Economic Development, Communications, and Marketing Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome

everyone to our Economic Development and Marketing Committee meeting. As you heard, this meeting will be recorded. The Zoom application will notify you that this meeting is being recorded. Please press continue on the Zoom application to stay in the meeting. Use the raise your hand feature in Zoom when you would like to speak on an item and also lower your hand when you're finished speaking.

Please unmute yourself when called to speak and mute yourself when you are done speaking. If you're calling in by phone, identify yourself by name before speaking on an item. Press 9 on your phone to raise and lower your hand. Press 6 if you are participating by phone to unmute. So now I'd like to call this meeting to order and let the record show that council member Gonzales and I are here and council, vice mayor Cox is absent.

She's out of town. She's taking a vacation in the summer like most people should do. So thank you all for being here and not taking a vacation. Alright. So first, we have, consent calendar approval of the minutes from July 14.

Approve.

I'll second. All in favor?

Aye.

Any comment on the minutes? I should have asked that first. Okay. Now we're gonna go to public presentations. So do we have any member of the public that would like to make a presentation? Not yet for for your actual event presentations. These are other presentations, other comments, or questions. Do we have anyone?

I see no one raising their hand.

Okay. Anyone here like to say something? Anything you'd like to say? Yes.

Hey, everybody.

Okay. Thank you, Sean. Okay. You're welcome. Okay. Alright. So we're gonna go on to our general business. But before we do that, I'm gonna start to go around the room so we can introduce ourselves again. We have new members every time. So go ahead, Yvonne.

Hello, everyone. My name is Yvonne Insiarte. I wear a number of hats in Santa Clara. I'm also I work for congresswoman O'Connor here in the district, so I'm here still in Santa Clara. Grew up in Santa Clara. And, again, I am here looking around the room representing the 30 year olds that are not here. I see a couple of young

Who just walked in that are younger than you? I have to say. Saw. Not Satish. Go ahead.

See a Gen Z, you know, crowd here, so I'm I'm applauding that. And, yeah,

See? There you go. Good. Thank you. Okay. Sean or Kurt, go ahead.

Good good afternoon or, late afternoon. Kurt Vartan. I'm with a local pizza shop in Santa Clara, slice of New York, and we're looking forward to participating any way we can. Thanks.

Hello, everybody. My name is Sean. I'm a small business owner out of San Jose, but I live in Santa Clara. I love it here, and I'm here to listen and find out what we can do to make our community better.

You.

Okay. There okay. Say your names.

I'm dogging, bro. I told you.

Hi. I'm Brandon.

Hi, Brandon.

Hello. My name is Jay, and we're here with Sean. You? Also looking forward to make this city better.

Boom. Boom. Thank you. This table, Esther?

I want to make sure is the mic on? Hi, everyone. My name is Esther. This is my second economic committee meeting. I'm very excited to be here. I'm running a marketing startup, a communications company in Santa Clara. So thank you.

This is Sathisani Chandra. I'm in California, D1 district president, and I'm an academic elected delegate also. Glad to be

here. Sunny?

Hello, everyone. My name is Diana Dane. I'm the representing DNTV Silicon Valley Community Media. We are the organizer of Silicon Valley Lunar New Year together and Asian American Stories video contest and award ceremony. I'm looking forward to work with everybody and to make our community better. Thank you. Have some souvenirs. I'm going to show you. Yes. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. We'll do that after Diana. Let's wait a minute. Let's go through the introductions first. Let's go this table.

Hello, everybody. I'm Howard, also known as the hot dog dude. I'm glad to be here to make our city, really stand out on a global stage, so let's do some good work.

Next? Hi. My name is David Curtis. I am a commissioner on the salary setting commission. I've been a resident of District 5 for twenty plus years, and I'm here to, to also help out in any way possible. I also coach, Westside Santa Clara U soccer league.

Hello. My name is Mike Walkie. I'm the resident of District 5 Lake David for over thirty years. I wanna make Santa Clara better. I'm currently the executive board president for Santa Clara Pal. Thank you.

Thank you. Back table.

Hello. My name is Caitlin Riccardi. I'm the director of marketing at Discover Santa Clara.

Christine Lawson. I oversee Discover Santa Clara.

Hello. My name is Katie Cozzi. I am the community relations manager for Sutter Health, and we're very excited be standing in Santa Clara. Hi.

I'm Anna Vargas Smith. I'm president of the Santa Clara Parade of Champions. And I know Katie well. She's actually our presenting sponsor for the Santa Clara Parade of Champions this year. And, I do wear other community hats, Cultural Commission, HLC, you name it. It's a fantastic city, Santa Clara.

I'm Deborah Von Hewen representing the Cultural Commission, and I'm also on the downtown community task force.

Patty Wong, city librarian, and I'm also a resident. And then we want I think we wanna go this way too. Somebody missing? There's a couple new people that came in. Habir?

Hi. I'm Habir Bhatia, Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce CEO.

Thanks. And we're introducing ourselves. So yeah, as you walk in, you get to introduce yourself.

Thank you. Hi. I'm Eamon Zamer with O2Micro. Thank you, Eamon.

Yeah. Go ahead, please.

Hello. This is Ari Mirabidi. I'm also with Silicon Valley Chamber.

Very good. Thank you. And then we'll start here. Aliyah?

Hi, everybody. Really good to see you here. More and more people every time. So amazing. I'm Elia Kozak. I'm actually not from Santa Clara. I'm from The Netherlands, and I'm spending my summer here working for the city hall as a summer fellow to help the city work on preparing towards the major events next year.

And Albert Gonzalez on the council.

Segal Morgan.

Rina Brio, director of economic development and sustainability.

I'm Elysia Knight. I'm development project manager supporting city manager's office and supporting Rina in economic development. I think most of you all know me, but welcome.

Can I ask our staff back there just to stand up and introduce yourself so everybody knows who's in the room? Thank you.

Can you use the mic, please?

Oh, we have people at home that aren't listening.

Hi. I'm David Knight. I'm the comms manager with the city manager's office.

Hi. I'm Janine Della Vega. I'm the communications director and public information officer for the city of Santa Clara. Happy to be observing and taking in everything that you guys are talking about.

Damon Sparacino, parks and recreation director.

Right. Thank you so much. So we've a lot of people in the room today, a lot of decision makers in the room today, so let's get going. So our first item is to discussion and direction on the citywide 2026 economic development and community engagement. So is it Rina?

Yes. Are you taking I just wanna make sure the people online, have an opportunity to introduce themselves.

Alright. I'm going to unmute, call names online and and unmute you and have you introduce yourself. So the purse person that I see is Anna. You are now allowed to speak.

Oh, it's I just said Anna, but it's Kiana. And I actually work for a clinic in San Jose called Roots Community Health. But I'm just trying to see what each county is doing because we do have clients that we serve in the Santa Clara area as well. So that's why I'm here and see how we can bridge and create partnerships. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Akana. Emmy, you are now able to speak.

Hello. This is Emmy. Can you hear me?

Yes. We can.

Hi. It's Emmy Morminster, and I am in the sports industry, most specifically, representative Professional Golfers Association and the California Alliance for Golf, and we are excited about anything that has to do with sports in our community. So looking forward to being a part.

Thank you, Emmy. Debbie, you are now allowed to speak.

Debbie Triforos, lifelong Santa Clara resident and member of the Library Board of Trustees.

Thank you, Debbie. Alright. And last one, Misha, you are able to speak. You're unmuted.

Hi, everyone. This is Misha Humara. I'm the CEO of Tricor Panels. We, specialize in designing, fabricating, and selling architectural panel system. I'm also on the board of directors of Silicon Valley Central Chamber of Commerce. Excited to hear all your guys' ideas and share how we can, you know, build the speed, get it ready for that.

Great. Thank you. That's everyone correct, Alicia? That's everyone. Thank you. Yeah. So as we move to our first and only agenda item for for today. Just sort of setting the stage for us. We have been meeting as a committee for the last few months, and a lot of progress has been made to receive community input, to really steer the types of community events that we wanna see, to really leverage the opportunity of 2026 for our city, and to make sure it really represents the desires of our very diverse community. So thank you all for being here.

Today, we've got a lot of opportunities for moving around and talking through sort of workshop exercises. But I'm gonna turn the presentation over to Alicia Knight, who's gonna give us the background through the different steps that we are going to undertake today to really move this discussion further from ideas to really actions. Thank you. Oh, and I did wanna add. There are two sign up sheets.

One sign up sheet that everyone here should have put their name on, and that's just indicating that you're participating today so we can track attendance and make sure that we keep in communication with everyone. There's a second sign up sheet that's on a clipboard. Thank you. On a clipboard that's being passed around. If you are someone who is presenting a community idea today and you haven't submitted that community idea, to us electronically, make sure that you sign in that idea so that we can record it. So if the idea sparks you later on, just just make sure you put it there. We're gonna have another place for you put to put it as well, but that's the other purpose for the clipboard. Thank you.

Is there an online version too, or just is it only in person?

There is not an online version, but I don't know if we've enabled the chat.

Yeah. The chat is enabled. And Okay. Yeah. If you have an idea that you wanna present, we can we can open it up before we move to the next exercise. If just note it in the chat, and we'll come come back around.

Sounds good.

Thanks for speaking up.

Alright. So we'll go ahead and get started. This is gonna look a little familiar for some of you, but I know we've got quite a new few faces in the room today. So, again, welcome for joining us. So we wanna take a step back for a second and talk about what we've done so far.

And in the last few months, we've created this major events task force, cross sector coordination with an emphasis on inclusive engagement, local pride, and global visibility. This will really strengthen our community readiness for the high profile events. We've also conducted a core value survey, which I believe most of you all have participated in. And this was really enlisting the community and the committee input, and so that's been completed. We also participated in a mapping exercise to align the spatial insights in the event placement.

And you'll see on your tables, we've got a mini printout of that map just to kind of jog everyone's memory. We've also identified the potential theme and slogan through generation of community and committee input. And so now we're here today. You'll see on our timeline the full execution through FIFA and Super Bowl. It includes all the exercises that we mentioned in the last slide, but more importantly, it highlights where we're at today.

So the focus today will be on community proposals, the call to proposals, and really narrowing or prioritizing the community events. And although we're aware that event ideas will continue to surface through this process, it's important not only to look back at the progress, but also looking forward at the overall timeline for 2026, which is what you have here today. So what's the purpose of today's meeting? Today, we're going to gather really high level input, and we're gonna do that by identifying and in term determining what type of events you all as the community members are working on or excited about. We're really gonna look at a natural alignment or any synergy that exists amongst those events.

And then also looking at which ideas may warrant further staff consideration for funding, partnerships, and logistical support. Staff intends to take today's feedback and recommendations to inform the pursuit of the city led events and partnerships. We will then identify or excuse me, evaluate the feasibility of the proposed ideas, which will include coordination with venues and partners, as well as an assessment of the resources required. So the agenda for today, and we're kind of flying through this quickly because we really wanna hear from you all. So today, we're gonna just do a really quick look back on the event categorization framework that we identified and talked about at the last meeting.

This is really gonna help jog our memories on what options exist for the type of events that the city looks to host. We will then open the meeting to community presentations of the event ideas that are being considered. So that's specifically city led, sponsor partner led, and the broader community. And then once we've heard from the community with your proposals, we will open the event identification workshop with a gallery walk, which is gonna be a dot exercise. You'll see the little small sheets that are posted around the room today.

That's how we'll be conducting the gallery walk and the dot exercise. And for those who have proposals today that may not be represented on those sheets, that's okay. We'll gonna go ahead and add those to the sheets that fit into the categorization buckets, which we'll outline as well. And then lastly, as part of the x DOT exercise, we'll use the input from the dot exercise to provide and help inform our group discussions as we narrow and prioritize the events. And so the that's some of the paperwork that you have on your, not desk, on your tables.

Alright. So stepping back, at the last meeting, we discussed the framework that staff is using to categorize the events to help identify where more clarity is needed. So that clarity could be funding like, identifying a funding source, an event lead, and size and scale. And really to understand the size and scale, we've categorized or we've represented the events in three different categories, small, medium, and large. And we'd like to you all to keep these in mind as we work through today's exercise and hear from the community proposals.

This framework is gonna be best applied in our group discussions. And I think just to run through these really quickly, the three different categories, city led events are categorized as small and will be led and produced and have resources supported by the city by way of fundraising and other sources. It's also possible, I just want to note, that some of these events could also be current events. So could be potentially parade of champions or street dance. So events that we already historically hold that we're looking to enhance.

And then sponsor partner events are categorized as medium because these events will really be led and founded by a partner excuse me, funded by a partner. And, again, the city may provide in kind services like permit logistics and staff time. And then the last is the community led, which are categorized as small but are extremely impactful because they engage all the districts and are organized by local groups, nonprofits, and individual community members. And the city will acknowledge and provide varying levels of coordination and support as available. Alright.

Now we get to the fun part. We wanna hear from you. So there are a few sponsor partner ideas that have been submitted to us or just event ideas in general that have been submitted to us ahead of time. And so we're just gonna ask you if you haven't already signed up to present today. I think Patty was holding the event sign up sheet. So if you can just sign up there, and we'll call on you. And then for those who have submitted, we will present on the screen as you are presenting your event idea to the community. Right. So we'll get started.

Mhmm. Oh,

I think we have a hand raised, so I'm gonna just go to Kiana before we get started. You are able to unmute yourself. You should be. Kiana, are you able to unmute? Okay.

If not, are you able to type in the chat? Or maybe you have your hand raised, but okay. Let's see. Kiana, can you hear us? Okay. We are gonna keep going for now, and we'll come back. Oh, sorry. Okay. Great. So the first set of proposals that we received was from Deborah.

I'm gonna ask if you wanna share your ideas. And let me know. I have your proposals, and I can I can share them to the community? Let me know which one you wanna start with.

Okay. Let's start with the Our Town creative placemaking event. She's going to yeah. The idea for this is an interactive all day play, like a theater play, only outside to distill grassroots research, interviews, and planning into a public presentation on the plans for the new

downtown you speak a little louder.

The new downtown on Franklin Street. It includes using prop storefronts, and abandoned buildings to host pop up businesses. The idea is rather than hold a reenactment, which looks towards the past, do a preenactment looking towards the future and what the new downtown could be. So do you want me to go through all all the details? Okay.

The lead departments or contact people might be reclaiming our downtown, downtown community task force, Santa Clara players, city planning, others. This could be city supported. We we would need support probably from planning and marketing and aligns with the community value of hometown heart and heart of a champion. Okay. Next.

Light art installations in underpasses, tall buildings near the stadium, at city gateways. And I have some photographs attached to what I submitted. I don't know if we're going look at those. But the idea is using light art installations for either a temporary or permanent feature of the city based on available budget, suggested to run from before the Super Bowl to after FIFA. Existing gateways such as the one at Lawrence And El Camino or use light to create temporary gateways, such as on 101 in Great America, 237 in Great America, Montague and Lick Mill, Franklin and Lafayette, etcetera.

And to run from January through July, the Cultural Commission could lead this and aligns with Hometown Heart. Don't have an idea of what the budget might be yet. It'll depend on how extensive we go. Next is nebula rider events. Oh, I'll go ahead and show those pictures some ideas of light art. Yeah. Do you wanna just walk us

through what we're seeing on the screen? Okay.

So the first ones, I saw in Denver. It's a lighted walkway. So these are frames with lights inside just to make a pathway. And then I don't have any more, but the idea is to do something like searchlights, you know, that meet over some of these gateways I talked about. Or they could even be additional things such as, you know, the the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, that kind of light installation. I think, hopefully, everybody understands what I'm talking about there.

Could we make it the colors of whatever countries that

are Absolutely. Hosting here in Santa Clara? Absolutely. Yeah. The colors of their flag or Or for their team jerseys. Different color. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's great. Yes. That's in San Jose. Yes. It is. And we have a lot of places we could just let our imaginations run wild and go until we run out of budget. Okay. Oh, there's another one. That's something that was at Burning Man.

This is a kind of metal cutout that has lights inside, so it casts shadows on the walkways. So we could also do that at strategic locations. Okay. I think that's the last picture for the light art. So next, we'll go to the Nebula Rider events.

Nebula Rider is currently installed on City Hall Plaza through mid November as sponsored by the Cultural Commission. Based on a few suggestions, we can find a sponsor to extend the installation through at least Chinese New Year celebrations as 2026 is the year of the horse. Also, the horse, the Bronco, is Santa Clara University's mascot, and there's also the Morgan Horse in front of the Triton Museum. We can make this a recurring theme or symbol of artist artistic and catalyzed events, as the Nebula Rider is a life size Pegasus sculpture about to take wing. We can hold multiple events to celebrate and draw the community to City Hall Plaza, continue selfie marketing campaigns, and devise other events.

Right now, as I mentioned, it's paid for through November. We could run it through at least Chinese New Year or even through the FIFA events or longer based on the kind of funding or sponsorship that we get. Right now, that's being run by the Cultural Commission. This aligns with Heart of a Champion or Hometown Heart. And in both cases, I wrote that lowercase h e, capital a r t, because you can't spell heart without art.

Cute.

Okay. I have a few pictures of Nebula Rider here. If how many people have been to City Hall Plaza to see it? Yay. Okay. And then, we took a picture also of, city council members and cultural commission members and the artist in front of it. So you can see it's a little larger than life size. And, it's also lit up at night. Any color. Okay.

Going on to the next one. Burning Man art installations. We can either add to the horse theme with other whimsical horses, or we can play some other large scale art that has been developed by Burning Man artists over the last few years. There are about a 100 art pieces at Burning Man each year. Some of them have already been sold to buyers, Some of them weren't meant to be permanent, so they might not still be available.

But we can look through the web pages and look at things we might feel are appropriate. Proposed locations would be major gateways, transit hubs across from the stadium and other places on our map. It can be temporary or permanent based on funding and sponsorship. And right now, it's being led by the Cultural Commission. The the staffing needs and budget and all that is TBD based on, again, how much sponsorship we get and what we can afford as long as as far as how long it can, last there.

And, again, this is hometown heart on a world class stage. So I have some pictures as well as links to those web pages, but there's one disco snail. That's cute. The next picture shows a horse that's being developed by a camp called Misfit Toys. So this is you can see kind of the scale, how large this horse is.

There's another one being sponsored out of India called the Phoenix of Odisha, and there's a whole mythology behind this. And then one more. I think one more. Yes. This one is a a slide that's shaped like an infinity heart symbol.

So you can, yeah, you can climb up. It's a see, 23 feet tall. We'd have to think about making it safe for participants. And finally, there is the exquisite animalus. This is 19 feet tall, and it has revolving layers.

So as you turn each disc, you can create whimsical animals, and it's very interactive. It spins on human power. And okay. That's all I have, but this is just an example of the many, many types of fun, large scale art that is available, from Burning Man artists.

Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Yeah.

Oh, I have one more. Okay. Community mural. Some people might remember that in the 2019 street dance, we had a community muralist who had a 30, 30 foot wide by 20 foot tall mural that the community was able to paint on. And he has continued to do that in places like San Francisco, Redwood City, Miami, Basel, all over the place.

The idea is using that everyone can paint format, we'll host community mural making events based on marketing themes, like the future starts here or hometown heart or whatever we decide. The proposed locations would be night markets, any downtown activation, gateway place making, etcetera. And we can have them as often as, again, as we have budget for. And that could also be led by the primarily by the Cultural Commission. We may need some staff from Parks and Rec to help us with that, depending on location, and may need some street closures.

So I have some pictures on that one too, on the street or the murals.

Do I have that one? I'm not sure if

I I did send it to you. I sent you five of them. Five proposals. Let's see. What's it called? Murals. Just murals.

I remember that at the street dance. That was fun. Everybody Yeah. Got involved. I was trying to find my own picture of it.

Yeah. So they're painted on canvas. Yeah. And either he can take that back to have somebody else repaint on it, or it can be placed in a permanent location. Or he's developed a process to take high res photographs and print it on vinyl so it could be placed as a panel somewhere. Yeah.

I was just thinking about that. Actually, we do architectural panel systems. And if this is an idea that we do move forward with, we can even, like, build panels if you wanna install them somewhere in the city later to kind of keep them as, like, memories and how to be a part of the community moving forward. Also, I wanna let you know that the chat is still disabled, so we can't add anything in there for online online participants.

Thank you, Misha. We're we're working on it.

Yep. We're working on it. Sorry about that. Thank you.

All good.

I just before we move to the next proposal, wanna open it up and see if there's any questions for Deborah or if we wanna add to any of the thoughts on on her proposals.

Oh, and the microphone. Anna, microphone. Pick up the microphone. I

can vouch for that. We were all at that particular street dance, and he had it on the side of his van. And everybody just went at it and started painting on it. And my my question to Deborah is, how do we make that a permanent thing? Because I would love to see that piece of art again, but it I'm not sure where it is right now.

It's in storage right now from what I understand at the community rec center. Nobody knows what to do with it. We at one point, we're gonna try to hang it in the Kaiser lobby, but that hit some snags with lawyers. If we can find a place to put it, yeah, we could at least hang that up because that particular one had a hometown theme as well. It was really about what downtown means to me. Yeah.

If we can't hang it in the Kaiser lobby, maybe we can hang it in the Sutter Health lobby.

Sean, I think I saw your head.

Yes. You did. Yes. You did. There's a piece in Downtown San Jose. It covers an entire wall. I was going to the museum, but they were closed. So I took a walk, and there's art on every little object that you walk by. And this one wall, it looks like they're they're almost like the size of records but a little bit bigger. A little bit bigger. And it's every different square has a different artist from the city that they've all come out and painted their style. They've got their name signed on it. They've got their Instagram thing on it. And it was the coolest thing to see. And and then all the little planters and some of the electrical boxes.

I just think when you highlight the local artists and give them an opportunity to show their work, it kinda lifts them up and also lifts the community. And if the museum is closed, what a fantastic walk.

Yeah. I to throw that. I know the wall you're talking about was done by Local Color, which is a a nonprofit organization in San Jose for artists. Yeah. It would be great if we had something like that. It would be awesome.

You, Habir?

One of the ideas that I think just to add on to if we can, we were thinking about is to do things like that, but engaging the businesses to light up their businesses with certain colors so we can then bring attention to the businesses while we also create a common theme along a certain pathway. So we can activate pathways without heavy burden on the city, and each business then gets to take the benefit from being I don't want to say promoted, but being visible, first thing. And the second thing, I was there for that year because I was still on the cultural commission for that. One of the things I remember walking away with on that canvas, which everybody loved, was they wanna take a piece of it back with them. Right?

And I wonder if there's a way for us to do something where we could have a photographer or somebody that kinda takes a snapshot and it's got, you know, the the city of Santa Clara written on it because then it becomes in itself very memorable, and then people can have that as a, you know, keepsake. So they get to still have that picture or the painting, and and then they still have the Santa Clara logo on it. The third part to that was something you mentioned with San Jose. Yes. I'm sorry. Don't know your name. I apologize. Hi, Sean. I'm Herbier. I'm okay with that.

Far from young, but okay. The other element was that a similar piece, if we could do it where it's rotating throughout the summer or the games, and then it gets to take it a moment in time, we take a photo of it. And in the similar way we do with the canvas, it becomes a it could be the journey of towards the games, and it could be an art piece in the future, whether it's housed here. And then you don't as the same problem, how do you house those artifacts once the event is gone? It it becomes very difficult. But if we can memorialize them as a painting through a through a photographer, whoever, it could be the journey to the games that stays with us, and it doesn't require so much, space afterwards. Thank you.

Thank you, Habir. Can I

just add the the good thing about temporary art is that the the city doesn't have to make, you know, long term commitment or permanent commitment to the art? But also, many of the artists are looking for a place to temporarily house thing until they things until they can find a permanent buyer. So this would be a kind of interim solution for both sides.

Great. Thank you. Oh, did you have a comment?

Yeah. Not a comment, but idea. Oh. I think we if you

have

inflatables, you know, which are very popular during the Halloween. Right? Because our famous river mark within the Santa Clara River Mark, we have a huge kind of gatherings and lot of people tend to come. So the idea would be look at if you have a logo, if you have a certain kind of a concept, build up inflatables, and maybe we can put at some of the common places which would glow and which has much more, you know, whatever we can use it, and maybe you can use all around until the event. So that's an idea I just wanted to floor. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for that. Alright. We're gonna move to Diana Ding, who I think has a proposal for us.

Yes. Can you show my PowerPoint? Thank you. Yes. Okay. I'm going to passing this around. This is a souvenir I created on my trip. So I have two events proposal, which we are already doing right now. So Seneca in 2026, not just a game host, but a story host. So the story host, I proposed two events.

One is Silicon Valley Lunar New Year together. Another one is Asian American Stories video contest. This is mainly to empower the local communities and build a lasting civic legacy. And also, this why this event matters, inclusive engagement, amplifies Santa Clara's diverse voices and local and the global impact. So like our Santa Clara will be a spotlight for the local pride.

And also legacy building establishes citywide traditions and storytelling, iCAPs. Can we go to next page? Thank you. So this is Silicon Valley Lunar New Year together. We've been hosting that for four years, starting from 2022.

And since Lunar New Year become the California state holiday, so we actually invited a diverse community, including Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean, Mongolian, Japanese together to celebrate Lunar New Year. What I'm proposing is we want to make this even bigger because we host we used to do that at our backyard. Maximum, we got 1,200 people, but that is too small. I'm thinking to make this become a 50,000 people events. Together with OMG Entertainment, who is a professional with street fair.

So they have 500 booths, culture, art, restaurants and food. So together with them, we are able to create a really big one because I this is I showed how that look like. And on the right side is the events we already hosted this year and last year. And just to give you an idea, you see that we got Vietnamese calligraphy and Indian face painting and Chinese dancing and singings, all kinds of events. So what we need from our city is we need a location, maybe at Downtown Santa Clara or any place with one to two streets.

And we have a main stage, have cultural performance the whole day. And Citi can be a sponsor or can be a cohost. So we need permits, security and funding. We're already having our funding for our last four events, but that is a small one, with 1,000 people. With 50,000, we definitely need more support. So this is Lunar New Year together. We call that together is all the cities coming together and all the diverse communities coming together. So let's go to next page. Thank you. This is the souvenir I found and I created.

So you can pass by and show people, yes. I create them. Each one, I just take like two minutes. So this is like a DIY Santa Clara DIY souvenir, personalized and instant and memorable. Just imagine use any picture, selfie or your family picture or picture in front of City Hall or Santa Clara City and just use your cell phone and scan the QR code.

And in less than two minutes, you create a souvenir by yourself with gold, silver or any color you can imagine. So that will give people an opportunity that they can do them by themselves. But on the backside, we can use the image in the middle, put our Citi's logo there. Or maybe you can find a sponsor. The one I created with someone sponsored at the backside, so we cannot choose. You can find a sponsor for the backside. And in that way, so everybody can take a picture and then go to the machine and create their own souvenir. And I create a magnet for the refrigerator with a picture of me and our mayor. That's the idea. And this is doable and very reasonable price.

I create a totally 9 coins and one magnet with around USD 200. Yes, all of them. And with also with the package. Okay. Let's go to next page, yes.

Another one is Asian American Stories video contest and award ceremony. And we started this from 2023, and we already hosted two of them. One is STEAM All of Us Belong Right Here. And this year's theme is My Gift to America, and next year's theme is Coming to America. That's next year's theme.

So for this one, and we already collected over 140 stories with short videos, one minute video. And this is very touching and moving. And we host that in Milpitas in the restaurant. The restaurant can only host like less than 500 people every time we a full house. So I'm thinking to move this to Santa Clara Convention Center.

And library or any place that can host more people, and we can also feature a Santa Clara story as one of the categories. So we can invite our schools and next generations coming together and tell their stories. And this can be on YouTube and also on many we are working with Indian parents, Filipino media and Vietnamese magazine. So this will be on all the other ethnic medias, share the stories together. This is what we already did, and we partnered with ABC Channel seven.

They gave us free ads. Okay. So this is a second event. So the unique value of us is we are a media in Silicon Valley for last fifteen years As the voice of Silicon Valley Asian Americans focused on telling our stories, we have this 200,000 monthly reach and already 3,000 digital videos on YouTube and 40,000 newsletters subscribers. And those are maybe a small number, but with everybody working together, it can be really big.

So we already been doing this. We have a team, and we raised enough funds for this year and last year, but we want to make this bigger and move this back to Santa Clara. This is the second event. Yes. Let's move to next page.

So the benefit for our city is promote tourism and civic pride through the cultural events and assets showcase Santa Clara as a beacon of equity and diversity. And visitors experience life culture shows and food and craft marketplace, community storytelling and family activities and local business booths. So residents engagement, we can have local school and youth involved, volunteers, ambassadors program, a story exhibit in libraries and in museum and after this. So community pride during 2026. So this storytelling and civic memory will be create a model for inclusive city programming.

This is the benefits for our city. Let's go to next page. So what we ask for our city is co host, endorse both events and provide seed funding or grants. Of course, yes, we've been doing this for years. So we have our channels to raise our fund by ourselves. But we need just need some support. Big or small, both okay. And also, we need to secure the public venue access, assist with logistics, permits, security, street closure and also promote through Citi's channel. That's all we need. Thank you.

Diana, is the big Lunar New Year event, is that similar to the your night market that you were proposing? Is it the same? Or

Yes. Same. Yes. Night market and Lunar New Year. And this night market, we can host more, because Lunar New Year is a short event, but this night market can, like, several times in our city because we've been working with them, and we visited their events. And Ching and I have been volunteered for their events. So we learned how they do that and how to become successful and how to bring people together.

And can you incorporate

Of course, yes, of course. Yes, I would like to learn and hear your advice and see how can we work together with Citi and with everyone to integrate all the results together.

Diana, do you know when the Lunar New Year celebration is this year?

Yes, we did. Yes. This year, when? This year, we host that March. Yeah, we host that. And this year, we have 1,200 people sign up for the Lunar New Year together.

In 2026, do you know

when it is? 2026 will be the February, but we're thinking to host that on March because Lunar New Year is a whole month, a one month celebration. So we're thinking to do that on the early March.

Thank you. I just want to open it up and see if there's any questions or collaboration or comments for Diana in her proposal.

Over there. Thank you. Thank you, Chuck.

Where was the 50,000 person event hosted that you showed right here?

This one is in Sunnyvale. Oh, Sunnyvale? Sunnyvale, yes. They got nearly 40,000 people there in Sunnyvale. And that was their downtown? Yes, in two days. That's in two days. This is the picture from Sunnyvale.

I know our ROI, get, what, 30,000? About that. 30 to 40.

Thank you so much, Diana. This was incredible. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Oh, Diana? Sorry. I had a question. Another one. With the Asian American stories, I can imagine that's something where people can go online and and watch them. Are you thinking about having a physical place where people can come in the city to watch them too? That'll be great. I will

be very thankful if you can make this happen.

Very different topic. It's actually a sad topic. But when I was at the World Trade Center, they have a very moving room that you go in to listen to a bunch of stories. And I was just thinking, oh, it'd be very cool if, you know, stories could be in a space and people could sit and watch similarly. That would be wonderful. Yeah.

Actually, state library actually gave us a suggestion. Yes. The library and the ongoing stories then played on that screen. That would be wonderful.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Diana.

It's me too.

And we're gonna go to the next presenter, which is Patty.

I don't have any show and tell up there, so I apologize for that. But, in the next year, the the library is thinking of bringing a series of of authors that have written books about a strong amount of our of our sports community that is so for instance, Mark Purdy, who's a known sports columnist, has written a great book about the 49ers. So he's coming in November 20. It's already booked. So we hope that actually probably every quarter, maybe every other month, we'll have another author book signing focused on sports.

BayFC has already come. We hope to have them come a number of times during the next year. I think one of the things that we also hope to do, is focus on the San Jose earthquakes too. I do think that there's opportunities for us to host watch parties in between the FIFA game. So not the ones that are here, right, but the ones in LA that are happening in between.

We have cable access in each of our libraries, and actually, that's what that's set up for is is for us to host things like that for the public. If there if there isn't any licensing things, we'll have to talk about what that looks like. But I believe if we have a certain amount of people or lower than that amount of people, we're okay. I think the other thing that I know that the mayor is very interested in is when Super Bowl fifty was here, we did have a STEM program. We called it STEM Bowl.

It happened in January. It was very wet that day. So we would hope not to do it in January and do it more in the in the spring. If we got support from NVIDIA and a number of the other tech companies, we'd love to have it elsewhere. Giovan has talked to me a little bit about it, and he suggested that if we can't do it at NVIDIA or somewhere like that, we could think about the convention center so more people could come so more people could come. And the focus would be on science, technology, engineering, and math having to do with sports, and there's a lot to that. So there's robotics. There's engineering. There's math. There's art, there's all kinds of things that we could kind of when we hosted this last time, ten years ago, we had about 8,500 to 10,000 people.

That's an average size for our Comic Con, and we are still gonna do Comic Con in '26. So there'll be two ends of that. So there'll be in spring, there'll be whatever we call it. We do have the domain for, STEM Central, so maybe we'll call it that. But we'll also planning on doing Comic Con as well. The entire summer reading theme is going to be about sports. So if you're invested in our summer program next year, that's all you're gonna see. Sports. Sports. Sports.

So it's it's just our way of kind of leaning in, and, it's for adults, teens, and kids just to get them excited about it and being prideful, right, of our community. Because, the other thing that you probably have heard, the library is partnering with Anna and a number of other people to, put together a list and links to sports celebrities who have called Santa Clara home. It's a lot longer than you think. So, and we're gonna be using some of that information to help support you in whatever you'd like to do. I know Anna is profiling that at the parade. So, anyway, those are a few of the things that we're doing. Yes, sir.

Oh, we need it for people online.

Okay. So my name is Frank. An author. I'm here, you know, Santa Clara resident. I collaborate with some professional athletes, Ricky Waters. We just had an event about a month ago at Books Incorporated. So he really addresses the kids. He has a children's book. So if you'd like to have me coordinate with Ricky Waters and his wife, Katrina, I could do that. Yep.

Good job, buddy.

We need about 80 to a 100 volunteers beyond the staff. And and, admittedly, since we're a seven day a week operation here, that means I probably need twice as much as that because I have to keep this place open too. I wouldn't wanna close just because we have another event somewhere else. So so I'll be calling on all of you to help. It's gonna it's gonna be fun, though. It's gonna be fun.

Alright. Thank you, Patty. It was awesome. Alright. Anna, you're up.

Did you? Ah, okay. Give me one second.

I like all the pictures. You know?

Alright, Anna. I got it.

I'm

gonna start sharing.

Hopefully, everyone in the room has been to the parade of champions. Raise your hand if you haven't. I wanna know who you are. You're gonna be there this year. So save that date, 10/04/2025. It's an all day event. This year's theme is called game on, obviously. We are kicking off a huge year. We're three months before the Super Bowl, actually. So it's kind of like the perfect event that showcases what's ahead of us.

Next slide. Pretty much all day, 8AM is like meet the grand marshals and take pictures with the community, and that money goes to the veterans, which is part of our mission, our charitable mission, followed by opening ceremonies with the mayor. And there'll be a few other elected officials this year, including senator Wahhab has already confirmed. After that, 11:00 is the big step off for the parade. Usually, 2,000 people in the parade.

Mostly, there's marching bands, so, of course, that increases the number. And then after the, for this year, we'd had a great idea. We've been working on for a couple months, which is adding more sports to the parade. A lot of folks don't know that the Santa Clara has a huge, long lineage of sports legends and Olympians. In fact, we have, like, seven seven 77 Olympians, 40 of which are swimmers, 24 of which are aquamades, and then various sports.

So there's a lot to be proud about in our community, and and the parade is going to showcase that that this year. Usually, we have about 15,000 people show up for the parade, and it's multi activational areas on the parade. They're obviously the staging where the parade is all starts, the end stage. Then there's the main event. We have judges who, we get from NORCAL Ban Association, and we have a contest that has prize money for the youth, mostly, marching bands, drill teams, floats, community made floats, and, performances.

In fact, our Santa Clara elite usually wins that contest. So, it's a pretty fun a slice of DNA is what I've been told, of Santa Clara. So if you're interested in what Santa Clara is all about, if you go to the parade, you'll probably see what we're all about. Next slide. And of course, our presenter this year is Sutter Health.

They're opening a location right there in the downtown by the Old Quad neighborhood, so we're pretty excited about them moving into town right there by the universities. It's kind of perfect. The sports fan zone is the new concept that we're adding to it. The farmers market will be moved, and in its place will be a sports fan zone. The idea is, we've already invited most of the teams. I'm still working on, warriors and Valkyries and Santa Clara University because there's a lot of sports legends there. But so far, the forty niners are interested. The earthquakes are ready to set up. AFC is all in, and so the sharks we're talking to right now. So it looks really promising that we'll get all the teams in this zone.

There's a lot of space there, for them to spread out with all their inflatables and, performance, bringing the mascots. We really want it to be almost carnival like, and there's gonna be games and swag to give away and prizes, and there'll be a stage there just like street dance. So it'll be across Jackson Street. DJ McCullough is usually our DJ for our events, so he'll be doing both, events, plus a partner. We'll help him out there, and he knows how to pump up the crowd.

They'll be in the program. The sports teams can highlight Santa Clara throughout factoids, you know, just really engage. And, of course, with Patty, we've been working on this mini museum that's gonna be in the sports zone, and that'll include sports legends and images. We've got an intern a couple of interns working on the images, little mini bios. And, in fact, one intern proposed, like, a mini Olympian podium so you can take a picture with some of the Olympians.

It's very cute idea. So there'll be a couple booths there showcasing that. And Patty's team is working really hard in digging up all of that. Going back to 1920, in fact. Hopefully, we get university involved because they, you know, they go back to the nineteen twenties as being one of the first universities to attend back then in the rugby category. So there's a lot of history there at the university. And those are the teams so far. They'll also be it's family friendly. We definitely want a kids zone there, and just making memories for future generations is the goal. Next slide.

These are just images of past parades. You can see the floats, an old Santa Clara High School panther that no longer exists. I had to put it in there. That's my alumni there. Spirit of forty five, they celebrate our veterans. Cause our mission is about was originally, for those who don't know, our history. We were founded in 1945 to welcome home the World War two veterans. They're our heroes. And, obviously, since then, it's evolved to just about a lot of things we're celebrating in the parade, so including sports. So it's it's very colorful and people really put their best foot forward as you can see all the outfits and the dancing and the performing and the giant balloons from Pennsylvania we bring in and the cool floats that they make.

Next slide. Just more images. Our program, I I went over at 8AM is like the breakfast of champions of the veterans. 9AM, we're gonna have a community village as well, about 60 vendor spots. So we definitely wanna fill the spots, that could be anything from artisans to especially our nonprofits. That's part of our charitable mission. We library is there. The bookmobile is there. We've got people who sell honey. You name it.

The police department, the fire department giving out little fire department hats. It's all very fun and family oriented. It's so exciting to see how everybody engages with their community. And then, of course, 10AM, mayor speaks and city council, Susan Ellenberg, and others. And then now 11:00 parade. And then after the parade, we're back at the sports zone. The sports zone is going all day. It's sort of the place for entertainment. We took out the street dance because we really wanted something more engaging than dancing for our event.

And then it ends at five.

Next slide. For generations, it's just been the one event that everybody can bond over, that if there's any differences, they get put aside, suddenly you're talking to your neighbor that you never see at at the parade. It's just a great way for our businesses and tech and students. Everyone in the community is kind of represented, and we welcome all. I did mention that we do, as part of our charitable initiative, 57 5,750 that we put into the contest, and it mostly goes towards the marching bands, the kids, the ones who really put a lot into the effort of participating.

We're grateful to the city of Santa Clara because they always broadcast our parade on channel fifteen every year for months and twice a week, so that really connects with the residents. They love watching that, recapturing the memories.

Next.

I mentioned our history goes back to 1945. Larry Marsali was the original founder. He founded a lot of festivals, the Italian festival, you name it. He was a knights of Columbus guy. Saint Clair's, he was all there.

And his partner for fifty years with Ed Kunia, and both their wives and families ran this parade to to until 1995. He I was able to speak to him before he passed and let him know that the parade was coming back. He that was one of his most exciting things before he went. In 2019, thanks to the city council, mayor, everybody believed in the parade who remembered the parade and helped us bring it back by covering city services, so that's what makes it successful. The rest of the money, we raise funds to cover the cost of it and also do our charitable work.

There were about 15,000 last year. We get a lot of press from the event. Even Discover Santa Clara was there. It got a nice video of everything, so thank you for that. Next slide. And then, of course, giving back to the community is why we exist. We try to help out those who need it most, and the tradition goes back to 1945. We we stay true to that. And so we are thankful for everyone because it takes the village in Santa Clara to make this happen. We have a board member here, Mike Walkie, who mister Green team over there.

He makes sure that operations go smoothly. It's just everybody pitches in kind of event. And it keeps our history alive and our legends and our sports and everything. Why the the community is engaged, it's something to bond on. It celebrates it's pride in our community. It celebrates our history. It's free to the public because we do all the fundraising. So it's inclusive, so anyone can come to the parade and spend the day with us. And it's it's a legacy that really showcases who who Santa Clara is all about, and we never wanna lose that. And it's multigenerational.

It's multicultural. We have every kind of folk dance. You name it. Every sports, little league, big leagues, everybody gets to participate in BC. And it really nurtures social responsibility in our youth. I started in high school as a volunteer for the parade of champions, and here I am now. So it's like really, it goes back away. But it really gives you the bug. You know? It makes you wanna give back to your community. Next slide. But it does take an army of volunteers, and this is how we engage the youth, about a 150 volunteers from the local schools. They all participate. We give them a shirt, and they have a great time. They come back year after year.

So as I said, it's very multigenerational, and it teaches them responsibility in giving back to the community. The community village is where we showcase a lot of the businesses, a lot of our nonprofits, and it's where you can do one on one and get to know who's there. It's a very popular destination. There are food trucks there. So now we have two activation zones. It's the community village and the sports zone. So if you can't find what you want in the community village, you just walk to Jackson Street, and there's all your sports memorabilia and everything that you want to do with your family. Next slide. And that's our parade route. It starts down by Booker Middle School.

It used to be the old Santa Clara High School, and it goes down Monroe and turns on Harrison Lands right there at Washington Street, where Sutter Health will be located in the future. So it's kinda neat that that's where the parade ends. The location is in North? The Wells Fargo is right there? The all that construction I was told with you. No? The the main the main our our Yes. Main. As you can see, Crazy George is a regular at our parade almost every single year, so he loves our parade. And any questions about how this represents Santa Clara or how what what else we could add to it?

I've heard some great ideas here. I would like to see more art at the parade, maybe. Yeah. Let's talk about that. And more storytelling at the parade. Yes. If anybody here wants a booth, let me know. I'll look it up for you. Little honor there to Larry Marsali. He's the founder. He is no longer with us. He passed in 2019.

Yes.

So in this event, like, has this event been an annual event throughout the years? So I'm curious because I received the email that it talks about we are specifically looking for community engagement events pointing to the Super Bowl and World Cup. I've been particularly interested in how the upcoming events are sort of shaping what how we do these traditionally how do you say, like, repetitive events? It's not the best word to use, but you get what I mean? Yeah.

So I wonder, are we gonna do is this are you is this event will this event be done very differently this coming October because of the World Cup and Super Bowl next year? Like, will there be specific, like, sports focus? Because I heard from the Patty said that there are a lot of sports events coming for the library event. So I'm kind of curious.

So what we added this year is the sports fan zone and entertainment zone. So that's new to the parade. It's located on Jackson Street, which runs parallel to the parade route. What we're talking to all the teams in the Bay Area. And so far, they're all excited about having this specific zone for sports. It's something they it fits them well. So that area will have booths. We're also going to incorporate the the youth sports groups as well because there are are future sports teams. And hopefully, we'll get a connection with Santa Clara U as well. And so we definitely wanna represent sports in a big way this year.

In fact, our theme is called game on. Was there questions on how you could participate more in the sports section or for you?

Yeah. I'm just sort of learning how the everything we do leads to marketing and promotion for the World Cup and Super Bowl coming next year. I feel like if there are special events coming up next year, I feel that maybe we should everything we do, maybe we should do something different to promote that and generate some excitement that is different from what has happened in the past, something that's very, like, special or unique. So I mean, that's some kind of thought on my mind. I mean, I haven't attended these events, but they look fantastic and look really, really fun.

I I would be happy to check it out if I have the time.

I think she has a good point as far as what is a comprehensive marketing strategy to make sure all these events are attended and market them maybe in a different way than what we have been. For us, it's been very grassroots. You know, we just reach out to everyone in the community and ask for participation, for sponsorship, for attendance, for volunteers. I mean, it's very grassroots. But for something at this level, that's a great question. How do we, you know, jump our you know, increase our game here, you know, make it better?

So I have another question. Is it okay if I ask? Is this is this event is not particularly located how do I say this? Within, like, Santa Clara City. Right? It's more like for

the Bay Area? Or It's located where it was originally founded, which is in the downtown Santa Clara over by the university. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Those So it is sort of like like a Santa Clara local special program. Yeah. Tradition. It's not like not every city has that. Right?

No. It's a very unique concept. That's the only

one. No. Right.

Thank you. Yeah. I think to add on to to Essar's point, will there be a way to all these people that you're gonna have at the parade and in the sport fan zone to make sure you're further directing them, right, to the World Cup and to the Super Bowl?

So I wanna step in and say, I think that's what we're we're all here discussing. So I'll take us back to the last meeting that we had a couple weeks ago where we were looking at theme and slogan. Right? And so the the point and purpose of that exercise was to really work through a community led theme and slogan that would be the through line for the events that the city is supporting, and then also supporting within the community as well. So we have taken that information that we went through at the last workshop, and we're combing through that data and working with a consulting agency as well to help us really shore that theme up.

And then we'll work through and and put out most like a guidelines, right, for marketing and promotion once we've nailed that down. So we're getting there. We made that first step in the last workshop, and now we're looking to really hone in on the event ideas, and then we'll come back. We'll step back to the the marketing. Also, sorry, really quick, I want to also share that Anna's been working with this the city team on getting some support in terms of really trying to garner support from the the regional sports teams, right, that she had listed on the slides.

And so she's working with that. I think also we've been trying to get someone from Bay Area host committee as a representative to come and attend this meeting as well to really help garner that support. And so Anna's been doing a lot of on the ground work to try to get that done. And then, Anna, I also heard you mention SCU, and so I also want to share that. We do have a rep from SCU that's now a stakeholder for the committee.

And they weren't able to be here today, unfortunately, but she is the athletic director for SCU, and she'll be sitting with us in the next couple of meetings that we have. So I think we're all synergizing together, and it's really good just to hear the events that are out there. And I'm I'm seeing the ideation happen and cross collaboration across different organizations and small businesses alike,

and

and that's how we're kind of garnering and and creating these these events that are gonna gear us up and lead us towards 2026. So, hopefully, that kind of answers the questions.

Alright. I wanna say something about the parade. It's I've been to the parade every year. Been to the parade many, many years. But I noticed after the parade, a lot of people leave, because you've had the dance and and the the the Franklin Street engaged and everything, but people leave.

My only concern is you're gonna have Franklin Street engaged with the nonprofit and all the booths there. But then the sports theme is gonna be all the way on the other side of Franklin Mall on Jackson Street. There's gonna be a big, you know, gap between so there has to be something that brings it all together, and it has to be pretty quick after right after the parade so people just don't leave. Because I've noticed that later in previous years, the street dance would start later, but people would just go home. And very few people or other people would come just for the street dance.

So there has to be a way to coordinate all of it so that it becomes one big event, just not parade, everybody goes home, and then, oh, I didn't even know this sports section was over here. It's gotta connect somehow. That's just my 2¢. It's I'm getting in the weeds. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

If the if everybody leaves after the parade, could you make the parade like the finale?

Do the what?

You know, you make the parade the last part of the event so that after the parade, everybody goes home and it feels natural. Right? That makes sense? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So everybody comes for all the events. Everybody sticks around. Make the parade the big finale.

In the past, we had what we called festival day. So we had a carnival and a parade, and everybody there was something going on all day long. But here, sometimes now there's a big break in between, so we have to have things going on the whole day to to engage people.

Yvonne? So now the the ideas are coming in. So I I I'm I'm hearing the different events and proposals here, and a lot of them are pretty stationary. Right? It's like the idea is how do we get everyone to come to these areas? I'm thinking, what if we do something similar to VivaCaye, where we have a route, we get people active. You don't have to run. You can walk. You can walk with your pet, ride the bikes, but then have it through neighborhoods that don't necessarily talk to each other. We have the most engaging districts where it's it's uptown, and then you have downtown.

So let's get some route going through, say, let's go on El Camino. Go to Scott Boulevard where that neighborhood is not engaged, and you have a lot of new Hispanic demographics coming up. You have an Arteagas there, and I know the owner. I'm just saying. She partners up with with the San Jose Sharks. She has a location there. Also, San Jose Earthquake, she's the sponsor there. And also FIFA, one of the the huge consumers is the Hispanic demographics. So we wanna have some, like, some traffic coming in to discover Santa Clara, and we can have local vendors and booths, including NVIDIA, include Palo Alto Networks. We have Applied Materials, all of that.

We got the tech hub, but you also wanna have those that have been here. You have the historic downtown, so you wanna have that incorporated and then the new developments in the North. So I'm thinking a route like that, that would be a great way to kick that off. And then in addition, we can probably amplify something for the hopper. We can use it for different districts and talk about maybe a game day hopper where it helps people that are far from transportation.

So I hear the the ideas of the library where not too many people go there, only people in the vicinity. It's kind of like the parade of champions where the downtown will be there and old Claude comes, but the rest leaves. Or you got the the wine festival where Central Park, you have that area engaged, but then the rest

of Santa Clara's, like, power lights are off. So that's that's an idea. That's incredible. Thank you. Habir, did you want to add to that? Not much. We we're we are at 05:30, and and that is the ending time for the meeting. I know that there's still Habir, I know you signed up to present today. I also had David and Esther. I'm curious if if folks are willing, we can maybe have I wanna ask if we can have people that want to present if they're still able, if we're able

to do so. For the presentations, if we can just shorten them and then but we hear everyone, I think is Misha on? Does she have one as well?

Misha is on. And then we

can do the rest of it at our next meeting. That's right. So let's just hear the presentations, understanding we need to be out of here. Kurt, did you have something? I

I just wanted to just it was on this Prey to Champions bit, which I really like the VivaCaye idea. I just wanted to add the idea of potentially, and this is I'm not volunteering for this. But to have like

Cliff, so go ahead.

But to have something that involves pets or animals, kinda like at the Super Bowl when they have, like, the Westminster, whatever. Santa Clara could have its own. People bring their own pets to Franklin Mall or something like that, and it could be, like, a really crazy, wild, crazy events like the David Letterman stupid pet tricks and and show your dog or your cat or your ferret or whatever. Bring your animals, and they just be kinda like a fun, really eclectic, thing that Santa Clara, I think, would just really love to do. Everyone loves to show off their pets.

So Great idea. Tell us when you're ready with your proposal.

Sure. Thank

you. I love it. Yeah.

To do something like that because they're so into this. Yeah?

You're

right. They actually Kurt, they're actually willing to do a parade and a show for Zoom room to do something like that. So I'm kind of excited that you thought of

that because they're excited. Okay.

Let me know if I

go through the last ones.

We're ready. Yeah. Sorry.

It's just one slide. So I'm gonna try to shorten it as the mayor said, and thank you for extending the time. So we have, as based on your categories, the small, the medium, and the large. So I'm just gonna mention the small really quickly because some of them will align with library and cultural commission. And then I'm gonna really focus on the larger ones with whatever time I have. We're looking at doing a talk series and movie nights about, as you were saying about, the legends. It's called legends and heroes of of our hometowns because there are so many. Right? So that one's quick one talk series similarly. The ones that are bigger ones, I'm just gonna bring those up because we have a kind of a large list.

The one you see behind me is if if you could just kinda shrink that a little bit. We wanna highlight Santa Clara because everybody I was in into I was in Fort Worth at a conference, and everybody's talking about the the games. And I'm like, no. No. It's not San Francisco. It's Santa Clara. So we want to make sure that the front of that cover says Santa Clara on it. Okay? So this is gonna be the guide to the games, and this will be showcasing all the things that are happening in Santa Clara but other cities as well. Because if we're to compete with San Francisco, and I'm not hating on San Francisco, I'm just saying that we have to show collective programming for people to stay down here.

So this is the guide to the games, and this will include anything and everything city of Santa Clara talks about, but also other regions to make them stay here. So that's something very important, and we welcome your input and sponsors to get that thing paid for. But that's gonna be one of our key highlights, and you can keep that on there. We've got three major buckets. I didn't put them so much because it takes too much time. We consider night markets and festivals in one big bucket. Because for us, festivals are how our businesses get in front of the public. So we are looking at night markets with and festivals as kind of one big bucket, and we're looking at multiple ones. Food truck nights, swap meet nights for people that have a lot of memorabilia. That's kinda cool.

Right? Because of our both of our co chairs are athletes or one is an athlete. The other one is a holiday market to kick it off this year in December if the city would like to do it right after our tree lighting because it's a perfect weekend, and we start off and kick off next year with that weekend. The other one is tour the globe for the games. Right?

So this way because these are gonna be our regular annual festivals, but we think that they're gonna be better converted to serve the need of our city. And then the barbecue chili cook off. It's gonna be whatever you guys like per barbecue versus chili. I think chili's is a little easier, but that is a cook off as well. And we would place these according to the timelines at work, but we think these two particularly could work really well. One is to be pre pre FIFA, and one could be the pre I just lost some time frames. Super Bowl. But yeah. I know. It's terrible.

Aging man. The tour oh, thank you very much. We gotta hang out later. Tour The Globe is the one that's really five pavilions representing our our continents. And thank you very much. And each of those would be a way for us as businesses to also show our businesses. Because for us, this is the way our business community gets to get in front of of members. So those are the ones that are under tour night markets and festivals. The next one is we'd love to propose a youth cup. And we have so many soccer fields in Santa Clara that we've always taken pride for.

Somebody needs to host it, and our team called the games committee is happy to be advisers because the chairs are soccer players. Just imagine people coming to Santa Clara for the youth cup. The other one is the international flags on El Camino. Now that's really not something that we have to stop and bring a festival around, but brings people to City Of Santa Clara foot traffic. The the other one is the Santa Clara's food fest or taste of Santa Clara, which is a walking food tour.

People can kind of fill their passport. People can come and eat at different restaurants. We bring and keep people in Santa Clara. The other one is the I can't read my handwriting. Is the is called the the walk is a sport too for a five k walkathon. Okay? It was kind of playing lightly on it. The walk is walking is a sport too because we used to do that with yoga, but I I like this idea equally. So these are the big bucket items that we're I wanted to talk to you about. We have about 15 programs that we're looking at to do that are to reuse our existing programs.

I didn't bring up the light and the gateway because I think Deborah did a good job of covering that. The last one I will tell you is the tech showcase. We want to work with our partners because we have so many businesses in our community to light up their buildings according to a theme that the city kind of predesigns. And then the burden of electricity is not on the city. It's on the corporation.

And each of those tech providers can hold a demo day or a showcase of the businesses or the innovations that they're working on because people are gonna come here. Yes. They're coming for sports, but there's a lot of innovation happening around gaming, a lot of innovation happening on data analytics for sports. So I think if we can encourage our businesses and corporations that we can have them on this list of things to do That, hey. If you're coming here, go check out AMD's, you know, glove for controlling bots or whatever it is. That can be a demo day for them as well. So it's sports plus technology and innovation. Any questions or comments? Thank you.

I wanna say something that, I have a proposal from the swim club, Santa Clara swim club. They weren't able to make it. They're at a tournament or a tournament meet in Portugal. So one of the things they talked about was having an event showcasing Santa Clara as a youth sports capital of the world because we used to be that. Right?

So they have a a location TBD, but it it kinda fits into the youth cup that you talked about. They want activities based on age, like an age based triathlon, three on three basketball tournament, four and four volleyball obstacle courses, all that provide all of Santa Clara's youth sports organization the opportunity to shine and fully engage the broader community, showcasing how Santa Clara provides the healthiest, most active lifestyle for its residents to encourage future champions. And they're looking at, like, Santa Clara University. I had just gone to the,

oh gosh. What did I

Special Olympics. Yeah. And how they had the university set up with the swimming pool and the fields and basketball and everything else to do something similar if Santa for instance, if Santa Clara University would be our partner to have kind of that youth cup. So I just wanted

to say the swim club wants to be involved with something like that. Perfect. Happy to happy to talk to them. Any other questions or comments? Yes, Frank.

Just a a quick comment. Ding ding TV? Okay. One of the things that I'd like to say across the country, across The US, the Hispanic market, number one in games sold. Have my dear friend I get fired up about this because, you know, I'm

like I'm like, you know

the smile you think. The best World Cups in the history is 1970, Mexico City. 1986, I was there, Maradona, Mexico. And with the contingency right now with passports in The US, they may go to Canada and Mexico if somebody doesn't get his act straight. This is serious. So in a month I'm going to Mexico in two weeks, but in a month, I'd like to do a presentation. You know, you had mentioned your TV, but including the Hispanic market with you Absolutely. In terms of immigration and that contingency plan. That's all I wanna

We'd love

to know

it. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. Go ahead. And then we have

I got one I got one, one comment. I think something that can help, give some, like, marketing to this is if we get a streamer to show this because that's popular with the Gen Z generation. So if we get a, like, a a streamer, maybe a a an athlete from it could be someone from Santa Clara University or born here, like a like a artist like Saweetie. She was born here in Santa Clara. If we were to get someone local and they can stream this experience, I think that it would get more attention on Santa Clara.

I would love that because sorry, mayor. I had one thing. I apologize. Last thing. We wanted to do a youth campaign that, you know, for children to talk about what it means sports means to them to be the children of Santa Clara to say, you know, inviting them to Santa Clara for the games. And influencers, of course, are included in that. So I'm done.

I'll be real quick. So I saw this young lady who had created a little step that you can walk on, and it generates energy. And she had them in front of a building in New York, and I thought that's awesome with walking and creating the energy so you could work that into something to make it free energy and all that. And we're Silicon Valley. So

Alright. I'm gonna jump to online really quick. And so, Misha, you've now been promoted, and you should be unmuted. Let me know if you're not able to speak.

Perfect. Can you guys hear me?

We can.

Yay. Awesome. Thanks for helping establish that. These are all really great ideas. I love what I'm hearing, and I think there's a lot of awesome things that we can do together.

Something that I wanna bring to our attention is I think we should have some sort of, like, music festival that attracts the, I guess, younger crowd to attend. I know our age our average age is 34, right, in Santa Clara, if I'm not mistaken, but I feel like sometimes we don't see the youth coming out. So I thought it would be cool to do something similar to, like, what San Jose has been doing with a lot of the music festival that they've been having and also similar to San Francisco. So I thought that would be a really cool idea. I do have a lot of connections within the music industry in regards to DJs and things like that.

But, of course, we need support from the city and, you know, as a collaborative idea, but I just wanted to bring that to the attention. I don't have a PowerPoint or anything, but just something I've been thinking about. I'm curious to see what y'all thoughts are on that.

Thank you, Misha. I I know we I've talked about this with you. That is something we absolutely need to do. Music is a big part of what we're gonna be doing. Last time, we had two major concerts in Santa Clara before Super Bowl fifty. So what are you you're talking about a DJ. Correct?

Yeah. I think, like, a block party. So imagine, like, a daytime event, right, where there's gonna be food vendors, different pop ups can come. Also have a DJ. It could be promoting all the events for FIFA and World Cup at these, you know, music festivals. Maybe even we can do some sorts of raffles to our other events that we're hosting. And, also, I wanted to share with the parade something that I had thought of is maybe we do a raffle, like, at the end that encourages folks to move over to the sports village and all that after. After. So it kind of keeps them, like, reeled in of, okay. There's a, you know, something that they could be a part of that's bigger after. So just something I was thinking of too, but I wasn't able to unmute myself at that time.

Thank you. Any questions on Misha? Yeah. Sean.

Alright. I don't mean to jump in. So I own a rehearsal studio for bands. They all practice in San Jose, and I've been working for the Sofa Street Fair. If you don't know it, it's a big music event in the middle of San Jose in the Sofa District at South Of 1st Avenue. They've got five indoor stages, five outdoor stages. I have a big event happening August 30 at the studio, 20 bands, alternating stages, all kinds of food vendors. I've got it's just an incredible idea. And if there's anything I can do to make that happen, I'm your guy. So I'm in with all the bands, and I've got a huge roster. So I think that's a brilliant idea, and I'm all for it. Just wanted to add that.

That makes sense. Yes.

Go ahead.

Oh, no. Was just saying thanks, Sean. I appreciate that, and I think we can definitely make something happen. I just right. I have the I have this idea, but definitely need the support budget and all that. San Jose Fools, they've been helping a lot with hosting a lot of the San Jose events. I reached out to them. They said they're also hope open to helping, but they would need some sort of budget to be working with. So we if have some sort of budget on that, I'm happy to loop them in as well. But, yeah, once we have that all figured out and a date and all that, can loop in some of the artists and things like that.

It's very short, but like you said, EDM is very popular among people our age, but we have to go to SF to really get to events like that. And sometimes Exactly. We've been having events at Civic Center and in just in, like, the parks and, like, there was one right by City Hall with that was really cool. But I think if Santa Clara were to have, like, an EDM event, it would attract a lot of younger people.

I agree. A 100%. And there was just a study that showed that EDM music in the BPM ranges of one twenty to one thirty helps decrease aging. I think it was by, like, six years or something, but just another fun fact of why it would help.

First of all, let's not forget raves were started by my generation. So some of us some of us do listen to b p m, b p m on a daily basis, EDM as well. San Jose did Stevie Oke. I'm sure some of you guys know who Stevie Oke is. They did San Jose earthquake festival down there before, one of the big games in Miami, so that's something to look at.

The other thing I wanted to say real quick, I keep seeing Silicon Valley up there, and we really wanna see Santa Clara. So I would you don't have it now, but a couple of times today, two people put Silicon Valley up there. I think it's great to put Silicon Valley lower and have Santa Clara be the big theme and the big draw because we're fighting against San Jose and Los Gatos and other areas, Saratoga, other areas, Palo Alto. So that's just one of the things I just wanna say really quick. So I I agree bringing other people. You'll get some old farts out there dancing too. You know, but, you'll have a lot of young young people there as well. So

And, regarding music towards just within the city, there's also a lot of bands from Hispanic and Latino people who I think that we could showcase at this music thing. It's a lot of very underground people, but Bandas or Encoridos, it's all up now. A lot of people are trying to listen to this stuff. I think it would be cool if we could coordinate maybe and just highlight more Hispanic heritage with those songs. And also, again, a lot of Asian people, which is I know it's a lot of people who aren't speaking as an Asian person. It's a lot of people who are brilliant at EDM. So I think those two things could really you you could benefit from that definitely. It would bring a lot of community together.

Yeah. And I think the way that I'm, like, vision envisioning this, if anyone's ever been to the Midway in San Francisco and they do block parties, they have a few stages. And let's all all day. Right? So you can have, like, different genres, different stages, and have your headliners more towards the end. But I think it could bring in a lot of different variety of people, give local businesses opportunities to showcase who they are, what they do with the pop ups and the food vendors, and we'll also probably need help setting all this up so we can get the local construction community involved. And, yeah, I think it'll be good for the whole community. And we have From the young all the way up. We all we should all come together.

Thank you. We have more quick. Alright.

Yep. We're gonna go really quickly just to be considerate of everyone's time. I think David had a presentation.

Yeah. So it's actually not a presentation. It was actually from Robert. He's the, Santa Clara News Online founder of wrestling for charity. One of the things he talked about that he hasn't heard, but Lucha Libre company is a, five zero one c. So what he was saying to get other people in, and you can get George Kittle because George Kittle is into, wrestling. So with the mask. Exactly. So if you did something like that, that might be another avenue to get younger and different, diversity, coming as well. So, I don't have more information, but Robert said he'd help out in any way.

It's probably about $2,500, but it's a, nonprofit. And I've you can easily do it across the street from my house in those ugly freaking parking lot on Benton and, Lafayette. So there's plenty of space there, and it's not used. So alright.

Thank you for sharing that. And last was Esther.

Hi, everyone. I will try to be very brief. I just have this idea of helping, you know, to promote the upcoming big events. I'm very marketing minded and also very international minded. So I think very internationally, like, whatever we do here, I see how do we tie everything together to represent who who we are as a city locally and internationally?

For example, we have so many events. I'm thinking, oh, do we say we are we have a vibrant city or community? So one thing I've been thinking to promote things like this, there are two big resources out there. One is human, like, do we use people to spread out the message? When people get excited, they take phone they they use their phone to take photos and images, so that that's one way to spread the message.

And then the second way is use technology. For example, these days, there are apps. You can tailor and customize the design using message apps to communicate with a community that speaks multiple languages. The message app can can help us to communicate with the community. So in order to leverage these two big resources for disseminating disseminating information, I think a talk show, like a public talk show facing people an audience with at different ages.

Like, I mean, in Silicon Valley, people are very busy making money. There are a lot of, you know, corporate people. But if we can get their attention to get them excited and and or bring their family and say, come out to watch a show and and and and learn what's happening in our city and especially sports, it's whatever cultural background or religion you you you you have. But sports is is a very, you know, unifying thing. So I think a talk show would kind of how to bring the crowd, and then we can use the crowd to they will become our messengers to promote the upcoming events.

So they will also help to generate local excitement as well as a global online presence for the events here. So for the talk show to happen, just off of my mind, I don't have the I didn't have the time to present any slides, like PowerPoint slideshow. But just off my mind, if I if if Santa Clara, you know, our city could help provide a a venue, like, let's say, the convention center or just a big room with some nice, like, stage setting. My company I'm I'm I'm a new startup, but I have connections with media people who can help produce these kind of things at a very low cost. I'm I'm not into making money off the city.

I'm just wanting to make a difference with my strengths. In in I have a very strong communication background, so I have a PhD in linguistics and communication. Also, I I love marketing. So I hope I can play offer some unique perspective, you know, in addition to all the awesome events and festivals, the local festivals that I'm still learning. So, that that that's what I hope to see that that's it's very, very feasible. It's very possible and doable, like a public talk show. And the the name I just came up today is called Santa Clara Time. So it's gonna help promote the city. Thank you.

Just one thing. I just wanna add. That sounds like a podcast. And we can get the youth involved in that, having them work crew and having them edit it, make it, you know, attractive to the youth.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sounds like a podcast. And that sounds like a great idea.

So capturing, like, Patty said, there were authors, and we have sparse celebrities. If we can feature those people and have them on stage and and generate the so I'm also I also have a very strong academic background. I actually worked for, like, two U universities in Australia. So I I love to see whatever I produce is gonna be educational. It's gonna be very healthy, like, no maybe bad content. Very educational to a global audience. It's gonna be if you make your video or or show educational, PYR will embrace it, and it will be safe to, you know, to send out to a global audience.

Thank you, Esther. Thank you. Thank you so much, Esther. Really quick before we move, I just want to ask you all to hold on to these ideas and events and kind of remember this. We we didn't have a chance to do the gallery walk today, and so we'll probably pick that up next week and really start prioritizing and narrowing down on the events so that we can start this collaborative approach and and working together to build a beautiful beautiful multiple beautiful events. So thank you for that.

Alright, everyone. Thank you. And our next meeting is

Two weeks from today? August 11. Two weeks from now.

Could we do one more picture out by our clock, everyone? It's our tradition, although it's much bigger now. Yeah. Yummy. Yeah.

Little