The engine of progress restarted in 2021, and I have a bunch of momentum rolling into 2022! All of my favorite events from 2019 and before have relaunched in person, and the calendar looks to be returning to its normal arrangement – no cramming a year’s worth of stuff into the second half of the year. Also, a number of projects are finally making some progress, and I’ll finally be able to show off what I’ve been building for some many years. On top of that, a number of new projects have just started that might take me across the state, the country, and the world!
If you thought these last few months were fast-paced, hold onto your hats!
As I covered in part one, most in person events came roaring back in the second half of this year. EntreFest, Denver Startup Week, Young Entrepreneur Convention, and Startup Weekend Iowa City – all mainstays of my calendar in previous years – all had at least some components in person. I fully expect most “hybrid” options to disappear in the coming year. People have had enough of sitting alone in front of a computer playing a Zoom webinar. One thing I’ve been stressing for years on this blog is the importance of person-to-person connections in the entrepreneurial community, and just about every version of the online experience has failed in this regard.
Even though we’ve all grown tired of the online experience, one feature of the experience should and probably will persist – recording sessions for future use. While conferences could charge attendees extra for accessing the recordings later, I think this should be a sunk cost of producing an in-person conference going forward, allowing ticket holders access to the recordings at least until the event the following year. By recording everything, event organizers have a library of content to use for promotion leading up to the next event. Posting the videos to any number of online video hosting Web sites costs nothing, and immediately raises the event’s profile online. I see the curation and remixing of event content into highlight reels, advertisements, and podcasts as the future of event promotion. We’ll see where it goes in the next year.
CiderCon is (hopefully) returning to an in-person format the first week of February after what I consider a massive flop last year. The entire reason to go to CiderCon is to network with others in the industry (over beverages, of course.) While there was a “chat roulette”-style networking option, the online version was too heavily focused on the breakout sessions, none of which involved tasting due to logistics. I’m still holding my breath that the conference will actually take place in Richmond, Virginia, in a month, complete with cider tours on Tuesday, the Wednesday evening bottle share, and keynotes, breakout sessions, and tastings the final two days.
In-person or online, I have one month to get the last bugs worked out of Cider Finder and moved into an open beta, hopefully available on mobile app stores. CiderCon is going to be the big test for the app, to see if things flow smoothly or break down horribly with a large number of people interacting with the code all at once for the first time. It’s probably the most nervous I’ve been in quite a while – I haven’t built any Web apps on this scale before, and the stuff I’ve built in the past has been desktop/laptop first. I’ll have my laptop and the rest of my mobile command center with me the entire week, in order to quickly patch anything that comes up during the convention, and to create a running list of bugs to fix before GLINTCAP.
Not only is CiderCon back in person again in 2022 – the Great Lakes International Cider and Perry Competition is moving back to its usual mid-May time frame, which probably means that Grand Rapids Cider Week will return as well. There are a number of features that I’d like to build into the app that I want to stress test during a cider festival or piggyback off of a cider week, where local cider makers put forward an extra effort to get people in the door and drinking their beverages. Having the first stress test during CiderCon will be great – cider makers, for the most part, will be forgiving of a few early bugs – but the real stress test will happen when the public gets their hands on the app. If all goes well, cider season in the fall should go relatively smoothly.
On top of the app, I’ll be taking the Certified Cider Professional Level 1 exam in January, before I head off to CiderCon and well before GLINTCAP. I want to get that done before I volunteer to help with GLINTCAP, as a qualification to judge if they are short on judges this year. I’ve had a ton of fun stewarding the last two events, but I think I’d have fun on the other side of the wall as well. I attended the judge training both times that I stewarded, and I hung in there pretty well with some very experienced judges. We’ll see what happens and where they need me this year – either way, GLINTCAP is a great time and an experience anyone in the industry should have at least once.
Even though Cider Finder and its associated events are going to keep me busy, there are a number of other projects and proposals I’m crafting as an entrepreneurial ecosystem builder. First, as I mentioned in part 1, I’ve partnered with two Mandela Washington Fellow alumni to create a course for new entrepreneurs in Uganda through the Reciprocal Exchange Program. As of right now, the course will consist of an in-person group meeting in Uganda with me teaching the course from the comfort of my home office from mid-March to mid-April. However, there will be an opportunity in January to apply for extended funding so that I could travel to Uganda for a month to teach the course at the in-person meetings, but the program will move to mid-July to mid-August. My African partners are really excited about the extended funding opportunity, and we’ve decided to apply when the application opens.
Either way, I’ve already started building out the course – essentially, it’s going to be Startup Weekend as a side hustle, stretched out over a month. Students will meet three times a week in the evening for three weeks, and then have a traditional demo day at the end of the month. Most of the material is already there – it’s just a matter of me remixing things into the format and creating a number of lectures for the evening meetings, along with recruiting a handful of mentors to work with the students during the month. Internet connectivity could be an issue, so I’ll be recording videos all along the way. Depending how the course goes, this could potentially turn into something we could use here in the United States for traditionally overlooked audiences – people who can’t break away from full time employment due to economic issues, but could attend an extended course on their off hours (or potentially watch the videos during their off hours and join some sort of online community to connect with other students and mentors.) This is going to be an awesome experiment in the coming year.
I’ve also been included on a proposal spearheaded by an entrepreneur in south Texas who wants to bring together Startup Weekend with a new business incubator and other idea-generating programs in a suburban setting. While he works on the funding for the incubator, I’m serving as an advisor regarding Startup Weekend, and would facilitate at least some of the Startup Weekend events if this program obtains funding. This is a really exciting proposal and could potentially create a new tech and entrepreneurship hub in that area. I can’t say too much more about the proposal, but it’s a solid idea and I hope it ends up being funded – hopefully, I’ll get to share more about it in the coming months.
Something I can share is information about Startup Weekend Iowa Online, coming up January 21-22, and Startup Weekend Iowa City, planned for mid-July. As of noon today, we had 82 people signed up from across the globe, ready to see what the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Iowa is all about. Startup Weekend Iowa Online serves a couple of purposes: locally, it’s a training ground for ecosystem builders across the state to see how a Startup Weekend functions (even if the online version is heavily modified,) and beyond the state, it’s meant to show off what we’re doing here in Iowa. A handful of people who have signed up actually mentioned that Startup Weekends used to happen in their area, but haven’t had one since well before the pandemic. During the pandemic, I’ve positioned 1 Million Cups Iowa City as a promotional tool for people outside the area and outside the state to see what Iowa City is all about, and we’ve kept a number of attendees from outside the area coming back over the last two years.
If we have enough success with Startup Weekend Iowa Online in a couple of weeks, my hope is that will translate into momentum for at least one or two in-person Startup Weekends outside of Startup Weekend Iowa City. I’ve made it clear to the rest of the organizers of January’s event that I will help them set up an in-person event, but I will not be the primary organizer. I’m more than happy to give others the tools and support they need, but I don’t have enough bandwidth to do the project for them, and I shouldn’t be expected to do the project for them. Especially in Des Moines, there are enough people to run an in-person weekend with little to no help from me. They just have to put in the effort to complete a checklist, and the event tends to fall into place from there.
So, with the return of in-person events across Iowa and across the country, my calendar has already nearly filled up for 2022. Here’s a sneak peak of what’s locked in already:
- Startup Weekend Iowa Online: January 21-22
- CiderCon in Richmond, Virginia: February 1-4
- The Reciprocal Exchange: Either March 14-April 15 if online or July 18-August 19 if I travel to Uganda
- GLINTCAP in Grand Rapids, Michigan: May 18-20
- EntreFest in Iowa City: June 9-10
- Startup Weekend Iowa City: July 15-17
- Denver Startup Week (and Colorado cidery visits): September 19-23
There will certainly be more additions to this list in the coming months depending on the success of proposals in play the next couple of months and any requests for me to facilitate Startup Weekends across the country. I was supposed to facilitate a Startup Weekend in Anchorage, Alaska, back in November, but that event was canceled due to low registrations. I’ve been asked by the folks at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks to run an event there in February, but I’ve not heard back from them since November as well. In addition, Geekdom is planning a number of Startup Weekends in 2022, and I told them that I’m always happy to make the trip south to help out. I’ll be talking with them again after Startup Weekend Iowa Online. Also, while I’m not able to fit the spring Startup Champions Network Summit in North Carolina into my schedule due to the Reciprocal Exchange, I should be able to make the fall summit work, wherever and whenever that ends up happening. In addition, there are a number of other events and trips that should pop up in the second half of the year that just haven’t yet.
This coming year is going to be wild, and I feel like I’ve just shared the tip of the iceberg. The last few months have felt somewhat overwhelming, but I think that’s just the shock of everything reopening and restarting all at once. January and February tend to be much slower than the rest of the year during “normal times,” so hopefully that stays true now that we’re edging back that direction. It’s hard to me to say no to new projects, but I’m going to have to do that for a few months at least. After the Reciprocal Exchange has concluded and the south Texas proposal has been funded or not, I will reevaluate things and make a decision to open the gate again or not. There are only so many hours in the week, and as these projects become more complicated and time-consuming, I have to stand firm and not bite off more than I can chew.
I’m so thankful for those of you who have stuck with me on this crazy adventure. This is the seventh year I’ve done a year-end post, and I’ve grown a lot since 2015, when I began blogging my experience as an entrepreneur. The entrepreneurial ecosystem has changed a lot in those years, and I’ve learned so much along the way. A lot of people, ideas, and programs have come and gone, but they helped to build a solid foundation for what I’m building now. This year has been an amazing restart for many, but I know there are some still struggling. If there’s anything I can do to help you get back on track, please let me know. I want us all to win in the coming year.
Happy New Year to you and yours. Let’s make 2022 the best it can be.