Trust me, I've read the emails, listened to your comments and thought long and hard about how to do this the right way. As many of our loyal readers will remember, DC Inno used to have podcast, aptly called "The Beat."
But as we grew and changed in 2017, producing the podcast fell by the wayside. It's a tall order for me to do alone while also staying on top of all of the other moving pieces in the Inno network (you know, the newsletter, the stories on this site, our social media channels... you get the picture). That's when I started asking around and seeking out a partner for a brand new show.
General Assembly just made sense. If you're in the D.C. area and attending tech events, chances are you've been to an event at GA. Plenty of the local talent have come out of GA's programs, and at the end of the day, our goals for this show aligned perfectly. We all want to tell the stories that you might not see in other local publications.
Called "District Download," the show will be co-hosted by Shahier Rahman, partnerships specialist at GA, and myself. You already know who I am, but let me introduce you to Shahier: He came to the D.C. tech scene in 2016 when he was hired as the campus manager at 1776. Before that, he helped launch an incubator in Orlando called Canvs. In a former life, Shahier was in the law and international relations field — a bit different, I know. But all this to say, Shahier has an insight we don't quite have. He works with founders who are more early stage than the people we usually cover. At GA, he's working with both companies and entry-level programmers, designers and engineers on their employment needs.
Every other Tuesday, we'll have a new episode for you. Some will be straightforward interview shows, others will include roundtable discussions about relevant topics in the tech scene. Our star-studded list of interviewees includes Michelle Brown of CommonLit and Mark Ein, a local investor who recently purchased the Washington City Paper. We're also experimenting with more reported pieces — like covering a startup challenge live or bringing in a local D.C. musician for a recorded concert.
But that's enough from me. Listen to it yourself. In the first episode of "District Download," we chat with CommonLit CEO and founder Michelle Brown, who is behind one of the fastest growing tech nonprofits in the D.C. area.
Subscribe to District Download on your favorite podcast app: Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Stitcher.
SHOW NOTES (Links to stories and companies mentioned & credit information):
18 D.C.-area Startups to Watch in 2018
What D.C. Tech Learned in 2017: The Strongest Companies Embraced Market Fit, Flexibility and Caution
Appian is One of The Most Successful IPOs of 2017 So Far. What’s Next?
The D.C. EdTech Nonprofit Growing at The Same Rate as Facebook
Meet The Revolution-Backed Startup You Haven’t Heard of Yet
Homesnap site
Hatch Apps site
All music for this episode comes from Broke For Free under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. Our theme song is "Playground Pigeon," and transition track for this episode is "Something Elated."
