Impact Hub Accelerator Kickoff (Day One)

MediaTech Venture’s nonprofit “Collective” has been accepted into Impact Hub Austin’s “Workforce Development Accelerator”. Along with 8 other organizations we have been selected to help address many work force development challenges including the work that was done in the Master Community Workforce Plan.

The First day started off at The Austin Central Library, with Leadership Austin discussing “On the Job and in the Classroom: Cultivating a Culture of Innovation for Workforce Development”. The speakers included

• Geronimo M. Rodriguez, Jr. — Chief Advocacy Officer, Ascension Texas
• Tamara Atkinson — CEO, Workforce Solutions Capital Area
• Melanie Flowers — Senior Manager of Technical Training, Samsung
• Shasta Buchanan — Executive Director — Office of College & High School Relations, Austin Community College

The conversation was centered around how we’re creating equal opportunity for the entire future workforce, while preparing them for jobs that haven’t been created yet. Turns out, with a little bit of research or reaching out to some of the speakers highlighted above, there are many public tools available for families, and what seems to be a proactive group trying to reach as many children as possible. A debate I would like to have with these professionals, is asking them why there is so much focus on “STEM” and not “STEAM”? If we want the future workforce to compete with robots, a large part of that will be arts, and the ability to be more creative and passionate than machines.

Upon completion of the Leadership Austin event, we headed back to Impact Hub’s Monroe location for our official first day classroom session. It was a great initial introduction to the cohort, with many of us in the room recognizing we didn’t know 75% of the people that were also accepted. Instead of diving right into actionable items, we were instead introduced to Solomon Masala, Principal of Source Consulting Group and Program oversight at Amala Foundation. We were asked to join him downstairs for a team building exercise, what happened next was incredible and very unexpected.

We’ve all been a part of team building exercises, and typically they’re more mundane and uneventful; to our surprise, this was not the case. Solomon had us do a series of exercises from splitting into three different groups with various sets of directions, to working together to fulfill Simon Says like requirements, and finishing with a group exercise testing our ability to think outside of the box and improve upon our recorded time. The results were incredible and the group was able to improve our time on the last exercise from 38 seconds, to 3.8 second, down to our final 1.9 second record.

But why was this important? The truth is, we all come from very different industries and we didn’t know one another personally at all. It was a great way to break the ice, and get to know every other person in the cohort to understand we’re not alone, we are a team, and the more we collaborate in helping solve the complex challenges around workforce development, the better and more powerful the solutions will be. Solomon did an incredible job of leveraging very basic rules and exercises, generating very profound realizations and results.

Following the team building exercise, the class had to write down three rules/philosophies the group should adhere to throughout our 11 weeks together, here are the results. This was a total of 48 submissions from 16 individuals (3 each):

• 25% — Respect
• 25% — Feedback
• 12.5% — Collaboration
• 10.5% — Vulnerability
• 8.4% — Mindfullness
• 8.4% — Innovation
• 6.1% — Creativity
• 4.1% — Fun

This data clearly shows how effective the Team Building exercise really was. It challenged us to think beyond ourselves and be respectful, give feedback, collaborate, and show that it’s ok to be vulnerable; in fact, it’s encouraged.

The final activity for the day was a powerful conversation over lunch, on workforce development solutions. These individuals sat across from one another and had a conversation as if we weren’t even there, following a Q&A at the end. These individuals have been advocates and activists for solutions for years:

• Aaron Hill — Program Manager, Skillpoint Alliance
• Dazzie McKelvy — CEO/Owner, Workforce Matters
• Garret Groves — VP of Business and Industry Partnerships, Austin Community College

The conversation was based off of three principles of not just workforce development but also economic development:

• Equity
• Inclusion
• Diversity

The future is bright if we’re able to give everyone a voice, and not subjugate any groups of peoples to prejudice or biases. The representation of all walks of life no matter your back ground, ethnicity or the color of your skin is important to any growing economy and can only prevail when we overcome our own preconceived notions and historical cultural biases.

The conversation was moving, but also left me a bit befuddled, due to a lack of historical national and/or international data on efforts to solve workforce development challenges. This in my opinion, is a massive opportunity. Comparative analysis is important in any industry to help it grow, and prosper. Arguing the validity of another program’s dataset as it pertains to “the now,” creates a void in our over all ability to be more proactive and collaborative, with the goal of finding solutions faster. The reason I find this opportunity to be large, is because workforce development is not the only non profit initiative that lacks a database, there are many that don’t share a common database, when it would be in everyone’s best interest if they did.

I’m looking forward to this week’s class, and also going on the journey ahead, working with an incredible group of people. Find out more about how MediaTech Ventures is tackling workforce development here.