I got to thinking about the foundational building blocks of an ecosystem recently.
Why? Because I think we’re in yet another formative moment of Orlando tech.
As a tech community and, let’s face it, the tech media landscape, we tend to celebrate final products – a new app, a funding round, even a really cool sports venue embedded with tech – but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about process. The pipeline.
We need to celebrate the foundation.
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But I wanted to create this new space so that I can build upon what I touch on in the newsletter.
Build upon its foundation, if you will. See what I did there?
As a tech community, it would be easy to focus on the flashy announcements. And, trust me: we will continue to do so.
But what makes Orlando’s tech community an emerging (emerged?) juggernaut is the fundamental, often unseen, infrastructure that creates the talent and innovation in the first place.
It’s a complete ecosystem. Soup to nuts, as they say. And we’re seeing new pieces of that pipeline being added all the time.
In building a foundation for future growth, we commit to growth.
That can be scary. But, in this case, it’s exciting.
What makes this an even more incredible and powerful moment is that this is not coming just from one entity.
Innovate Orlando and so many others have launched newsletters (hint, hint.
We see new podcasts regularly launch.
But right now, our educational institutions lead the way.
Just last week, Valencia College committed to proactively training the next wave of technicians in a program that is first-of-its-kind in Florida.
The new Semiconductor Engineering Technology degree addresses a specific need that links directly to a high-growth industry right here in Central Florida.
That followed on the footsteps of UCF recently launching the new Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Meanwhile, the school had also been working toward last week’s major event in Lake Nona, where it launched a high-tech nursing training facility backed by Advent Health.
The facility, as they say, isn’t your grandmother’s nursing school (how old am I?).
It’s cutting-edge. It’s a high-tech sim lab. It incorporates virtual reality.
To put it plainly: It’s Orlando.
These aren’t just one-off stories. They are threads in a larger tapestry that creates a continuous loop of talent, innovation and growth.
It’s this very pipeline that enables the big players – the Siemens of the world – to find a home and grow here. They know the talent being forged right down the road.
I’m incredibly proud that Orlando Tech News gets to be one of the chroniclers of this entire process, from the first spark of an idea in a classroom to the final product that changes the world.