Tech Toledo

Things Tech Toledo Has Done

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by

Stuart Bertsch
in ,

A list of some of the things Tech Toledo has done and helped with over the last five years.

Events and Other Efforts:

  • Annual Tech Mixer (6 done)
    • Attendance in 2016 was about 120 technology workers from the region
  • Helped with Pitch & Pour (three done)
    • Tech Toledo played a significant role in the planning and execution of #1 and #3
    • 2015 Attendance was ~ 200-300 people
  • Helped with Startup Weekend (three done, usually one per year but not consistently)
    • Tech Toledo played a significant role in the first Startup Weekend and has helped at a lesser level in each Startup Weekend since but still was on the planning committee.
    • Attendance is usually 40 – 80 people plus mentors
  • Helped start Coder Dojo Toledo (one year old, weekly)
    • Teaching javascript coding & professional dev tools and methods
    • Meet every saturday for 3 hours
    • Roughly 15 kids ages 7-17
  • Tech Toledo purchased a CodeMash booth for 2017 to promote Toledo and the region
    • This is the first time a booth has been used to promote a City/Region rather than a specific company (an innovative approach that we are sure will be copied in the future, but Toledo will be first.)
  • Sylvania STEM (new technology-focused school in Sylvania)
    • Attended and helped promote grand opening and several events since starting
    • Including in kid-focused events and activities
  • Imagination Station
    • Working with Imagination Station to hold tech events in their new space
    • Possible kid-focused events and regular meetup type tech events
  • Bowsher HS
    • Visited Luis Jimenez and his class to see and talk about their Mars Rover Project and Drone piloting projects.
    • Will be working with Luis and his classes for community engagement efforts in the future
  • Helped with First local Codeathon
    • Involved with several efforts to run a local codeathon/hackathon.
    • Helped with GlassHacks 2016 at MVCDS. First primary school hackathon in Ohio (as far as we know)
    • Working on the AquaHacking committee for 2016-2017 to help Toledo participate with Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Toronto “hack” water problems relating to Lake Erie.
  • Working with Ohio Celebration of Women in Computing (OCWIC) conference to promote inclusion to women in computing 2017
  • Helped with EPIC Connect IT (2 done, more planned)
    • Roughly 60 people attended
    • Tech Toledo worked with EPIC to jointly bring young corporate tech-interested people and Corporate tech people to meet for a networking and professional development event.
    • Connecting grassroots tech community to Corporate IT
    • First one held at Owens Corning 2015
    • Next one was with ProMedica and Paramount 2016
  • Tech Toledo UX Conference (5 done)
    • Roughly 80 people attended (several from out of town)
    • Roughly 40 people attended (several from out of town)
    • 2015 event was held at the Toledo Museum of Art
    • 2016 event was held at new Toledo Lucas County Public Library in Sylvania
    • Usually do one per year, but would like to do more of these
  • Morville Architecture of Understanding
    • Tech Toledo is providing significant resources to help make this event successful
    • Held at 5/3 building downtown
    • Expecting roughly 100 people (several from out of town)
  • We Curate the local Tech Community Calendar : ToledoTechEvents.org
    • 1,559 user visits
    • 2,886 page views
    • 1,771 sessions
    • The only community calendar that tracks tech-focused events
    • In place for almost 5 years (since Sept 20, 2011)
    • Stats for MAY 2016
    • 1,412 historical events in the Calendar
  • Tech Toledo Website
    • 750 users
    • 977 sessions
    • 1,291 page views
    • Stats for MAY 2016
  • Startup Roadmap
    • Help people new to the community connect
    • Help local tech entrepreneurs with a startup roadmap
    • Stats for MAY 2016
    • 69 Users
    • 82 Sessions
    • 131 Page Views
    • Startup.TechToledo.com website
  • Business Model Canvas Workshops
    • AEI Workshops for Creative Entrepreneurs
    • Creative Entrepreneur panels
    • Toledo School for the Arts BMC Training
  • Community Development
    • 22nd Century Committee Support
    • Attending all meetings and providing feedback
    • Attending 2016 Uptown Development Committee meetings
    • Attending Downtown Development Committee meetings
  • Spearheaded Efforts for local TechHire designation
    • Worked with local employers and trainers to match needs with courses
    • Working on developing an outreach network to the underserved communities through connected religious organizations and institutions
    • Represented Toledo in Washington DC at the TechHire Summit (“Building the Tech Workforce of Tomorrow”) on December 21st 2016
  • Working with local entrepreneurs to build a local coding bootcamp CodeCity
  • Meetup Support
    • We help local MeetUps plan their year, bring in speakers, and generally help tech-related MeetUps be successful
  • Mentoring
    • Participated in a one month volunteer i-Corps program and traveled to San Francisco, Austin, Chicago, and Boston working to monetize intellectual property with a UT professor and PhD student.
    • Entrepreneurial support – pairing entrepreneurs with mentors
    • We formally mentor teams at Startup Weekend
    • We formally mentor teams at Pitch n Pour
    • We formally mentor teams through i-Corps
  • Informal Mentoring
    • Tech Toledo is engaged in what we consider full-time gorilla mentoring, meaning that we mentor potential entrepreneurs and startups at any and all times.
    • Hatch, Startup Weekend, Pitch n Pour
  • Introducing new people to the community
    • Big Fab Lab
    • New Food-based startups
    • Community Maker Space
  • Regional Representation
    • CodeMash – Tech Toledo paid $1,000 for a table to represent Toledo and talk about our TechHire efforts in our region
    • OH Tech Doc
    • Techweek Detroit
    • Cleveland Tech Week
    • Startup ScaleUp – Cleveland
    • Ann Arbor New Tech Meetup
    • A2 Tech Trek
    • Detroit (bizdom)
    • A2 CEO visit
    • Techlife Columbus
    • Setting up an Ann Arbor Tech CEO Visit event for 2017 to bring tech CEOs to Toledo to meet our tech community. Currently have three who want to come and working on more.
  • Outside the Region Representation
    • Attended Denver Startup Week
    • Attended Boulder Startup Week
    • Attended New Orleans Entrepreneur Week
    • Attended Phoenix Hadoop users group meeting and co-working spaces
  • Marketing and Cross Promotion of Community Events
    • For example: AAF held an Innovation Summit that had several tech people presenting that we suggested.  We promoted their event to Tech people in the region that would have never considered going to an AAF event. (AAF=American Advertising Federation). This cross promotion builds credibility across silo’d organizations and industries (like Advertising/Marketing) and helps the community connect outside their normal audience.
    • It’s also an opportunity to infuse tech into an otherwise non-tech community.
    • Making connections across industries (smashing silos)
    • We let organizations know about aligned events that their members would be interested in and help organization bring IT/Tech people into their events.
  • Annual “event planning” calendar (not toledotechevents.org)
    • Used to help plan the year so different organizations don’t plan events on the same date. We help to put some strategic planning efforts into the yearly planning for the organizations that will work with us. (It has taken many years to get to this level of comfort with several organizations, but we can now talk with them before and during their yearly planning meetings so that their big events don’t conflict with other big events planned for the year by other organizations).
  • Social Media
    • We help promote local events by attending and posting social media content before, during, and after each event.
  • Community understanding and explanation of community things (Like NSF, Rocket Innovations, Seed, i-Corps, Hatch, LPI, etc.)
    • We explain things that are hard to understand to people in the community that want to know.
  • Thinking and creating a local ecosystem model (Tech/Design/Entrepreneur)
  • Connecting the public sector to the private sectors
    • We meet with and support City of Toledo Tech workers and local politicians
  • Working with Higher Ed/Academia (UT/BG/Eastern Michigan)
  • Asset Map (see startup.dexterityux.org/website_9083fb5c)
    • Directory of Community Members
  • Deal Flow design, support and experience – facilitating conversations between venture and startups
  • Tech Toledo provides bank services for some Meetups (some in Michigan)

Highlight of efforts for 2017 (Some in the works, some are wish list)

  • Build outreach network to local communities for TechHire training
  • Local Coding Bootcamp(s)
  • Tighten talent pipeline from outreach to training to employment
  • Integrate our efforts with ProMedica ESP efforts for the region
  • Create a Toledo Tech Trek similar to Ann Arbor’s Tech Trek
  • Have a Tech Event at the Zoo & The Imagination Station
  • More Tech outreach to UT/BG Computer Science Alumni
  • CEO visit from Ann Arbor CEOs to Toledo Tech Community
  • Tech spotlight storytelling of local talent and companies
  • Mega event planning – Tech/Design/Startup Week
  • Major event planning: conferences
  • Running an accelerator – e.g., design + tech
  • A more functional and capable directory
    • People, Companies, Services, Skills, Geocoded