We were back. Audience was great, I enjoyed my lunchtime keynote interview with Wired editor Steven Levy.
To fill an early-morning slot, I crowdsourced a session (in old school unconference style!) on creators as distribution partners, and creators of news. (The topic has been on my mind!) In a crowded room
Below are a few notes from the daylong unconference on the future of news for my own memory.
Continue reading A few lessons from the 15th annual Klein News Innovation CampThe creator economy may be big, or not. The numbers are somewhat divided because definitions are still evolving.
I took what I did know from covering, living and curating creator campaigns, and gave a keynote on the topic for the Philly Ad Club’s annual conference. They had roughly 150 marketers on site at the cozy innovation space of Independence Blue Cross’s headquarters.
Find my slides here. A rough audio recording of the presentation can be found here (or here).
I published here a piece on Technical.ly informed by this work.
Backed by a research project on tech workforce development that I am leading with Technical.ly for our client Accenture, I got the chance to share high-level findings.
Ahead of National Apprenticeship Week, I gave a 10-minute talk, which was broadly about apprenticeships but included a bit of general tech workforce and tech economy basics and some Philadelphia-specific detail. Find the slides here, and a story I wrote on the topic here.
Informed by reporting I’ve done, I’m keen on making the case that entrepreneurship engagement and tech workforce support are bipartisan issues.
I led a workshop session on the topic at the Young, Smart, Local conference. Find my slides here. Below is the session abstract I roughly followed. (After the daytime conference, there was an evening reception, at which I am depicted below with my friend and collaborator Damon McWhite, photo by Sana’i Parker!)
Continue reading Entrepreneurship is bipartisanToo often when tech, startup and local economic development leaders I know say they want more “storytelling” about their “ecosystem,” they just mean “I want more people to know about my stuff.” They mean marketing and promotion alone.
But when we evoke the word “storytelling” we need more meaning. All the brain science makes clear, storytelling works when the audience learns something about themselves. With the help of strong data-backing, today storytelling can mean: Using fact-finding and people stories to help a community identify the closest approximation of its truth. It sounds like my old definition journalism.
This idea of marrying data with storytelling for local economic organizers was the focus of a keynote, and subsequent discussion, I led at SuperConnect, the user conference of Baltimore-founded startup Ecomap. It was informed in part by the “ecosystem stack” concept I’m tinkering with.
My slides are here. Earlier this year, I presented a webinar for the firm, and those slides are here.
Well the video crew somehow damaged the file of my speech, but I gave the keynote at Technical.ly’s annual Builders Conference back on May 8.
I published the themes on Technical.ly here, here and here. I wanted to share the full video here, but no luck. I do have my full notes below.
Continue reading My Technical.ly Builders Conference keynote May 2024I proudly accepted Wednesday the “Innovators Award” from the Temple University Fox School of Business’s Institute for Business and Information Technology. The award is “given annually to a person or persons for innovation in applying IT to create business opportunity.”
The award was timed with the launch of the 14th annual Philly Tech Week, which I founded, and the 15th anniversary of Technical.ly, a local news org that has adapted in this strange economic period for community journalism. The transfer of Generocity.org last year was also a relevant example of my work.I was proud that my references for the award were my friends journalist-turned-college-dean David Boardman and entrepreneur Bob Moore. I formerly emceed these very awards, which are led by the thoughtful and analytical Munir Y. Mandviwalla and Laurel Miller. Knowing what they put into these awards made it all the more special. I was certainly in good company: My fellow award-winner was Jeff Hamilton, who was the CIO of Pfizer while the company rolled out its covid-19 vaccine.
Below, I share my remarks from the award event.
Continue reading I was honored with the 2024 IBIT “Innovators Award”Economic strategies should focus on people, not companies.
It was always true but the pandemic made it obvious, as Technical.ly reporting has shown. I said something like that in an opening keynote before leading a conversation at the Young, Smart & Local conference in New Orleans last week. I then got to lead a conversation with Dominique Clarke of Tulsa Remote and Perry Sholes. I’ve written on the topic before, but I pulled together data analysis across my reporting. My slides and other pics courtesy of the conference are below.
Continue reading Economic development strategies must focus on people, not companies1 in 5 professionals in the United States now manages people — major growth since 2000, as our economy has shifted. Lots of them are there for the wrong reasons. The good ones do magic. I said something like this on behalf of Technical.ly next to honeygrow founder/CEO Justin Rosenberg and ORS Partners ops Leslie Hafter at this energizing breakfast conversation put on by Matthew Saline and Mike Krupit for the TAB CEO community. Thanks for the opportunity!
Continue reading Middle managers matter: remarks at TAB eventI traveled to Birmingham, Alabama to be part of the revival of SlossTech, where I joined a panel discussing how different entrepreneurship ecosystems vary by geography.
Among my favorite pushes: Everyone has projections about why their city is special but spreadsheets are full of hopes and lies.
Continue reading Featured speaker @ Sloss Tech in Birmingham, Alabama
