The end of the year is routinely a whirlwind of activity. Even with an early Thanksgiving, the five and a half weeks at the end of the year seems to go by in a flash. I managed to find all of the Christmas decorations this year and dig them out of the back of the garage and the storage loft before the big snowstorm the weekend after Thanksgiving. Oasis missed out on most of the snow since the storm tracked a bit further south than they were expecting. – only about 3 or 4 inches fell at the house, most of which blew away when the wind kicked up the day after the storm. South and east of us, some places had over a foot of snow. The wife had to trudge through 14 inches of snow to get to her office in Davenport. Just a few miles north of us in Cedar Rapids, they got absolutely nothing.
Winter weather in the Midwest is oddly fickle. You have to be made of stronger stuff to handle the temperature swings, the mixed bag of precipitation, and the constant wind. Seriously, the wind never stops blowing. Somehow, it blows from every direction in downtown Iowa City and on The University of Iowa campus in the winter. It doesn’t matter what side of a building you’re on – the wind blows directly into your face. I guess it makes you appreciate the nice days we do have when the weather is warmer.
So, in an effort to keep out of the wind and to prevent my nostrils from freezing shut, I’ve been diligently working on several projects to start 2019 off with a bang. The project that requires the most lead time is Startup Weekend Iowa City 2019. I’ve been really impressed so far with how quickly the new regional manager has answered questions about getting next year’s event going, and has given us feedback on our ticketing structure experiment – he couldn’t believe that we had broken even last year only charging $20 maximum for each ticket. We’re still on track to have our ticketing page up and running on January 2. Our community page is nearly ready to publish, except for a couple of graphics which we didn’t realize are slightly out of compliance with the Techstars marketing department’s guidelines – nothing was mentioned about it last year, so we were in the dark.
It’s going to be a lot of fun promoting SWIC again. Now that we have a successful event to build from, we know what we need to do in the next few months to reach our goal of doubling the size of the event from 2018. When I applied to run the event again in 2019, I had also mentioned that we were interested in running some workshops before the event – these workshops, for the most part, are going to take place outside of Iowa City, as part of a promotional roadshow. In January, I’m going to be reaching out to some of the coworking spaces within a couple of hours of Iowa City, to gauge their interest in hosting one of these workshops. If we were able to bring in participants from as far away as Mason City for the 2018 event, I think we have a good chance of bringing in more people from outside the area in 2019. The goal of making SWIC a statewide event is looking better each day.
I’ve also started talking with the folks who run the Freelancer Meetup in Cedar Rapids about expanding the program to Iowa City once a month, as part of a potential expansion of Iowa City Open Coffee beyond Wednesday mornings. One of the major complaints that I’ve heard about Open Coffee is that it only takes place at 8 am Wednesday mornings, but it’s been tough to justify doing much more than that with the program’s resurgence over the last few months – we average about 12-15 people each Wednesday morning, and many mornings have more than 20 people conversing and connecting.
Bringing the Freelancer Meetup to Iowa City under the banner of Iowa City Open Coffee would mean that over 1000 people who have signed up for the Open Coffee Meetup group would hear about the freelancer group, and a few might end up attending both our monthly event as well as the bi-monthly Cedar Rapids event. I’ve promised that there wouldn’t be any overlap with the Cedar Rapids event, since they run their event twice a month at lunchtime. They don’t provide lunch, but I was thinking of finding a lunch sponsor for an Iowa City event – either to host the meeting and provide the food, or simply provide the food with the meeting taking place at MERGE. I am planning to head north this coming Wednesday, to attend 1MC in Cedar Rapids for the first time since April, and to attend the Freelancer Meetup at noon. 1MC Iowa City decided to take an extended winter break this year and start 2019 strong, so I’m actually free to make the trip up to the NewBo neighborhood for the day.
Speaking of getting to Cedar Rapids for the first time in a while, I made the trip up there this week for the NewBoCo Launch Day. It was my fourth launch day event, and the third location in which they’ve hosted the event – this time in Theatre Cedar Rapids. First impression: I liked the venue better than either the Paramount or the DoubleTree. Having things at the DoubleTree always seems like overkill, and the Paramount is set up oddly, where it feels like the front door is in the wrong place and you have to navigate a maze to find the actual theater or the lounge. Also, TCR has a much better beverage selection than the other two – unfortunately no cider, but tons of local beer.
The event itself was fast-paced and was a natural evolution from the days where all of the Iowa Startup Accelerator teams from that year pitched, and that was the end of the program. Last year’s program was the first that did not solely revolve around the current cohort of companies going through the accelerator, as the NewBoCo innovation conglomerate had formed in the couple of years prior, taking several different programs and projects under its banner. However, it felt this year as though the ISA was a footnote jammed into the end of the program, after spending much of the time talking about the educational and training programs offered by the organization.
There was a weird, split personality vibe going on with the event. The first two parts of the show – essentially everything but the pitches at the end – involved lengthy sit-down interviews. During the interviews, it felt like some of the energy was evaporating from the room. If you want to have a true launch day, pitches and presentations are the way to keep the audience energized and engaged. There’s no reason why the other two parts of the show couldn’t have followed that format. The energy did come back during the ISA and Social Good Accelerator segment during the pitches. It’s a shame that they don’t require all of the companies and organizations from each year to pitch – only about half of this year’s cohort presented on stage. Hopefully next year, they ditch the interviews and add more pitches.
The crowd seemed to disburse relatively quickly after the event. I stuck around until about 8:30, but I was one of the final few to leave. In past years, it seemed like people hung around a lot longer after the show. I would have liked to have had the chance to talk to more people after the event. There were a fair number of Iowa Startup Accelerator alumni in the room, but there was only so much time to interact with everyone in the hour before the show and the hour after the show. Maybe I’ll see them again at other events in 2019.
However, before those events start, Cider Finder needs to be finished, cider makers brought on board for the beta test, promotional materials created, and a bunch of swag ordered. I’m now counting down the days to CiderCon and Cider Summit in Chicago. It’s going to be a lot of fun, and really educational for someone as new to the terminology and the industry workings of cider makers. I’m not totally fluent in cider-ese yet, but I know enough to ask for the bathroom. I’m looking forward to expanding my vocabulary and my palette, and to make as many industry connections as I can during the few days of the conference.
I’ll be publishing my summary of 2018 at the end of the month, along with my plans, hopes, goals, and most of my travel schedule for 2019. A couple of trips to Des Moines are in the works, along with a couple of states I’ve never visited before. 2019 is shaping up to be a great year, and I’m looking forward to sharing it all with you. If you haven’t yet, subscribe to the Freelance Media Newsletter for monthly summaries and the big “ask” of each month. There will be a ton of content in there in the following months, as Cider Finder takes off and other projects start moving into place.
I’m in an optimistic mood for next year, and you should be too. I’d love to have you along for the journey.