Much respect to the hard work put in by our friends on the eastern side of the state this week in dealing with #Flood2016 preparations. As of this morning, it looks like the Cedar Rapids community did what needed to be done to avoid another disaster like the 2008 flood and that is such a relief (unfortunately, some smaller communities didn't fare as well).
Geoff's Blog: Gravitate's Two Year Birthday Celebration (schedule)
Geoff's Blog: The full Iowa Tech Tour Schedule!
The Iowa Tech Tour starts on Monday! Tremendous thanks to everyone who has helped pull this together in a really short time frame: Deanna Bennett & John Jackovin in Des Moines, Jessalyn Holdcraft & Eric Engelmann in Cedar Rapids and Diana Wright & Sam Schill in Ames. It's going to be a great week!
The full tour schedule is available here but I want to highlight a few events where anyone and everyone can meet Paul Singh and join in the fun.
Geoff's Blog: More on the Tech Tour
We've had the good fortune to be able to schedule events in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Ames that week so I hope that you'll be able to join us somewhere along the ride. If you're coming into Des Moines for the tour and need a place to land in between events or a spot to get work done for the day, come see us at Gravitate where we are hosting free/open coworking all week long. Our friends at Vault Coworking & Collaboration Space are making their space available on Thursday 7/21 for anyone needing a spot the day that the tour is visiting Cedar Rapids.
Geoff's Blog: More details on Paul Singh's Iowa Tech Tour
Things have been coming together extremely fast in the last week for Paul Singh's Iowa Tech Tour (remember to click the Count Me In! button to get direct updates).
First of all, tremendous thanks to the folks who reached out to me after last week's announcement to help cover the final costs of bring Paul to Iowa for the week: Twilio and Square One DSM. With the support of these two organizations and the aforementioned Next Level Ventures, Iowa Venture Capital Association, Davis Brown Law Firm, NewBoCo and BrownWinick—Attorneys at Law we're in great shape for this series of events.
The online schedule will start to update very soon but for now I can let you in a few of the events that we have confirmed (events are in Des Moines unless otherwise noted).
Geoff's Blog: We're bringing Paul Singh's Tech Tour to Iowa
Big news, friends! We're bringing Paul Singh's Results Junkies Tech Tour to Iowa the week of July 17. Paul (formerly of 500startups, DisruptionCorp and more) is a serial entrepreneur, investor and startup ecosystem expert that has been criss-crossing the country in an Airstream camper for most of this year. Each week he drives to a different community and packs his schedule full of meetups, keynotes, round tables, office hours, etc. to get to know local founders, investors and policy makers
Geoff's Blog: Iowa Fundraising Roundup Series
Geoff's Blog: The Sesquicentennial edition of The Pull
Geoff's Blog: Is the Greater Des Moines Leadership Institute worthwhile for entrepreneurs?
As a natural part of what I do, I’m constantly thinking about the role of a “community” in helping to support innovation and particularly those building startup companies. For most of the past year, however, I’ve also been thinking a lot about the role of startups in a broader community context as I’ve participated in the Greater Des Moines Leadership Institute’s Community Leadership Program.
Geoff's Blog: Young people are critical to building a startup hub
Des Moines recently started working on the next phase of our community-wide vision plan called Capital Crossroads 2.0 and I was invited to participate in a few meetings with the consultants, yesterday, to help represent the view of the entrepreneurial community. It was a lot of fun—I'm never shy about sharing ideas and I kind of nerd out on things like this going back to my undergrad days in the Community and Regional Planning program at Iowa State. Several times in the discussion I found myself pointing out ideas from Paul Graham's recent post: How to make Pittsburgh a startup hub.