FISH WHERE THE FISH ARE.
ALABAMA COLLECTIVE
MY ROLE: STRATEGIST · ECOSYSTEM ARCHITECTThe Lab was working.
The next question was bigger:
What happens when the work doesn't stay in one place?
Over wings in a Birmingham sports bar, Charisse, Deon, and I started talking about what regional economic development could look like if more of the people already doing the work actually knew each other.
We weren't trying to build another organization.
We were looking for a reason to connect.
Alabama already had plenty of people doing interesting things.
Entrepreneurs.
Educators.
Technology professionals.
Community leaders.
Businesses.
HBCUs.
Economic development organizations.
The problem wasn't a lack of people.
It was that too many of them were moving through different rooms.
Sometimes they didn't know each other.
Sometimes they didn't know what the other person was working on.
Sometimes they simply needed a reason to meet.
So we looked at where the people already were.
Two football classics.
Thousands of people.
HBCUs.
Entrepreneurs.
Technology professionals.
Businesses.
Community leaders.
People already traveling, gathering, celebrating, and paying attention.
Why build another destination?
Fish where the fish are.
The idea was simple.
Use the places and moments that already had people's attention to create more reasons for them to find each other.
Not another conference.
Not another organization.
Not another room where the same people sat around talking about connecting.
Actual connections.
People meeting people.
Networks crossing.
Ideas moving between communities.
The work was less about building a brand than activating the networks that already existed.
Personal invitations mattered.
Relationships mattered.
The people in the room mattered.
If someone could bring ten people who mattered to them, and those ten people could each bring someone else, the network started to expand on its own.
The social capital was already there.
We just needed to give it somewhere to go.
Alabama Collective grew from there.
A regional effort built around connection.
Around showing up.
Around finding the people who were already doing the work and giving them more opportunities to find each other.
It didn't need to start with a giant plan.
It started with a table.
A conversation.
A question.
What if we connected more of the people already moving Alabama forward?
That question was enough to get moving.
Sometimes the work isn't building the thing.
It's creating the conditions for the right people to build something together.