Tai Nehisi AMA: Building a Tech Ecosystem People Can Actually Enter

Edited AMA Transcript

Edited transcript of the September 17, 2026 Techlahoma Expert AMA with Tai Nehisi, hosted by Sam Carlton. Speaker wording is retained with light cleanup of hesitation, repetition, and source-confirmed names. Pre-show conversation, personal details, funding figures, and routine technical interruptions are omitted. Statements and announced plans reflect the conversation on that date. The recording remains the source for tone and exact wording.

Watch the source recording

Building a Tech Ecosystem People Can Actually Enter

Sam Carlton

Welcome everyone to the Expert AMA for Techlahoma. My name is Sam. I serve as Vice President and board member for Techlahoma. We’re gonna have some fun today. We’re talking about building a tech ecosystem that people can actually enter. I was talking with Tai and I remember we had this September AMA coming up and I was like, actually, this might be perfect because there’s a— there’s an event coming up where there’s a bunch of tech events going to happen during the week. And like any good community leader, Tai isn’t one to like make it all about her. She’s very intentional with that, which actually I appreciate because that can be an issue, like personalities.

But I wanted to make sure to give space. Like at Techlahoma, we’re all about the doers. We’re not the talkers. About the Oklahoma, not just Tulsa, but like Oklahoma and OKC, Oklahoma tech community. And how to get involved. And there might— it’s really— I’d be hard-pressed to find someone who would be better expert to pull on than Tai. And also, I wanted the first slot on Tulsa Tech Week calendar. And so I got— I slipped one past the goalie and I got— I got— I was like, I was like, okay, we can, you know, I want to do this interview and get— and get— get Techlahoma as the first slot.

So with that said, there’s plenty of events and organizations to discover in Oklahoma and like finding your way into that community can still be intimidating sometimes. It’s just like, oh, there’s all these people who are skilled and like, I’m just a— I just like write stuff and I know how to prompt ChatGPT a little bit. So today we’re going to talk about where to start, how these events come together, how someone Can— how meeting someone can lead to working together. You can get work, you can get like connections for your job, you can get people to hire for your— for maybe a company you want to start and get funding.

Those things are just like a lot of that happens through this community. So whether you write code with prompts or design, or you’re a founder, a student, or just a curious neighbor, the goal is to leave with one useful next step. So a little bit of explaining the format of how this is going to work. We’re going to do live questions as they come in so people can jump in the chat. If you want to practice right now, you can open like this chat on the side for the— for or Google Meet and just say, and just wave and like say hi and like say your favorite food.

We’ll also go back and forth between the community-voted questions. So we had some people submit some questions through Luma, and then we had the Techlahoma community vote on what they wanted to hear about the most. Through those, and we’ll kind of go back and forth between live and the community voted questions. So a little bit of intro about Tai. So our guest is Tai Nehisi. AKA Tech Tai. She is the founder and executive producer of Tulsa Tech Week and OKC Tech Week. Fun fact, cows are one of her favorite things about living in Oklahoma.

A little more details for those who don’t know about Tulsa Tech Week, because we’ve got kind of like 2 communities coming together as in the form of Techlahoma and then the Tulsa Tech Week people who joined from the calendar. Tulsa Tech Week runs September 21st through the 26th, and it’s bringing people together around technology, local industries, and community. If that’s not enough, she also founded Organizely, a tool for building AI tools that turn businesses’ procedures into usable workflows and documentation. How do you know it works? Well, she made it, and she is the operator of Tulsa Tech Week. So all of these, like, Dozens of events, I think, at this point.

I kind of lost count, and she’s making all of that happen. She’s got a team, but it like if you talk to her and ask her about like oh like what are you what are you going on? It’s it is inhuman the amount of just like operation that runs through her. So today we get to hear about how Tai brings all that together and how the rest of us can participate. So with that said, open up your reactions, your little emojis on bottom of the Google Meet. And let’s give a warm Techlahoma love for the Tech Tai.

Tai Nehisi

Thank you so very much, Sam. Thank you everyone for the claps and the heart emoji. Is this my time to chat now, Sam?

Tai Nehisi

So for everyone that is viewing in the Google Meet and those via the stream, I just want to say hello to you. I’m Tai Nehisi. That was a really great intro by my friend and colleague, and hopefully future collaborator, Sam. And I’m really excited to be here today. And Sam was really, he really wanted that first I was like, I’m not ready for this. Actually, a Tulsa Tech Week event when he submitted it, and I said, yeah, no problem. So you’ll see this above everything else, and I’m happy that you invited me here today.

What is your approach to getting city participation in Tulsa Tech Week?

Sam Carlton

Cool. All right, with that said, we’ll get started. We did have a question come in from Garret, which I’ll ask first, but if you guys want, you can hear If you’re in the live Google Meet, you can add a chat or just raise your hand if you would just want to say the question with your own voice. We love that. Add it in the chat or raise your hand. But with that, Garret actually submitted a custom question in Slack. He asked, what is your approach to getting city participation in Tulsa Tech Week? Is it more grassroots, bottom-up, e.g., local companies, or is it more top-down focused on city leadership?

Tai Nehisi

Okay, so I’m happy that there were some qualifying sub-questions, because the minute I heard city leadership, I thought of Mayor Nichols and city government. So firstly, I am persistent. I have also had experience being a BDR or business development representative or SDR, so sales development representative, and that means that I have very specific skills on cold and warm outreach. So first things first, I use my tech tools like Apollo, and I scraped. The people that I wanted to do cold outreach to. So I have officially lived in Tulsa 3 and a half years this past weekend. I’m originally from Brooklyn, New York, and I came through the Tulsa Remote program.

For anyone that’s familiar, so I brought my tech company Organizely with me and started to get a bit more access to the community when I brought myself here, so I joined Techlahoma. I go to events and meetups and such. So I was here literally just over a year prior to starting Tulsa Tech Week in stealth mode, so I had some contacts already.

And understanding of who might be quote unquote leadership from those I interacted with, and for those that I had not interacted with yet, I just went to LinkedIn and said, okay, what are some influential companies that I would want the community have more exposure to, and it’s really all of them because Tulsa is very segmented. It is very siloed and culturally, Oklahoma is one where you have to be invited to actually know what’s going on, so no company, I find, was inviting people in anyway. So I decided, I’m gonna go after all of them. So if Garret wants to come off mute and ask any further or specific questions, I’m willing to answer those.

But Sam, this is your format, and I think I did answer his question.

Garret Wilson

Yeah, thank you for that answer. It’s really interesting, this, you know, the cold approach. But what about the city leadership? Did you find out you had more I guess traction by going and talking to individual companies, or did you have— did you find that talking to the city leadership somehow gave you more of like an opening or more of like traction to talk to companies?

Tai Nehisi

No city— there has been no city leadership that has helped me talk to companies. So let me step back a little bit more because when you said city leadership, like I mentioned, I was thinking Tulsa City Government, the mayor, economic develop. Mayor Nichols, who I’m familiar with and will be at the opening ceremony this coming Monday for the second year in a row. Right? I’m thinking. Erin Pursley, who was the new— at the time, the new senior economic development officer for the city of Tulsa. I’m thinking of Brenton. I just forgot Brenton’s last name. Brenton Todd. Yes, yeah, we know Brenton. Brenton Todd, who’s now the mayor’s deputy chief of staff.

These are all people I know. And knew when I started this, but at that point they were new to city government, like they had just started. I, in stealth mode, started Tulsa Tech Week in

Sam Carlton

Brenton Todd, we love Brenton.

Tai Nehisi

Summer 2024 officially launched it on Saturday, February 1st, 2025. [Discussion omitted.] They were still getting up and ready, and even though I knew people there They weren’t in a position to help and assist. So when we talk about city government, I have the connections, I speak with them regularly, but they still have not— if I wait For city government, there would be no Tech Week and there would be no second year of Tech Week. So if we’re talking about city leadership from the company’s perspective, all of that was cold outreach.

I am very good at sending emails and being very persistent, creating email cadences and emails that people actually open at very high open rates for my subjects and very short emails that get to the point. And it was literally, and still to this day, me actively reaching out to people and being persistent in and creating all of the content that you see on social. Create. All of it. So it’s multi-pronged campaign, but it’s almost all cold because, as I mentioned, Tulsa and Oklahoma at large is very, very segmented. Siloed. And to me, I don’t find very collaborative. I think that there might be collaboration within certain stratas.

So I’m going to wrap this up because I know there are other questions, but I want to be Comprehensive because I think there are a lot of assumptions on what I do or what I’ve done without many people like really understanding.

So what I see here in Oklahoma is entrepreneurs talking to entrepreneurs, corporations talking to corporations, nonprofits talking to nonprofits, but I don’t see a lot of mixing and mingling and collaboration between the different stratas of what business looks like here, and one of my hypotheses for Tulsa Tech Week would be bringing more of those subsets and communities at large together, and that actually did happen because you will rarely see galas or company events that have a mixture of all types of representatives. Tulsa Tech Week invited anyone who was willing to register and attend. Does that help, Garret? Does that resonate?

Garret Wilson

Yeah, that’s extremely interesting. Some other conversation some other day. I’m sure I’ll have lots of follow-up questions, but I know there’s other questions now. Thank you so much.

Tai Nehisi

You’re welcome. Well, Catch me outside next week.

Sam Carlton

Shout out opening ceremony, September 21st.

Tai Nehisi

Yeah, and all throughout the week, if you see me running, like, just stop me. Hey, hey, Garret, let’s continue this conversation. I’m like, walk with me, talk with me.

Garret Wilson

Sounds good.

How can someone with a design or built environment background combine tech with their existing skills?

Sam Carlton

Alrighty, the next question we had, the most voted question by far, how can someone with a design or built environment background combine tech with their existing skills?

Tai Nehisi

I think that’s a great question. So I’m going to really step in my technologist role. I’m a software engineer and I am very much a creative, which is, which has been really, really helpful for me. So in being a software engineer, in being someone who is very creative, it accelerates what I build and gets me to a place where I consider myself, and Sam considers me, which he also mentioned earlier, as an operator. So an operator to me, and also Sam, because we’ve discussed this, is someone who can ideate, come up with original updated derivative ideas and also implement them.

So they’re people that ideate, can’t put into practice, and there are people that can put stuff into practice but have no original ideas. I happen to be an operator that does both, and because I’m a systems-level thinker, I build very fast and I start designing and then I say like, what resources do I currently have that will allow me to get to prototype? Or get to something that can be consumed by others.

So whether you are a technical person and know the software development lifecycle, or whether You’re a design person, I think it’s just very important to understand that we have tons of tools that will, especially AI tools, and I don’t really use AI tools. I think it’s very important to understand that there is so much happening in the world. As of 2026, I really feel that we have entered the era of the creator. It is most important to have an idea and create any part of it and get it out there for people to consume. Right? It doesn’t matter how good it is. It doesn’t matter how you feel about it.

It does not have to be perfect, but it has to be authentic. It has to be you. And it also has to be resonant for other people. So when, when you say design, I don’t know if you mean designer and designer meaning someone who is maybe a graphic artists or fine arts artists like me, I have a creative team that I’ve been working with for 3 or 4, almost 4 years, and I have a graphic designer. Then I have a motion designer and we pump out all the content, but I create every single idea. I spec it out. I write a spec for them and They design based on how I write the spec.

And it always gets me because we’ve been working together for 4 years and I think that they know what I want, but they’re just designers. They’re just creating what they interpret I’ve written, and we still go through about 5 to 6 drafts on average before anything is ever posted that you see. All right, so they are designers in that aspect. They are, to me, the implementers in that relationship, and I’m the idea person in that relationship, but overall I’m the operator, and I task everyone to really start operating. Have an idea? Write it down.

Write everything down and also speak it into the universe, because when you write it down, it adds a little bit more magic to it. It gets in your system, and when you say it out You don’t have to share it with everybody. Makes it firmer. Out in the universe, but you must. You don’t need to be original. But you must be authentic. You must create things that resonate with other people, and you must listen for feedback. I didn’t get much feedback when I first launched Tulsa Tech Week in the survey that I sent to other— I sent out after people gave me feedback. But along the process, along the way, I didn’t get many comments.

In our social media, I didn’t get many people telling me what I should or shouldn’t do when they realized it was me behind it. I just did it. But I did seek feedback because it’s not Tai’s Tech Week, it’s Tulsa’s Tech Week. So this city, its people were going to make it what it was going to be. And still to this day, I have to reconcile that. I created a platform. But for other people. So I have to continue to do the foundational work, but who? And how we build on that foundation. It’s for the people to decide. Build something, have an idea. Write it down. Take the steps to actually get it done.

It doesn’t design whatever, you just do it. Get it out into the world for people to consume. Be open to taking people’s feedback on how to improve, how to make it more resonant, but be very clear on why you made it and why. You show up every single day because Personally? I don’t want to do this work. I feel tasked to do this work, and I do it because I’m disciplined. Which is why I work 16 hours on average a day is now about 18 hours. Now in 2 8-hour shifts and a little bit more as we get closer, but discipline is what’s going to make you do it every day.

Not just the idea, not the implementation, it’s the discipline. So I’ll say that and stop there. Hope that resonated and was helpful.

Sam Carlton

Cool. I love that. I don’t know if you guys picked up on that, but something that’s really powerful about what she said is like that in that doing, that operating, that intentional design is Actually really important in this AI age. I don’t know, you guys can go on Twitter or X right now and search ChatGPT Astra, and you can see everybody’s building video games, all these video games with that, with Astra. It’s very fun, but if you actually play any of those, there’s something about it. It is just like, it’s the, it’s like somebody had a conversation about a video game, but they didn’t actually play it. And they didn’t actually experience it.

And it’s a subtle difference between design and usability. Even as I was setting up for this, this booth was designed and they have this place to plug in right here. and I have my huge chonker of a MacBook charger and I plug it in and then I, and then I move and I hit— my elbow hits it and it falls down. It’s like somebody did not use this booth the way I use it.

Sam Carlton

And so that’s what, like, something very critical that Tai is touching on is the usability, like the creating lived experiences. Because if now that everybody has the power to build anything they want, the thing that is actually thoughtful and considerate of other people’s lived experiences and how they experience it in the world after, after the prompt, after you ship it out, that is the stuff that is going to be very sticky. That will be, you know, a lot of— a lot is going to change in the next 18 months, in the next 5 years, but those things will remain important as everything becomes more AI-generated. The things that are thoughtful and intentional.

Sam Carlton

Just going to be— people are going to gravitate towards.

I am not designing events. I am designing experience

Tai Nehisi

Okay. Yes. Pardon me, I said that you could tell that Sam and I talk really often because he’s correct in how he complemented what I just said, that I am not designing events.

I am designing experience, you know, and I— anyone who’s here today that may or may not be a partner from year 1 or year 2, I would also ask them what is their experience in being a partner, because from year 1 I did everything via email, so any outreach, any follow-up, everything was via email and I am a systems-level thinker, so if I write something once and I know I’m going to use it again, I have it in the clipboard and I have it— I can copy. I’m very responsive. And I continue to iterate on it to make it better, right?

For year 2, I built out, because I’m technical, an entire backend that has a partner portal and design and entire experience for them, onboarding videos, you know, digital toolkit, step 1 through step 4. So it’s those things that really talk to experience and intentionality. That lead to it being sticky, and I like that you said that because that’s a word that I use all the time with the new partner announcement where you see Buff, our mascot, and with our logo and our partner logo that I created. And that was a sticky moment because people wanted their own new partner announcement.

So I know I broke up for a little bit and I’m back now, so I’ll stop there for the next question.

Sam Carlton

I love that. And buff is a bison, right?

Tai Nehisi

Yes, he is. So he’s making a guest appearance. Hey, y’all.

Tai Nehisi

So this is Buff, and Buff was 3D printed by my friend and colleague, Wesley Stevens, who owns a Tulsa-based company. And then Buff has a brother, and his brother is Biff, who is the mascot for OKC Tech Week. So these are my first— like, these are the first Other batch, so they’re my personal ones and they sit with me on my desk while I work. So maybe I’ll keep them on my shoulder, I’ll let them chill.

Sam Carlton

This is— I love this. Yeah. I love that. I don’t, I don’t know if we’ve talked about this before, but, the people who’ve been, been around Techlahoma knows the Techlahoma mascot is also a bison. It’s called Jason the Bison, like the format. We need to make an AI video of them being friends.

Tai Nehisi

Mm-hmm. Yes. Exactly. I think that’s hilarious. Yeah. Yeah, no AI, and that’s the thing. I do not use AI, people. I remember when I first launched— this is a good segue— when I first launched the NPA, or the new partner announcement, that I just described with our logo and our partner logo, and that is when I started to get the first bit of engagement on social because people would ask me, is this AI? And I’m like, no, it’s motion design. We create— my motion designer and I create every single one of those.

Sam Carlton

Wow. Wow, I love that. That’s craft.

Tai Nehisi

Yes, and I think— no, I don’t think, I believe, as, as I mentioned, this is the start of the creator era, so people are clamoring. They’re clamoring for truth. They want to believe you. They want to interact with you. They want it to be resonant, right? important than ever to decide, especially however you build as a software engineer, designer, copywriter, creative, wherever you are, to decide

Tai Nehisi

Your creative philosophy and what you will use AI for and what you will not.

Tai Nehisi

So there’s only one piece of content this entire year on social where I’ve used AI, and that is in a drone video that I used about autonomous systems. It was around June last year while I was, flying actual drones during Partner Tulsa’s— they have at the last Saturday of every month, they have a droning event.

I had 3 clips of— I just put them down— like 3 clips of me flying, a drone, and I wanted to string them together, and we strung them together, but I like mixed media, so there are times when you’ll see Tech Tai, my avatar, on top, superimposed on top of like my actual That was filmed, and because we were stringing the clips together, and there was a lot of movement as opposed to the static use of tech tie, you know, which is superimposed, my Designer, my motion designer asked me if it would be okay to use an AI product to get the kind of smoothness that I wanted.

You know, that’s the only time they know that. ask me because I just don’t want to use it because what I am making in my creativity requires stickiness. I tell them at the beginning of the year, and the beginning of the year for me is October, like I’m already planning 2027, so I tell them at the beginning of the year, like from a creative perspective, What I want, and last year’s word was wow. I wanted to wow everybody. This year’s word, like on top of wowing them, I wanted people to connect. So everything we had, we had to build creatively needed to connect because we already wowed people.

Sam Carlton

Hold on. On that. Like, does that craft come out? Yes.

What have you noticed about the local tech community that still has gaps to be filled?

Sam Carlton

We had a next question, but I actually got a live question in from Peter. Peter, did you want to unmute and ask your question? Like out loud or privately?

Tai Nehisi

And I’ve seen your registrations already, Peter, and we recently connected on LinkedIn because I’m quick with it. So nice to meet you.

Peter, audience question

Awesome. Just a little bit about myself. I’m, Eastern transplant myself, first-year MBA student here at ORU, and just hearing you talk and how you made this happen in a relatively short amount of time. I just wanted to know what, in your experience here, what have you noticed about the local tech community that still has gaps to be filled, whether by locals or transplants?

Tai Nehisi

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. In answering that question, I’m going to touch on what I haven’t said because there is an assumption that I want to address. So in answering your question, I think there are tons of gaps, which is why I created Tulsa Tech Week to meet some of those gaps and is an annual event, right? But I think in there being gaps, I wanted to highlight the people that are doing the work every day, like whether people know you as members of Techlahoma or not, y’all are building every day. You’re adding and contributing to your community, and I commend you all for your contributions, and I wanted to highlight that. Right?

But there are a lot of gaps, and I’m going to talk specifically about Tulsa because I live in Tulsa. It’s the only place that I’ve actively lived in the 3 and a half years that I’ve been in Oklahoma, but I’ve traveled around Oklahoma statewide, [Discussion omitted.] So I think that there are gaps because the biggest gap is an awareness gap. Y’all are doing the work every single day, people are doing the work, but there is a lack of awareness because Oklahoma at large, to me, is not telling any specific story about Oklahoma, about technology, about what’s happening here?

There is no story, there’s no storytelling, and the storytelling is very important because it allows one to decide what they think of themselves. And share that with others and also kind of craft what others think of themselves. And Oklahoma is telling no story about technology from a statewide perspective, and I think some part of it is that maybe they’re expecting— some people are expecting the state government to do that, and some people are expecting the major corporations to do that, and some people are expecting, you know, really a unicorn startup to do that. But there is no need to expect anyone to do it when we can all do it.

There will continue to be gaps until we decide as an overall kind of statewide what it means to be a tech hub here in our state, what it means to be technologies, what it means for everyone to do. They do, because that’s how San Francisco and Silicon Valley became what it became. Because they were very clear on what they were doing there, and they were able to translate and export that to the nation and the world.

Tai Nehisi

Awesome. It’s really, to me, it’s hard to— it’s not hard. It is difficult, but it’s a challenge to say like, what could we be doing? Where could we be filling the gaps? What gaps are there when there isn’t an overall consensus about technology and innovation? Statewide, citywide, so how, why? I could see why individuals might be confused. Okay, like a smart— who’s, who’s doing what?

Peter, audience question

Not to take up time, just a quick follow-up. Are there any actions you can think of that we can do here locally? To make awareness be a thing to build up that consensus?

Tai Nehisi

Yeah, they’re, not the 2, but Tulsa Tech Week is like one. One engine in that direction. All right, and Techlahoma has longstanding roots. So Techlahoma, you’ve been doing this, you do it well, you continue to do it. But Techlahoma is only for people that consider themselves technical, right, or consider themselves within tech. And I think for those of us, wherever we are in our career, Wherever we are in our technologist journey, need to also embrace more people that might not see themselves as technologists, right? So constantly people tell me, I’m excited for Tech Week, but I’m not a techie. And I’m saying, what is a techie?

You know, like this is not a conference for a reason, because I don’t want to exclude people. It’s inclusive. So I think we need to start talking to our children around the fact that there is no way to escape technology in our modern age or at any point in time because older technology was the wrench, you know. Like, it doesn’t seem like it now. It’s like the wrench is so instrumental and so important. But at some point in time when it was introduced, it was like, whoa. And I think we need to start talking to people in a more everyday way.

I don’t like to use the term layman, but a more everyday way that everyone has a role and responsibility in shaping our world on a daily basis using technology, because all technology is, is a tool. For us to implement. And you don’t have to be a software engineer, you don’t have to work in tech, and the more we really evangelize that everyone is a Participant, not can participate, is a participant. I think then we’ll get more consensus in our might, in our communities, from micro level to macro level, from grassroots.

So I think that’s a really important message that we need to get out there from grassroots to grass tops, that technology literally is for us. I realized that I wasn’t speaking Spanish at any point in time in any of my videos, so I just recently realized I need to start speaking Spanish more regularly and also introduce, you know, more content with messaging, excuse me, for that language for Vietnamese people because we have growing population, more Mandarin for Chinese populations. I think we need to evangelize that everyone is part of this and It is for everyone, and that message will spread, and then we will feel more community around all the contributions people can make.

Is we’re limiting people because they feel like they need to be techies. And what is that?

Sam Carlton

Yeah, that was a really good question, Peter. Yeah, and I wanted— people don’t— people really don’t know. [Discussion omitted.] To Tai’s point, it’s just like there’s some pretty impressive stuff going on already. No one’s really talking about it. No one— a lot of people don’t know about it. with that said, yeah, yeah.

Tai Nehisi

Yes. Sorry. Yes, you are paraphrasing what I said, and if anyone wants a little bit more clarity, I wrote an op-ed for Tulsa World. It was post— it was published 2 Sundays ago. And I can give the link. I’ll grab it while before the end of this chat and I’ll put it in the, in the chat function. But like I said, there is, there is It wasn’t really an issue around innovation and technology here.

Tai Nehisi

Statewide, there is an awareness issue. So I think that’s even more so people are clamoring. Learn more because with one of these and on the computer I’m on, there is so much that you can learn, but still we don’t know that about. You know, the companies that you mentioned, you know. We just don’t know because we’re not experiencing it because there is no active experience. You don’t just walk into people’s buildings if they have a physical space. And ask what’s going on here. It’s impolite, and it’s not—it’s not really of the culture.

And then, like me, I am sitting in my living room right now where I spent a great majority of my time, all right, and I have space at Gradient. I’m a member there and at Build in Tulsa, but because I have a computer and technical skills, I can literally build from everywhere and anywhere. So we have to be mindful of that as well, is that people are building all the time. Y’all are building all the time. So that’s why storytelling is more important than it ever was before. If a tree falls in the forest right now and it made no sound, did it happen?

And it’s like, if you didn’t tell a story about What you’re doing and post it online, do you exist? Right. But if you told this story and you posted it online and nobody saw it because it didn’t resonate with anybody, it’s like, do you exist? Of course you exist. Right. To yourself, like storytelling

Tai Nehisi

Leads to awareness. It resonates with people. So if you take anything from this, we have an awareness issue, not an issue around innovation or technology. And the best way to combat the awareness issue to close that gap is telling one story and partner companies, especially like Techlahoma, I am We just created a platform for you to tell your authentic story. I can’t tell Techlahoma’s story for it, even though I’m a member. So tell your own authentic story. That is what’s going to resonate. That is what’s going to close the growing chasm, not even gap, around awareness in about technology innovation in Tulsa, in Oklahoma, and in our world at large.

What’s a collaboration in Tulsa that produced something that neither organization could have achieved alone?

Sam Carlton

I love that. I love that. All right, well, this hour is going fast. We got about 17 minutes left, but sometimes I think we need— yeah, we might need to go to 2 hours on some of these, but we’re going to speed around these questions so we can get some more in. Another question the community voted on, what’s a collaboration in Tulsa that produced something that neither organization could have achieved alone?

Sam Carlton

What’s a collaboration in Tulsa that produced something that neither organization could have achieved alone?

Tai Nehisi

Say that one more time, please. Neither organization, like what partner did I partner with?

Sam Carlton

Yeah, or just other partner that, like a partnership that you’ve seen even outside of Organizely or Tulsa Tech Week, something that comes to mind.

Tai Nehisi

Nothing specifically comes to mind because I’m a collaborative person. Like, no man is an island. If you don’t collaborate, even if, like me, I’m a solo founder. It means nothing. If people don’t register for events, right? So to me, that’s the collaboration that I say that I have collaborated with partners that want to showcase themselves. And what’s going on here with you. So please come out, please register, and please attend. And I think that more so in our society, we are acting too much as individuals and not enough as communities.

Like, people use community for everything, and I often— and I’m being mindful of time as well— I often correct them on how I use or enlighten them on how I use community. I— what I see a lot is congregation. That’s people getting together. That is not community.

Tai Nehisi

That is gathering, you know? That’s congregation. When you interact, when you consistently, consecutively, when you engage, when you find connection, that connection, those things lead to community. So I don’t have an example of a collaboration that I have seen. that, you know, where they come together and it’s like a chemistry experiment where the sum of the 2 parts is greater than the individual parts, which is how I’m interpreting the question, I would say I’m grateful for opportunities to collaborate with Techlahoma. You know, I have liked your programming, especially for those people that are more technical and are looking for communities like Techlahoma to dive deep in.

Tai Nehisi

You know, to have the discussions and to really learn more about what’s happening in Oklahoma. I am grateful for all of the individual founders or solo founders like me and small teams that are now getting a chance to highlight, amplify, demo, get new customers for their companies and their products instead of waiting to be selected by an accelerator or any other larger entity to showcase them. I’m excited. Very excited to have the Tulsa City County Library as a partner 2 years in a row and maintain that connection. We’re growing it because libraries to me are like some of our first and longest-standing innovation spaces.

[Discussion omitted.] I think about the library because they have the resources and they’re free.

Tai Nehisi

And they’re year-round. So I think it’s about being creative in not only the storytelling, but in the resources and in the collaborations you can make. With people that are in this chat, are in the Slack community, that are in the— excuse me. Are watching live. Like, you got to get creative. And work with each other. And accelerate and move fast and just build and break and do, reiterate, just, just do. Don’t just stay here, just do.

Sam Carlton

Be doers. Techlahoma loves doers.

Tai Nehisi

Like Yoda says, there is no try, do. Seriously, people tell me all the time, oh, I’m trying to do this. No, just do it. There is no try, do.

If you’re new to Tulsa’s tech community and you can attend only 2 tech events this week, what would you choose?

Sam Carlton

Let’s do it. Bye-bye. All right, next question we had, if you’re new to Tulsa’s tech community and you can attend only 2 tech events this week, what would you choose? And this is Asterix, I know your favorite event is going to I know that’s your favorite. But like besides that’s— those don’t count. So, so I want you to pick your children.

Tai Nehisi

Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yes, if I had to exclude those 2, if I had to exclude those 2, I would definitely say I would choose one of the 7 events on the calendar that are being hosted by the library.

Tai Nehisi

The library has 26 branches throughout Tulsa City and County, and they— I really wanted to highlight specifically all of the digital and physical resources that they have, you know. So I would choose one of the 7 events that really resonates with you where you are in your journey personally, professionally, to go there. I think another event that I would recommend, thinking about this community and specifically someone asking me this question from this community, I would go to a founder event because I kind of feel like they’re definitely founders. Yes, Jesseth, at the library. Yes.

So I think there are founders in this community or technologists who are building things and want to take it to the next level and may or may not want to be in an accelerator and wondering like what other ways that they could move forward in their journey. Like there is a, there is a founder tag. So there are certain tags and I add all the tags to events. There is, and you can see this on the website, TulsaTechWeek.ai as well. So there’s hacker, those are for people that are very much interested in technical things, workshops and such like that where it’s hands-on.

So there is a, there is a hacker path, there’s a founder path, there is a creative arc. Architect, you know, there are different pathways, and I would click through those tags for the one that resonates with you to select. the second of 2 events that I would go to depending on who you are within this community, because we’re vast. We’re not all just software engineers, you know, we’re product people here. We are We’re designers, we’re copywriters, and I want to make sure that there’s a diversity of events for the diversity of people. I’m like, I don’t do tech roles. Oftentimes, yes, and your printer.

I’ve been doing that for a long time, but I’m a systems-level thinker, so I design pathways and workflows, you know, things that get implemented so people can do the work.

Sam Carlton

Oh, and we’ll put in the show notes for this in Slack, and then just we’ll put the links to both the Tulsa Tech Week and OKC Tech Week calendars. You can see, you guys can see everything.

Tai Nehisi

Filter with the tags. Fax machines too, Shayna, if you had one of those.

What’s something established tech insiders do that unintentionally makes newcomers feel unwelcome?

Sam Carlton

X machines too. Yeah, that’s a fax game. I think that we’ll make this the last question. What’s something established tech insiders do that unintentionally makes newcomers feel unwelcome?

Tai Nehisi

Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of jargon use. So I have been working in and around tech for, I would say I’m at the 20-year or just past the 20-year mark, depending on what somebody, some I might classify it as technology because like I mentioned just previously, we talked about IT and for the longest time people are like, oh, IT is Tech, right? And the only thing you could do, like help desk engineers and stuff like that. Can I write code? Yes. Do I write code? Yes. Every day? No. Sam does every day, right? Me? Not every day, right?

That’s why I use the technologist term, and I think we should be adopting the technologist term because it’s very broad. So using jargon. Like, am I? It creates space between people because I don’t know if— well, no, not that I don’t know, it is not always clear for me or other people in context Until a deep context is created, just like when you’re prompting if someone means PM for product manager or PM for program manager, right? So now you kind of have to stop listening and engaging to make sure that you have the context to stay with the conversation and follow it. It’s not difficult to follow.

You know what you know, but it’s based on your lived experience. So I think it’s important to be mindful of the jargon that you use and/or explain it so that, you know, people are like, oh yeah, I do know that term. You know, or I see where you’re going and yeah, I’m familiar with that. And I think also in tech communities around policing.

Tai Nehisi

Like understanding experience.

Sam Carlton

Yeah, the gatekeeping.

Tai Nehisi

Yeah. Yes, and which is another reason why I created TTW, Tulsa Tech Week. There’s way too much gatekeeping here for a city. Like Tulsa, a state like Oklahoma that is like underpopulated and 75 of 77 counties are rural.

Tai Nehisi

You know, why all the gatekeeping? Like, it costs nothing to share a resource, right? [Discussion omitted.] I will always share information because what is for you is always going to be for you. You’ll never be too early, you’ll never be too late. And what is for me is for me. If you get it, that’s wonderful, right? There needs to be more sharing of information. And less gatekeeping, because I promise you, it’s stymieing all the progress. Much. Of— I find a culture of wanting to control everything here, and innovation is stymied. Stifled. Cut off by the need for control.

So many people kind of want to control what Tech Week is going to be, and I’m like, no, this is for the people. That’s why, that’s why there are no tiers. Everyone pays the same price. Everyone has the same, Access. Everyone has the same ability to be involved. But there’s such a need for control and supremacy and, you know, at top spots. The star— excuse me, the skies are filled with infinite stars. There’s enough room for everybody. Stop. Gatekeeping. There’s more than enough for everyone. Thank you.

Where should people follow your work? What’s one thing you would love the community to help with?

Sam Carlton

I’m done. All right, I do have to apologize. I have one more question. This is kind of our actual final, final question. Where should people follow your work? What’s one thing you would love the community to help with?

Tai Nehisi

Yeah, I’m here for it. Mm-hmm. Okay, so I’m gonna debut this to y’all because you just asked me the question. I thank you for that question, and whoever submitted it, I thank you again.

I spent the last 2 years of my life actively thinking about my contribution to my community in tandem with Tech Week and decouple with Tech Week, and shortly after Tulsa Tech Week finishes, because I’m also doing OKC this year for year one, I am launching the year-round calendar where I am reaching out to my current partners, prospective partners through cold and warm outreach to put the events on this year-round calendar, and also I am Going to be working in partnership with Startup Grind Tulsa to produce more regular events throughout the year. Tech Week started as a platform to support, highlight and amplify all the work that individuals, corporations, everyone was doing.

But I feel that in creating more community and community coming from the trust that y’all put in me by following and the authenticity, because You know, I’m creating this for you, and it’s for us by us. Fubu, now is the time to launch the calendar for year-round events in between tech weeks. So you will see that. Soon I’ll be sending out information for people that have registered and/or followed all our social media platforms too.

Subscribe so you can learn about new events, which is free, and of course when you subscribe to the calendar, and partners that want to get in front of people and be more active in building Out this tech community so that people regularly come to their events. [Discussion omitted.] And then also I am getting ready to launch more of my thought leadership on community, innovation, agency on my Substack. It’s called Between the Coasts. When it’s ready, when I’m ready to launch it after both Tech Weeks, I will.

And I am preparing a I’m going to start with northeastern Oklahoma because I, in the 3 and a half years I’ve been here, I’ve gone back and forth to north. Northwest Arkansas, you know, it’s just 2 hours away, Bentonville, and there’s a lot of dynamism and energy here. So I also want to go to more of the rural communities to highlight what they’re doing because Tulsa Tech Week is really the platform to showcase and amplify innovation and technology for northeastern Oklahoma, inclusive of Tulsa, because Tulsa is one of the 2 major cities in Oklahoma.

And OKC Tech Week is for showcasing and amplifying the technology and innovation of central and southwestern Oklahoma by just Seth, you know, thank you very much for your comment. So this is about us all working together. And Tech Week is never going to be about me. It’s going to be what the people make it. The tedious work that people don’t want to do, the manual labor, you know. I’m gonna— I’m— people talk about strategy, but I’m the person that does the tactics, the day-to-day grunt work that Where, using one of my mom’s sayings, where you gather dust, you can build mountains. So let’s gather dust together. Build mountains together.

Upcoming events

Sam Carlton

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So up— some upcoming events I wanted to let you guys know about. OklahomAI and Google, the Google group that we’ve been running, September 22nd is going We’re going to be meeting as a part of Tulsa Tech Week, and we’re going to be actually going to be hosted by

Sam Carlton

Yours truly. We’ll be talking about— we’re going to actually build some AI from scratch, as in language models, as in we’re going to build AI and customize AI models. They say that’s impossible. Well, then you’ll just have to come and see how we do it. The other one is the Tulsa Tech Week opening ceremony on the 21st. We’re going to hear Monday, Monday, Monday, you can hear about all of what we’re doing, all of some notable speakers. The mayor’s coming, right?

Sam Carlton

Yes, the mayor of Tulsa, Mayor Monroe, as well as some other fun guests that you’ll have to come and see.

Tai Nehisi

Yes, so it’s not very guest heavy.

Tai Nehisi

Because I just want to party with my people. So we’re going to talk for like 20 minutes. Hey, welcome to opening ceremony, kick off the week, and then we get into food trucks. We get into fun. I got a DJ. Like, this is, this is just a Monday party to say let’s get ready for the week. This is no long speeches. This is no like real programming. That’s what Tech Week is for.

Tai Nehisi

Monday is for us to all meet in person.

Tai Nehisi

Because there are, you know, capacity— capacity, not issues. Different capacities for each event, you know, but Monday is for us to congregate, gather, take pictures, laugh, have a good time, eat tacos. I don’t know what all the food trucks are.

Sam Carlton

Yeah, come on, the guests, the system, the guests are the food trucks. The Andalini’s will be not, I don’t know if Andalini’s is going to be there.

Tai Nehisi

But come Monday, you’ll find out. Yes, and also bring children. Like I said, this is not a conference. Tech Week is for our youth all the way through our elders and everyone in between. So bring the kids. I know it’s Monday, School just started, but it’s at 5:30. Bring them, bring them early, stop by, you know, grab something to eat, shake a little something, you know.

Tai Nehisi

You know, come talk to me, high-five me in person.

Tai Nehisi

Oh, and don’t forget OKC Tech Week. Okay, go ahead. Sorry.

Sam Carlton

Oh yeah, yeah, I was about to say, so the third announcement is I want you all to go to ChatGPT, Claude, your favorite AI, and ask it what is the biggest development The largest in Oklahoma. And after it tells you ThunderPlains, you can ask, it will tell you it is October 21st. It is, we are gonna have a blast. We got some good speakers. And we’re gonna talk a little bit about AI for you guys. Everybody seems to not be able to get enough of this, and it’s part of OKC Tech Week. So in addition to running like ThunderPlains this year, We mapped out perfectly where we get to contribute to the OKC Tech Week.

The first— this is the first OKC Tech Week, right? Yes. And so people like the design of these tech weeks is that people It’s not just like you have to choose one event over the other. People will be flying in and they get this one-week period where they get to experience all of what OKC has, and that includes the largest developer

Sam Carlton

Conference in Oklahoma, Techlahoma ThunderPlains. And so be sure to check out that and then check out the link to the OKC Tech Week calendar we’ll be dropping in the show notes. With that said, I want to thank the Techlahoma members who financially support monthly to make all this stuff happen. This stuff doesn’t happen without you guys. And I want to thank Tai. She is very, very busy. Especially coming up on like what everything that’s going to happen next week. And she made time, she took time out of that to come and talk to you guys and answer questions.

Tai Nehisi

Where else would I be? I’m a Techlahoman. I’m a homie. I’m here with y’all.

Sam Carlton

I love that. I love that. So with that said, we’re going to put up some recording links in the Slack and on the various channels. And how about you guys go outside? Not for too long because it’s still like 90 degrees, but go outside, touch some grass, and then drink some water. And then we’ll see you on the next one.