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Business as Usual Features Brian Moyer of the Nashville Tech Council

The Nashville metro region has ranked among the fastest-growing metro region’s in the United States in recent years, and is projected to grow in population by 50 percent in the next 20 years. Join us on Business as Usual as we host Nashville Technology Council President Brian Moyer to talk about the forces in play in driving Nashville’s success and the role of the technology sector in helping to attract newcomers to their region.

Transcription:

Good afternoon and welcome to today's session business as usual, I'm Audrey Russo, President and CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. And I'm joined here today, as always with Jonathan Kersting, Vice President of visibility and all things media. So thank you all for being here. I'm excited to have a conversation with my counterpart in Nashville. So I'm pretty excited about that, because I always benchmark Nashville. So it's exciting to be able to go in and do a little bit of a deep dive. So first few things about today's call, it would not have been possible without support of our long term friends at Huntington bank. They believed in us right from the beginning as we've launched this whole series, and they're very active in the small business community, providing everything that people need through this COVID epidemic and beyond. So thank you hunting to bank and then and then I actually Want to give a long shout out to Webb law firm, they have been with sponsors and partners with the tech Council for you know, at least over a decade, but they stepped up and wanted to participate in this series.

And if you don't know anything about them, they have actually been around since 1845. That's sort of a Pittsburgh legend, which is amazing. And they focus on intellectual property law in the United States. And globally, their clients have been many of the large businesses and the complexity of their cases, as well as some of the emerging companies here and around the world. They have 50 people who have academic degrees in a variety of technical disciplines, as well as law. So that enables them to be just tremendous partners and handling patent trademark copyright issues and litigations in every single technical field, so thank you for joining us and being a sponsor here. So just a little bit about the layup here, we've muted your microphones so that we don't hear any anything in the back. Round just out of consideration, want to make sure that we can hear our guests. And clearly And with that said, The call is interactive. There's a chat, you can see that on the screen you can ask questions, but this is not an opportunity for you to sell your wares. This is really an opportunity for us to have a conversation and really enjoy some of the benefits of having some intimate discussions with our guests.

So on that note, I'm thrilled to be joined by Brian Moyer. He's president and CEO of the greater Nashville Technology Council, which we are proud to count among our 55 that might even be 60 now Brian organizations across North America that our tech councils So Brian Kennedy actually on our team is on the board of the mothership, which is called tech na. So we're very excited to be able to do some benchmarking with Nashville, at least at the macro level. And welcome Brian wire. So good afternoon, Brian. Welcome to business as usual. Thanks for joining us. It's great to have another tech council executive on the program with us. Today's participants may not know this, but we are, as I mentioned earlier, we are connected through the technology councils of North America. I mentioned tech na, and they are the national Trade Association for Regional Technology Association. So I mentioned earlier, Brian Kennedy actually serves on that board. So we're gonna, before we actually dive in, Brian, I'm gonna ask some questions set, you know, set the table for us. And tell us about the Nashville tech Council and your work. And a little bit about what's happening in the scene there. So thank you for joining us.

Thanks, Audrey. And thanks for having me. It's, it's a pleasure. I want to start by saying, hats off for this series that you've been doing. I don't know how in the world every single day you come up with great content with this business as usual series but wow. Well done.

So tell us about that. You know, tell us about your organization.

We just celebrated last year, our 20th anniversary. So the organization was launched in 1999. Completely coincidentally, that's the year I moved to Nashville. I had nothing to do with the formation of the organization back then. But I did come to town with a tech startup. And I did, I was made aware of the organization that was starting and I was a founding member. So kind of an interesting touch point from way back when the the impetus for the formation of the organization back then was to support the tech startup scene. And over the years over the past 20 years out of the the Technology Council has has birthed an organization called natural capital network. At the time, it was the Nashville Angel network. was kind of incubated within the Technology Council and spun out and operates as its own entity today. And then about five years after that, and in 2010. We along with the Nashville chamber, and many, many others in town, but but we were the two leading organizations that were responsible for the launch of the Nashville entrepreneur center. So a couple of kind of key spin offs that came out of our organization. And since then, there's been a lot of focus as an organization on the technology community as a whole and really more of a focus instead of just the startups or the tech companies, but on the tech workforce, and the tech workers because in our mind, and from my perspective, in particular, we think that the future of economic development is it will be less and less and less about the companies and more and more about the talent and the workforce. And so that's really been our focus for the last four years. since I got here as CEO, so what does that mean? Can you talk a little bit about what that means in terms of is that a sense of place? A sense of community? Is it pipeline development? Is it partnership with universities? Or can you talk a little bit about the programs?

Yeah, I think it's, I think it's all of that. So we have, and I should have mentioned this as part of the intro, we have 530 member companies. And we've got a workforce currently of about 50,000 tech workers. At one point in time, I think Nashville in general, just as far as job growth has been in the top 10 in the country as far as major metros for the last many years. And at one point last year, I think we were ranked number two as far as overall job growth at at one point, I think our Tech workforce was was rated number two as far as as far as growth. And we've also been in the top percentage of growing those numbers always ebb and flow. But we've had one of the fastest growing tech workforces for for several years. So from, from our perspective, there's several initiatives. When I first met with my board of directors, four years ago, when we were starting, one of the things that I felt was important to identify at that meeting was what's the metric that we're going to use to track our success and measure our success. And that could have been a lot of different things. But what we eventually agreed on was, we were going to track the growth of our tech workforce. Because if we're executing on our programming and on our policy and advocacy efforts and on our promotional efforts and on our obviously workforce efforts, all of those shifts You'd be able to be measured in a growing tech workforce. And then, two and a half years ago, we kind of doubled down on that at a strategic retreat. And we established the B hag the big, hairy, audacious goal as a board of doubling the size of our tech workforce by 2025, which is indeed big, hairy and audacious, and something that we're not gonna be able to do on our own. But somebody had to throw that out there and kind of emphasize the importance of workforce. And so everything you mentioned, building a sense of community working with all of our colleges and universities, putting in place K through 12 programming and in camps that we're doing right now as we speak. So really just trying to create that pipeline of the next generation of talent, as well as providing a very attractive place for people That might be looking for a new place to start or to grow their tech career and make make Nashville known to them as a welcoming location.

So there was a time I know it slowed down. But there was a time where there were about 90 people a day moving into greater Nashville, right, which is pretty impressive. What talk about the amenities? So talk to all of us here in Pittsburgh and tell us about the amenities of Nashville because I mean, I know it from afar. I've been there a few times. And I know a little bit about the music scene, but and the healthcare scene. So talk about sort of like the configuration in the mix there.

So I think there's, I think there's a number of factors that were playing into that and you're right, everything has changed in the past three months, but, you know, we're all planning to get back in You know, Pittsburgh is to to where we were pre COVID. You know, compared to, compared to many cities, especially on the two coasts, we do have a more affordable cost of living in Nashville, you never want to just sell costs, because of all you have to sell those costs, you'll lose that deal sooner or later. We have no state income tax, we're not the only state. But if you're coming from California, or Massachusetts, that's a pretty big deal. We have one of the lowest tax rates for businesses in the country. And so if if it's a business that you're looking to locate here, you know, that's that's something that gets that gets factored in. You know, compared to some parts of the country, I think we we offer a better weather and climate environment, especially if you're comparing that to a Chicago or in New York. Certainly we've got some we've got some advantages there. But I think in a more the things that would that would be attractive to the millennials and a lot of those that were coming in were millennials. And what's just blew me away was understanding that many of those didn't have a job. They were just coming to Nashville because they kind of heard that. There's some cool stuff going on, and they just wanted to be a part of it. And I think the cool factor has to do with the creative in the music scene. Yes, I'll talk about healthcare in a second because that's our longest largest economic driver but, but the music and creative scene is I think, really what's driving a lot of that interest. You know, there's, there's a very vibrant startup scene here as well, which I think a lot of at one point So I'll say the last. The last statistic that I had from the Kauffman Foundation was that we were ranked fourth as far as startup growth of a market in in the country. But here's something. Here's something that's even more interesting to me is that we were ranked number two for small businesses owned by millennials. So a lot of these millennials came here and decided to start their own business.

So I don't want to monopolize on this, you cut me off. Wait, no, I want to hear it. It's good. It's very good for us to hear it. And you know, that's a very interesting point, Brian, about the small business and people tend to misunderstand tech and innovation always. It's not just about scaling and becoming, you know, a unicorn. It's you know, a lot of people just want to be able to build a business. That is a lifestyle business and that's meaningful and that has an impact. So there Something about that's happening in Nashville in terms of destination in place. And when people go to a place, that's what used to happen in Portland, people go to Portland, Oregon. And I don't know if any of our counterparts are on but they'd go to Portland, Oregon without work, right? because they'd say that's where they want to build a life. And I think that's what makes this a fascinating conversation with you about building a life rather than going for work. And COVID has exacerbated that. Because now I can work for Brian Moyer and I can live in Pittsburgh, right could be that we develop a relationship work and don't get any ideas, Brian, like, as an example, right, just as an example, we could you know, it's a different world. I can say my sense of place is Pittsburgh. So I moved here, you know, to Pittsburgh, but I don't want to move to Nashville. There's a lot of amenities in Nashville that the music scene in the way that it's built up. How connected is the tech town To the music scene, I know I asked you if you would bring Keith Urban or jack white on to the show, you know, I thought you were gonna can meet when I wasn't able to do that. So now wait a second.

So for those of you who have visited Nashville and you've been downtown, it's it's a very it's a very unique place. It's it's a it's a walkable downtown. I mean, you can, you can just go bar hopping and it's not just so much that you're going into a new bar for drinks. That's a part of it. But each bar has at least one band if not multiple bands going and so you just and some of it, yes is country music. But there's, there's quite a mix of music here. I mean, Peter Frampton lives here and that there's just, there's just a broad spectrum of talent and music that that being produced here. So that's, that's very attractive to one part of the population that's, that's looking to relocate here, the other side, and when I talk to companies that are looking to relocate and they're wanting to know, okay, where should we should be located downtown, or should we locate in the suburbs? And my answer to that question is, what type of people are you wanting to attract? If you think you're going to be attracting the millennial workers, then downtown's where you want to be if you're going to be attracting workers who are at the point either they have families or they're wanting to start families than the suburbs or maybe where you want to go because there's different kinds of amenities there. There's different kinds of school options that are that are available their education is is is a little bit better when you get into the Serbs.

All right. So we have some question. questions I want to I want to Jonathan to just try to address some of these questions. And some are statements, but some are questions. So can you call a few out, Jonathan, but start with some questions. There's some good ones here, Brian. So from Michael Nilo, he wants to know, how is Nashville dealing with the displacement of lower income minority families as the population explodes? Is the growing tech industry employing local people or bringing talent in from other areas?

So that is an excellent question and something that we talk about on a regular basis, because, you know, they, they the other side of all of this prosperity and boom that you hear about is the fact that success is not being felt equally across our population. And we understand that we have a large percentage, Nashville isn't the only city facing these problems. These are being faced Across the country, but you know, I can speak to what I see here. As many as 30% of our of our working population are underemployed right now, though we are.

Is that pre COVID? Or is that right now?

No, that was that was pre COVID. It would be even higher now, but pre pre COVID, we had identified a significant number of workers. And not all of those workers have the aptitude to learn a tech skill, but certainly a large percentage of them would have an aptitude to learn a tech skill. And so two years ago as we were as a tech Council, talking about what we could do to help with that, we launched tech apprenticeship here. So this is in partnership with one of our other Fellow fellow member organizations, which is the Washington tech Association. So we brought the apprentice program to Nashville to Tennessee. We called it a princey, TN. And we had, we had one specific goal in mind that was to identify the underemployed in town and provide them an opportunity to take an assessment to see if they had the aptitude to learn a tech skill, and assuming that they did connect them with the skills that were required to move into the tech workforce. You know, in our community, I'm sure it's exactly the same there. The average tech worker makes twice what the non tech worker makes. Our our numbers we've had close to 2000 people apply for and take the assessment since we launched this program, of those 2000 and this is kind of Interesting about 50% score, the threshold which is an 80%, on the assessment, that tells us that they've got the aptitude to learn a tech skill. So about half of them have have scored, which is 1000 people that could potentially move into our tech workforce of that thousand, and even the 2000, because there's really not a big difference there. We're finding that 50% of those people are veterans, which was one of the, one of the segments that we're targeting 50% come from a minority background. So they could be they could be a veteran and a minority. And about 25% of those that that we would classify as a minority are female. So that's a percentage that we want to try and work on and grow but we're actually kind of being blown away with the interest that we're getting and the mix of the people that we're getting to, to run through this. So that's not going to solve the entire problem. But that is one specific example of what we as a, as a tech Association did to try and help solve some of that inequity that you were talking about.

Yeah. I mean, because we need everyone to work on in the complex problems today. So okay, let, let's see, Jonathan.

Yeah. Another great question here. So Brian, obviously, obviously, you've been impacted by COVID. But you also had a Dallas of some pretty bad weather just before that. Definitely a double whammy. How did you guys respond to both of those situations?

Yeah, and I'm, I'm actually very proud at at the response. So you're right. Two weeks before COVID lockdown hit, we were hit with a series of tornadoes that did a lot of damage to parts of the city. Many, many, many businesses were closed down and a lot of people were out of work. So almost immediately, we started getting calls from member companies saying, how could we help? And of course, the first priority was shelter and food. And you know, we weren't that that's really not what they were asking about. They were asking how can we put our technical skills to work in helping out these people that have been impacted. So we had a little bit of time and we started collecting all of these calls that were coming in, and then I put out kind of a an ask to our membership saying, We've got, we've got this list of companies that are wanting to provide technical services, who else would like to be on board and we publish that on our website as a resource, so if you needed help, restoring from backup, or if you needed help getting hotspots up or You know, one of our member companies is assuring in and they just bought you break I fix. And so they had these mobile vans that they could position at different places to help with mobile repair and hotspots, you know, Comcast is is one of our member companies and they were, you know, way ahead of us on that because they deal with these kinds of things all the time. So they were out deploying mobile mobile hotspots, but it was really gratifying to see the community. We talked a lot about community here, to see the community come together and really create these, these solutions to help businesses. You know, we opened up our space, other people had extra space that they opened up free of charge. So if your, if your space had been damaged, you could come and use our space for no charge until you could get back into your office and we literally just, it was really so unfair. So sad for the tornado victims. Because before, before the recovery effort was even close to being fulfilled, COVID came in and this even bigger problem that that started facing our our economy and our business community and our workers. And we just kind of expanded those, that list of companies and asked to, okay, who can help get employer set up with remote workers who maybe hadn't had to deal with that. And, you know, we just continued to build out the list of services that were available to try and help support people that found themselves in situations they weren't expecting.

So with with all the demographic of, of Nashville in terms of the geography, I know, there's a lot of suburban communities that are, you know, that are coming up and noteworthy since COVID are you seeing in terms of work From Home any changes in terms of of employers thinking about working from home for good? And or Has there ever been an issue in terms of commuting in, in Nashville? Like Are there any issues around commuting? Haha, my being nice to you like...Nicely played Audrey nicely Okay Wait, let me tell you a little bit about the trap.

Oh goodness, yes. So, you know one of the byproducts of growth is obviously it puts a it puts a strain on the infrastructure and you know there's that there's a multi billion dollar project that's that's in in the works with our airport to try and build out our airport to to handle the increased the increased load that's coming in. We had an initiative we don't have time to go into all of the details of of why this failed. It's it's Really interesting story. But we had an initiative a couple of years ago on the ballot to fund a fairly substantial multibillion dollar mass transit solution. And it failed. Which was, which was sad to see, you know, the perfect solution will never exist, especially as you're, as you're having to plan. You know, not just for today, but it takes time to build these solutions out. And so you're planning out for years and, you know, it, you just, you just kind of have to start someplace and then pivot as you go along. But, yes, transit has been a problem for us. We, we get involved with that, because it impacts our ability to recruit workers and it impacts our ability to recruit companies, because if we're recruiting workers from cities that have a great mass transit, and especially, you know, I don't understand this, I have kids who, who, you know, aren't interested in driving There are a lot of people that really aren't interested in driving. And if they're able to get around without having to own a car, and they come to Nashville, and they can't do that, that's a problem. So that's, that's why we placed a priority on this. It was impacting our ability to grow our tech workforce, which is one of our top priorities. So, yes, we're looking at maybe some of the changes coming through COVID and the work from home as a benefit in reducing the traffic. I mean, it's been wonderful around these past few months, and you know, we did some surveys of our, of our member companies, and we're hearing that they're anticipating. So pre COVID work from home percentage was about 19%. They're expecting post COVID to be about 38%. So double the percentage of workers, which is actually great to hear people back in the offices right now.

You know, it's a mixed bag, I'm sure it's the same there.

There's nobody's fully back unless it's unless it's a hospital or somebody that that really has to be open, but most of them are coming back in a phased approach. So, you know, they're a Monday, Wednesday, Friday kind of thing or one week on one week off so that they can keep the social distancing. We have a, we have a tech exact peer group, which is a group of CIO CTOs that meets has been meeting on every other week basis. And those conversations have been really interesting to hear as they try and figure out what that looks like. And you know, how many people can we fit in an elevator and it just all kinds of all kinds of considerations, right?

Yeah,  two people in an elevator.

So talk about because we're getting sorted to the end, but are you trying to attract people from outside of Nashville to come to Nashville for tech jobs Yeah. But it doesn't mean that we're not going to have a countermeasure in place.

So, the answer to that is, yes. And to, to stay true to what I said earlier to the to the prior to the prior question. You know, our first priority is to try and grow our own talent. That takes time. You know, there are needs that are that our member companies have for talent and they can't wait for six months for somebody to get through a bootcamp or for four years for somebody to get through college. And so we're trying to do it in kind of a in kind of a mixed fashion where Yes, Our first priority is developing our own pipeline. But in addition to that, we are taking steps to tell the Nashville story to get that out and to try and to try and recruit talent, senior level talent from other parts of the country.

So what about around the world? I know that when I've been in London, I, I haven't been there in like, maybe a year or so. But there was a huge focus on Nashville, in Europe, and in London. We have, we've spent a lot of time I know you guys do a lot, Brian, in particular, you all do a lot of international stuff. We've kind of picked up on that. Thank you very much. And we've we've developed some very, very strong relationships with in the UK. And we're trying to leverage that for I don't know, I don't know so much for talent, but certainly for economic development and trading opportunities for our member companies do business overseas and vice versa. I say that's an important part of our of our mission.

I saw your stickers all over like Piccadilly square once and tried to peel them off. But that's awesome to hear.

You did a really good job. I took pictures and sent them back and said, what are we doing? So Brian, if any of our members want to come to Nashville and use your space and hang out, what do you think? You're gonna welcome them?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And by the way, hotel rooms are a whole lot cheaper right now than they were pre COVID. So a bad time here.

I bet. So what's your favorite music there? What's your favorite music and do How about like a celebrity sighting or anything?

I've had.

I've had several celebrity sightings. You know, one of the one of the really fascinating things about about Nashville is this, the celebrities that are based here, they don't travel and entourages. You know, they're just out They're just they're just living their lives and doing their things. But

yeah, so real quick, we were at a little hole in the wall kind of Mexican restaurant here in in Britain with a little town where we live. And this was many years ago my grandson was was running around and he you know, kind of somebody opened the door and he ran right through it and into the legs of, of the lady who was coming in and it was failed. You know, cut off flip flops, you know, just coming in with her daughter's to to eat. It's just part of part of life here, which is pretty cool.

Yeah, that's really cool. So what's your favorite music?

You know, my favorite music forever has been jazz. There's there's little jazz that that happens here. I have pretty eclectic tastes and I have certainly expanded my repertoire of Music and have become a pretty good fan. Since moving here.

That's great about penguins are predators.

Oh, listen, it is we've exceeded our time with you, Brian. But it has been delightful. Thank you for putting up with me poking you a little bit. Really appreciate that. Keep up the great work in Nashville. And we'll continue to benchmark and and be good friends because it's important for us to be collaborative. And you know, you never know you might be talking to jack white and just talk about Pittsburgh and the next thing you know, I know we've got jack white on the screen.

You have another 30 Records here in Pittsburgh or something like that. That's what we need.

Yeah, but thank you, Ryan, really stay safe. Thank you for your leadership in Nashville and thank you for your leadership with tacna and being so supportive and we may come and visit you

You know, we would love that you know that we were headed your way and we'll be there. We'll be there next hour. So if we can come back over,

we know but thank you, everyone. Thank you, Brian Kennedy for making this happen today. Thank you, Tim Jemal, I think he was on the call and everyone else. So until tomorrow, we'll see you again. Stay safe. Have a good day.

Bye. Thanks.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai