In normal times, the beginning of September is one of my favorite times of year. The heat of the summer starts to subside, the bugs start to disappear, and youthful energy returns to Iowa City. Thanks to the year that just keeps on giving, that energy that powers downtown Iowa City is all but gone. A major spike in positive COVID-19 cases led to the bars being limited on their hours, much to the joy of neighborhood fuddy-duddies. The Big Ten Conference also voted to cancel football this fall, but is beginning to waffle on that decision, as other programs that depend on football revenue are now starting to see cuts. Add to that the ever-present threat of ne’er-do-wells blocking roads and destroying property downtown, and all of the things that make Iowa City amazing in the fall are missing.
You’d think that’s enough, right? Wrong. On August 10, central and eastern Iowa suffered a nasty windstorm called a derecho – a massive, long-lasting complex of straight-line winds that, in some places, reached 120-140 miles per hour. The towns and cities along Highway 30, from Boone in central Iowa, through north-central Illinois, bore the brunt of the storms. Winds at the home office were between 60-80 miles per hour, sustained for 30-45 minutes. I thank my lucky stars that we didn’t have any damage to the house or the garage – we lost a number of branches and tree limbs, and the driveway light pole was tipped down 45 degrees. My house also lost power for an entire week after the storm, because one of the neighbor’s trees dropped a limb across the road, taking out the power lines on both sides of the road and blocking traffic for a couple of days. I sent the kids and wife away while the power was out, and camped out with the pets at the house, waiting for electrical service to return.
While the power was out, I camped out at MERGE during the day, in an effort to get at least a little bit of work done among all of the chaos. It was the first time I’d been downtown and inside MERGE since the last in-person 1MC on March 11, roughly 6 lifetimes ago. It was refreshing to get out of the house and drink coffee other than my own for a couple of days. Coworking coffee always tastes better than at-home coffee, no matter where you are. I made an attempt to soak in as much of the energy from MERGE as I could, because I fear that those few days are going to be the only startup community exposure I’m going to get for the next few months. Knowing this makes it really tough to keep a positive spin on the situation that we’re in right now.
I wanted to absorb as much energy as I could, because I’m not making my yearly pilgrimage to Colorado for Denver Startup Week – the first time I’ve missed this yearly trip since I started making the trip out west in 2015. What originally started as a weekend vacation trip in 2015 was slated in 2020 to be a two-week startup and cider adventure, starting in Denver during the first couple of days of Denver Startup Week, then driving through the Rockies to the western slopes to visit a couple of cideries before turning south to New Mexico to visit more cideries in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and then driving back to Denver on Interstate 25 for the Great American Beer Festival and Denver Oktoberfest before returning home at the end of the second week.
Even though Denver Startup Week will probably be a fun and educational online experience this year, it’s just not the same as actually being there physically, conversing with other entrepreneurs and builders over drinks, bouncing ideas and thoughts off of others in an amazing setting. I had the chance to take part in a few sessions during Detroit Startup Week back in June, and while it was filled with great content, it was still missing a lot of what really makes a Startup Week or events like it great – the interpersonal connections you can only great when you get a bunch of creative, energetic people together in a room, talking about how to make society better. Unfortunately, social distancing and virtualized events remove most or all of that energy. It would have been a lot of fun actually visiting Detroit’s startup ecosystem, and meeting some of the people who are working to transform the economy and grow opportunities there. Unless there’s a bit more interactivity on the Denver Startup Week schedule, the same things might end up missing.
Pro: you can attend events in far flung locales without having to leave your house.
Con: leaving the house to meet people in far flung locales makes for better events.
It’s a tough balance, and it’s going to be interesting to see how things go with all of the virtual events on the calendar for this fall. Denver Startup Week has some incredible sessions lined up, including talks by some of the biggest names in entrepreneurship and technology. On October 1, I’ll be virtually attending Flyover Tech Fest, put together by some of the larger tech firms in central Iowa. It seems like this is taking the place of Monetery this year, which had to be canceled due to the pandemic – some of the same people look to be involved in this shindig. Plus, it’s a free event, and nothing beats free.
Later in October, I’ll also be virtually attending IO2020: The New Innovators’ Summit, run by the folks in Nebraska who put together the Inside Outside Summit I attended a couple of years ago. The event spans three days, and looks like there’s going to be at least a little bit of social interaction between event participants. The speaker list also looks pretty impressive – not a lot of people with whom I am familiar and it looks a bit heavy on the corporate side, but should be a good learning experience.
I’ve also agreed to help facilitate a couple of upcoming online Startup Weekend events – one designed for high school students in Los Angeles the weekend of September 18-20 and a community event in Maui, Hawaii, November 13-15. I’m supposed to have one or more co-facilitators working with me on the Los Angeles event in a couple of weeks, but I’m on my own in November. The time zone issues might be interesting in November, as Hawaii is several hours behind Iowa. I fully expect to be up and going until 3 am that Saturday and Sunday morning and possibly after midnight on Monday morning. Remind me to stock up on Red Bull before that weekend.
On top of everything, I’ve even found an online cider tasting event! Cider Summit Seattle decided to move their event online this year by shipping out sample boxes of several Pacific Northwest ciders and holding an online tasting on the evening of September 12. Again, it’s not nearly the same as sampling cider and eating fried things in a big tent, surrounded by others having an amazing time, but it’s something. If you weren’t able to grab one of the boxes, Press Then Press offers some of the ciders for sale online in every state except Utah (but then again, why would you want to live in Utah?)
It’s really nice to see the calendar refill, even if everything is going to be online. Summers are usually pretty quiet, so even in normal times, the fall calendar brings me a bit of joy. It’s especially nice this year with all of the uncertainty surrounding any plans I’ve tried to make since March. I don’t expect that things are going to change much into early 2021 – I don’t even think CiderCon is going to be in Chicago in February. I sincerely hope that COVID-19 has run its course by next spring, so we don’t start year two of postponed and canceled in-person events. We hit our one year anniversary of moving 1 Million Cups Iowa City online the third Wednesday in March, and I really don’t want to celebrate that awful milestone with anything other than moving back to physical, in-person events at MERGE. The sooner we can get out of this holding pattern, the better.
Unfortunately, it’s really difficult to stay positive and productive as I’m going on nearly six months homebound, with the brief forced break due to the derecho. Sure, I’m forgoing ton of wear and tear on the truck and saving a ton of money cooking at home and not traveling. What’s the cost to my state of mind, though? What about those who were struggling before the chaos began? There are times where I’m starting to feel pretty beaten down from the lack of contact with other humans beyond my immediate family. I wouldn’t consider myself a full extrovert – I need time to recharge and do my own thing. But there’s a point where you’ve been plugged into the charger too long, and the battery starts to degrade from overcharging. Over the last couple of months, I feel like that’s been happening. We’ll see if the online stuff coming up is akin to unplugging from the charger for a bit and using that extrovert energy, or if my battery continues to degrade.
We’ll see how things go this month. Fingers crossed.