I was recently at a meeting with some startup community builder friends and the idea came up that entrepreneurial ecosystems can really benefit from having a community "flag" to rally around and get all the elements—people, companies, investors, chambers, etc.—moving in the same direction.

The Kauffman Foundation held their first ever ESHIP Summit last week in Kansas City, bringing together about 400 people from all over the world who had some familiarity with the term "entrepreneurial ecosystem". The idea was to get all these folks in one large room and work through some of the foundational elements of what is becoming a burgeoning industry: intentionally working to grow your community's ecosystem. Or as I usually refer to it "startup community building".

I said last time that this week would be busy and that has certainly been the case. 

I had a great time on Thursday at the Technology Association of Iowa's Prometheus Awards event in Des Moines. This was TAI's 12th annual iteration of the event and I'm pretty sure that I've been to half of them. I'm always impressed by how well they're produced and they seem to get better every year.

I know that sometimes industry awards get a bum rap as being too self-congratulatory—I understand where that comes from—but I really like the Prometheus Awards for three reasons.
 

I'm excited to share that Iowa will once again be well represented on Paul Singh's North American Tech Tour. We had Paul and Dana in Des Moines for a few days last July—most likely the hottest days of the summer a/k/a the time I learned the term "heat dome"—filled with presentations, investor pitches, a slew of office hour meetings and day trips to both Cedar Rapids and Ames (here's the full recap).

One of my favorite things to do is to get out of Des Moines and visit other cities to see how their startup communities work, how they've implemented things like coworking and to build relationships with the people who make it all function. The only problem is that I rarely make the time to do it.Last Thursday, however, I packed up the Honda and drove west across the Missouri River.