Just as much as I like looking back over the year to see what I’ve accomplished and where I’ve gone, I really enjoy planning ahead for the coming year. 2019 is going to be an incredibly busy year, with the launch of Cider Finder, the return of Startup Weekend Iowa City, and several different entrepreneurial events throughout the region. In this part of my annual review, I’d like to discuss in detail the events that will shape my experience of the next year, and mention a few events that will probably be added to the calendar, but haven’t been set in stone yet. Finally, I’m going to wrap up the discussion with my hopes for the local entrepreneurial community for the coming year.
Here are the events already set on the calendar:
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CiderCon/Cider Summit Chicago (February 6-9) – My first trip of 2019 is set to be one of the biggest, and possibly most important trips of the year. It’s one part trade show, one part educational seminar, one part tasting event, and one part networking opportunity with a bunch of cider industry professionals. It will be my first foray into the cider industry beyond the people with whom I’ve discussed the Cider Finder app already, and it’s going to be a great opportunity to do a bit more customer discovery with a captive audience. Luckily, the entirety of CiderCon will be spent in the Chicago Hilton, with Cider Summit in a ballroom at Navy Pier. The wind coming off the lake can be pretty cold in early February, so my fingers are crossed for temperatures above freezing and calm winds.
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Iowa Startup Games (March 1-3) – I’ve already committed to mentoring student teams at the spring semester Iowa Startup Games. Each time I mentor, I feel as though I learn as much as I end up teaching. The student teams always come up with amazing ideas, and I have a great time helping them work through their problems, from formulating customer discovery questions to putting together engaging pitch decks. It’s also one of the ways I’m able to participate in a Startup Weekend event without walking away with a new project of my own, something my wife and family appreciate.
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Young Entrepreneur Convention (April 26-27) – My first planned trip back to central Iowa in 2019 is to the fourth year of the Young Entrepreneur Convention, this time being held in Ames rather than Des Moines. The move, while disappointing, makes sense for the team running the event. The event founders are all based in Ames, are all Iowa State alumni, and many of the speakers have come from that ecosystem. Because of all that, it’s actually nice to travel to “enemy territory” and learn what the folks in Ames are doing with regards to entrepreneurship and innovation. I had been on the fence about attending this, but I’ve decided to fully commit to attending, just to see how the move north affects the event. I’m hoping that a good number of Des Moines-area entrepreneurs decide to attend as well. I may spend the day at Gravitate on the 26th, since YEC doesn’t start until the dinner hour.
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Grand Rapids Cider Week/GLINTCAP (May 15-18) – After CiderCon, this is the next biggest event on the schedule for 2019. GLINTCAP is the largest craft cider competition in the country, and it’s just a few hours’ drive away in western Michigan, including the ferry ride across the lake, to avoid Chicago traffic. The western part of Michigan has the highest concentration of cider producers in the Midwest, most of which are north of Grand Rapids. After GLINTCAP, I’d like to visit at least a couple of the producers before I head back to eastern Iowa.
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Monetery (May 21-22) – My second trip to central Iowa will be for the second Monetery conference. The 2018 conference was a kind of trial run and only last an afternoon, but it was incredibly well-programmed. It’s on my calendar for the year, but I’m not sure what to expect out of year two. Is it going to follow the same format as the first year – three fast-moving panels and a social hour? The event is to stretch over two days in 2019 and the venue is different, so there will probably be a fair number of changes. The organizers haven’t posted much on the Web site just yet, so it’s all speculation at this point. I expect there to be a decent number of friendly faces in the room, as there were this year.
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Startup Weekend Iowa City (July 12-14) – Along the same line as Iowa Startup Games, the other way that I’m able to walk away from a Startup Weekend event without a new project to consume time I don’t have is to help organize and facilitate our local event. My team and I are once again looking forward to bringing this event back to eastern Iowa for 2019. In 2018, we had nearly 25 people participate – our goal for 2019 is 50 participants or more. I’m also planning to hold at least a couple of workshops outside Iowa City, in order to attract more attention to what we are doing, and to bring more out-of-towners to our event in July. Tickets go on sale on January 2 on the SWIC Web site – you should be there!
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Denver Startup Week (September 16-20) – The yearly tradition will continue… I’ll be heading to Denver in September to get my yearly large market entrepreneurial experience. Denver Startup Week is a couple of weeks earlier than it has been in the past – not sure the reasoning why. The Great American Beer Festival, which normally determines the timing of DSW, is the first week of October 2019… so who knows. If the event next year is anything like 2018’s event, it will most likely be rather front-loaded, which will allow me to make the most of my time out there by scheduling some meetings late in the week. Monday to Thursday contains over 90% of the activity, and I might spend Friday in Boulder instead of Denver. Regardless, I always have a fun time while I’m there, and 2019 shouldn’t be an exception.
Here are the events I haven’t yet put on the calendar, but I most likely expect to add over the course of 2019:
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Minnesota Cider Week – I’m still working out the details on Minnesota Cider Week, which takes place in the Minneapolis area in early June. From the information I’ve found online (or lack thereof), I’m not sure if it’s just a collection of independent events or overarching week-long festival, like Denver Startup Week. This may end up just being a one or two day trip for the biggest event or two of the week, since it’s just a few hours away.
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Mentoring the JPEC Summer Accelerator and the Mandela Fellows – The call for mentors for JPEC’s summer programs hasn’t yet gone out, and probably won’t until late April or early May at the very earliest. I had a blast helping this year with both the Summer Accelerator and working with the Mandela Washington Fellows from sub-Saharan Africa. These are two incredibly different groups, but both groups were building some amazing things. It also works out that both of these programs are running while the major part of the work is done for Startup Weekend Iowa City, and I have to be in the area anyway – a win-win for everyone. I’m really looking forward to meeting both groups and finding ways to help them grow their businesses, as well as help them enjoy Iowa City in the summer and integrate better into the community-building and entrepreneurial ecosystem events that keep chugging along, even after most students have gone home for the summer.
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Franklin County Cider Days – This event seems significantly more organized than some of the other cider weeks throughout the United States. However, they haven’t announced the dates for 2019, since this year’s event just happened in early November. More than likely, the event will occur in the same range of days in 2019. This will be my first trip to New England, and because of this, it’s worth padding out the trip by a couple of days on either side. The event also stretches between multiple venues in multiple small towns throughout the county. This one’s going to take a decent amount of planning, both for the trip itself and to make sure it doesn’t overlap with anything else that time of year.
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EDC Innovation Expo – I’m very much on the fence about attending the Innovation Expo. I’ve attended this event 4 times since entering the entrepreneurial ecosystem, so 2019’s Expo would be my fifth. When I was new to the entrepreneurial ecosystem, I felt like I got a ton of value out of this event. However, as I will discuss more later in this post, it feels like I’m getting less and less out of attending events such as the Innovation Expo each year, since it’s one of those events that really seems to highlight entry into the ecosystem through connections with other entrepreneurs. I do enjoy connecting with people during the exhibitor’s showcase, but I didn’t even end up going to the pitch competitions this year, as I’d heard almost all of the other pitches at other events, and I wasn’t pitching any of my companies this year. If I do decide to attend, I plan to pitch and set up a demo table for Cider Finder, complete with company swag and possibly featuring some local ciders that can also be found on the app. I do want to have some serious traction with Cider Finder first before I make a decision on this.
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1 Million Cups Organizers’ Summit – This should take place sometime in the final third of the year, either September or October. It took place in late October this year, having been rescheduled from mid-September. I’m hoping that I can represent Iowa City at this event again, just because it was such a refreshing and reinvigorating experience. I think it’s something that should be experienced more than once, because the organizing committee changes the experience each year. From what I was told, the 2018 summit was leaps and bounds better than 2017, and with the information we provided to the folks in Kansas City, 2019 should be even better. My attendance depends on two things – the biggest of which is whether or not our organizing team changes significantly over the next few months, where it would benefit someone else more to attend the summit, and whether or not it potentially conflicts with anything else, like Denver Startup Week or Franklin County Cider Days. This will definitely be a late addition to the calendar.
Finally, I do want to touch on something I’ve mentioned previously in this post, as well as in previous posts. It’s an issue I’ve discussed with other entrepreneurs and community builders in eastern and central Iowa, and it’s something I feel is not exactly a problem, but an opportunity. While we have a dearth of opportunities for people just entering the entrepreneurial ecosystem, with educational events and networking meetups, we have a distinct lack of events for people who have been connected to the ecosystem for an extended period of time. Most of the information that’s presented at our local conferences is designed for people who have just gotten involved in entrepreneurship. Much of the focus tends to fall on those who have burst onto the scene, many of whom will disappear as quickly as they appeared, with minimal recognition for those who stick around, plugging away at what makes our local entrepreneurial ecosystem great. There’s an opportunity here to celebrate the most tenacious members of the community.
I’m not exactly sure what this recognition of tenacity would look like. It probably would take the shape of a conference or event, with presentations on advanced topics in entrepreneurship during the day and a recognition party in the evening – preferably all on a Saturday, so it doesn’t interfere with the workweek. Perhaps combine the day of programming with some sort of awards ceremony that doesn’t involve self-nominations or suggestions from the previous years’ winners, so it avoids becoming the in-group circle-jerks typical of our local awards ceremonies.
Maybe Monetery or the Young Entrepreneur Convention in 2019 will contain this type of programming. Maybe we will design something in Iowa City that focuses on the “old-timers” who have tried a few things, possibly have failed a few times, and have something to share that has a bit more substance than a listicle. Let’s see what happens this coming year, and what kind of connections can be made to turn this into a reality by 2020.
I would love to hear what you’re hoping and planning for 2019. If you found my post on social media, feel free to start a comment thread there, and maybe others will add to it. Otherwise, send me an email and let me know what you’re going to be doing in the next 12 months.