Since the beginning of the pandemic, it feels like a lot of the days have blurred together just a bit. I’m not really confused about what day it is – there are enough recurring events on the calendar each week to use as guideposts. With the exception of two weeks ago, where I was shuttling my older kiddo to and from an actual in-person summer program, I could count on my fingers alone how many times I’ve left my property since the middle of March. If it weren’t for online happy hours and 1 Million Cups each week, I’d only be talking with family members and clerks at Hy-Vee.
A couple of months ago, I was extolling the virtue of having the time at home to work on all of the projects that have built up over the years, just waiting for a time where I’m stuck without anywhere to go. I have accomplished a great deal over these past three months – my office hasn’t been this clutter-free since I last moved. However, I really could use a change in scenery after this much isolation. It’s not as simple as just taking a few days off here at home with all of the various unfinished and unstarted projects staring me in the face. I could use just a few days away, but that’s out of reach this year.
The dominoes have nearly all fallen at this point. Nearly all of the trips I was looking forward to taking have been canceled, as events have either been canceled for the year or transitioned to an online format. I don’t hold out much hope for the remaining events that have just postponed until later in the year. Denver Startup Week has decided to go virtual in September, so I won’t be going to Colorado this year. Franklin County Cider Days has already pulled the plug on this year’s event, which means I won’t be going to Massachusetts in the fall. Monetery canceled their conference outright, so no trip to Des Moines for that. 1 Million Cups Organizer Summit is going virtual as well this year – no Kansas City barbecue this year.
There are only three events left on the list that haven’t announced a final decision about their plans for this year. Young Entrepreneur Convention is the only event of the three that would work in an online format – as of right now, they have postponed until the fall. Des Moines Tech Crawl probably won’t happen at all this year, and I doubt that it will happen in the first part of 2021 either, depending on the severity of infection this winter. GLINTCAP in Michigan is also postponed until either late summer or the holidays. Realistically, if they want to have the event, late summer is probably the only viable window of the two. Waiting until December puts the event at the beginning of cold and flu season, which I think will overlap with the second large wave of COVID-19.
The worst part of all of this is that we had to cancel Startup Weekend Iowa City not only due to COVID-19 and civil unrest dampening ticket sales, but also due to Techstars leaving us hanging out to dry. We would have had to refund everyone who bought a ticket, reapply to hold our event using an “interim” system, restart ticket sales on our own, and completely build out a financial infrastructure for the event in less than a month. Add all of this on top of their staff completely disappearing between March and May, leaving us with no answers about whether events were going to happen at all this year. Part of me is furious that there was no transition period for events already scheduled – they just decided to shut off their old system on a certain date. However, a larger part of me is actually glad that we don’t have to try to manage an online Startup Weekend alone. It probably would have been a huge hassle.
The silver lining in all of this is that we can start focusing on building next year’s Startup Weekend Iowa City and the larger Johnson County Entrepreneurship Week idea with almost no need to work with Techstars. At this point, the only thing that they are adding to the project is their blessing to use the phrase “Startup Weekend” – if push comes to shove, we can just call it something else. Building everything with a separate financial system means that we only have to raise funds once, enough to cover both the week’s activities, as well as the funds necessary to run an awesome weekend event. We have 13 months to raise about $10,000. Once the right people are in place, I think this is completely doable. Let’s see what the next year will bring.
Now that most of the calendar has been wiped clean, you’d think it would be easier to plan out the rest of the year and into 2021, right? Not a chance. There’s a good chance that the kids won’t be at school five days a week in the fall. What days will the girls go to school? Who knows! Good luck trying to plan anything right now. My family is incredibly lucky that I already work from home and have a relatively flexible schedule. What about the people who don’t have this luxury? I truly hope that the schools return to normal in the fall – not only do the kids need some structure, but parents need a break from the chaos as well.
Returning to normalcy is desperately needed right now. Closing everything down suddenly and throwing everyone into turmoil turned society into a powder keg. One event in Minnesota was the spark that set off that powder keg, and it’s going to take a lot of water to put out the fire and a lot of work to put things back in order. What we’re witnessing right now is the end of an epoch; a great reshuffling of the societal deck of cards. In another blog post, I’m going to discuss this “Great Reshuffling” and what I think it means for local communities, as well as the country as a whole.
So, where do we go from here? I’m going to continue plugging away at things here in the home office, trying not to go completely insane from the isolation, since I’m essentially locked into working from home until eternity. I’m really proud of the progress I’ve made on a lot of projects, but it’s frustrating that there’s really not much to show right now. Many things aren’t finished just yet, and other things are personal projects that really shouldn’t be shared. I’m hoping in the next few weeks to finish a good number of projects, setting the foundation for much of what’s to come next year. If we get over enough of the economic and societal humps here in the next six to twelve months, I’m hopeful that we can still work together as a community of productive and positive people to make things better than they ever were before 2020.
The time to start building a community of productive and positive people starts now, even in the midst of the pandemic and the unrest. If social media is any guide, those who don’t want to participate in building something positive have already started to separate themselves from those of us who do. Those who want to burn everything down and live in a state of permanent victimhood have made themselves known, and it’s too bad that they’ve bought into the nonsense. The “system” isn’t holding you back – you are holding yourself back. Take some personal responsibility and work to improve yourself and your community. Rather than tearing everything down to the lowest common denominator, work to be the rising tide that lifts all ships.
It’s frustrating that we’ve lost a lot of the momentum that we had built since I took the lead on these entrepreneurial ecosystem building projects in 2017. This break in the action does allow us to build something even better for the coming years, and with some of the dead weight removed, we can gain the momentum back faster than we did before. It’s going to take a lot of work, but it will be worth it. Will you join me in moving the entrepreneurial ecosystem forward?