Tell More Stories (Where It Matters)
(This article was digitally remastered from the medium.com. You can find the original version here - https://medium.com/@jlowe000/tell-more-stories-11131980fab1)
This line which seems so simple took several attempts to start. Each time, it didn’t seem right; not funny; not interesting enough or not relevant to the story. What it did though was to start the story of which I’m writing about. (And who knows whether I’ll keep it …)
Last week, I was able to attend the Community Leaders Workshop at the Arc Incubator (https://twitter.com/arcincubator). I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. I was honoured to receive an email from Chad Renando with the invite and at the same time Lizzie Moorhouse from our Oracle Global Startup Ecosystem, newly arrived in Perth from the UK Accelerator in Bristol. What an opportunity to meet some truly passionate people and for Lizzie to witness what is happening in #QLD.
To keep the whole experience short, what happen? A couple of speakers talking about the MIT REAP (https://bit.ly/2viok5Q), about the Startup Catalyst mission to London ( https://bit.ly/2Lxf1tL) and the Collider trip to Thailand (https://bit.ly/2M1AxDe) — each bringing a sense of what it takes to build these communities. This was great and the fun was about to begin — its not called a workshop for nothing.
We all got up and there were different challenges or areas that we can all do better. This was something that was talked about last time this event occurred. I’m not sure what happened but there was definitely a sense of ownership and putting pragmatic actions to work. There was a system and it worked well. We got to look a few different elements of what the community needed and what we can do about them.
The items covered were: Gaps, Investment & Funding, Talent, Specialisation, Promotion and Programs. All of which we can do better. It was interesting to learn from some of the people from different regions — what was important to them. It is obvious that the different regions had different priorities and challenges — no one size fits all. Chad Renando released this article (yesterday) that does talk to that — https://bit.ly/2veBzoc. It is worth a read.
Even though there were different items and different comments made across the room. There were a few different themes that resonated for me. Using one of the mnemonics that Peter Laurie talked about quite early one in our discussions, was the one that talks about the different types of resources.
The summation from my perspective is that the R-O-I resources are important. P-F-T resources do keep things moving along but are short-term. So getting back to the things that were on the walls — and even we just focus on R-O-Iones, I could see a few different things that I can start working on.
R for Reputation and Relationship. This is something that I like doing. I like telling stories. I like learning through stories. Everyone has a story to tell and every one of them is interesting. And through stories we create that relationship and reputation. I keep bringing up the conversation that I had with Martin Talvari from Myriad Live last year about crossing the streams and sharing stories between the startup community and corporate community (and specifically in this case the Oracle community). There is “value” to be shared if there was real engagement there.
So, I as my part of this I will share stories with others in the Oracle community. I will also share Oracle stories with the startup community.
O for Organisational. This is also something that I like doing as well. The bit that I saw was the connected nature of the community. How did the community work together to get a better outcome. There were words like niche, pie factories, collaboration, partnering, etc. This is something that I’d be happy to do. I know that I can’t do it all. And even I could, is it the best use of my time. Is it worth partnering with others to create scale or speed or create diverse opportunities? Throughout the last year or two, there has been common thread where I’ve asked startups or others — How can I help? As organisations, we all have our part to play and where I am at Oracle is no different. Oracle and the Oracle partners and customers have their part to play.
So, I as my part of this I will create the niche and partner with others to create opportunities to create scale, speed with a focus on specialisation.
I for Intellectual Property / Informational. This one is important however as a deliverable; a task; an action it feels a little weird. The way that I’m interpreting this one is that the IP that we have is what we do as a community. It’s not a single mind approach. It’s a hive approach. We are after-all living in a community; an ecosystem.
So, I as my part of this I will try new things; I will be open to share and talk and figure stuff out. I may get it wrong sometimes. But I’ll give it a crack.
So there it is. This is what I’ll do and I’m sure that others in the group will have their views as well. We are diverse group of people and plenty of passion in the room for what we do. We are as diverse in our nature as well as diverse in experiences and organisations we work for.
I thank everyone for their contribution at the workshop. It’s just the start. I’m sure there will be a bigger group next time.