There are a plethora of entrepreneurial events hosted in Kansas City on a weekly basis. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, investor, supporter, or curious community member — we recommend these upcoming events for you.
Are you hosting a relevant community event? Feel free to add it to the FWD/KC calendar for increased exposure. Once your event is submitted, it will quickly get reviewed and then published to the calendar.
(So You Think You Know) How to Use Social Media for Your Small Business?
When: July 18, 9:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Where: Kauffman Foundation Conference Center
Even if you THINK you know everything, we promise you will walk away with some new knowledge and tips on the best Social Media for your business and the best times to post for highest engagement. And if you need to learn the basics of why your business must use Social Media, this workshop is for YOU!
This SoLVE IT! Workshop for SCORE will focus on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – bring your laptop and your questions!
Your Instructors for the Workshop
Teddy Hernandez and Aviva Ajmera, co-founders of SoLVE KC, are consultants and professional marketers whose experience and insights about using social media to build small businesses are based on real world successes.
How to Do Business with the City (Kansas City)
When: July 18, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Where: Human Relations Department, City Hall
Please join City Hall facilitators to discuss how to do business with the City of Kansas City, MO. This workshop is offered the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of every month.
Business Concept: How Do You Tell if Your Business Concept Will Work?
When: July 18, 5:45 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Where: Kauffman Foundation Conference Center
This Business Concept workshop provides step-by-step guidance in researching your idea, your market, and your competition. At the end of the Business Concept section, you are able to:
- Identify your target markets
- Locate resources to research your target customer
- Collect key competitive information to support your feasibility plan
Attend all sessions or just one of our 5 part series “Simple Steps to Starting Your Business”.
Session 1 – Start Up Basics
Session 2 – Business Concept
Session 3 – Marketing Strategy
Session 4 – Financial Projections
Session 5 – Funding Sources/Next Steps.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK and give yourself the best chance for success in your new business venture.
Competing for Government Contracts: Basic Training
When: 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Where: KSBDC – Johnson County Community College
This introductory seminar is an overview of the critical first steps associated with winning government contracts. The Kansas Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) presents information on how to get started in the government contracting arena including federal, state and local government registrations and certifications. The seminar will also cover Kansas PTAC services available to assist businesses in all aspects of government contracting. Preregistration is required.
The Marketing Series: Growth Hacking 101 with Doug Allen
When: July 19, 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Where: Sprint Accelerator
The Marketing Series takes an in-depth look at the science and analytics behind marketing campaigns–from the basics of growth hacking to ins-and-outs of content marketing.
Third Thursday KCedu and Lean Lab Happy Hour
When: July 20, 5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Where: EduHub
Join #KCedu and the Lean Lab at EduHub, a co-working space for education and youth-related startups. Network with genius educators, business partners, and other interested folks as you eat and drink, learn and collide.
When you arrive, grab a snack and check out the whiteboard where participants create the schedule on the fly! Want to share something? Want to get feedback from others on a topic? In addition to the featured guests, as an attendee, you can throw your idea up in one of the squares for small group breakout conversations. For example:
Want to talk about technology in education, apps, gamificatoin or how to make it relevant to kids?
Want to talk family-community engagement in schools and in KC?
Want to plan a city-wide project to bring KC together, led by kids?
Looking for some interested parties to co-write a grant? EdHub has several offices for us to spread out and share/discuss.
After introductions of any featured guests at 6pm, we go into an Edcamp/Unconference format in two fast-paced, 20 minute breakout sessions. Stay in one group or sample more than one discussion. We come back together as a group at 7:00 for final announcements and then continue conversations at EduHub or at a nearby establishment.
This format is about active small group networking and relationship building, not passive listening. CHOICE and VOICE! You’ll be happy you plugged into KC’s vibrant educator network.
Django Girls Workshop
When: July 21 – 22
Where: Sprint Accelerator
If you are a woman and want to learn how to make websites, we have good news for you: we are holding a weekend workshop for beginners! Kansas City Women in Technology‘s ongoing mission is to grow the number of women in technology careers in Kansas City. KCWiT is excited to introduce women to coding and technology through this Django Girls workshop. We want to give you an opportunity to learn how to program and become one of us – women programmers!
Workshops are free of charge and some meals will be provided. Don’t wait too long; you can apply for the workshop through May 26th, 2017!
Ongoing events
Don’t miss out on the events that happen every week at the same time, in the same place.
Code for KC Hack Night
Mondays from 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. at Sprint Accelerator
Hammerspace Open House
Thursdays from 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. at Hammerspace
1 Million Cups
Wednesdays from 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. at Kauffman Foundation, Lawrence and KC Live Stream
Looking ahead
The First Steps to Starting a Business
When: July 24, 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Where: Small Business & Technology Development Center
Are you looking for the basics of starting a new business? This three-hour class provides a quick overview of the critical first steps needed to start a business.
Participants learn to assess their strengths and weaknesses in terms of business ownership, and the importance of planning, meeting legal and regulatory requirements and identifying sources of financing.
Topics Include:
- Basics of business ownership and planning
- Forms of business ownership and other regulatory issues
- Marketing and financing
- Business resources and training opportunities
- Determining if business ownership is for you
The Basics of Writing a Business Plan
When: July 26, 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Where: Small Business & Technology Development Center
Start your business planning, or ramp up your game plan, with this three-hour class on Basics of Writing a Business Plan. Designed for current and aspiring business owners, this class is perfect for entrepreneurs who need to create a business plan, but have little or no knowledge of how to get started. Learn the key elements of a basic plan and how it can be a useful management tool.
Participants will get tips and guidelines on writing styles and formats that produce polished, professional plans. Business counselors will facilitate class discussions to help participants consider individual situations, opportunities and additional valuable resources. Discussions are facilitated by business counselors who will help you ex-amine your individual situation, explore opportunities and discover new ideas. You’ll learn from other participants and have a host of valuable resources available to you.
2017 POWER of Diversity Breakfast
When: July 16, 7:30 a.mm. — 9:30 a.m.
Where: Muehlebach Hotel
The KC Chamber’s POWER of Diversity Breakfast is the region’s premier celebration of the metro area’s culturally diverse business community, recognizing diverse workforce members and corporations that have demonstrated a commitment to diversity and inclusion.
The Greater Kansas City Chamber values and promotes diversity because it enhances the business community and the economic development of the region through: increasing regional and global business development; expanded educational opportunities; and creating a robust community infrastructure that encourages all community members to make contributions using their special talents, expertise and knowledge. This year’s POWER of Diversity Celebration will feature the results of the first Regional Diversity and Inclusion Best Practices Survey. The KC Chamber will also present ACE Awards to mid-to-senior level diverse manager who are having a positive impact on their company’s profitability and increasing their diversity efforts in the workplace. New in 2017, a Supplier Diversity ACE Award will go to a mid-to-senior level diverse manager who is accomplishing dramatic growth in increasing supplier diversity.
Fiduciary duties for retirement plans
When: July 26, 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Where: UMKC SBTDC
This seminar will provide you with the information you need to stay in compliance with your defined benefit and defined contribution pension plans. It will focus on steps for avoiding the most common problems with the EBSA.
Workshop is co-sponsored and facilitated by staff from the US Department of Labor.
Why a Gigabit City Summit?
When: Aug. 1 – 3
Where: Plexpod Westport Commons
The population of colonial America at the time of the Revolutionary War was between 2 and 3 million people—roughly the size of metro Kansas City today. Outside of New York and Los Angeles, the rest of the top 100 US metro areas by population are in the range of a half million to less than 10 million people—six- and seven-figure populations. Those numbers are remarkably modest compared to the nine- and ten-figure populations that the world’s national governments are charged with managing and protecting.
It is hard to talk about the importance of cities these days without sounding trite or slipping into cliché. We’ve all heard that 70% of people will be living in cities by 2050, that cities draw the “creative class” and house “innovation hubs” that foster collision density and serendipitous connections. We lament the growing financial burden cities bear, while lauding local as the place where “things get done” and innovation is alive.
The dialogue around and exploration of these issues facing the city of today and the city of tomorrow is an important one. The invocation of the American revolution is not so much intended to recall conflict and tyranny, but the opportunity for fundamental definition of principles—of what a society believes, of what the people stand for, and of how they create the rules and institutions to realize a polis based on those beliefs.
Such is the opportunity for today’s cities, and it is called into stark relief by the digitization of infrastructure. Whether through fiber deployments to expand capacity for connectivity and data traffic or the application of sensors and real-time computing to the roads, buildings, pipes, and wires that enable modern life, cities (and the communities in between) are in the midst of a fundamental transformation. Unlike much of the consumer software revolution, these infrastructure projects deploy slowly and at great collective expense. The magnitude of the investment and the long infrastructure life cycles create an opportunity and an imperative—the opportunity for fundamental redesign and improvement and the imperative that they be well-considered and executed.
Over the past several years, the conversation around smart cities has evolved to include and even prioritize the role of actual human beings in the smart city loop. To those new to that conversation or unfamiliar with the history of “smart cities,” it may come as a surprise that such an evolution was even necessary. The idea that technology projects need to focus on meeting the needs of actual people ought to be obvious of course, but the challenges in making that a reality are more complex than might be imagined at first blush. These are precisely the challenges that our first gigabit cities have found themselves faced with—not simply how we build new infrastructure and deploy new technology, but how do we build the systems to apply those assets in the right way.
While this is an issue of national import, it’s one that cities and communities, with population sizes that operate at a human scale, networking down to schools and neighborhoods and homes and individuals, are uniquely able to address. This is the challenge that the Gigabit City Summit is designed to help address.
