THE VISION
Here are the challenges the tech community faces in general terms.
Tech companies need a bigger pool of potential hires. Computer-literate colorado springs residents need a simple, effective way to find out about industry opportunities.
Our Goals:
- Drive alignment of COS IT teams to coordinate efforts and maximize efficiencies for local IT company growth
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Assist in introduction of local employers to job seekers to help fill open positions with local talent
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Generate positive marketing and press with respect to IT success in Colorado Springs
Colorado Springs has a need for better communication in and about the local tech community.
Businesses and potential hires aren’t in contact with each-other.
The vision of COSIT is to create and sustain an industry group that positively impacts professionals, media, and politics in and around the IT community.
Read: National cybersecurity center could become ‘huge economic driver’ for Colorado Springs
Colorado Springs is set up to become the center of Cyber Security.
But we need to improve lines of communication in our community to take full advantage of this opportunity.
THE OPPORTUNITY
Here’s how we foresee COSIT making an outstanding positive impact on the local tech community.
Our opportunity can be summed up with a single question:
How can we make the biggest impact with the smallest, most targeted effort?
Job fairs, world cafes, local marketing efforts, and raising awareness about resources like the Southern Colorado Workforce Center are opportunities for busy tech executives to create huge amounts of positive change in the CSprings tech community.
Read: How Does a Job Fair Benefit Companies?
COSIT will also focus on organizing and distributing information about meetups, training or certification opportunities, and more!
A coordinated effort from tech industry professionals is the highest impact way to improve our local tech community, and COSIT provides the space for that effort.
The beginning of recent COSIT efforts occured when a local group of IT professionals organized a first-of-its-kind gathering in Winter 2015 to brainstorm ways to improve communication between industry participants and improve the hiring pool for CS Tech companies.
Improving the hireability of tech-minded individuals in Colorado Springs has become a matter of national security.
Related Tech News from the Gazette:
Watch: BTL: Cyber Intel Center in Colorado Springs means economic boost
Read: Student from Colorado Springs inspires college program in cybersecurity.
Read: Colorado Springs company wins contract to fight hacking.
Featured Businesses
Videos courtesy of Bourbon Street Productions on Vimeo.
GET INVOLVED
Here’s what you can do right now take our opportunity and help make it a reality.
COSIT’s goal, in numbers:
Qualified and applying for jobs by this time next year.
And since we’re educating and gathering students, let’s make an effort to ensure that every student’s experience interacting with COSIT is as personally and professionally rewarding as possible.
To do this we should always be asking ourselves: What has worked well in other sectors? What are we doing that doesn’t work? What do we need to do more of? What opportunities are we overlooking? Where could we be applying more leverage for better results?
So far we have identified four common ways we’d like everyone to be involved with COSIT:
You can click on each to learn more and take action.
CSprings Workforce Center COSIT Job Fair Visit the Catalyst Campus Mailing List & ContactWe are just getting started, so stay tuned for more ways to get involved.
Our Team
COSIT is already a rockstar group of tech industry employees and entrepreneurs, including but not limited to:
Rachel Barrett, Jeff Beauprez, Sally Wiggins, Johnny Walton, Dale Pickering, Matt Steed, Brad T. Bird, Vince Colarelli, Don Brown, Tyrone Johnson, James Rigger, Doug DePeppe, Ed Fajardo, Nathan McCann, Todd Ketterer, Sunil Salve, Kris Beasley, Al Wenstrand, Patrick Baldwin, Vanessa Johnson, Mike Clark, James Proby, Stephen Cabrera, Aaron Nielsen, Jeremy Shirley, Marcus Alvarado, Steve Moraco, and Tammy Fields.
Right now our focus centers on:
- Determining & communicating the core focus of COSIT.
- Empowering students to become qualified for apply to local tech industry jobs.
- Bringing more awareness to the vision of COSIT through community outreach & open discussion.
We’re also focusing on increased student support, better marketing (communicating incentives to students, parents, and companies in the field), and diversification of certification and training courses.
The general consensus is that if we can offer a lot of flexible, effective ways for people to get involved in COSIT and the tech community as a whole, we can spike the numbers and make it much easier for Colorado Springs companies to find qualified talent.
We have an awesome goal, and we’re already making it happen. Let’s keep at it.
Our first job fair happens in:
Thanks for reading.
COSIT is on a mission. We hope you’re excited to contribute.
We hope this page was helpful for clarifying your some of your own thoughts about the local tech industry, student certification and more.
Curious for more?
You can ask any questions that may have arisen by emailing us at info@cosit.co
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Please send this to your best clients, colleagues, and friends — especially those who you think would like to contribute to COSIT’s mission.
Sharing pages like this help us all keep this bigger vision in mind as we keep up with fires we need to put out and otherwise do our day-to-day work.
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