Youngstown Technology Initiative With Youngstown Forward
To help a city re-emerge
To help a city re-emerge
We're in partnership with Youngstown Forward to further the Youngstown Technology Initiative. Also as part of the Mission In Youngstown, our company is set on helping the Mahoning and Shenango Valley area re-emerge economically through a foundation in technology-based businesses and endeavors.
The Youngstown Technology Initiative is an endeavor to build upon the enabling capabilities of technology and digital — in the areas of education, innovation, entrepreneurship, business, communication/connectivity, and social impact. Through initiatives, endeavors, scholarships, training, seminars, and evangelization.
The bottom line reason for the Youngstown Technology Initiative is to create an environment and culture where innovation can arise and thrive. An unhindered access to computer power, bandwidth, and digtial storage space should be available for all in the Youngstown area. It can't be argued that a scenario such as that is the breeding ground for all sorts of innovative ideas, tools, products, services, and entertainment creation.
Our goal is set forth and/or engage in as much activity as possible that will help bring this scenario about.
The Youngstown Technology Initiative is a full supporter for entrepreneurship. Actually, perhaps aside from innovation, it's entrepreneurship that is at the root of this initative. With an innovative environment in motion, it will undoubtedly give rise to commercial ideas and business models.
We will be engaged in business development and assistance of any endeavors that are utilizing technology — Digital Technology in particular — as their driving force. We will also be proactive in this regard by launching native business endeavors of our own and launching them in the Youngstown area. Our businesses that we launch will be web-based, portable, and wherever possible — symbiotic.
One such business is Grubdom. This business is an online restaurant discovery platform which incorporates food ordering, table reservation, and delivery. Customers are able to browse menus of restaurants and place orders via the web for pick up or delivery. The orders are then delivered by specialists who have a notification app similar to UberEats, Grubhub, and/or DoorDash in a symbiotic relationship of streamlined income. It benefits restaurants and eateries by way of online discovery due to the powerful location-based search feature. Customers can search by cuisine, location, name, or specifc dish, and perhaps learn of restaurants that they never knew existed. This furthers the reach of restaurants who may be in locations not usually traveled or visited.
This ecosystem provide restaurants with more customers (the data clearly shows that restaurants that offer online ordering see a substantial increase in sales — preventing forced closures of business in many cases.) Online ordering enables the restaurants to process more orders as opposed to simpy taking phone orders, which are limited to however many calls they're able to take at once. It provides an income source virtually out of thin air for delivery specialists since the demand for delivery is higher than ever with online ordering. These revenue and income additions contribute to a growing tax revenue stream for any area in which these types of businesses operates — in this case, Youngstown, Ohio.
The prestige of having multiple tech-based start-ups in Youngstown begins to foster a new identity for the area. To provide a real-world example of what was pointed out by Youngstown Forward in an article about the benefits of launching a tech a startup in Youngstown, this will set the tone for other businesses — tech-based businesses at that — to either launch or relocate to Youngstown as well.
Being able to connect to the Internet reliably and efficiently is key to the goals of the Youngstown Technology Initiative. Without secure, stable, and fast network an web connectivity, it can be difficult take part in innovation and education, business and entrepreneurship at the rate needed to stay on par with the rest of the world. Productivity in general is bottlenecked to a large degree when considering your level of connectivity.
Today's Innovative Economy rides on the rate at which you can access, store, and process information. Youngstown's connectivity speeds are considerably lower than the average of the U.S., and the world in general. As part of our initiative to further enhance and entrench technology into the culture of Youngstown, we will be active and proactive in any way that we can to ensure Youngstown is able to access the Internet — as well as many of the cloud-based resources (such as IBM Watson, Amazon Web Services, various academic and research networks, and others) as possible.
We believe that we can do this by researching and reporting on ways to improve network and WiFi infrastructure. Furthermore, we are adamant about ensuring this connectivity for all to access, and to even playing fields in areas where it may be falling behind substantial levels. RunningH20 will take be involved — whether directly or indirectly (i.e. - funding or donating) — in setting up centers and labs that will contain computers connected to the Internet, or where WiFi connectivity is available for free.
It is our perspective that cities and organizations that place their efforts upon a technological base — that is, using the power of connectivity/Internet/distributed systems, cloud-computing, Artifical Intelligence, on-demand services, blockchain, digitally symbiotic relationships/ecosystems, Ecommerce, remote digital workforces, and similar, to serve their agendas are the ones that will thrive. Being that we are now in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and quite importantly and accutely — The Innovation Economy as a world society, it is an imperative for governments, educational institutions, businesses, organizations, and indivduals themselves to embrace the reality that their life in these aspects has been disrupted and will not return to the ways that they were prior to this technological disruption.
Failure to confront this reality voluntarily will be met with the inevitable confrontation with disruption anyway. It will be marked by the peril of efforts since the world is moving the way of technology and those who are seeking to avoid it, or are (mistakenly) believing that they can somehow make themselves exempt from this will tragically experience a deminishing of livelihood.
This initiative is focused on Youngstown, Ohio because it is a city and region that has been terribly impacted by a failure to diversify its economy in the past — and furthermore continues to do so in the day and age of exponential technological advancement and further disruption. Youngstown has an excellent potential to re-emerge economically due to its geographic positioning (along the transnational interstate route 80), as well as being home to a world-class university (Youngstown State University), a nationally renown technology business incubator (Youngstown Business Incubator), a rich collection of cultural centers (Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown Symphony, Youngstown Playhouse, and more), a diverse ethnic population, and many other helpful factors.
Also, Youngstown is a place where we have made our home as a company, and seek to further our Social Purpose in the city in which we operate. RunningH20 owes it to Youngstown to spearhead, sustain, spread, and strengthen this initiative.
For more info about the Youngstown Technology Initiative, contact yti@runngingh20.com or contact us here.
Social Impact
The Social Impact goal of the Youngstown Technology Initiative is to foster an entirely new mindset in the city of Youngstown, and the region as a whole. Evident opportunity on the foundation of using technology is a ray of light for an area which is marked by despair, economic woes, and a dampened initiative towards education. When an area doesn't have a general sense of hope, it begins to manifest in a societal sense negatively. However, if the population in general has access to the world and it's digital resources — in a fashion unhindered by cost, connection speed, and/or time — then the countenance as a whole begins to be lifted. We
It's also important to note that when you're connected to the world, you're connected to the various cultures, the people that make up those cultures, and the methodologies and ideas of those cultures as well. Exposure to diversity has a tremendously positive impact upon people, and undoubtedly expands minds, understanding, and as well as acceptance of others. This new found environment of understanding and empathy has a positive impact which enters into the way that individuals understand and treat one another on a local level.
The impact on the social culture of a technologically advanced Youngstown cannot be overlooked.