The Albuquerque Living Cities Integration Initiative announced a new Implementation Table this week to guide the Initiative through to the next phase. The Table, which will first convene on March 17th, is comprised of some familiar and some new faces; participants include both planning year table chairs as well as new members who bring specific expertise or leadership related to the Initiative’s implementation year goals literally to the Table. Alongside the Implementation Table, the Initiative has established a series of Action Teams that focus on budget and funding, evaluation, RBA and impact, and communications and community engagement.

We spoke with Implementation Table co-chairs John Freisinger and Henry Rael to get the low-down on next steps for Albuquerque’s Integration Initiative. While the two anticipate some significant developments over the next couple of months as the Implementation Table and Action Teams meet, they both had a clear and collective vision to move forward.

So what’s in store, you ask? Well… 2016 is focused on piloting projects around the Initiative’s navigator strategy. As a refresher, the navigator strategy is designed to position trusted, well-connected individuals in target communities to assist entrepreneurs in assessing their needs and connecting into the right services to start and/or grow their businesses. To keep it short and sweet, the whole first phase of the pilot is about making Albuquerque’s ecosystem more focused and responsive to the entrepreneur.

Alongside identifying and placing navigators in key communities, the pilot will begin linking networks through both grassroots efforts and technology. These linkages could be thought of as layers; the navigator layer will be the direct line into communities, the technology layer will support the navigator by offering a fast, reliable access to the available resources that can inform and support entrepreneurs in their field, and the Molino layer, which is focused on formalizing the informal networks that exist between service providers, will enable all of us to better share resources. As service providers become more interconnected, information will feed into the technology layer to provide navigators the resources they need for their specific clients within those communities. This is just the start of something big, so stay tuned for updates on progress and opportunities.

OPPORTUNITY: There will be opportunities to reconnect and participate in co-design and implementation. Stay tuned to the e-newsletter to keep informed as the pilot continues to grow.