[Music]
thanks for having me here everyone I
don’t have any magic tricks for you but
I am excited to talk to you about
something that I’ve worked on for about
the last two years here locally in West
Michigan so my name is Joe Terry I work
at Western Michigan Works we are the
workforce development agency for the
state of Michigan and we cover our local
region here in West Michigan part of our
big initiatives is creating industry
councils
in high demand occupations I work
specifically for a group called West
Michigan tech talent our goal is to
expand and enhance IT talent for our
employers in the area and be able to
connect that to the community so today I
want to talk to you about connections
how really connections made a huge
impact on our work and how that can
really accelerate the timeline of being
successful in your job so connections
are part of my job on a daily basis
making new connections with employers
with jobseekers with the community with
training providers building those
connections developing relationships and
trying to expand the talent base in West
Michigan so why is technology and why is
tech talents so important so everyone
probably has their iPhone with them
you have technology consumes your life
in some way so we’re all consumers of
technology in some sort of way and we’re
trying to shift that mindset from being
a consumer to being a creator of
technology how do we create those type
of things so that we can you know have
these high wage occupations we can be
the next hopefully Silicon Valley of the
Midwest so that’s something that we’re
working with every day so I’d like to
throw out a couple stats at you of why
it’s so important that we really push
tech talent in our region so first is
the growth rate of technology job so
across West Michigan jobs are growing at
about 7% which is really great and we’re
doing really well in that in technology
alone we’re growing about an average of
20 to 24 percent
year-over-year now as you can probably
tell
that’s about triple the average job
growth so although it’s not a huge
industry at this point the growth is
there we need more people statewide as
Michigan we have over 15,000 jobs
available in information technology and
computing but yet we only have 1700
graduates per year to fill those jobs
there’s a huge gap in in that
additionally average wages for
technology and computing jobs averages
around $80,000 compared to about $47,000
for average wages across the state so
there’s obviously a huge need a huge
opportunity for high wage positions and
especially here in West Michigan so you
don’t have to go out to one of the
coasts to find jobs in IT and technology
you can find that locally here so that
was kind of driving the need for us to
be able to create a group comprised of
employers training providers workforce
development to address some of those
needs and be able to connect our
community to these high wage positions
we created West Michigan tech talent for
this reason exactly so I’m going to talk
today about how connections made a
difference in what we did how we it was
born from the need for connections how
we built it using existing connections
and some of the impact and success we’ve
had
due to the new connections that have
been made so talk about how technology
US Michigan tech talent was born really
it was a conversation between myself
three or four employers a couple of IT
training providers saying what are we
doing as a whole as a community to
expand the amount of talent we have in
the area to fill these high wage high
growth high in demand positions and we
really weren’t doing much there was
different groups kind of siloed here and
there there was not a really connection
between what we were doing similar
groups were doing the same thing in
different places and we weren’t making
those connections well enough we didn’t
have that single place for people to go
additionally employers were getting
requests so one group needs volunteers
for this one group needs funding and
sponsorship for that
we’re getting requests on a intermittent
basis
there wasn’t one place that people who
could go to make that connection
thus we kind of came up with this idea
of having this Clearinghouse called West
Michigan tech talent to be able to
connect our community with our tech
employers so we said okay how are we
going to build this thing it’s not easy
to build in a network which gets a lot
done we’ve this is a best practice that
we’re trying to establish across the
state we didn’t have any guidelines we
didn’t have a template of what to work
off of we were kind of building this
from scratch so we thought what’s about
what better way than to find someone who
has those existing connections and we
got lucky we found an ex CIL from the
area chief information officer who had
just retired and was doing some
collaboration work and he was willing
and believed in the cause that this was
a needed a needed thing in our community
and he did a lot of the legwork along
with our group to recruit people into
our group and to recruit IT leaders who
had access to resources access to
knowledge about the industry and within
six months we had officially a board of
directors set up 15 c-level leaders in
technology and IT training providers in
our region I bring this up and saying
it’s happened in six months where other
regions have tried to put this together
and within a year or two nothing has
come together and it’s kind of fizzled
away so to be able to do that and six
months was really great
all built because of the connections
that were already made over the course
of years in the community so not only in
six months did we have this board of
directors set up but within a year of
having our initial conversations we had
a kickoff party headed at founders who
doesn’t love beer let’s get everyone in
where we had over 75 industry
professionals come to our event sign up
for our newsletters get involved with
some of our initial projects and from
there within a few months after that our
our mailing list our member list has
expanded to about 200 people from 75
local organizations so within a year of
having conversations we went from three
people in a room to having over 200
industry professionals working together
to expand talent in West Michigan so
this is something that is not we don’t
see very often and couldn’t have been
done without these existing connections
that had been made so from our group now
that we had built this group from
connections we saw new connections being
made on a monthly basis through some of
the projects that we’ve done so I’d like
to talk to you for just a minute about
some of the impact that we have had in
the last year some of the highlights
that we’ve made so over the last year
since our since our launch we were able
to build these new connections to have
several different projects that have
impacted the community the first one was
our hour of code initiative so if you
don’t know what the hour of code is it’s
an ash a nationwide event for pretty
much anyone but focused on K through 12
students where they can go online
through co.org do coding tutorials so
this is kind of leading into some sort
of software development or developer
role building systems for organizations
for software for doing web development
building websites kind of learning those
fundamentals because a lot of these
skills are things that people have to
learn early in life so they don’t self
select out of this type of career path
so we built a program around the hour of
code where we had industry professionals
through our network go into classrooms
lead a coding tutorial a hands-on
activity talk about their work and then
also take them through this online
tutorial so in our first year we covered
45 classrooms in West Michigan reached
1,100 students and a hundred percent of
the classrooms and mentors say they
would participate again we’re looking
forward to our next event this year and
we’re looking to double that amount and
bringing up connections as the theme is
today it’s always cool to see a
real-world example of how connections
can build that and stemming off of this
event we also were able to see the the
connections that we made helping us get
connected with a new group
that was in town training teachers on
how to teach computer science in their
classrooms we were able to support them
with some grant money we’re able to
support them when they applied for
another grant and 200 teachers this
summer we’re trained on how to teach
computer science in their classrooms
which will impact over 6,000 Michigan
students next year and try to help fill
that talent gap another project that
I’ll bring up is a video that we made in
response to a few of our members who are
newly connected finding that through
conversations we really have a need in
West Michigan to diversify our tech
industry so we want to make sure you
know these high-paying high growth jobs
are very inclusive available for
everyone over 50 percent of the
population in West Michigan is women yet
less than one in four jobs and computing
is held by by females this is a problem
we know that having a more diverse team
especially in technology brings better
results better outcomes for clients and
just better projects in general so
within three months and with these new
connections we were able to fundraise
recruit speakers secure a production
company and creative video encouraging
and hopefully inspiring women to jump
into IT roles and also build a
connection for where they could find
local resources to help them go through
that so I’d like to show you the video
today as a culmination of some of those
work some of those connections that
we’ve made and how we can really make an impact in our
thanks for having me here everyone I
don’t have any magic tricks for you but
I am excited to talk to you about
something that I’ve worked on for about
the last two years here locally in West
Michigan so my name is Joe Terry I work
at Western Michigan Works we are the
workforce development agency for the
state of Michigan and we cover our local
region here in West Michigan part of our
big initiatives is creating industry
councils
in high demand occupations I work
specifically for a group called West
Michigan tech talent our goal is to
expand and enhance IT talent for our
employers in the area and be able to
connect that to the community so today I
want to talk to you about connections
how really connections made a huge
impact on our work and how that can
really accelerate the timeline of being
successful in your job so connections
are part of my job on a daily basis
making new connections with employers
with jobseekers with the community with
training providers building those
connections developing relationships and
trying to expand the talent base in West
Michigan so why is technology and why is
tech talents so important so everyone
probably has their iPhone with them
you have technology consumes your life
in some way so we’re all consumers of
technology in some sort of way and we’re
trying to shift that mindset from being
a consumer to being a creator of
technology how do we create those type
of things so that we can you know have
these high wage occupations we can be
the next hopefully Silicon Valley of the
Midwest so that’s something that we’re
working with every day so I’d like to
throw out a couple stats at you of why
it’s so important that we really push
tech talent in our region so first is
the growth rate of technology job so
across West Michigan jobs are growing at
about 7% which is really great and we’re
doing really well in that in technology
alone we’re growing about an average of
20 to 24 percent
year-over-year now as you can probably
tell
that’s about triple the average job
growth so although it’s not a huge
industry at this point the growth is
there we need more people statewide as
Michigan we have over 15,000 jobs
available in information technology and
computing but yet we only have 1700
graduates per year to fill those jobs
there’s a huge gap in in that
additionally average wages for
technology and computing jobs averages
around $80,000 compared to about $47,000
for average wages across the state so
there’s obviously a huge need a huge
opportunity for high wage positions and
especially here in West Michigan so you
don’t have to go out to one of the
coasts to find jobs in IT and technology
you can find that locally here so that
was kind of driving the need for us to
be able to create a group comprised of
employers training providers workforce
development to address some of those
needs and be able to connect our
community to these high wage positions
we created West Michigan tech talent for
this reason exactly so I’m going to talk
today about how connections made a
difference in what we did how we it was
born from the need for connections how
we built it using existing connections
and some of the impact and success we’ve
had
due to the new connections that have
been made so talk about how technology
US Michigan tech talent was born really
it was a conversation between myself
three or four employers a couple of IT
training providers saying what are we
doing as a whole as a community to
expand the amount of talent we have in
the area to fill these high wage high
growth high in demand positions and we
really weren’t doing much there was
different groups kind of siloed here and
there there was not a really connection
between what we were doing similar
groups were doing the same thing in
different places and we weren’t making
those connections well enough we didn’t
have that single place for people to go
additionally employers were getting
requests so one group needs volunteers
for this one group needs funding and
sponsorship for that
we’re getting requests on a intermittent
basis
there wasn’t one place that people who
could go to make that connection
thus we kind of came up with this idea
of having this Clearinghouse called West
Michigan tech talent to be able to
connect our community with our tech
employers so we said okay how are we
going to build this thing it’s not easy
to build in a network which gets a lot
done we’ve this is a best practice that
we’re trying to establish across the
state we didn’t have any guidelines we
didn’t have a template of what to work
off of we were kind of building this
from scratch so we thought what’s about
what better way than to find someone who
has those existing connections and we
got lucky we found an ex CIL from the
area chief information officer who had
just retired and was doing some
collaboration work and he was willing
and believed in the cause that this was
a needed a needed thing in our community
and he did a lot of the legwork along
with our group to recruit people into
our group and to recruit IT leaders who
had access to resources access to
knowledge about the industry and within
six months we had officially a board of
directors set up 15 c-level leaders in
technology and IT training providers in
our region I bring this up and saying
it’s happened in six months where other
regions have tried to put this together
and within a year or two nothing has
come together and it’s kind of fizzled
away so to be able to do that and six
months was really great
all built because of the connections
that were already made over the course
of years in the community so not only in
six months did we have this board of
directors set up but within a year of
having our initial conversations we had
a kickoff party headed at founders who
doesn’t love beer let’s get everyone in
where we had over 75 industry
professionals come to our event sign up
for our newsletters get involved with
some of our initial projects and from
there within a few months after that our
our mailing list our member list has
expanded to about 200 people from 75
local organizations so within a year of
having conversations we went from three
people in a room to having over 200
industry professionals working together
to expand talent in West Michigan so
this is something that is not we don’t
see very often and couldn’t have been
done without these existing connections
that had been made so from our group now
that we had built this group from
connections we saw new connections being
made on a monthly basis through some of
the projects that we’ve done so I’d like
to talk to you for just a minute about
some of the impact that we have had in
the last year some of the highlights
that we’ve made so over the last year
since our since our launch we were able
to build these new connections to have
several different projects that have
impacted the community the first one was
our hour of code initiative so if you
don’t know what the hour of code is it’s
an ash a nationwide event for pretty
much anyone but focused on K through 12
students where they can go online
through co.org do coding tutorials so
this is kind of leading into some sort
of software development or developer
role building systems for organizations
for software for doing web development
building websites kind of learning those
fundamentals because a lot of these
skills are things that people have to
learn early in life so they don’t self
select out of this type of career path
so we built a program around the hour of
code where we had industry professionals
through our network go into classrooms
lead a coding tutorial a hands-on
activity talk about their work and then
also take them through this online
tutorial so in our first year we covered
45 classrooms in West Michigan reached
1,100 students and a hundred percent of
the classrooms and mentors say they
would participate again we’re looking
forward to our next event this year and
we’re looking to double that amount and
bringing up connections as the theme is
today it’s always cool to see a
real-world example of how connections
can build that and stemming off of this
event we also were able to see the the
connections that we made helping us get
connected with a new group
that was in town training teachers on
how to teach computer science in their
classrooms we were able to support them
with some grant money we’re able to
support them when they applied for
another grant and 200 teachers this
summer we’re trained on how to teach
computer science in their classrooms
which will impact over 6,000 Michigan
students next year and try to help fill
that talent gap another project that
I’ll bring up is a video that we made in
response to a few of our members who are
newly connected finding that through
conversations we really have a need in
West Michigan to diversify our tech
industry so we want to make sure you
know these high-paying high growth jobs
are very inclusive available for
everyone over 50 percent of the
population in West Michigan is women yet
less than one in four jobs and computing
is held by by females this is a problem
we know that having a more diverse team
especially in technology brings better
results better outcomes for clients and
just better projects in general so
within three months and with these new
connections we were able to fundraise
recruit speakers secure a production
company and creative video encouraging
and hopefully inspiring women to jump
into IT roles and also build a
connection for where they could find
local resources to help them go through
that so I’d like to show you the video
today as a culmination of some of those
work some of those connections that
we’ve made and how we can really make an impact in our
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