The Listening Period
It’s been one week since I started as the Executive Director of Entrepreneurial Initiatives, and it’s been a period of listening.
Last week, after a dozen meetings across multiple departments, I realized that January is the month of listening. Listening to what is happening across campus, listening to what is happening in the community, listening to the national and international organizations we should be a part of, and listening to what people want to see.
The best part of this listening period is realizing how much potential there is. Multiple efforts are taking place across the campus and community. However, many of them are unaware of one another. There is a need to connect and share.
A top priority will be building the infrastructure for telling the Fargo story. We need to share our work so colleagues and community members know what are happening, whether they work across the hall or across the state.
If we can help our entrepreneurs, professors and community share what is happening, they will see greater success. We can provide the escape velocity to help our creators stand out.
In short, we need our own hype machine, a micro-agency to capture, edit and share our stories. I look forward to getting started here, with the stories you need to hear, and developing these stories in future weeks.
