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Let’s work together to build a better city
Late last year over lunch, I was complaining about the lack of diversity in tech to Hack of the Sexes co-founder Jason Carrigan. He challenged that we should do something about it. Although our original idea of a boys vs. girls challenge in the tech space sparked a lot of controversy, much of the heat…
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Black Girls Code founder delivers important message at Raikes School
Black Girls Code: a bold name for a bold organization. Kimberly Bryant founded the San Francisco-based nonprofit last year with a mission to close the gap of women and people of color in STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) fields. She is getting young girls interested in technology by introducing them to programming. After a successful…
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The race has begun: First-to-file under the America Invents Act is here
Inventors—if you are not practicing your sprint drills…you should be. The race to the Patent Office has begun and there is no ribbon for second place. Prior to March 16, 2013, the United States was a first-to-invent country. Although there could be exceptions to the rule, the date of invention in the United States was…
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Millennial generation is focus of April 5 event at KANEKO
(Guest post by Dan Gilbert.) How does the millennial generation influence your workplace, our community, and the world? Writer, filmmaker, and millennial storyteller David Burstein tells the nuanced story of a generation that is pragmatic enough to navigate constant change, and creative enough to chart their own paths despite beginning their careers in a troubling…
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How to hack a gigabit city
This weekend, about 100 hackers, developers and visionaries will gather in the City of Fountains for Hacking the Gigabit City, an event aimed at creating and developing the advanced uses for the ultra-high-speed connectivity that Google Fiber is bringing to Kansas City. Our local organizations—the Kauffman Foundation and KC Digital Drive—have partnered with the national…
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Win the battle for UX designers
(Guest post by Kyle Murphy.) It’s damn hard to recruit and hire great user-centered design talent right now. Demand is palpably high. Supply seems depressingly low. Midwestern organizations are competing against every Silicon Valley startup throwing cash and options at the limited talent pool. To win the recruiting battle against companies in hotspots like San…
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What I learned on my way to SXSW
As I write this, I am sitting on a bus with about 25 entrepreneurs from around the Midwest. We took a busload of tech entrepreneurs to the annual South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival in Austin, Texas. Long known as a great place to launch ventures and build buzz for your startup, we thought it…
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Startup Community Revolution: Caffeinating Communities
(Guest post by Nate Olson) This morning was a whirlwind. At 11:00 a.m. CST I joined a Google Hangout with a coffee shop full of smiling entrepreneurs in Reno, Nev., who were launching their very first 1 Million Cups. As I saw the excitement in this room packed with 50 or so entrepreneurs, I was…
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You can’t win if you don’t play
If you are like me when you read something or talk to someone you immediately add a phrase or word to a song, title, proper noun or really anything. Things pop into my head that are loosely correlated to what I am reading or hearing. For example when I first met Ben Milne and he…
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Start something big in the Silicon Prairie
2009: “You live in Omaha? When are you going to move away?” 2013: “Oh yeah, Omaha. I hear that’s a pretty cool place.” When I used to travel for business, my industry peers would always force themselves to feign interest in my answer to the usual first question: “Where are you from?” Oh, I’m from…