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Welcome to MISAC Connect Audio, the official podcast of the Municipal Information Systems Association of California (MISAC). This podcast is your go-to resource for in-depth discussions, expert insights, and community stories that go beyond our MISAC Connect forum.
Allen Hammond (00:00.834)
Hey everyone, a quick program note before we begin. Our friend and colleague, Tim McEntee from the city of Brentwood is facing a serious health challenge right now. On behalf of MESAC Connect Audio and the entire MESAC community, we're sending strength, prayers, and all the positive energy we can. I also want to celebrate Tim's spirit.
Even though he's been sick, he still attended the MESAC Annual Conference, virtually. In a beautiful show of support, Michael Baria symbolically carried Tim with him from keynote and general sessions to the breakouts via iPad with Tim's badge. That's the heart of this community.
Tim, we're here for you.
Allen Hammond (00:54.284)
On a personal note, I'm honored to have received the President's Award for my work around this podcast. My sincere thanks to MESAC President Miguel Gordado for the recognition and continued support. I'm grateful and want to point the recognition right back to you, MESAC community. You're the backbone of what we do here. I'm just putting your expertise and generosity into the audio format. I'm humbled and energized to keep building this with you.
Moments like Tim's virtual presence remind me what this community is all about, showing up for each other. With that, let's get into this week's report.
Allen Hammond (01:40.024)
Welcome, MESAC community. Welcome to MESAC Connect Audio, your weekly report out from the Municipal Information Systems Association of California. That's a mouthful, and I'm glad we just call it MESAC. I'm your host, Alan Hammond. Today is a post-conference wrap-up blended with our usually, we'll try to be usual, weekly digest of MESAC Matter Highlights, hot topics from MESAC Connect Forum, and I look forward
to what's coming up. Let's get into it.
Allen Hammond (02:16.376)
Quick note up front, I unfortunately had to leave the conference early and get back to the salt mines for matters I needed to be present for. So I'm not fully equipped to deliver a full comprehensive blow-by-blow recap of the conference, but I did want to make some time and not miss the opportunity to recognize folks who made this conference outstanding.
Huge shout out to the conference committee led by Chris Skelly from South Tahoe Public Utility District. You and the entire team did a phenomenal job from awesome logistics, thoughtful session curation, and just a general welcoming vibe throughout. You may have set the bar pretty high for future committees and they'll definitely have their work cut out for them in the best way possible. From what I experienced and from the feedback from others,
The keynotes, which I was able to hit a few. Actually, the main keynotes I did. They hit their mark. The general sessions were awesome and very well attended. And the breakouts, which is really sort of the straw that stirs this drink was phenomenal. I was able to pack in as many as I could. Again, it's a
It's a tough challenge and I know it's a tough nut to crack, respective to how those sessions are done, because it is definitely Sophie's choice when you are reading through the agenda and the synopsis and quite frankly, the great people that are putting those presentations on. So great job everybody.
I know for me, there's many people who had great takeaways to bring home from those breakouts. So if you see a committee member, please thank them. And if you've got notes or a favorite session, hey, post those in the forum so we can amplify them there. It'd be nice to kind of keep the conversation going in a lot of those areas that we're up for discussion and presentation. Don't be shy about posting those. So next up,
Allen Hammond (04:35.576)
we're gonna hit the the MESAC Matters newsletter. Some of those things in that newsletter.
is
entitled Five MESAC Members Receive President's Award. Congratulations to Scott Sawan, City of Woodland, Nicole Gutridge, City of Elk Grove, Benny Shea, City of Mountain View, and Augustin Agui Preciado from the City of Torrance.
That's four. Where's that fifth one? Alan Hammond, city of Pleasanton. Selected as recipients of the 2025 MESAC President's Awards, the award presentation to the five took place at the association's annual meeting held on October 21st in conjunction with the 2025 MESAC annual conference. Hammond was feeded
for his leadership and vision in producing the association's MESAC Connect audio. It's weird kind of reading about you in the third person, but it also notes a podcast covering a multiple of association and IT related subjects. Sawan was recognized for his guidance and leadership in updating and refreshing the MESAC.org website, as well as creating the new MESAC tenant. The three MESAC.
Allen Hammond (06:08.024)
chapter presidents Gutridge, Shea and Presadio, I'm sorry, Agatha, I jacked up to your name, were recognized for their leadership and encouraging the three MESAC chapters to better collaborate in the association's governance and governance structure.
Allen Hammond (06:29.102)
Moving on to the next newsletter item, we've got 25 MESAC member agencies received the 2025 MESAC Excellence Awards. We'll call this the 25 and 25. I just made that up. MESAC congratulates the 2025 MESAC Excellence in IT Practices Award. Winners who were recognized at the Association's annual meeting held on October 21st, the Excellence Award is presented to those agencies that meet
or exceed expectations in a variety of different IT-specific criteria. The coveted Peer Review Award is recognized nationally and is considered one of the more prestigious awards an agency can receive. Following are the 2025 MESAC Excellent IT Award winners and the number of years the agency has received the award. City of Marino Valley, 23 years.
City of Santa Clara, 19 years. City of Diamond Bar, 19 years. City of Riverside, 18. Orange County Sanitation District, 18 years. City of Fresno, 14 years. South Tahoe Public Utility District, 13 years. Western Municipal Water District, 11 years. City of Roseville, 10 years. City of Ensenada, 10 years. City of Sunnyvale, 8 years. Alameda County Water District,
Six years. City of Sacramento, four years. Rancho, California Water District, four years. Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District, three years. City of Palmdale, two years. City of Mesa, that would be in Arizona, two years. City of Indio, two years. City of Cerritos, two years. And the City of Rolling Hills Estates, two years.
Congratulations to those Excellence in IT Awards. Moving on, these are the special congratulations to the following agencies who received the Excellence Award for the first time. Santa Margarita Water District. Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts. City of Newark. Valacitos Water District.
Allen Hammond (08:44.426)
In addition to the 25 Excellence Award recipients, another 11 member agencies received the Achievement in IT Award. Beaumont Cherry Valley Water District, City of Anaheim, City of Concord, City of Hayward, City of Redondo Beach, City of San Luis Obispo, City of Santa Clarita, City of Stockton, City of Temecula, City of Vernon, and West Basin.
Municipal Water District. In addition to the excellent achievement awards, two member agencies were recognized for innovation and visual communications. Congratulations to the City of Sacramento for receiving the 2025 MESAC Innovation Award for their AI Drive Enforcement for Safer and Efficient Public Transit Initiative. And congratulations also to the City of Mesa, Arizona, which received the 2025 MESAC Visual Communications Award
for their 3D development site Digital Twin presentation.
Allen Hammond (09:51.148)
Moving on to another item in this week's MSAC Matters newsletter is an upcoming MSAC educational opportunity. In addition to the 2025 MSAC annual conference scheduled for the 19th to the 22nd, which you have attended and is now over, the Associates has a number of very reasonably priced virtual education opportunities on the schedule for members and non-members.
Certified Agile Scrum Master. This one's scheduled for November 10th through the 12th. Registration fees are 1,095 for MESAC members and still a smoking deal, 1,195 for non-members. This course will cover the Excent Agile Scrum Master certification seeks to confirm both the knowledge and skills of the Scrum methodologies as well as Agile framework. Moving on.
to Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals. This course is scheduled for December 5th. Registration fees are $3.95 for MESAC members, $4.95 for non-members. About this course, this course introduces fundamental concepts related to artificial intelligence and services in Microsoft Azure that can be used to create AI solutions.
The course is not designed to teach students to become professional data scientists or software developers, but rather to build awareness of common AI workloads and the ability to identify Azure services to support them. The course is designed as a blended learning experience that combines instructor-led training with online materials on the Microsoft Learn platform. The hands-on exercises
in the course are based on learn modules and students are encouraged to use the content on learn as reference materials to reinforce what they learn in the class and to explore topics in more depth. I'm thumbing through my budget and I think I got a few bucks from my team to take this one. So, hint, hint. IT MLP certification scheduled for January 20th through the 22nd. That would be in the year of 2026.
Allen Hammond (12:07.758)
cannot believe I'm saying that. Registration fees are $1,200 for MISEC members and $1,300 for non-members.
The course is, Attention Soon-to-be New and Experienced First-Line IT Managers. The ITMLP Certification Workshop contains a collection of key IT topics designed to enhance your current job performance, position you for promotion, and accelerate your upper professional mobility by expanding your knowledge of the business of IT, discussing strategies to maximize user support and satisfaction.
gaining insights into IT innovation and technology trends. MESEC members interested in attending any of these courses can register by logging into their online MESEC account and going to the calendar section of the MESEC homepage. Non-members can register by going to the MESEC homepage and clicking on the calendar section as well.
Allen Hammond (13:11.168)
All right, let's move on to this, our next segment. And these are the hot topics from the MISAC Connect Forum. Here's some of the items that people have been wrestling with that have been pretty topical. And we invite you to help your colleagues out by jumping into these, either by helping or maybe even feeding more questions. In any event,
The one I'm seeing right now are matters related to SB-707. As many know now, that was signed, that legislation was signed and it will go in effect on July 1st, 2026. It originally was January 1st, but part of the amendment of that was it being, gave us a little more time to be in compliant. So if you're not familiar with SB-707, this is the matter related to open meetings.
respective to meeting and teleconference requirements, matters related to language access and outreach. So a lot of this is quite frankly, not our first rodeo, right? mean, COVID has taught us how to do this and many of us continue to do this. But what I'm seeing and what I know, at least in our agency, we actually are teeing up some meetings to really nail this down because
like many agencies, while we still allow some remote participation, that participation has been mainly with consultants or a council member being or a commission member or a committee member. We really kind of pulled back on the public's ability to participate remotely. Large part was the, you know, due to the Zoom bombings in late last year that allowed
for some pretty rough meetings and I know many cities I Will include ours as one of them. We decided to forego that part of the meeting requiring people to physically be down To participate in one if you wanted to publicly speak We always streamed them you can watch them live and I think many of us still do that and have always done it The twist is now all those things that many of us did during
Allen Hammond (15:43.386)
the pandemic and maybe you still do. There's a little more teeth in this in terms of translations and the reliability of those remote services. You actually have to pause a meeting if not end it if those services are not working. And so those are matters that we're all going to be faced with. The legislative committee recognizes and I understand that
they are assembling a webinar for December to help in this space. So get ready for that. Some of the other things that were topical in MESAC Connect were matters related to telephony done out of service attacks. There was a question about, has anybody else been affected by cyber attack or otherwise? I guess it is going to be a cyber attack, not otherwise. On any type of telephony,
Denial of surface attacks.
Allen Hammond (16:43.458)
There are some posts about what you're using for your phones. know, many of us are moving to from VoIP to UCast and some of those phones may have been proprietary to your VoIP system. Some may not be as open and SIP friendly. So there were some posts related to that. RFP for a full network redesign.
some help in reaching out and I always appreciate when others can help others out in the recruitment process. I know I like to participate these and I try as much as I can when a neighboring agency or if virtually an agency somewhere within California needs some help on an interview panel, you will find posts related to that. There was some posts related to SIEM recommendations.
And so I would recommend you get in the MESEC Connect, find some of those and help your MESEC brothers and sisters out.
Allen Hammond (17:56.686)
Some of the things that are upcoming. We have a pretty exciting thing called the Spooktacular MESAC Costume Contest. So you have until November 13th to submit a photo of yourself or your team in your Halloween costume. The communications committee is gonna draw three winners randomly. However, you can put your thumb on that scale if you get the most
If you're the top three of liked photos, you'll get an extra entry for the drawings. So get those posted in the Connect Forum and we'll click on the ones that we think are the best. And finally, we've got a special event by the MISAC Idea Committee.
It's their last webinar for 2025. Connect with Burke Brown on putting the Human Centric Foundation into motion. Those who are at the conference and attended the keynote session with Burke, it was a phenomenal presentation that you put on, a great presenter. And so I can only imagine that this webinar will not only be well attended, but will be an excellent one as well.
It'll be Zoom on November 13th from 12 to 1. So bring a bag lunch, fire up the Zoom machine and join in. Let me give you a quick synopsis of what this webinar will be. After exploring what it means to lead from a human-centric foundation, October, that was the conference.
This follow-up session focuses on putting those ideas into motion. Participants will learn how to translate fairness, empathy, and respect into consistent daily actions that strengthen trust and team cohesion. Through short interactive exercises, we'll build simple accountability rhythms, quick check-ins, transparent communication, and collaborative feedback loops that keep culture work alive long after the conference.
Allen Hammond (20:21.794)
We'll explore how to sustain momentum when bandwidth is tight, priorities shift, and climates rise. Practical moves for steady progress in challenging times. This goal is not to add new tasks, but to refine how we show up, to make belonging and accountability a natural part of every interaction, meeting, and decision. I can't tell you this.
sounds to me like something that we can all benefit from. I don't care how small or big your shop is, if you're just a one-person shop, these are definitely attributes and strength we can all benefit from. So that's it. That's this week in MESAC Connect Audio. I'm Alan Hammond, honored by the award recognition and even more honored to be part of the MESAC community. Until next time, take care of each other.
and we'll see you on the forum.