Coffee With Creators offers discussion about local business, technology

Every Wednesday at 7:30 a.m. local members of business, technology and design meet at The Factory to discuss their trade.

Kate Hunt, the coLearning Project Coordinator of The Factory, wants people to know they are invited.

"Coffee with Creators is sort of that first step in getting people that are unfamiliar with the local web-tech ecosystem in the community to be more comfortable and familiar with stepping into that," says Hunt.

Coffee with Creators started in March, and was created to facilitate coLearning classes The Factory offers to those seeking new skills or looking to change professional fields.

"It stems out of a thing called coLearning, which is an initiative from The Factory that started in January when we started thinking about the concept of coworking, extending into learning," says Hunt. 

The peer to peer coLearning classes are taught by working professionals in the technology, design and business sector, and are offered in partial partnership with the Michigan Economic Development Corp's Shifting Code program. The Shifting Code program is a statewide initiative designed to fill the void of IT professionals in west Michigan.

"There's more work here in the tech field than there are people to do it," says Hunt. "The depth of skill is significant here, the people that are in the industry are really talented, but there's just not enough of them. So work goes away, and opportunity can go out of state because people aren't being trained fast enough."

Hunt stresses that Coffee With Creators isn't just another meetup group or networking event.

"It's not like a high pressure network opportunity," says Hunt. "There's a bunch of cool people here that are talking about things that interest them. And there are some real connections that can be made; it's not purely surface introductions."

Hunt urges those interested to sign up for classes through The Factory's website and to follow the coLearning facebook group. CoLearning classes begin a new round in January 2014.