Movers & Makers Building Ecosystems Beneficial to Makers & Entrepreneurs Presenters: John Graulty, Ed. D. Dean of Visual, Applied, & Performing Arts & Payson McNett, MFA, Professor of 3-D Art & Digital Art Fabrication Cabrillo College Santa Cruz County, CA
Why build an ecosystem? The keys to new value and growth likely do not reside within one s current boundaries but beyond them, and that success involves forging new connections to solve problems and create new value as a team. - John Geraci, Harvard Business Review
How did Cabrillo College become a mover and maker? A serendipitous mix of Opportunism and Strategy Making & Entrepreneurship = two sides of the same coin
Artists are first and foremost creative beings, expressing their creativity through their particular medium. Most just haven t thought of themselves in that way. They are sometimes bound by their own limiting identity I m a painter, actor, dancer, musician, designer, etc.
#1 We need entrepreneurship training for artists Training artists just to be better artists leads to more starving artists. No more building better mouse traps.
Artists don t hold the corner on the market on creativity; the best engineers, doctors, landscape designers -- you name the profession -- are first and foremost creative beings.
What if we had an ecosystem, playground, and curriculum that leveraged the creativity embedded in all our students for greater good?
Creative Careers Discovering Self-Directed Pathways A cross-disciplinary course and 3-course skills certificate that helps students identify and reflect upon their own unique creative skill sets identify unmet gaps pursue unique, non-traditional, and entrepreneurial creative careers First offering this fall - 30 enrolled & 30 on the waitlist!
3 questions we ask students to ask themselves 1. What am I good at? (arguably better than all the rest) 2. What am I passionate about? 3. Who needs what I m passionate about and good at? ( and maybe they don t even know they need what I have to offer, yet)
#2 Partnering with MakersFactory and accepting a donation of $44K of their digital fabrication gear. They had the gear, but no way to leverage it. An all-too-common problem.
#3 Hiring Payson McNett Getting the right people on the bus. - Jim Collins Good to Great
My personal creative journey from Cabrillo and back.
Creation of a creative playground and curriculum in the art department
STEAM connections came naturally Planting the seeds for an ecosystem that crosses many academic boundaries (Remember: Creativity is everywhere!)
Serendipity A $17M injection from the California Community Colleges Chancellor s Office
CCC Maker Project Mission The California Community College (CCC) Maker initiative will: 1. build a community of college makerspaces that welcome non-traditional students 2. support faculty in embedding making into instruction, including offering adaptive STEAM curriculum 3. partner with businesses to produce innovation-ready graduates inspired to contribute to the creative economy
The $40K Seed/Planning Grant The charge: Develop an on-campus and regional ecosystem that will help prepare students for innovative and entrepreneurial careers in digital fabrication, advanced manufacturing, rapid prototyping, and iterative design.
The challenge for Cabrillo We re just an art department with a cool Fab Lab that allows artists to make art in new ways. We just discovered the coolest new thing since the ceramics wheel! You want us to do WHAT?! People can get jobs doing this stuff?! Are you sure?!
Our ecosystem had just a handful of passionate members, including some students Dean of Visual, Applied, & Performing Arts Payson McNett Digital Art Fabrication Instructor (part-time, at the time) Jo-Ann Panzardi, Chair of Engineering Department Students, art and some STEM, who were passionate about the new digital art fabrication classes
What else did we have going in our favor (and what existing assets do you have in your community?) A VERY creative community adjacent to Silicon Valley with a high concentration of creatives and venture capitalists. The 5 th highest concentration of artists in the country after NYC, LA, San Fran, and Santa Fe. (2010 US Census data) Strong Art and STEM programs (including digital fabrication capabilities)
The grant required us to expand our ecosystem, on campus and off, and consider unlikely partners Conversations with Faculty across disciplines (not all drank the Kool Aid: lions, and tigers, and siloes, oh my!!) 20-60-20 rule; go around resistance! Students Community, industry, non-profits, government agencies, K-16 partners, etc.
We Identified, talked with, and surveyed many potential partners Then, we invited all to a day-long Makerspace Plan-a-thon on campus April 21, 2017
First challenge: Who s hiring students with digital fabrication/rapid prototyping skills in SC County, the 2 nd smallest county in CA? We needed to find what Malcom Gladwell calls mavens the connectors, the people in the know who know others in the know.
I know a guy who knows a guy Each new tip led to more tips starting with the Economic Development Manager for the City of Santa Cruz, a key early maven.
Tools for cataloging and building an ecosystem Start building a data base right away A simple spreadsheet will do, but there are cool tools out their, too, like KUMU ecosystem mapping software Throw everyone and every possible partner on the list; evaluate later this step takes a LONG TIME and a LOT OF ENERGY and POKING AROUND
With the help of KUMU software, we developed an ecosystem map that 1) categorized and attached unique values to each of our more than 200 potential ecosystem partners 2) allowed us to cluster by descriptors
Slide Title
Will all 200+ of these local, regional, and national partners be key players in Cabrillo s Makerspace project?
Definitely not, and more may be added. The ecosystem is dynamic. Connectedness within the ecosystem emerges to the extent that members see the value in staying connected. Plastrik, Taylor and Cleveland (2014) provide the following four levels of member connections
Cabrillo s experience the funnel effect 200+ potential ecosystem partners 55 attended day-long Makerspace Plan-a-thon 12 potential internship providers
Ecosystem Engagement Pointers from: Harnessing the power of networks for social impact: Connecting to change the world. Plastrik, P., Taylor, M., & Cleveland, J. (2014). Washington, DC: Island Press.
Engaging with your ecosystem Face to face interactions are the gold standard. Find out what brings value to your members. Augment with social media, e-newsletters, webinars, regular conference calls, and special interest groups. Become a network hub. Strong members beget new strong members.
The Cabrillo Makerspace Plan-a-thon
Welcome them
Feed em
Show them what you have and what you don t
Celebrate the diversity in your ecosystem
Listen to them
Let them meet each other and share
Capture what they have to say
We got the $700K grant!
Payson McNett - Art Studio Faculty & Fab Lab Coordinator (Fab Lab Club) Carrie Mulcaire Grant Development Manager John Graulty - Dean of Visual, Applied, & Performing Arts Jamie Alonzo Dean of Natural & Applied Sciences Gerlinde Brady Dean of Career & Technical Education Jon Salisbury - Facilities Project Manager Mike Matera Department Chair, Computer & Information Systems (Robotics Club) Gary Marcoccia - Department Chair, Engineering Technology Jo-Ann Panzardi Department Chair, Engineering (Engineering Club) Beth Regardz Department Chair, Digital Media Mary Govaars Grant Administrative Assistant It takes a village! (here s the core of our 196 Ecosystem Kumu-ites) Jerome Jentz Fiscal Services Assistant Leila Jamoosian Cabrillo College Research Analyst Ashley Carniglia Cabrillo Extension Facilities & Event Coordinator Teresa Thomae Cabrillo Small Business Development Sector Gabriela Sapp BACCC Deputy Sector Navigator for Small Business J Guevara - Economic Development Manager, City of Santa Cruz Eileen Hill Director, Cabrillo College Foundation Thanks to MakersFactory, who gave us our first gear!
RCR Fabrication WHY we re excited STEAMY makers wanted in Santa Cruz! World-renowned maker industry eager for Cabrillo maker interns Santa Cruz has 5 th highest concentration of artists per capita in the nation after NYC, LA, SF & Santa Fe (2010 US Census Data) By 2020, over 40% of the workforce will be participating in the gig economy
Poised to become real movers and makers in our expanded space! Increased access for STEAM students AND community members. 7X more sq ft (407 to 2,817) Expanded equipment inventory and staffing Ever-expanding industryresponsive maker curriculum, including new modularized enhanced non-credit workforce prep courses, fee-based and/or work-for-trade Extension offerings with digital badging opportunities, and FTESgenerating open lab courses (all developed by a STEAM faculty team) Leverage Cabrillo s SBDC and new Creative Careers- Discovering Self-Directed Pathways Skills Certificate to help students and community members develop and launch new entrepreneurial ventures/enterprises
Our progress thus far we re on a roll!
August 2017 Furniture is arriving, from the bone yard
and so is gear!
September 2017 Room 1302 takes shape tools on right will soon be on tool board made with new CNC router
Room 1301 with tiers that must go!
October 2017 No tears shed over removed tiers
My skills as a painter a floor painter!
Thank you for attending! Questions? Payson McNett pamcnett@cabrillo.edu John Graulty jograult@cabrillo.edu