Gary, Indiana is as unlikely a place for a tech hub as you can find. With crumbling infrastructure, thousands of abandoned homes, and an unemployment rate double the national average, Gary is a city well-known for its struggles. And it's a place that generates the type of headlines that make it almost impossible for the city to escape its narrative.
But Emile Cambry knows a thing or two about changing narratives, and he sees a different story in Gary--one that involves using technology to ignite change. Cambry, the founder of Blue 1647 an entrepreneurship and technology innovation center that launched three years ago in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood at 1647 S. Blue Island Ave, has been expanding the program across the US at a rapid pace and recently brought the workforce development and business accelerator to Gary.
"The funny thing is, some folks didn't think that these communities really wanted this stuff. But when I went out to (Gary) for the (initial) presentation, they said we’ve wanted this for years," Cambry said. "You see people want this engagement. They want their narrative changed. They just don't know where to go."
That's where Blue 1647 comes in. They've partnered with local organization MOVE on a space and have received funding through Indiana's Legacy Foundation to initially launch technology training classes in Gary for adults and children. The goal is for Gary to have a fully functioning Blue 1647 space of its own--similar to the one in Pilsen--to provide co-working space, skills training, business acceleration and more.
Gary is just one stop on an ambitious roadmap of cities where Cambry has brought, and will bring, the Blue model. In addition to Gary, in the last 12 months Blue 1647 has expanded to St. Louis, Compton, Los Angeles, and even Haiti, while also growing its Chicago footprint with a tech accelerator in Englewood and an advanced manufacturing space on the West Side. In the last year, Blue 1647 has taught coding and other tech skills to over 16,000 students across the US, held hackathons in more than 10 states, and its team has made 5 trips to the White House.
Cambry told Chicago Inno he's making plans to expand to New York, New Jersey, Cincinnati, Milwaukee and Minneapolis. And Blue 1647 is unveiling new products to further connect the communities it serves, like an online training program where community organizations can launch their own Blue programs when Cambry's team can't be there in person (like Haiti, for example). Blue 1647 is also launching two crowdfunding platforms--one that's equity based and one that's rewards-based, like Kickstarter.
The crowdfunding portals are a way for businesses that operate at Blue locations to tap into their local communities and get funding needed to grow their ideas. A major hurdle for many minority-owned startups is that they often don't have access to a wealthy friends and family network who can provide funding from day one, said Tracy Powell, co-founder of Blue 1647's Blue Fund Rewards.
"Our platform specifically is geared toward underserved communities, folks in areas where you’re not going to see the VCs," Powell said. "Where the banks have historically redlined and haven't loaned folks money."
Blue 1647's goal is to set up in diverse communities and host tech classes and workshops, put on tech events, and provide space and other tools for early-stage companies to grow their businesses. Blue 1647 hosts programs like 1919, a women in technology initiative that just launch its newest cohort that will train 75 women of color in tech. It runs Latina Girls Code, a program that provides tech education young Latinas ages 7 - 17. And its Code Chicago program does hands-on, mobile development, web programming and design training. Blue 1647 will soon launch pop up tech workshops out of a school bus, which will allow the group to go into more Chicago communities.
Blue 1647's multitude of programs have taken off in Chicago, but things really started to heat up for Cambry and his team when the New York Times profiled Blue 1647 in June.
After the piece ran, Cambry estimates between 30 and 35 cities reached out to see how they could get a Blue 1647 in their neighborhoods.
"(The New York Times piece) changed everything for us," Cambry said. "It just went crazy viral in a lot of ways."
Cambry and Blue 1647 have benefitted from other recent national exposure. Blue 1647 launched a partnership with Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH organization, and Cambry has been recognized by the Ebony Power 100, SXSW, and the Root 100. Everyone from Gov. Bruce Rauner to Lupe Fiasco to executives from Google Ventures have stopped by the Pilsen space to check out the work being done.
Cambry says the model works: get tech training, resources and opportunities to diverse and underserved neighborhoods, and change the narrative around these communities. The next step is to scale even further.
"We just really wanted to start to double down on the stuff that we do," he said. "We launched what we call the 'new normal campaign' on Twitter and Facebook. We want to show that it's normal to be talking about crowdfunding, to be building a business, to be woking on technology in communities that weren’t seen as innovation centers."
Cambry says his goal is to eventually engage with 1 million people in a day, whether that's online or in person. And he wants to see Blue 1647 companies contribute a combined $1 billion in annual revenue.
The success stories are already starting to pile up. Blue 1647 members have launched startups, Code Chicago graduates have landed jobs and internships at tech companies like SMS Assist, dough, and Lenovo, and students have gotten scholarships at the University of Illinois and other engineering schools.
The technology industry at large has a major diversity problem, and some companies--like Facebook--have argued that there simply isn't enough talented minorities to fill these roles, an excuse that generated a fair amount of criticism.
But whether or not you buy Facebook's argument, Cambry and Blue 1647 are making sure the pipeline of diverse technology workers is stronger than ever, in as many cities as possible.
Images via Blue 1647
