The OpenHub is a comprehensive ecosystem that takes a holistic approach in supporting business growth with 3 components that work together synergistically:

  1. Educational Programming,
  2. Co-learning study jams and projects,
  3. strong Network of collaborators and shared resources.

Our Educational Programming is focused on Technology and Entrepreneurship, two main parts of modern business.

We are applying this approach to all our activities, using #coding or #business hashtags.

We are structuring all activities into three types:

  1. Community Meetups and Free Workshops
  2. Courses (short term educational seminars and workshops)
  3. Bootcamps (intensive long term fundamental series of courses structured around key subject of matter).

The Coding Bootcamp serves the local demand for employable skills in coding and web development / web design. It will help local people to develop the necessary skills to market themselves, to make them competitive in the tech market, and to build their own projects. At our Coding Bootcamp, students will become proficient programmers, ready for an entry level web developer position. Students learn by doing, gaining hands-on experience, a project portfolio, and possibly a reference for their resume.  Participants will learn the specific tech skills for front-end mobile responsive web development, including object oriented programming basics, HTML, CSS, Java Script, and PHP, along with modern CMS including WordPress and Joomla or Drupal.

Business Bootcamp participants will be guided through an entrepreneurial evaluation and discovery. The program will then address the essential parts of the business processes: strategy, marketing, sales, operations, and execution. OpenHub mentors will evaluate strategies of existing businesses as well as facilitate SWOT-analysis for businesses. Participants will learn to leverage collaborative brainstorming and the co-working atmosphere, and revenue marketing, which transforms marketing from a cost center to a profit center. They will discover how qualified sales are earned, how to engage customers, and ultimately increase sales revenue and how to use metrics, analytics, and measurement as core tools to influence revenue performance management as well as the other side of the marketing/revenue equation. Finally, they will get help finding professional and suitable resources to grow their businesses including web tools and techniques used by successful startups and growing businesses.

We are interested to highlight Hudson Valley's Co-working spaces available for community meet-ups and collaboration / education. Co-working spaces where diverse groups of freelancers, remote workers, and other independent professionals work together in a shared, communal setting, are the key driving force for collaboration. We believe a lot of new businesses will be born through collaborative projects and co-working initiatives.

The OpenHub Supportive Collaborative Network plays an important role in the OpenHub ecosystem. People get together to learn, work, create, and experience a collective energy at the PivotGround physical space as well as online. They support each other, share resources, and form valuable collaborations that ignite exponential growth. Ultimately, people get more value for themselves, seeing a bigger picture and realizing more business opportunities. Sharing similar thoughts and values, people begin participating in collaborative partnerships, creating together, and building a network of resources, including people, lists, tools, techniques, libraries, and knowledge bases. ‘Protecting the turf’ is no longer the approach to survive or grow. The OpenHub Network encourages people to form a collective MasterMind to grow their businesses.

We have developed the OpenHub in response to a workforce trend which leads individuals to become entrepreneurs. With shifts in agriculture, technology and the vacancy left by IBM, many skilled professionals in Hudson Valley either start their own small business or cobble together a living by going from job to job in what is known as the “gig economy,” a freelance lifestyle upheld by a large number of small and solo businesses that subsist on short-term projects. According to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Statistics, the gig economy is steadily growing, in professions from graphic design and web development to construction and transportation. There is also a burgeoning startup community in the area, but according to a 2016 report by the Statistic Brain Research Institute, 50% of startups do not make it past the first four years. 46% of those failures are due to incompetence: lack of proper business knowledge and skills. 30% of those failures are due to lack of balance or managerial experience. What we have seen in MidHudson Valley, from Mom and Pop shops to entrepreneurs in the startup and gig economies, is that the struggle to make ends meet on a monthly basis is debilitating. These business owners need entrepreneurship and business education as well as tech and web skills that will help them market themselves and run more efficiently using existing resources.

The OpenHub strives to connect, train, and assist the local community in the utilization of modern technology and business skills while rooted in a philosophy of open space collaboration. Through its four synergistic components, the OpenHub will help local small businesses, startups, entrepreneurs, and freelancers grow or change by providing support and targeted educational programs, a collaborative environment, a space to work, and the benefits of match-making and internships. We believe it is very important to start building this ecosystem as an open space collaborative environment combined with best business practices and tech skills education, utilizing modern technologies, sharing successful growth hacking tricks and digital marketing strategies.

The OpenHub will collaborate with many local mentors and experts, including the Hudson Vally Startup Fund, SCORE, SUNY New Paltz, Mid Hudson SBDC, the Hudson Valley Sustainable Leadership Organization (HV SLO), and many more through community MeetUps, group collaborations, joint workshops, and co-sponsored events.