CLEVELAND — “We are a tech hub. We just don't recognize it,” remarked the President and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, Baiju Shah.
That perception needs to change and this is why a series of conferences, dubbed "The Land of Trailblazing Tech" is underway in the month of October. The goal is to showcase Greater Cleveland as a leading Midwest Tech Hub and home to 58-thousand tech professionals.
“Our neighbors are creating the future. It's not just happening out there in Silicon Valley or places around the world,” Shah said.
“We have a lot of talent here. We have the resources. We have the assets. It's an opportunity for us to level up,” said the Co-Founder of FutureLAND Kumar Arora.
FutureLAND just wrapped its second year focusing on business, arts and culture.
Its mission is to help start-up founders of color find a thriving environment here.
“We've really seen the camaraderie amongst a lot of people, and we're realizing that people want more and they can never have enough opportunity to learn,” said Arora.
The flagship event of tech month is the Forbes Under 30 Summit. Bringing in big business leaders and artists like Bad Bunny, Kendall Jenner, Rainn Wilson and Cleveland's own Machine Gun Kelly.
“These are people that are changing entertainment, changing finance, changing the music sector, and they bring them all together to connect, to network, to learn from each other and to inspire,” Shah said.
And to give the thousands of visitors an insider's look into Cleveland, and the one-of-a-kind experiences happening here.
“From leisure to culture to industry experiences. With it being the Land of Trailblazing Tech was really important for us to showcase the technology industry here in Cleveland,” Chloe Irish the Director of Destination Experience and Destination Cleveland.
For example, a tour of Nottingham Spirk, responsible for hundreds of innovations… a look at the Cleveland Clinic's quantum computer or a ride on LAND Energy's EV motorbike.
“We have a hope of evolving these curated experiences for October into evergreen experiences so visitors can book at their leisure in the future,” Irish stated.
All to attract the millennial talent the Greater Cleveland Partnership sees as the region's future. The good news, we're attracting more college graduates to Northeast Ohio, than we are losing to other cities.
“We have hit that inflection point where we are starting to accelerate,” stated Shah.
This idea of rolling from one conference into the next will help create an annual event highlighting Cleveland tech, business and art, like the South by Southwest Festival has done for Austin Texas.
“Coming together to learn and build and network is always beneficial,” said Arora.
“And you've seen what happens when you get the mash-up of creativity that occurs between these fields in terms of generating energy throughout a community,” said Shah.
Declaring to the world, Cleveland is a tech hub.
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