the Div: Building their own high-tech workforce

Many small towns and small cities have a terrible shortage of skilled workforce, especially in today’s high-tech skills. The reasons why are complex: some places lack local training, some have high out-migration rates, some places just have no history of high tech work.

Lindsey and Cory Miller

A few Oklahomans decided to do something about the lack of high tech workforce in their area. I heard about it from Cory Miller. He and his partners in DigiMedia, Scott Day and Jay Chapman, founded the Div. They needed a better workforce and decided to build it themselves. Cory’s wife Lindsey is the executive director. The partners are funding part themselves, raising funds from other sources, and planning to seek grant or government funding sometime.

At the Div, their mission is:

To foster and promote web tech innovation, creativity and community in Oklahoma
To champion Oklahoma as a web tech hub
To be a launching pad for projects and startups in the web tech industry in Oklahoma
To help develop and train a strong, skilled and dynamic workforce for the web tech industry in Oklahoma

They’re busy providing training courses online and offline, building awareness of the local tech scene, and generally changing the whole paradigm by jumping in and doing.

Edmond, Oklahoma, isn’t a small town, exactly. It is a suburb in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. But it’s an idea all of us can grab on to:

If you want a better workforce, get involved in building it.

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About Becky McCray

Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.