What is The Hub? 

Hubs are member-based work and event spaces where social entrepreneurs, freelance professionals, artists, funders, students, mentors, and community leaders can work and interact. Working together, it’s hoped these groups will access market opportunities and capital, build community, and scale ideas.

Hubs are a type of co-working space in which members receive a set of tools and services from a community of professional hosts, mentors and local enterprises who are passionate about supporting innovative ideas. Depending on the location, Hub centers may offer donated legal services, mentor office hours, and unlimited coffee. Aside from the shared services, the real benefit to Hub members is the business incubator environment.

History of The Hub

The Hub began four years ago in London and quickly spread to 18 cities and across four continents. Today, there are nearly 4,000 Members of The Hub, interconnected by a place-based and online network. The Hub Bay Area is the first Hub location in the United States and was started in partnership with Hub Global by a San Francisco-based team who founded Good Capital and The Social Capital Markets Conference (SoCap).

“We are thrilled to be working with the people from Good Capital and SoCap, and the stellar team they’ve put together,” said Jonathan Robinson, co-founder of The Hub Global. “We have known them for years and are impressed at what they have accomplished at the forefront of a new kind of investing, and at the way they have been able to convene and build strong community.”

MBA Students Integral to United State’s First Hub

Hub Bay Area was designed by a team of architects, Hub Members, IDEO and MBA students at UC Berkeley’s Haas Business School. The space at the David Brower Center features collaborative workspaces, meeting rooms, private phones booths, kitchen and cafe, and lounge areas that reflect the dynamic working needs of its members.

Money, Mobs and Media

Being part of The Hub community includes access to their Innovation Series that will regularly produce interactive events focused on inspiration, aspiration and operation of social change. This summer, before the doors even opened, The Hub presented Money, Mobs, and Media, a panel featuring the founders of Kiva, Virgance, and Change.org. They discussed ways to create and scale community-driven non-profit and for-profit social enterprises.

“We are providing a home, inspiring community and support structure for those who are building solutions for people and planet. By connecting change-makers, sharing resources, and cultivating new ideas, we can massively increase the scale the impact of our collective work,” says Alex Michel, Managing Director of Hub Bay Area. 

The Future of Hub Bay Area

Plans are in place to extend Hub Bay Area to the Mission District in San Francisco in early 2010, and into the South Bay in 2011.

“Bringing the Hub concept to the Bay Area and beyond is a natural extension of what we are already doing,” says Kevin Jones, a founder of both Good Capital and SoCap. “We convene many of the people who are making the social capital market happen in an annual conference, but The Hub is where the rubber meets the road every day of the year.”

Prospective members should e-mail bayareahosts@the-hub.net for more information.

Building a Web Presence
De La Garza was playing with and managing his band Chloe’s Honey in Austin, Texas, when he decided that the band needed a web presence. Frustrated by the lack of decent website designers in the area, he decided to build his website. He started by learning how to build HTML pages and ended building an original Flash-based site — www.chloeshoney.com — which utilized early user-generated content devices such as forums and blogging, as well as streaming audio and video. He also became interested in digital audio recording. Knowing he wanted to further his exploration into the digital media industry, he enrolled in an MBA in Digital Media Management program at St. Edward’s University in Austin in 2005.

Learning the Ins and Outs of the Industry
The two-year, daytime MBA program challenged De La Garza to rise to a new level. Along with a rigorous curriculum that included 54 hours of graduate coursework, he also spent a seven-month internship with the management company C3 Presents. During the internship, he worked in the planning and execution of several digital media campaigns. One of the campaigns included a viral online marketing strategy for the Lollapalooza Festival’s cultural extension webisode series, Lolla Lives. De La Garza created a Vlog channel on YouTube for the series of Webisodes that launched the campaign. The series now boasts over 500,000 views, over 35,000 channel views, and 463 subscribers to the channel. The webisode series went on to win a Goldie Award. You can view the series at www.youtube.com/lollalives.

De La Garza also participated in the launch of the “Live at…” digital download series for both the Lollapalooza Festival and the Austin City Limits Music Festival performances. The series capitalizes on post-festival interest by offering a series of performances from the festivals to serve as both a digital media concert document and a post-festival souvenir for attendees and fans of the artists. He also led a group of MBA students in creating an industry and market analysis and a sales and marketing plan for eSession.com

The MBA program gave De La Garza a taste of the business world with seminars on résumé writing and etiquette dinners to networking opportunities. Internships and Capstone consultancies also provided the opportunity to explore the industries he was interested in and a chance to get a foot in the door along with making meaningful contributions to various companies.

“The MBA degree, especially the Digital Media MBA, has given my educational background an air of substance that allows me to pursue employment opportunities in industries and specific fields that appeal most to me,” he says.

Welcome to the Digital World
Since graduating in 2007, De La Garza has kept busy by working on contract flash design sites in the private sector. He’s also developing a new digital media music company that will serve as a digital umbrella for artists handling everything from digital audio production, digital distribution, digital/interactive/online marketing, social networking, and Web 2.0 strategies.

De La Garza has also been in the studio lately recording a new musical project, the krypteia collective, which will makes its debut during the 2008 South by Southwest Music Festival. And he’s applying for a digital media position at a world-wide communications company in Austin.

“Wherever I ended up landing, I know I have the skills and knowledge to succeed,” he says. “It’s a whole new business world out there, and I’m ready to find my place.”