Last month, ecosystem builders from across the country met up at StartingBlock Madison for the 2019 Fall Ecosystem Builders Summit. Summit hosts Amy Gannon (Doyenne Group), Scott Resnick (StartingBlock Madison), Chandra Miller Fienen (StartingBlock Madison), and the SCN Summit planning team did an amazing job creating a conference centered around interaction and engagement.
“Magic happens when brilliant and motivated champions collaborate.”
- Shayna Hetzel, American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact
Throughout our 2.5 days of programming, attendees experienced that magic through a number of facilitated conversations, intimate and curated dinners, and interactive workshops. We began the conference by exploring our True Colors, a personality assessment that uses temperament theory to show your true character using four color styles: Blue, Gold, Green and Orange. The workshop gave us insight into how we operate in certain situations, what our underlying motivations are, and set the stage for how to understand and collaborate with others. This essentially became the basis for everything we were going to learn and do over the course of the week. For the rest of the summit, we referenced our four colors in everything we did as a fun way to relate to or understand each other quickly.
Madison Summit Key Themes
“Trust your own resilience and know that you will come out a better person on the other side.” - Amy Gannon on navigating conflict
The summit experience was set up to follow three different themes. Each theme had a workshop and a case study to compliment it. The themes were:
Articulating the underlying logic that shapes our work
Navigating conflict and leveraging its benefits
Using improv techniques to craft the structure of our pitch
Putting Madison on Display
“Ecosystem builders build the connective tissue of entrepreneurial ecosystems.” - Scott Resnick
Our Summit hosts did a great job of putting Madison on display. From dinner with locals to afternoon activities, we got to see the Madison ecosystem from multiple perspectives. We were also appreciative of the support of Summit sponsor American Family Insurance, who provided opportunities to learn more about their Institute for Corporate and Social Impact.
Curated Dinner Experiences
“Ecosystem Building is relationship building.”
Night one of the Summit, our dinners were hosted at three different private residences. Each dinner had a different theme and keynote. Entrepreneur and investor Mark Bakken hosted a group in his home on Lake Mahona to talk about his journey from entrepreneur to investor. Nyra Jordan, the Social Impact and Investment Director at American Family’s Institute for Corporate and Social Impact discussed entrepreneurial approaches to addressing the fallout from mass incarceration. Not a social justice issue you’d expect an insurance company to tackle, but one that is deeply important to Nyra, her team, and the CEO of American Family Insurance. Peter Gunder lead a talk on corporate engagement in entrepreneurial communities at the home of another local leader in the Madison ecosystem.
Nyra Jordan discussing entrepreneurial approaches to addressing the fallout from mass incarceration
Night two of the summit we were again separated based on the interests and themes. There were eight curated dinners across the city in restaurants and homes of community leaders. Themes included Surviving Burnout as an Ecosystem Builder, Scaling Beyond One City, Best Practices for Working with Local Government, Social Impact in Ecosystem Building, Engaging Corporations in Startup Community Building, The Intersection of Startup Communities and Venture Capital, Positioning Your Region in the National Conversation on Ecosystem Building, and Developing Mentorship and External University Programming in an Ecosystem.
Entrepreneurial Activity Across Madison
“So many spaces in Madison are infused with an entrepreneurial piece. When many cities look at entrepreneurship they think tech. They look at who’s building high growth tech companies. Ten years ago, that was the genesis of the entrepreneurial interest. But one thing Doyenne and other organizations have pushed is that entrepreneurship is a wide range of activity. It’s not just tech and it’s not just high growth.” - Amy Gannon
We saw the multiple facets of entrepreneurship in Madison while we were there. We met each morning at The Spark Building, a collaboration of corporate, city, and University, and entrepreneurial collaboration. Within the Spark Building is StartingBlock Madison, where our Summit took place. We got the chance to explore its three floors and learn about the many organizations and businesses that operate there.
We explored the burgeoning food scene in Madison through our daily catered meals and curated dinners, the Underbelly Taproom tour, and post summit food tour of Madison. Other opportunities for exploration included coworking space and non-profit 100state, University of Wisconsin’s Memorial Union, and Hackerspace Sector67.
Stop #3 of The Underbelly Tour
We also got a glimpse of another unique pocket of entrepreneurial activity growing in Madison: the femxle comedy scene. We got a chance to hear comedian Dina Nina Martinez.
Stories from the Margins
“The most important good we distribute to each other is membership. We must foster new identities and inclusive narratives that can support us all. This means generating stories of inclusion that reframe our individual and group identities while rejecting narratives that pit us against each other.” - The Problem of Othering: Towards Inclusiveness and Belonging
One unique piece to every SCN Summit is weaving Intercultural Unity into the programming. Our ICU team did a great job facilitating a workshop on creating spaces for belonging. During the workshop, we were split up into teams of three and asked to share stories where we felt othered. We then were asked to affirm the story once it was told and then have a conversation about the key learnings from all three stories.
Mark Lawrence sharing his group’s findings after the ICU exercise.
Belonging: An unwavering commitment to not simply tolerate and respect difference but to ensure that all people are welcome and feel that they belong.
Madison was a wonderful experience that was uniquely Madison. We saw first hand the strong partnerships and collaborations throughout the ecosystem and were encouraged to create our own collaborations through the various activities. The setting was beautiful and the hosts and facilitators were welcoming. We’d like to thank our summit sponsors for their support: StartingBlock Madison, Doyenne, American Family Insurance, Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, and WIPFLi. Bonfire for creating our super cool summit shirts.
We’d also like to thank our Summit hosts for putting on a fantastic and engaging summit! If you missed it, you can explore most about our Summit hosts and partners on in these articles: