Most people consider coastal cities or large, booming metropolitan areas like Denver or Austin to be innovation hubs.
Yet, as one of this year's Inno Under 25 honorees put it, "capital is everywhere." It just takes a dedicated support network to turn an idea into a reality.
Each year, Albuquerque Business First and New Mexico Inno look for young startup founders, entrepreneurs and people who are doing their part to advance the state's economy. After a call for nominations from the public, the editorial team then reviewed nominee applications and selected four individuals as part of this year's Inno Under 25 group. To qualify, those selected had to be 25 years old or younger.
From building a video game to shaping a brand identity to educating the next generation of gamers to developing kitchenware, these four people are driven to innovate. And they are doing it, right here, in New Mexico.
First up, meet Damian Banks.
Esports have always meant a lot to Damian Banks.
He started playing video games competitively as a teen, but he couldn't land a spot on any professional teams because of his age. So instead of waiting, he came up with an idea: Create an organization to mentor young gamers who aspire to one day go pro.
Banks started Ecliptix Gaming, his own professional esports team and organization, in 2013. Ecliptix has a professional team in the PC game League of Legends and it sells branded merchandise. Aside from the professional team and merchandise, Ecliptix also has a gaming academy centered around helping kindergarten through 12th-grade students become involved in gaming as a career path.
But Ecliptix isn't all Banks is doing. He's the director of esports at New Mexico Tech, his alma mater, where he founded the university's esports program. There, he started to develop a way to teach younger people interested in the gaming industry how they could make it a career.
What Banks learned by building the esports program at NM Tech, he said, transferred into his work with Ecliptix.
"Now, I'm able to take a structured career-based curriculum and teach it to kids so that they don't have to just be a player," Banks said. "You could be a coach, you could be a caster, you could be a manager, you could be an owner of a team. There are so many different ways to access that type of information." (A 'caster' is someone who commentates live during video gameplay like a sports broadcaster.)
Banks has partnered with the City of Socorro, NM Tech and DreamBIG, an Albuquerque-based nonprofit, to grow Ecliptix. Banks said that the organization is only a few months away from opening a brick-and-mortar location at the Raymond G. Sanchez Community Center in Albuquerque where students can come and learn, equipped with all types of gaming stations and classroom space.
"There's not a simple pathway at the moment for esports careers," Banks said. He wants Ecliptix to offer that pathway.
"I feel like what we're doing right now is really beneficial to the world — and really beneficial to the youth," Banks said. "That's the next generation, especially as esports continues to expand and grow and become more mainstream. I just see no limit to the growth."
