Relationship to Los Angeles and stakeholders
Questions I answer:
- In what way does this organisation serve or benefit the residents of Los Angeles, or more broadly, the state of California?
- Who benefits?
- Is there any outreach or dissemination of work from this organisation to others in Los Angeles?
- What would you say is the public’s opinion or impression of this organisation and the work being done?
Adventure Corporation does not directly serve or benefit residents of Los Angeles or the state of California. As a small startup, the company is still in stages of obtaining funding from VC’s and is in talks with different companies for various products based on new technologies. Since we are heading into the music space, we are creating projects and products in collaboration with various music production studios and music companies located in Los Angeles and in California. The aim is to enter the consumer market eventually, but at this stage it will be a while before the organisation releases a high quality and impactful product to the general public.
I think at this moment the people who benefit the most are the internal stakeholders and employees. As an intern, I am getting so much responsibility and freedom to work on ground-breaking products and ideas. Everyone in the organisation is definitely getting a lot of hands-on and practical experience along with deeper understandings of new technologies and their applications. Music production studios and companies also benefit because they are interested in the tools we are creating to diversify music and artist experiences.
Furthermore, I conceptualized and organized a virtual hackathon (mentioned previously) to help reach out to university students and recent graduates, in order to get them involved with innovative projects and technologies. I wanted to make it as diverse and inclusive as possible, so I came up with different tracks (business, design, blockchain, AI, AR / VR) and ensured that people without any technical knowledge could participate. I wanted to create workshops and ctutorials for various skills like HTML, CSS, React, Node, Ethereum, WebVR, WebRTC and AI. Mentorship and education were key aspects of the event, which was focused on cultivating creative, inquisitive and innovative participants. A lot of the people I reached out to were UCLA students, and other LA residents in my network. It was definitely a great idea and way to give back to Los Angeles and various communities.
Since Adventure Corporation is such a small organisation, there is not much brand awareness and not a lot of people know about us. Most of the public’s opinions or impressions of the organisation come from posts on LinkedIn that I and my team have made (since a lot of internal projects cannot be shared with the public as of now). I have actually focused a lot on networking and building genuine connections with professionals, companies, students and people with similar passions and interests over the last month. Through forming these connections and posting on LinkedIn, a lot of people have asked me about Adventure Pizza (previous name of Adventure Corporation) because they were curious about the name of the organisation and the work both it and I was doing.
Through this I have managed to work with PMA.LA (The Product Managers Association, Los Angeles), to spread awareness about their mentorship program, which is focused on providing product resources and career guidance to students from underrepresented social and ethnic groups. This has been a great initiative and I am happy to be a part of it. Overall, I am proud of the work that I have accomplished over this summer, both within my internship and outside it, and know that both the company’s and my relationship with Los Angeles has grown in a positive manner.