50 participants gathered at YOXO BOX on February 6th in order to experience Galvanize’s state-of-the-art method of educating tech talent.

Galvanize, a US-based software engineering and data science educator., has eight campuses across the U.S. including San Francisco and New York, and has engaged in ambitious tech education projects in other countries such as Mexico. Alongside its publicly available bootcamps in the US, Galvanize provides various kinds of enterprise classes ranging from one day data science programs for executives to three months training courses intended to raise software engineering / data science proficiency, tailoring the curriculum to the needs of client companies.

At this special event in Yokohama, Japan, after an overview of the company’s profile and services by Mary Ann Barge, Galvanize’s Director of Enterprise Talent Strategy, Adam Richards, Head of Enterprise Data Science, delivered a data science course demo and interacted with the participants in a lively Q&A session. Among the concerns raised by participants was that while young corporate employees who have risen in an age inundated with internet and digital technologies might have the passion and ideas to tackle digital transformation, many of their managers are likely to stick to the methods that brought them past success and are often unwilling to change existing systems, especially at larger companies.  In response to this concern, Adam agreed with the importance of executive mind-set on company policy, and indicated the effectiveness of Influencing company-wide policy change by targeting executives in data science literacy courses, citing the success of Galvanize’s previous such courses.

With the success of Silicon Valley and other innovative startup and tech hubs worldwide, many major cities in Japan including Yokohama have been making strong efforts to develop their own innovation ecosystems over recent years. Attracting and training startups through collaboration with overseas accelerators like Galvanize which have plenty of talented and experienced mentors has been an established and well-practiced pattern in Japan’s tech communities and cities to date, but introducing a more far-reaching tech bootcamp through an overseas provider would be a first for any Japanese innovation ecosystem.

Despite a pervasive international image of Japan as a futuristic cityscape filled with robots, many companies throughout the nation are currently confronting the same challenges of digital transformation and skill gaps/shortages that have slowed down companies all over the world. The Economic Affairs Bureau of the City of Yokohama and the city’s New York Office, supported by JETRO, arranged this opportunity to introduce a world level tech training to Yokohama based companies, universities and startups. The Office of the City of Yokohama will continue to follow up for further collaborations.

Learn more:

Galvanize’s website: https://www.galvanize.com/

Read more about the Innovative culture in Yokohama