Most of all you’ve learned how to tell a story, and that is really important. This is a community that’s re-learning how to tell our story. And so I guess the thing I want to ask of you, or challenge you to do, is in the years to come I hope you will really think about how your story fits into this community’s story, and how South Bend’s story is part of your story. I will need people with your skills, not just your coding skills, which are really impressive, but your other skills — adaptation, storytelling — to really shape this community.

People will be competing over you, so you might get some chances to leave this community. That’s okay, although I would prefer that if you do that, you eventually come back. But either way, I hope you keep South Bend in your equation because this is really exciting stuff and you’ve already found some problems to help solve. Every community has problems; we have problems that need solutions, and they need you.

I can’t wait to see what you all do as leaders.