Imagine for a moment if there was a community that was willing to invest in their hometown by building connections, creating opportunities, and helping others reach their full potential. In a nutshell, that is the driving force behind San Diego Tech Hub (SDTH).
SDTH is a people organization with the common goal to strengthen San Diego’s tech ecosystem.
On December 6, 2018, a group of 38 passionate individuals got together to answer the question: “Is San Diego a tech hub?”. The group all agreed that San Diego is an innovative city, and with 3.3 million people across the region, we have the talent and resources to be one of the top tech cities on the map.
However, the perception of San Diego as a “tech hub” was not resonating with the outside world or even some that lived in our hometown. And worse, we were constantly being compared to the Bay Area or cities like Dallas and Seattle.
After some discussion, it turned out San Diego had some challenges with how we collaborated as a city and this was preventing us from reaching our full potential. We were then on a mission to start a grassroots effort to solve the following pain points:
- Siloed environments: Are businesses, organizations, and individuals truly collaborating towards a common goal or are we duplicating efforts working independently?
- Biased opinions: As a city, are we conscious of our biases? Or do we sometimes make decisions based on familiarity, where people are more accepted if they fall into the “like me” bucket?
- The Status Quo: Are some of the business, hiring, or even our learning practices a bit outdated? Are we only following them because it’s just always been that way
We asked ourselves, what opportunities are we missing out on for not taking a stand to address these challenges.
That question sparked a movement, and as of this writing, our small organization of 38 has grown to over 1600 members in just 9 short months where we are now united with a clear mission, vision, and set of values.
Our Mission, Vision, and Values
The power behind San Diego Tech Hub is its community members. The beliefs of our organization are focused on driving social change, engaging the community, and creating an opportunity for all.
Our Mission: Inform, connect, and empower the San Diego tech community to drive social change.
Our Vision: Establish San Diego as a collaborative, diverse, and thriving tech community.
Our Values: Strive to break down siloed environments, eliminate biased opinions, and challenge the status quo to create equal opportunity for all.
As part of SDTH, we strive to be conduits for change. This concept is represented in our conduit logo symbol in the following way:
The Circle: represents the continuous flow of information. As a community, we should be open to knowledge sharing by providing access to resources and teaching others.
The Different Colors: represents the connection between people, their interest, and the relationships we need to build. As there are different colors, we know people come from all forms and walks of life and building relationships that complement each other to promote growth is key.
The Outward Spokes: represents the ability to take what we learn and pay it forward. What good are the sharing of knowledge, relationships, and talents internally if we can’t identify ways to help others.
Transforming San Diego
When I think about the community being created and the goals we aim to accomplish, it is amazing to think about how our collective efforts will all come together.
We are a “community” We are “conduits for change”
DO ONE GOOD THING, HELP TRANSFORM SAN DIEGO
