Five ways a startup conference will change you forever

I’m not an expert. Honestly, I’ve only been to a single startup conference in my entire life: Thinc Iowa 2012 organized by Silicon Prairie News. Even so, that single conference changed the course of my life in several ways, many that I’m still discovering. With Silicon Prairie News’ next conference Big Kansas City just a…

Note: As we’re preparing for our Big Kansas City conference this month, we asked Ben Barreth for his help. He comes to the event with a unique perspective because he’s attended a Big Series conference of ours before. In this post, he shares his experience and expectations for Big Kansas City.

About the author: Ben Barreth is the founder of Homes for Hackers and community builder and software developer at Geeks With Blogs.

 


Thinc Iowa 2012 attendee Adam Hunke asks a question to speaker Ryan Graves.

I’m not an expert. Honestly, I’ve only been to a single startup conference in my entire life: Thinc Iowa 2012 organized by Silicon Prairie News. Even so, that single conference changed the course of my life in several ways, many that I’m still discovering.

With Silicon Prairie News’ next conference Big Kansas City just a few short weeks away, here’s what you should expect from it:

1. You will meet people that will change your life

At Thinc Iowa, I had two precious minutes to speak with Brad Feld in between speaker sessions. I have no idea what I said. I’m pretty sure it was one of the crappiest forms of my sales pitch for Homes for Hackers. Nevertheless, he liked what I was doing with the program in Kansas City and asked how he could help. 

Here’s the tweet I sent out shortly after that conversation:

Brad ended up buying his own Google-Fiber-powered hacker house, literally 30 feet from the back of mine. He’s now helping put Kansas City on the map by holding a contest for one lucky startup to win free rent and Google Fiber for a year. He also released a book at the conference called “Startup Communities” (based on his Boulder Thesis and given out for free at Thinc Iowa), which has already been instrumental in the shaping of the KC Startup Village.

2. You will be inspired to do greater things

Before I launched Homes for Hackers, I was told it sounded like Airbnb.com, but for entrepreneurs. I had no idea what Airbnb was, but I decided to try renting a room for myself at Thinc Iowa. Two months later, I was listing my own room from the Homes for Hackers house up on Airbnb and it’s now funding half of the monthly costs of the house. 

3. You will make connections you don’t even know about

When Feld’s KC Fiber House Competition was announced, Brad wrote about it on his personal blog. This was one of the comments at the end of the blog post there.

Who is Jason Heltzer you ask? I’m ashamed to admit it but I don’t actually remember. My point is, somehow we connected at Thinc Iowa and here he is defending my integrity in a public forum even though we hardly know each other. Many employees wouldn’t do this for their own company, yet here is a near complete stranger complimenting a fellow Silicon Prairian and supporting the efforts of other members of the startup community. Holy crap that is cool! The only connection between us is that we all met at Thinc Iowa and formed a loose brotherhood of like-minded souls, committed to changing the world in our own small ways. 

4. You will hear advice that you need to hear

I asked a lot of questions at Thinc Iowa. I remember at the beginning of the conference I would introduce myself and make sure I mentioned Homes for Hackers, like it was a precious drop of free publicity that I had to capitalize on. By the end of the conference I had given up even saying my name because I figured I had beaten that dead horse, good and hard.  

One of my questions was to the Q&A panel of speakers: “How can you keep family first, while burning so many hours on a startup?” The entire panel agreed it was extremely hard, which altogether wasn’t a very helpful answer. Then after the session I cornered Jeremie Miller from Singly. Jeremie commutes weekly from Cascade, Iowa to San Francisco and gave me a few quick pointers to make sure my wife and I are always on the same page. The tip that we immediately put into place was to set up a shared Google Calendar with both our schedules and make sure our weekly agendas were always in sync. Just tonight my wife mentioned she had some more things to update on our Google Calendar to make sure we were on the same page. Thank you, Jeremie.

5. You will see some cool stuff

One of the most memorable talks at Thinc Iowa was the design-centric presentation of Gentry Underwood from Orchestra. I had the privilege of talking to Gentry later that evening and convinced him to give me an advanced preview of his newest endeavor which would soon become the new Mailbox app for Gmail. I got a sneak peek of proof-of-concept technology a full five months before it came to market. Even from that small preview with the app in its infancy, it was awesome.

So next time you’re debating whether or not to attend the next Silicon Prairie News event, don’t ask “Why?” but instead put the burden of proof on “Why not?”

 

Credits: Photo by Anna Jones | Art of Photography and Phillip Harder. Screenshot from feld.com

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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