New Projects and the Months Ahead

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First, I want to apologize for the lack of updates over the last month. I’ve been meaning to get to this at least every week, if not more often, but I’ve had my nose to the grindstone almost constantly over the last four weeks. I had a pretty quick turnaround on a Web site I was designing for a student start-up at The University of Iowa specializing on e-sports clubs on campus. Once they get their domain issues resolved, I will post a link to my handiwork. I’ve also been working on some wireframes and graphics for a new law firm, the site for which I hope to have done in the next couple of weeks.

It feels as though I’ve been rushing from one event to another over the last few weeks. I attend One Million Cups every week either in Iowa City or Cedar Rapids – the program rotates between FilmScene on the Ped Mall in Iowa City and the Iowa Startup Accelerator in the New Bohemia district in Cedar Rapids.

It’s been a major change of pace coming from a public health and health communication background and diving into entrepreneurship, but I feel as welcome in the startup community as I did working in public health. People in both groups are trying to make the world better through innovation, but are just going at it in different ways. Public health (and different levels of government in general) tend to move at a much slower pace and involve much more collaborative, committee-based work. Entrepreneurship moves significantly faster and is based less on committee decisions, but sometimes the increased speed of startups seems to get away from some people. Follow my Twitter feed to see who is presenting here in eastern Iowa, and my hope is to get over to Des Moines at some point for their version of 1 Million Cups.

Speaking of diving into entrepreneurship, I have entered into a partnership with the owner of Tomaso’s Pizza in Cedar Rapids to work on a potential startup project at The University of Iowa’s Venture School. We are one of seven teams going through the 6-week program to determine if we have a valid idea for a startup business. Our project involves building out a new restaurant in Cedar Rapids with high-end pizza, craft beer, and good wine. I will be updating this blog on our progress through Venture School, starting October 21.

Did I ever think I’d be going through a course on startups? Did I ever think I’d possibly be a partner in creating a new restaurant? No way. It’s amazing the connections you can make and the opportunities that present themselves by networking with local business owners, or really anyone in the field you desire. Networking was the main reason I started attending 1 Million Cups and some of the local Meetup groups in the “tech corridor” between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids.

Other than partnering in a startup, I’ve been meeting with local video game developers and learning about some tools to create games; tools that require coding (which I definitely don’t have time to learn) and other tools that require no coding whatsoever (which I want to learn, but can’t even put on the back burner right now because all four burners are in use… so I’ll put it in the freezer?)

There are some great projects coming out of eastern Iowa right now that you should check out:

I am continuing to work on my series on switching to Linux for people who have no Linux experience at all. The series will be interspersed among other blog posts, which will increase in frequency once Venture School starts.

I have a great deal of events coming up on the calendar, including:

I’ll have plenty of things to write about over the next couple of months… but it’s a matter of finding the time to sit down and organize my thoughts. Follow me on Twitter and my Freelance Media Producer page on Facebook to keep up with my activities around eastern Iowa.