One of the WTIA’s key strategic initiatives is workforce development. From our members’ perspective, the short-term need is to get them in front of job seekers.  The long term solution is rooted in better education along the continuum of pre-K – 12 and in expanding capacity for STEM degrees in higher-ed.   The WTIA’s been advocating for the latter for years and through collaboration with other tech and educational organizations is beginning to see the power of consolidated voice in influencing public policy. This work represents a long-term proposition that is vitally important to our state’s and the national economy. We asked our partner Garrigan Lyman to develop a new sub-brand of the WTIA called NextTech to represent our workforce development efforts.  NextTech reflects the attitude and energy we will bring to programming as we roll out events and initiatives this quarter and going forward.

Short Term

WTIA’s first NextTech offering is a tech job fair on October 24 in partnership with TechFetch.

The need to find qualified workers for tech jobs is a daily focus in industry publications and national mainstream media.  Washington’s tech companies suffer from the limited number of tech talent and face fierce competition from companies statewide and nationally. So much has been written just in the last quarter on the topic, that more stats here aren’t needed to convince folks of the magnitude of the problem.

Long Term

The WTIA has been fortunate to count university partners as engaged members of the association.  Ed Lazowska’s (http://www.cs.washington.edu/people/faculty/lazowska) contributions to our ecosystem and to the progress of the WTIA as a top-notch tech trade association are well known and greatly valued. WSU joined the WTIA in 2010 — adding our state’s other major research university to the mix.  With the recent addition of Northeastern University as a WTIA member, sponsor and engaged partner, we’ve got serious horsepower with higher education collaboration for workforce development programs. We are delighted to have Tayloe Washburn, the CEO and Dean of the Seattle Campus for NEU is heading up the WTIA’s workforce development committee.

That’s the long and the short of efforts underway to help Washington technologies prosper through tech talent initiatives.  We’re looking forward to building on these with our members and partners.

Look for NextTech programs and sign up for our tech job fair!