So, what exactly is OptomystiK?

Imagine a local community where members co-create a better version of their community through guided choices lead by a story director who uses real-world data, unmet needs and resonance to show a new concept of community-driven governance guided by entertainment.

This first community is being lead by Louis to identify needs, figure out how to allocate resources, and measure impact through a process where participants get to choose their role.

After 34 years in Los Angeles, Louis is back in Sacramento. His family became native to the area when his father's last assignment at Mather Air Force Base. His family had lived on military bases throughout the world —Panama, Alabama, Texas, Beale A.F.B. in California — then Spain. Those teenage years in Madrid, from 13 to 17, left a big impression on Louis.

His family lived in the heart of the city, where Louis commuted during the school year to Torrejon Air Force Base to attend an American high school. By his senior year, his family had moved back to California where Louis graduated from Cordova High and began college at Sacramento State as a Political Science major.

Though interested in politics, Louis became more interested in developing himself as a storyteller. At USC, where he entered as a freshman, he made his first commitment to become a storyteller when he chose Creative Writing as his area of study. Between semesters, he picked up copywriting work for advertising agencies that did campaigns for Nike, Honda, Smith’s Food and Drug, California Pizza Kitchen & Suzuki.

His ad agency experience taught him how to communicate complex messages in a simple manner; he learned branding, market research, media strategy and full scale concept development for brand campaigns. His first job out of college, he was hired by UCLA as a research assistant where he dove into homeless populations in Hollywood and South Los Angeles; after two years, he got an offer to work for Nissan North America, where he worked on a team that developed the next generation of vehicles for the company, including the Nissan Xterra, a Mini Van, Infiniti G35 and the Titan Truck. It was during this time where he launched an herbal soda, Sun Cola, and sold it to an investor.

The corporate world had taught him a great deal about marketing and product development, but the complex process of developing a vehicle caused him to lose interest in the car industry. As a result, he began teaching English and Filmmaking for the Los Angeles Unified School District. After fifteen years of teaching and thirty short films, he decided to enter the Global Learning XPRIZE where the challenge was to build an interface for a device that could teach any child, anywhere, anything. The Xprize project took him to places of deep poverty - South LA, East LA, India and New Orleans.

His deep research to gave him an understanding of how education actually works in under-served commununites. It would be the combination of these insights that convinced him that he could develop an interactive story that could reach all learners.

He named the story "OptomystiK", which means to "Decide to Create".

With the right training, support, and resources - OptomystiK would become a blue-print designed to guide a plot in a story, a path called the "Yello Bit Road".