What a Day in a Chicago Classroom Taught Me About the Future
The infrastructure behind advancing technology only holds significance because of the people in front of it. A day of observing and interacting in Chicago Public Schools reminded me to look up and see, hear, and feel the things that make the work we do, meaningful.
I recently went to Chicago as the EdgeConneX representative on a film shoot with our education partner, Hello World. It was my first experience with both the Hello World team and the actual students taking the curriculum. I got to see it first-hand. I watched as students answered questions referencing pythons and syntax. I saw their eyes, goofy grins, big teethy smiles (some missing teeth) and posture at attention as connections to the coursework, their teacher, and yes, even me, were made.
I was not expecting hugs
I was prepared to observe and provide comment when/if needed. I was not prepared for the genuine outpouring of gratitude I received from the educators, students and faculty. So much so that I began to wonder if they even knew that I was just Dean from the data center marketing team. They didn’t see it that way. To them, I was part of something much more human. Kindness. Care. Compassion. Hope. Opportunity. Belonging. I saw it time and again on the faces of these students. That’s not something you can get from technology, it’s something you achieve through living a present life. And I was hugged.
To be clear, we did not arrive with a giant check for a photo opportunity. We did, however, arrive with a significant challenge being faced by our entire industry. Construction faced a shortage of roughly 439,000 workers as of late 2025, and our industry needs people across more than 230 specialist roles, from electricians and facilities technicians to controls specialists and network engineers. We need them in the places where we build. Chicago Public Schools needs AI literacy and STEM curriculum, teacher training and a window into careers most of its students would never otherwise see. Those two needs fit together honestly, which is the only way a partnership lasts past the press release.
Connecting students to the technology they already use
Hello World uses AI and virtual reality to give K-12 students project-based experience with computer science and the digital infrastructure behind it. EdgeConneX sponsors the program in the communities where we operate, and we are on track to reach more than 100,000 students by early 2027.
What the numbers do not capture is the relationship. The students in these classrooms already live inside the technology we build. They stream, they search, they ask an AI for help with homework (Shhhh). What they have rarely had is an adult from the other side of that screen sit down and explain how it works and that it was built by people who started out exactly where they are.
The soul of the technology
We speak about technology as though it exists apart from us. It does not. Every server we commission was designed by someone with a mortgage and a food allergy. Every line of code was written by a person who has grieved a loved one and welcomed a new birth. My industry builds the physical home for all of that human effort, and the people it serves often live down the road from our facilities.
That is why human to human learning matters more than any platform. When a student learns about AI from a teacher who knows her name, or from an experienced volunteer who answers her questions in person, the technology stops being a black box and becomes something she can shape. The values of the people who build and use these tools are the values the tools end up carrying. Empathy is not a soft skill in this business. It is the mechanism by which a company stops being a stranger, and it is how the next generation of builders learns that the point of all this infrastructure is the person on the other end of it.
Community trust is not won at a hearing. It is built early and tested often. What Chicago reminded me is how much of that trust rests on vulnerability. The teachers who let a film crew into their classrooms during one of the hardest budget years of their careers were vulnerable. So are we, every time we admit that the future of our industry depends on a twelve-year-old deciding this work is worth her curiosity.
Technology and humanity do not need to be reconciled, because they were never separate. The hugs I received in Chicago were not about EdgeConneX. They were about what happens when people who build the future and people who will inherit it finally meet in the same room.