talk that many people in the are in this room who we spoke with So thank you for bearing with us throughout many interviews And we had a chance for four online surveys talked with over a hundred respondents Throughout those surveys and we continue to do these interviews and have these surveys a bit open Now talking about the designation program itself we had some other maps, so here's one version of the map It's very small to see right because it's a whole state these designation areas are a little small But 277 of them by the latest version of your GIS map covering a bit over 27 000 acres One key point that 5.7 percent of land of your developed land is categorized as a designation area This echoes some of findings that we have to plug one of our reports called foot traffic ahead At smart growth america where we look at walkable urban places in metropolitan america We generally find that about two to five percent of a metro areas landmass Is what we would call walkable urban place So this matches in terms of scale with that and the programs mapping wise are a little bit different when you zoom in Specifically we have overlaps one town or community or municipality could have more than one of these and this here is burlington Just to show you some of the complexities these come from the DHCD map itself Here's another one of your communities just to illustrate exactly what it is that's going on here And we got to do great research and no good research is done without research questions These were the four broad areas of research question or four research questions We have over four broad areas first. We wanted to focus on the administrative processes So what is it about the actual process itself that can hinder or advance the actual success of the program? We wanted to identify some of the conditions for success. What is working or what might be working in the future what you might change On number three. What are some of those program benefits and incentives that are working or not working? How are they aligned? Of course, all these questions are cross tabulating. They all Have little arrows going towards one another Catherine talked a lot of the specific program benefits, but our focus is how do those program benefits advance statewide goals In number four the current and the emerging priorities. What are your state's priorities? What should the state's priorities be going forward for a successful program? So two themes Two themes that emerge that we want to talk about this morning We had several themes that emerge. I want to be clear there. These are just the two that I want to talk about in the short time we have today and These aren't the only ones but We heard a lot about housing housing housing housing So I'd be remiss to not mention that this is a large problem that we heard in a large area that we would like This program to advance in terms of housing affordability and so on And then secondly the issue of climate we heard a lot about that. It's very topical. So it's natural that we're going to discuss some of that and The housing question going right into it number one We heard about whether the designation program is doing much about housing Or even what the state's strategy is and how this program might fit into that straight state strategy such that it is there Some of the outcomes that we bothered to measure because again, we looked at a lot of data a lot And this coming from Zillow. These are your Zillow home value index prices They do track with your median sales prices, but to give you a sense of scale We have about 3.9 percent housing growth from this period about 2010 to 2019 There is a bit of a break point that I noticed statistically out about the pandemic So this might not be a surprise to many of you who I've talked to so starting at that point housing Prices started to increase about 10 to 11 percent This is both a nationwide trend. We see this in a lot of metropolitan areas and across the country But also very specifically hitting vermont pretty hard in terms of your housing costs And we heard it in terms of people said words like housing So when we ask folks, what are the top goals for your program? That's what this shows. This isn't just me making up a word cloud This is actually words that came out of a survey. So when we see Housing pop up that large I get the idea that you think broadly speaking housing is pretty important There's a lot of other themes and a lot of these other themes are going to be discussed in the report But to illustrate and to emphasize that housing is pretty important here And so what's the state really doing about housing? Especially since housing of course is an important part of your overall equity goals when we look at that in particular So this is your supply growth. I want to point out that your state Goals are 802 people by 2035 and 305,000 non-seasonal units by that year. So by 2035 That's just to meet the overall workforce needs of your state Well, so here's supply growth pre-pandemic specifically because I don't want to lose sight of Specific pandemic trends in supply. It's a bit funky But if you just want to know housing supply did go down during the pandemic period by about 0.6 Most of these numbers invert a little bit, but I want to focus on long-term trends So there's a specific reason why why I keep it there And we see that village centers are the largest buy number But they've declined by multifamily units and the new town centers are where we see the growth is supplied most rapidly But these numbers folks I'm going to mention as an economist. They're pretty low These are not high growth numbers Usually in a community or metropolitan area or a state that's growing rapidly or trying to achieve a pretty aggressive housing target that number tends to be Higher than 2% at least higher than about one and a half percent Effectively you want to track with population and job growth whatever you'd like that to be So if we zoom in here zooming in on everything else to note that these rates State housing at these rates state housing goals really can't be met when you just kind of do the math and This is an important equity issue For example, just 20 percent of black households in vermont actually own their own home when you Calculate what that number actually means. That's actually 450 450 Black households in the state that actually own their their home So what we see in the data and what we hear throughout the community is an issue with housing We heard it loud and clear and it's especially they're evident with housing and supply So the second big biggest issue we hear no surprise climate and resilience And of course the major events have underscored this we talked about that and I have a little bit of data on this When it comes to the designation programs So here's some of the flood data about your designation programs What we did here is we took the FEMA flood maps and identified for your designation programs How much of the designation areas are inside the FEMA flood maps? So About less than 8 percent just about 8 percent All of your designated areas are in the 100 year flood zone and about two-thirds of them in total are in what we would call the 500 year flood But it's important to note that that 500 year flood mark was surpassed in the most recent floods in certain areas in terms of the high water mark If we drill down, which is not on this slide But so that you know the highest risk of flood is in the downtown zones They have about 21 percent of their land is in the 100 year flood and about 71 percent in the 500 So of course, this makes sense in a way. We like to build cities near water. That's a natural human endeavor So we should note that but it's an important thing to know where your areas are But flooding is not the only hazard. We want to point this out. This is from your state from the department of safety and Public safety and your hazard risk scores So when the department of public safety puts together, these are weighted scores of what some of the most important risks in the state are They vary from everything from fluvial erosion to ice drought infectious disease and so on So flood is in there in terms of inundation flood number two Related to flu fluvial erosion. Again, this is from your state data from department of public safety On a related note though as part of the broader theme of climate and environmental stewardship Your state is committed to agriculture preservation. This was one of the things we were mandated to look at and we think is pretty important So we got some of the us geological survey Satellite maps and drilled down to identify where is the agricultural land and how much of your land covers agriculture versus developed land Pretty darn stable. These are the most recent data available from satellite usgs survey data Less than a tenth of a percent change over almost a decade period Same thing with development in terms of development increasing Pretty stable for a whole state. So in a way, good job For if you have that goal to keep that pretty stable and everything else that's not either agriculture or developed land sums to pretty to almost exactly stable at 80.9 percent, which is basically everything else from wetland forest and barren land Now your transportation statistics, I know one more related issue is transportation It's a pretty important one when you talk about climate We talk about this in smart growth america climate is related to transportation And generally you would like vmt vehicle miles traveled to be steadier go down the trend is that in vermont They've been those numbers vmt have been pretty steady for about a decade and there's been a dip since the pandemic This is not surprising the the overall The overall state has about Seven to six and a half million billion vmt So There you have it but transit use big hits when you go from 2020 2020 to 2021 the pandemic period not like not unlike other states and other metropolitan areas that is a large hit that you see We'd like to get that number back up because that's an important part of meeting overall climate goals So so, you know, here's your transportation statistics and is one part to consider How do those designation programs play in to mode choice to transportation to the ability of people to take transit Or other transportation modes like walking and biking So moving away from topical areas these are the actual findings and some of the key takeaways of the designation program themselves This is now the program evaluation stuff And I want to focus part on where we consider The evaluation itself there's there's four main takeaways At least for this short presentation that we have this morning The program is challenging to coordinate. That's one of the things we really see some coordination challenges We see that local communities have different views than the state overall So when you talk to state officials and when you talk to local officials, there's some differences in perception, but that's not uncommon to many government programs Really anywhere where end users may think differently than administrators We see that programs are not easy to administer On either of those ends. We heard that the programs are a bit difficult That's there and then to the extent that they're difficult or any of these three things exist There's a difference in this perception of micro versus macro goals I'm going to get into specifics of that but that broadly means that At the micro level some view that oh, maybe it's meeting success at this small scale development At our municipality at these very local levels, but when you talk about higher statewide goals this macro stuff Maybe not necessarily a strong belief or view or perception that it's aligned very strongly So getting into some specifics on coordination Here's what coordination looks like a small view from one of your documents Makes complete sense, right? We thought so and took about 30 seconds to digest it, right? You got the program Everyone. Yeah. All right. That's what we thought so What we heard about this type of stuff is that there's some confusion Of what the program does now look it's not That surprising given that like many Government programs at the federal level at the state level really everywhere. It's a multi layer of five programs There are five different points at which you added programs to one another So you have this layer cake of sorts of different programs and that naturally needs Leads to some difficult coordination. That's probably why we're here today so With that we heard Some mixed views and this comes from our survey participants were mixed to middling about their satisfaction on the designation program Especially if it benefits local goals overall, we heard some points on coordination How does the development? How does development coordinate within the program? Who's tracking anything? How does infrastructure align with growth? These are just some of the areas The main points here is that complexity of the five programs. It evolved over time It evolved over five different programs that were put together on this and that naturally creates some challenges for coordination Then we have this other issue that we're seeing of local versus statewide perceptions We heard some differences from local officials again from folks at states And this isn't surprising nor in nor an indictment of local officials or statewide officials Again, it's a nature of many programs where end users and administrators might just have some different perceptions of what's going on It made the locals may tend to be a little more critical of programs that they use And weren't necessarily strong on the idea that programs were heavily serving their communities or their particular goals And back to the idea that programs are difficult here when you ask very specifically Not high scores per se on overall understanding or overall belief that the program is easy on the one hand or other way To say it another way. It's a little hard To administer to comprehend to execute the program There are many points of challenges from creating boundaries to the back and forth between local officials DHCD and the board We have challenges of upward lapping designations and maintaining them Folks the programs simply are not simple We heard that we see it in your documents and we see it ourselves in terms of our expertise to such that it is And then considering a new program framework We need to think about the program structure how it can be improved with ease And how it can be easier for local officials businesses developers and for the state officials who administer the programs themselves And lastly this idea of micro versus macro goals The main point here is we notice that there was a distinction between When you ask is the program really meeting your goals? Well, which goals are we talking about the developer the local community? The very specific stuff are we talking about these big macro? large statewide goals Maybe on the former Yeah We could see for example that maybe a developer likes the regulatory relief here or that the Tax credits or that some of the transportation credits are doing their thing at this local site level or municipal level But when you say about statewide goals You get a shrug How is it meeting statewide goals? Well, I suppose the documents say it's supposed to But from an operations point from a theory of change perspective, how is this program leading to that? There is an indirect path. Yes, but Views from participants from folks that we talked to that maybe that arrow isn't as strong and could be stronger And so with that I'll leave it here as a recap And we'll hear a lot more about these things the rest of today in this presentation in our workshops I'm looking forward to putting together a great program evaluation of our findings with our team and all of us at SGA and We look forward to talking to you folks again or to your legislature Today is very much part of this process. So now I'll turn it over to rebeco I'll have some more fun with actually getting to get your phones out and seeing some of the Getting to give us some direct input And yes, of course we see Thank you so much michael Welcome everybody It is great to be here and see all of you in the room after so many weeks of planning and getting everyone registered I am going to need a minute for tech transition and that's a perfect moment to ask you all to make a little tech transition Michael is actually serious about getting your phones out. We are going to attempt some live polling We are going to need every warm energy vibe in the room for technology to work because of course those gremlins are always here So if you have a phone on you Pull it out on your table is an agenda that has wi-fi instructions for today If you do not have a phone on you or any other device a tablet a laptop would also work just fine Find a buddy A key theme for the rest of the day is going to be that it takes a village to do just about anything Sorry downtown But we're going to have a lot of village energy in the room today So you can certainly team up with somebody nearby you if you do not have your own phone Or if you struggle to understand the technology today If you struggle to figure out how to get on the wi-fi Find a buddy near you who can help you out We'll have our first team challenges here to see uh, which table can get on first And then I'm going to just switch over and get our polling set up If somebody is really struggling wave a hand in the air and hopefully one of our resource team members Who particularly gets set will be able to come around and help you out or somebody else And if you have gotten yourself connected so far you can also just stay on your cell signal if you like But wi-fi may be a little bit better You can go ahead and take a look at the screen And get connected to our polling system here today There are three ways you can do that. You can scan that qr code by holding your phone right up opening your camera And snapping it and that will let you open the link It's not showing. Oh dear. Look at that. Okay. Let's try this again Oh Thank you for that Okay, we have more tech challenges than I thought Sit tight for a second It was working just fine a minute ago a power point All right, I'm going to give you all a challenge here for a moment while we're figuring this out If you've figured out your wi-fi, here's your first challenge to discuss at the table What is one thing that surprised you out of what you just heard michael presenting? So just go around you can start by introducing yourselves to your table members if you want to do that names pronouns Organization or where you're from something that surprised you while we get our display set up


Excellent. Thank you. So this is going to be a very high level talk, so it's not going to be technical in any way, although it is about using Python for in smart things. Short introduction about myself, I'm Mark Lemberg. I've been with Python for a very, very long time. 1994 I studied with this. I studied mathematics originally. I have a company doing Python projects, currently mostly working as consultant or so much, so much as a company. I'm the EuroPython Society Chair. I've been on the board of the PSF, so I've been around a bit. And this is also what I want to talk about today. So the theme of the talk is basically to tell you a bit about my experience in enterprises. With enterprises, I mean companies that have at least 100 employees, usually from 500 to like 20,000 employees. So much, much bigger sizes than what you usually see. And also companies that often don't have a lot of use Python, or where the company itself often doesn't know that it is using Python. So when working in these companies and consulting for these companies, I always had to deal with enterprise applications, and sometimes also selecting enterprise applications for them. And I found that there was very, very little Python being used in these companies. So this talk is basically about at least maybe hinting at ways of maybe how we can change this. So what's the current status that we have with Python in the enterprise? So if you go to a large company, where do you see Python being used? Like I said, most of the times the companies they don't know that they're using Python. They're probably using Python somewhere, at some low level, for into-credit companies. So what's the current status that we have at some low level? For integrations? For calculations that they're doing? For managing batch drops? For testing for these things? But it's not really very well known that they are using Python, and if they're using Python only at the low level. So it's hardly visible in actual applications that use in enterprises. They are using it for web applications, as the web frameworks, Django, for example, or Pyramid. Some of the companies also use Python for implementing in-house applications, but those are again usually just very niche applications, not the big ones. And you almost never see it used in any enterprise applications. And with enterprise applications, I mean applications that you typically just hear about using acronyms. Acronyms are very popular in enterprise world, right? So it's just about acronyms. The more acronyms you use in your talks, the better. So these are a few of them. So ERP, for example, is one, is enterprise resource planning. It's actually a stack of applications. You have a CRM, which is a customer relationship management system, a PM project management system. Then there are probably some acronyms for accounting billing and procurement as well, but I didn't put them here because I didn't want to explain too much. Then you have BI solutions. BI is business intelligence, with intelligence in the sense of like, you know, what the CIA does, except that you look at your data and other data. So this is mostly reporting and analytics, so they're trying to find out how the company works internally, how well it performs. The managers want to have reports. They want to analyze trends. They want to identify certain weaknesses within the enterprise. That's why you have BI. Then, of course, you need to store the data somewhere, so you have data management systems. For that, they usually have something like a data warehouse, or recently, more recently, it's more popular to talk about data lakes. Don't ask me what the difference is. Don't ask me what these are. I don't think that they actually work, but this is what enterprises use. Of course, they also have a whole ballpark of different database systems that they need to maintain, so you get basically all different large databases in there. They always have to have some way of storing static data. Static data meaning, for example, customer data, so names of customers, billing addresses, phone numbers and so on, or things about details about products they make, certain aspects, properties, and so on. That is usually stored in MDM systems, it's called, master data management systems. Then, of course, these companies, they take data from other sources. Sometimes these other sources are actually other departments inside the company, and then they have to convert data between different databases, different applications. For this, they use ETL tools. ETL is ... What is ETL? It is, anyway, exchange, transform, and then load. I don't know why it's that order, but it doesn't really make sense, but it is about transforming data from one format into another format, maybe applying some extra logic to it. Then, of course, they have systems for making it possible to use APIs for the applications. Another one is CMS, content management systems. In the enterprise, it's not called CMS, because CMS is always seen as something that's used for websites. In the enterprise, you call them ECM, enterprise content management. It's essentially the same thing, only that you focus more on internal knowledge, how to manage documents, and so on. Of course, there are many others, but I don't want to go into that level of detail. If you look at where Python is being used, or where Python actually has entered this space, there are only very few things. In the ERP space, you have ODU. How many of you know ODU? A few, maybe half. ERPnext is another one. Very few. Interesting.  I've never been working for an enterprise company that uses one so they always use SAP or Oracle or many other systems. For BI, what we have is the Anaconda stack, I called it, which is not completely accurate. It basically means everything that has to do with the PyData stack. I think the best tool that we have right now in Python is Bokeh for doing charting. But again, it's just low level. We'll use it to just create a few graphics and put them on PowerPoint slides and then use them in presentations. That's about the level that is being used there. For data management, we have, for ETL, we have a fairly new tool called Bonobo. How many of you know Bonobo? Again, a few. This is, it's a nice start, let's say, but it's way too simple for what enterprises actually need. For APIs, we have Swagger. Swagger itself is not really a Python tool. It's more like a tool that you can use to build APIs that then build libraries that work against APIs. For CMS, we have Plone. How many of you know Plone? About, like, maybe half. Of course, you can also do this in Django. But the kind of CMS that enterprises use with lots of permission management, with workflow management, this, I've not, so far I've not seen being done in Django. So Plone is basically the only solution that we have for that. But it's not a widespread use, which is kind of unfortunate. Because if you look at the market sizes of these tools, these are numbers from Gartner, mostly. The market sizes are huge. There's a huge potential that could be used for Python applications. So just look at the ERP market size, like with almost $42 billion expected by 2020. And it's just two years away. And similar for the other things I took out of the list. So there is a lot of money in this. So if someone wants to do something in this area, even if you stay tiny, it's still going to make you a lot of money. And it's definitely worth it. Because there are so many issues with these enterprise applications. So some of the issues I mentioned on this slide, of course, the biggest issue is cost. When you are in an enterprise, you want to have one of these systems installed at your place and you want the system to be used. You always have to customize it. And this customization is usually called an implementation project that you run. It takes at least a half a year to run this project, usually longer. The estimates that the vendors come up with are usually wrong. So the expectations that they have are different than the ones that the enterprise has. And so there's a mismatch there. So you have to address that. You have to project management. You have to transition from your old system to this new system. So it's a real project that you have to run. It's not something that you do on the side. It's not like installing quick-in on your system and then be ready to run and select two hours. Most of the time you have to get consultants in for this. The consultants for these things are typically quite expensive. So let's say you want to have SAP in your enterprise. They usually cost between 2,000 and 3,000 euros a day. Some of them are even more expensive than that. And even though they charge a lot, they are not necessarily all that useful, let's say. So they don't actually meet the expectations that you put into someone who costs that much. Then of course, once you have it installed and it's running, you always run into issues because things don't work the way that they should. The processes change a bit. Let's say you have a form, it needs a new field. You need to get a consultant to add that field. Or you want to have a new export format. Then again you have to get consultants in. They have to work for you. You have to set a project, project management and so on and so forth. It's really costing enterprises a lot. Of course enterprises are aware of these things. So let's say they do care about the cost, but they expect these costs to be like in the hundreds of thousands of dollars every single time they do these things. On top of that, of course you have maintenance and licensing costs for these applications. And there you can easily reach a million a year. No problem at all. Once you have these applications installed, then you find that basically you're locked into that application. And it's very hard to get out of it again. Because what most of these applications do, and most of the vendors do of these applications, they try to take ownership of all of your data. And basically this makes it impossible to take your data out again or makes it, let's say, not impossible, but it makes it very hard for you to take the data out again. And as example, for example you can have like the data put into a database. And the database you don't get access to database schema. So you cannot actually just go to the database, export the data in some other way using some other tool, Python for example, and then just do something with it. Sometimes they even go as far as encrypting the data in the database without giving you the encryption key. So you cannot really access the data anymore without asking them for permission. SAP for example has licensing contracts where they actually take ownership, I mean literal ownership of the data that you have in the SAP system. So if you want to export data from SAP and give it to someone else, you have to pay them extra, unless your license allows this. So those are just a few disadvantages of these existing systems. And of course I didn't mention most of these are written in Java and in C sharp or C++ or languages that like Fortran, Cobol, you know, really old stuff. Or systems that where basically you don't care how it's implemented like SAP for example, because it doesn't provide you with any decent interfaces to customize except for the custom interfaces that they do want you to see. So you don't have any good way of integrating without going through their APIs. So what are the advantages of Python solutions we could have in this field? So one major advantage is that because Python is so easy to learn, it's so easy to understand. You can actually have the enterprise staff itself do the customization. So you don't have to run projects with consultants, external consultants, or at least you don't need as many consultants to do this. Licensing can also be had cheaper because most of the Python applications would typically use a complete OSS stack. So you use open source software which you can use as let's say if you were a company implementing one of these solutions you can use to lower your price and be more competitive. We can have open APIs because standard is all over the place in Python. We don't need to have soap interfaces or bloated XML to store stuff just to be enterprisey. We can do things in JSON. And we can also make it possible to choose the database in any way you want and to open the schema so that you have easier ways of integrating. What we currently don't have, or at least I don't really see in the Python community is we don't have big companies in the field. So we are lacking something that's very important for enterprises which is good company backup. So they want to be able to go to a company, they want to be able to phone up a support guy immediately helping them. Maybe even a key account manager that's basically dedicated to that particular customer or depending on the size of the company even people going in from the vendor company into the enterprise and working there directly on site. So this is something that we don't have. And of course because most of the companies are smaller companies that we have in the community there's a huge risk for enterprises because of vendor default. If the vendor just goes away then what are they going to do with the enterprise solution? And this is something of course would need to be addressed if Python wants to enter this kind of space. So the solution to this is to not start in the usual way like opening up a small shop, having an idea, implementing something, doing a bit of marketing and expecting then huge revenue. It doesn't work like that so you have to take a different approach there. Another thing that I saw with for example Python libraries not all of them of course but many is that they are not polished enough to actually compete in the enterprise market. If you look at solutions that are implemented in Java, a C sharp, then you very often have much more polished interfaces so much more care is being taken about how the UIs look, how the functionality is implemented. They focus very much on what people actually need in terms of interfaces rather than just making up things and thinking what could a customer need. These other solutions they typically go out to the market, do market analysis all the time and iterate and then basically improve their solution constantly to fit the actual customer needs. And then finally of course as part of this because we have small companies, we cannot provide the level of documentation training and marketing that would be needed to enter into these fields. So what we would need to do in order to reach this level and enter the enterprise with Python, we need to change all of these things so we need to find ways of having a good company backup. One way to do this for example is if you want to start a smaller company you enter partnerships with larger companies that do provide a lot of these services and then via the partnership then to the enterprise you look as a larger company because then you can say okay I have this partner, the partner is going to do all the training for you, it's going to do the support for you etc. So that's a way to do it. There has to be a lot more focus on support and training. This is essential for these solutions because of course the people in the enterprise want to use it and they want to be like a thousand or maybe even 10,000 people using the application. So this is essential if you want to be successful in this area. And then like I said you always have to look at the customer, you have to see that everything is built in a way that addresses actual customer needs and not things that you just think that the customer would need. Plus something that small companies usually forget, not including myself for example, I have a similar story. I started building a product. I had an idea, I started building the product, the product was done, I started a company to sell it and then I started marketing and then I started sales and then I found that there is no market. So I basically spent five years of my lifetime doing something which in the end did not really generate any significant revenue. So this is where small companies happening a lot and if you want to start into this or head into this area then this is definitely something to keep in mind. So you have to start with marketing and sales first and then do the development. So what's the strategy to get there? Unless you are a billionaire and can easily afford just spending like 100 million or so on one of these ventures of course you need to find and the way to find good investors is you have to have a good strategy, you need a good execution plan and you have to have a vision for the future because it's not only about getting there, getting the product out of the door, it's also about what do you want to reach in let's say five or ten years with your product. Ten minutes left. Okay, that's good. You need to find the markets, you need to do market analysis, you need to see what the market actually wants, you need to pick the right market so as we saw on the other slide there are different market sizes so it might actually be better to reach for a smaller market and not for the bigger ones so let's say not ERP but let's say go for BI first and then enter that market because you might be more competitive in that market, it might be easier to do marketing and as I said do sales and marketing. That's good, just a second. Right, and this brings us to the dream that I have. I would really like to see Python enter the space, I don't know exactly how it could be done, I just want to maybe see the few ideas here. I think it's well worth it, I think there's a lot of potential out there for this. Python could actually make a huge difference in this market So many more people could have the possibility to do the customizations, for example, or you could easily extend it. It could be much more open. And then I and my job as consultant to enterprises, I could then pick a Python solution instead of a Java solution, for example. So right now, we just have web applications, we have data science applications. And if we enter these other areas, then I think we could actually make a big difference in enterprises. The solutions I've seen in the RFPs I've done for enterprises, RFP is like a procurement process where you go out to the market, ask the vendors to send you in details about the products, including the prices of course. And then you basically do an assessment of all the features they have and compare them and then pick one and then maybe do a pilot project with them and then see how it goes. For these things, it would be so much better to have a Python solution in there because I would immediately know that this has to be better because it's so much easier to customize. Of course, I have this knowledge. Other people in other consultants and enterprises don't necessarily, so you need to do a lot of marketing there. The best way to do marketing is to have nice flashy websites, lots of PowerPoints, people walking around the places and talking to a lot of other people. And of course, you need to pay them and so you need a bit more money and you need to have investors to finance this. And then the development can then be done in parallel to that. So I have a bit of time left, eight minutes. So I have some questions for the audience. So maybe you can come up to the mic and maybe answer these. So the first question would be, do you agree that there is a potential there or you can just shout out? I can repeat the question for the video. Maybe you raise your hands. It's easier to see. Okay, not all of them. That's interesting. Would you like to work in such markets? Even less. Also interesting, what is your favorite, let's say, market to work in? Are you more like in the web space and do you like low-level work more than, and this is not a question basically, I don't want to say that low-level work is bad in any way. It's just different, right? So do you think that working in that space is easier or better than in an enterprise or is it just the size of the company that you think is intimidating or maybe not the right place for you? Okay, that was a hard question to answer by hand. So, okay, how many of you think that that small is better than big? Okay, about maybe not half, maybe a bit less. How many of you think that that enterprise is boring? Okay, maybe a third. How many of you would like to work in the enterprise as freelancer and customize things and earn a lot of money? Okay, plenty more. Yeah, I know, it's the money question again, right? How many of you think that this is not a viable way forward because we don't have enough pricing programs available to actually pull off this thing? No one, that's good. Oh, one, okay. This is already much better than like 10 years ago. How many of you think this whole thing is way too risky? Okay, one back there. Jacob, I have a little story. I taught a Python course in London a few weeks ago and some people were from the financial district and they're saying that they're really, really interested in Python these days for data processing purposes. For importing Excel spreadsheets, doing processing and then exporting to Excel spreadsheets again. So that's very much the business intelligence part and it's hot in London right now and I've heard it from other sources as well. I'm currently working for a fintech company in Cyprus and basically that fintech is doing exactly that. It's basically taking data processing it using Python and then pushing it out again to other data, basically imports and yes, definitely. So there's a lot of work being done in Excel. There's lots of import from Excel and processing and output to Excel again. This is definitely something very hot in the finance industry. I know that Bank of America is building a complete system in Python, for example, internally. I know that many other banks are using Python internally to build systems or to integrate systems. The fintech I'm working for has built a middle office service completely in Python and because it's in Python, it's extremely competitive against all these other solutions that you have out there and so they're actually doing quite well. So definitely finance is a big industry and it's one of these enterprise level industries where Python does already make a difference but again it doesn't have this. They're not using the Python for any of these enterprise applications or at least I haven't seen any. They do build custom systems internally. They do a lot of integration and data management using Python but all the larger systems that they have are different systems. Yeah Fabien or maybe you? I'm just connecting to the spreadsheet. I have a library which does the spreadsheet so my client and my users turn the comments coming back from them is that using Python to process the spreadsheet in terms of performance wise is slow. So they usually have gigabytes of data. They want to transport transcoding and then also try to do data computation. It takes too long using Python to do that and then the second observation is that I use Python for web development and then they only trust me to do the internal applications but then when it comes to the business core activities as you said the SAP applications they already have been decided like this is SAP. There's no question you can't work around so they have already salesmen working to the bigger management and to say oh my product is good. It's good it's decided so Python, me as a Python developer as there is so small that I have no voice. So that's the thing. Yes I completely agree that's what I'm seeing as well. So Python currently is being used a lot for integrating things but it's not actually pulling off the big thing. So yes Fabian? A big thing especially where it's still growing is also the cloud that things are not anymore as earlier maintained inside an enterprise but that each service and that might be even human resources is managed through the web portal somewhere in a different company and in the end there it doesn't matter anymore whether it's Python or not because it's internal to that company. Can you say something into that direction? Yes I mean of course the applications that I was talking about many of these applications have web interfaces right so of course the user doesn't really care what it's implemented in whether it's Java or whether it's some other technology could even be Python but I'm basically coming from the side of the procurement basically the decision makers deciding which enterprise solution to use in an enterprise and I think at that level we can enter that market. It's not so much that the user will actually see Python it's more that we are able to provide these solutions to the enterprises and to create a name for Python in the enterprise which goes beyond just in being a nice integration language that kind of thing. How many of you are working in fintech? Not that many I'm looking for a few fintech freelancers so if you want to contact me yeah another just an observation for myself I do make money doing enterprise Python computing my view is the main barrier to entry is not really technological it's really that the cost of sale into enterprises can be very high and you need to spend a significant amount of time marketing and actually closing a sale after you've eventually found the right person to sell to in the organization which are not normally the kind of people who show up at conferences like this. Exactly this is not supposed to be a talk for like sales people and business people obviously I mean I put on a jacket today just to look more enterprisey but the of course I mean the the europe Python conference is not or not yet let's say it's not yet for for businesses businesses maybe eventually we'll get there my hope is that we'll get there and I would very much like to like to see this so with that thank you for your attention.


Okay, so my name is Pradh Dut. I work for SAP Labs in Bangalore. And we'll be talking about auto sleep and how we can probably save a little bit of money using it. So this is a Cloud Foundry community project. We collaborate with Orange on this, Orange Labs. And so first version of it was already developed by Orange, which already supported a couple of use cases. Then we joined hands with them and we developed something more that we wanted to enhance it with. So yeah, let's just go ahead. So yeah, what does it do? What is this service? So it basically automatically puts in active apps that are running in your space to sleep. And it also wakes it up. There is also an auto wake up feature that allows you to wake it up as soon as it is being accessed. So how many of you here have seen this 2016 talk from Guillaume from Orange? He's there. So Guillaume from Orange is the one who developed the first version. So has anybody seen the first talk? Okay, so then I'll also include a quick recap of it. And yeah, we also have the source repository here if anybody wants to try it out. It also has instructions on how to install it and use it. Okay, so the target users, who are we developing it for? So at the end of the day, we have to save resources. So platform operators, org managers, even space developers can use this, install it in their own respective custom spaces and then bind the service to their apps. It comes with a service broker of its own and use it to bring down apps that are inactive. We'll just see how it works. So it's not only about the space developers, also application developers. For example, if you are in a current situation where you do not have much memory or CPU available and you want to work with a lot of apps, then you could probably bring down a couple of apps and bring up a couple of them which are more active that you're actively working on basically on them. So please stop me in case there is any question at any point in time. Okay, so what are the features? So this slide talks about the features that were already there in the first version. So it already has a service broker. How do you create a service instance? You basically do a CF create service auto-sleep. Default is the name of the plan that is inbuilt and give the instance name. If you do this, then it already comes with a predefined set of default values for the configuration that you see below. For example, there is something called an idle duration. There is something called exclude from auto-enrollment. Then there is something called an auto-enrollment and the secret. So what is idle duration? Which is more or less the important part here. So you can configure a service instance to bring down apps that have been idle for the last 24 hours. So that's the default timeout. So which means if you create a service instance, all the apps that are bound to the service instance will be brought down if they are inactive for 24 hours. You can of course provide an idle duration that is more or less than 20 for us. I'll include into the demo. Then exclude from auto-enrollment. You can use patterns to exclude say apps that you do not want to be enrolled into auto-sleep. For example, you have an app called sales order app and you can just put a pattern there called sales order star or something like that, which will ensure that this app is not monitored by auto-sleep. Then auto-enrollment standard and force we support to variance. I'll come to that as to how. And we have a secret that works along with the forced version of auto-enrollment. I'll also show you what it is about. Okay, so let's do a quick demo of how it works. Okay, so I'll just create an org.  So let's create some space because without a space we cannot really push an app. So I have a demo auto-sleep org. I have a space called dev. Oh, it's dev, okay. That's weird. Let's delete that. Okay, so let's also target that. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to just push an app into this space because I want to monitor that app and I want to see how auto-sleep works without the app. So I'll just quickly push a simple Chinese app. All it does is pushes out Chinese characters. Why I'm using it is because it's very easy to push. It takes only a couple of seconds for it to get loaded so I can do a demo with it. Okay, so what I've done is I've created an org, I've created a space called dev, and I have pushed an app called simple dev to this particular space. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to use auto-sleep to monitor this app and I'm going to see whether I can bring it down or not. So now let's, using the service broker of auto-sleep, which of course should not be there right now because, it's already there, it's enabled for all orgs, great. So if you look at this, CFCS auto-sleep default, sleep one is the name of the service instance that I have, and I have provided an idle duration of 30 seconds. If I don't provide an idle duration by default, it'll be 24 hours and our demo will go on for a day. We don't want that. So I've provided an idle duration of 30 seconds. What it means is auto-sleep will monitor this app and will bring down any app that has been idle for the last 30 seconds. So I did that, so I have a service instance called sleep one that I've just now created using the service broker. Now what it'll internally do is it'll monitor all apps that are there in this particular space. The service instance monitors all apps that are there in this space and bind itself to them. So if you look at bound apps now, you see that the simple dev app has already been bound to this particular service instance. Now what next auto-sleep will do is it is going to start monitoring this particular app for any activity. So what we have said is please bring down any app that is inactive for the last 30 seconds. So which means the simple dev app that we have pushed has actually been inactive for the last 30 seconds, so it has been stopped. So now what happened was auto-sleep actually looks at all the logs that are there for this particular app. It also looks at events for those apps. So when we deploy auto-sleep into its own org, we configure auto-sleep with a user, with a cloud controller admin scope. This user has the right to poll for the logs of all apps that are bound to it. Basically it can poll for all the apps that are there in the cloud front instance. It also looks at the events of that particular app and if there is any kind of inactivity, which means there are basically no logs, no events, nothing, which means this app is not being used by anybody and it will just bring it down, which it did. Now of course what a developer can do is that he can obviously go unbind the auto-sleep service instance from this particular app and then start work because at a certain level it is irritating for him. So I as a space developer or an org manager would just go and create a service instance. My developer would just come, delete the service instance and continue to work. So which means it doesn't serve the purpose. So that is where the forced auto-enrollment feature comes into play, that is this. So now if I create a service instance with forced, what happens is you cannot really delete this particular service instance. So quickly going to that. So what I'll do is I'll unbind this. Unbind this and I will also delete this service instance because I'm going to create a new one. Yeah and what I'll also do is I'll bring up the app which has been brought down by auto-sleep anyways. So now I do not have any more service, yeah please. The idle duration is also the polling time. So which means if I have configured the idle duration is 30 seconds, auto-sleep will poll the data for this app from the Cloud Controller or from the LogGator for every 30 seconds. So you obviously in a, sorry? It will also poll. Yes. It will also poll. So if I push now along with the simple dev, another simple test or something like that, it will also bind itself to that particular app and also start monitoring that. So of course in a production environment you wouldn't have the inactivity period as 30 seconds. You will probably have it as 12 hours or 24 hours or something like that. So yeah, okay. So now let's create a service instance with auto-enrollment as forced. Now when I create a service instance of with auto-enrollment as forced, I also have to pass a secret which was there in the slide. So this secret is a mandatory parameter that we have to pass with forced. So if you pass the secret as with, sorry, the secret along with the forced auto-enrollment, what it'll do is it'll create another service instance which is different from the one that we created before because a developer cannot really delete this particular service instance until he gives the secret along with it. So which means a forced service instance cannot be deleted until he knows the secret and all developers would know it only the person who's created this service instance would actually know it. So now for example, if I go there, of course it'll bind itself and it'll also stop the app. Now the beauty here is if I do a CF, say unbind and I do a sleep one and I do a, it'll actually throw me an error. So it's no where I can run away from auto-sleep anymore. So if the app is inactive for the idle duration amount of time, it will be monitored and it will be put down to sleep. So no developer can actually override this feature, this behavior anymore. Now how do I get rid of it? Now of course there might be situations where I need to delete the service instance because I would want to also delete the space and the orgs along with it. So in that case the only way to do is is to update the service instance to standard by providing the secret. So I'm going to convert this forced service instance to a standard service instance and then I'm going to delete it. No, because he wouldn't know the secret. The secret is going to be known only to the person who's created the service instance, not to anybody else, exactly. So if I have created the service instance only I will know the secret by which I can update the service instance. Okay, so this behavior is already there in the autosleep service instance from the first version so we haven't yet reached org enrollment. So now what we wanted was, we wanted to enhance this with another feature called org enrollment. So which means, so currently with this feature said we are very, very dependent on developers or space developers to actually create service instances on their own, bind it to their apps and then help save the amount of money that we want to, but it ain't happening because no developer is going to do that. I mean we all know developers are lazy. So what is the problem that we're trying to solve with org enrollment? So yeah, so we have a problem that org manages to their face, which means so developers of course consume resources relentlessly. So if I give you 10 gigabyte of space you will push 10 apps and use all of it. I mean no matter whether an app is actually running or app is actually used it will continue to run forever. This is what we see in a lot of Cloud Foundry platforms. Of course all platform operators like SAP and others face this problem anyways and we tend to consume a lot of money on that. So we need a way by which we can curb this usage of resources and send those resources to apps that really need them. Another use case that we have basically in SAP is we have a trial org that we roll out to developers for trying out stuff.  The apps are running there forever. I mean it's like, I mean just imagine one, so we have around 4,000, 5,000 plus spaces in the trial org. If every space has at least one app which is taking one to two GB of memory just superimpose that to the money part of it and then you have so much of money not being, I mean just being wasted. So we wanted to somehow solve that problem within SAP. And that is where Autosleep comes into picture. So what we did was okay, we have this org enrollment feature where an org manager can actually come and enroll a particular org with Autosleep. So it's not at a space level anymore. We take an org and we give it to Autosleep and say monitor this org. So what Autosleep will do is it'll take that particular org, it'll start monitoring all the spaces in that org including ones that are newly created from time onwards and start demonitoring of course or deleting threads for spaces that are deleted and create service instances in them, bind them to all those apps and start bringing them down. So I mean in our platform, when we actually did this exercise, I mean within almost within one to two days almost more than 70% of the apps were actually down and we had put the idle duration of 24 hours. So which means almost 70% of apps in our trial org of more than 4,000 plus spaces were actually not being used. So yeah, so how does this work? So of course, as I said, the solution that we have is org enrollment. So we don't have a CFCLI yet.  So yeah, so once I do that, Autosleep will start monitoring all the spaces in their apps. It will create service instances automatically and these service instances are of a special kind. So for example, if I create a service instance, a developer deletes it. For example, he doesn't want his space to be monitored after the idle duration period of time. I will come back and I will recreate the service instance again. So you cannot really run away from Autosleep by once I roll this out into the platform. I'll come back to the parameters after the demo. Let's just quickly go into a demo. Okay, we already have a space. We have an app. Let's restart this app anyways. Okay, so what I'll do is maybe I'll create one more space called test. So normally in an org, you'll have a dev space, you'll have a test space, you'll have a prod, you'll have hotfix, you'll have a lot of names, a lot of different spaces. I'll just create two spaces for the purpose of the demo. So let's say I create one more space called test. Yeah, of course, there are no apps there. So I'll push the same name. I'll rename the name to simple test so that I can actually push it. Okay, so I have a dev space with a simple dev app. I have a test space with a simple test app. I mean, of course, this is not a production scenario. In production, you'll have probably one space with around say 10 apps, 20 apps and so on and so forth. Okay, now next what I'm going to do is I'm going to enroll this org. The org which is demo Autosleep with the Autosleep service. So we still, so this is still development in progress. We still do not have the service broker or the CLI updated to use this feature. So what I'm going to demo it with is a curl command. So basically I'm going to fire the rest API directly right now. So before that, I also need the space, sorry, the org ID. So let me pull out the org ID from here so that I can actually use the ID to enroll. Okay, it just seems like the org ID. So if you look at this curl command, I'll quickly also explain what the curl command is. So the curl command also takes the same parameter. So out of this curl command, we will of course wrap it up at a CLI. Currently, we have this rest API safeguarded by the basic authentication of the broker user and password that we have already for a service.  And I'm passing an iteration of 30 seconds and the state called enrolled. So which means what I want to do is I want to enroll this particular org with auto sleep. Okay, it returned me a response back saying that it's been taken care of. So let's go to the dev space. It actually enrolled the correct org. Oh no, the org view ID is different. I enrolled the wrong org. So you wouldn't really have to do all these things because once the CLI is in place. So now what I've done is I've actually enrolled the org that I really want to monitor. So what you've now seen is I went into the dev space and what auto sleep did was it created a service instance of its own into this particular space. And what the service instance is going to do is it will start polling all the apps in this particular space, bind itself to that space and basically more or less do what the previous service instance that we manually created did. But what you now don't have to rely on is to tell individual developers to basically create service instances on their own and help you save some money. The platform operator can actually force this particular feature into the platform for orgs like, for example, the trial org where you have a situation which you want to deal with. So if I go to the test space, I have a simple test app which is now bound to the service instance that was automatically generated in this particular space and if I, sorry, if I look into that app, it has been stopped. So now this service instance that has been created is not of a forced kind. Why it is not of a forced kind is because developers should of course get the chance or the opportunity to be able to delete the service instance and delete the space because we cannot really let the space remain there if the developer doesn't want to. But if I now go ahead and delete this particular service instance, what auto sleep will actually do is it will recreate a new one as long as the space remains. This has been built into the service. Of course, there are some more features to it. So let's now come back to the features that we are building into it. So there is a state parameter which we saw that we used as enrolled into the org. There are two more parameters to that which we call back office opted out and back office recursive opted out. So back office opted out means if you enroll an org with the status enrolled and you want to now move out, you don't want that org to be enrolled with auto sleep. You update it with the state as back office opted out. Now back office opted out means that all service instances that were created by org enrollment when you enroll this org will not work anymore. But individual service instances that were created in spaces by developers will continue to work as they normally did. But if you do not work, want auto sleep at all to work even for service instances that were not generated by auto sleep, the parameter that you have to use is back office recursive opted out. So if you do that, then auto sleep is just stop monitoring this particular. For example, you want to do some maintenance activity or some performance test for which you do not want auto sleep to really come in and meddle with your work. So for say two or three days in a week, you do not want org enrollment to work. So you just update the parameter with back office recursive opted out and it will continue to, and it will stop monitoring the org. Once again, after your work is done and you want to monitor again, update it to enroll and job done. It'll again start monitoring all the apps in that space, including any new spaces that have been created in this particular time that was, that org enrollment was not there. Okay, idle duration of course is defaulted to 24 hours and you can give any time you want. Then comes auto enrollment. So standard force, there's a transient opt out. So transient opt out is the one that we use for org enrollment. So what it allows is, it allows you to temporarily opt out of org enrollment by creating a service instance of that type, which means you can actually delete the service instance. But if you don't delete the space after the idle duration amount of time, it will recreate a service instance there and start monitoring again. So you cannot run away from the system. Of course, exclude from auto enrollment. You can also configure spaces or apps that you do not want this particular org enrollment to monitor. So you might say, okay, I don't want the dev space to be monitored because I'm running some performance stuff or I'm doing some development, but the prod space and the test space can probably be monitored. So you can just put a pattern there. Okay, so we have been running this our internal tri-org landscape. We have been using this on 4,000. So we have a trial org, which has 4,000 plus spaces with 5,000 plus apps. And as I said before, when we enrolled this particular org, we had almost 70% of apps just brought down with an idle duration of 24 hours. I mean, it was amazing. What we, so the rest of the next three points actually deal with some open items or some problems that we have with this. So auto sleep also comes with an auto wake up feature. So which means once an app is put to sleep, you want to access that app again and it'll wake that app up. So it's automatic, but the way this feature works is you have to enroll or register a wildcard proxy with the auto wake up app, which a public service provider like SAP cannot do because the wildcard proxy is something that we use in our private spaces. We cannot really use it for a public spacing service. So which means we do not have auto wake up right now. So once an app is put to sleep, the developer has to manually wake it up. Of course, we had a discussion with Route Services team, including Shannon. There's a discussion that you can also see in CFDef where so we wanted to see if Route Services can actually help us intercept traffic to an app that is put to sleep and help us wake it up. But unfortunately, Route Services right now do not support this. So if an app is put to sleep or it is stopped, Route Services cannot help us intercept any traffic to that app, which means we cannot also leverage Route Services to build auto wake up. So which means basically auto wake up is one big question mark right now for a public service provider like SAP. Of course, now if you expose a service like this on your public platforms and developers start using it, I mean, you will cut into your revenue generation to a certain extent because apps will be put to sleep if they are not used. So I have to decide whether they want to do that or not. So we in SAP still do not run this on a public facing pass. So customers are still not exposed to this particular service. And then there is also an argument that there is a feature called, or service called auto scaling that is already being developed. SAP is already a part of it. And the argument that people give is if I can bring down or if I can scale down my app using auto scaling to one, should do I really want to make it to bring it down to zero. I mean, the counter argument is right there. If you have a space, if you have 4,000 spaces and 5,000 apps, one single app with one GB, you already are hitting the roof. So it's up to the provider to decide. But yeah, there's still discussions going on here and there if you see a convergence point between auto-sleep and auto-scale at some time coming together, don't know the use cases are still different from my personal point of view, but yeah, something that is being discussed. Once again, what's missing today? Okay, HA, high availability. So auto-sleep today still runs as a singleton. If I scale this particular app for more spaces, it won't work because both instances will start monitoring it. So HA is a problem which we will solve and there are stories to fix it. We still don't have a dashboard for org enrollment. For space, for the already existing services instance, we'll still have a dashboard, but for org enrollment, we don't. We don't have a CLI plugin for org enrollment yet. Notifications is also not inbuilt. For example, when I sleep or wake up an app, there is no notifications yet. And of course, that I've already discussed, auto wake up on public cloud providers. So somebody like SAP still does not use it on the public facing pass, but it helps us save money on our internal landscapes. At the end, these are the contributors. So started by Orange. Guillaume is here. If anybody wants to bug us with questions, please. And from SAP, three people are contributing to it. That's all I have. Any questions, I'll take them. Cool. Thank you.