Mind The Gap – Origins

Welcome to the Digital Gap Year!

Welcome to the Digital Gap Year!

During 2017 I’m challenging my friends and contacts in Adelaide to help create a “digital gap year” so that young adult digital enthusiasts can spend some time together learning to collaborate, finding real-world problems to solve, creating digital products and services, while developing relationships with experienced digital innovators, entrepreneurs and investors.

For the last year I have been helping to create the Adelaide GigCity which will bring affordable gigabit Internet connections to digital innovation precincts around Adelaide. Spending time in some of these precincts reminded me that one of the most productive times in my life was working with other technologists in a converted factory where we created cool things like this:

dataview-1

It also struck me how many people in my network I met at the Angle Park Computer Centre summer schools which were very informal, basically throwing a bunch of interested young people in a space with some very expensive computers.

Bringing this all together, I think a good start would be to find a suitable space in one of the precincts, gather some school leavers and Uni students, introduce them and provide them with the basic tools of the startup culture:

high speed Internet

a folding table owbfld6ft_hummingbird_6_foot_bi_fold_table

a chair smpiccmbbk_studymate_piccolo_medium_back_chair_black

and a whiteboard owmobwtbrd_ucomm_ucomm_mobile_whiteboard_900_x_1200_mm_white

At the risk of waving my hands in the air and saying “the rest is simple”, then we pull together our unique version of the incubator model.

Young people, wifi, tables and whiteboards, what could go wrong? I expect they will make forts.

blanket_fort

Do you want to be part of this?

I’m going to need mentors, people with problems to solve, commercial sponsors and participants.

What’s in it for me? I need to hire smart cloud specialists in Adelaide so this is a recruiting venue for me and I’m keen to create more support for the next generation of digital entrepreneurs in Adelaide with projects and angel funding.

What about places beyond Adelaide? I want Digital Gap Year to work anywhere there are young people looking for an amazing gap year experience. I want people from Adelaide to roam the planet growing their network and gaining experience so that they can build valuable, global scale digital businesses in Adelaide. I want to see Digital Gap Year programs set up everywhere, from country towns to megacities and I want them to be connected.

Author: bigjsl

I help smart business people use technology better. I’m a consultant and company director. I love the Internet, technology, electric cars and improving businesses. I love working with smart people who get stuff done. I understand the minds of geeks and can lead and manage them to produce amazing results. Send me a message if you want to talk about a project.

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