Interviews with Chuck Hoffman, Matt Patane, Jake Kerber, Josh Krakauer, Aristotle Loumis, Garrett Carty and Matthew Smith live from the Gravitate Grand Opening Celebration.

Interviews with Shawn Harrington, Zach Kreger, Spencer Herzberg, Ben Milne, Chris Burns, Austin Mac Nab, Jay Olsen and Brian Sauer live from the Gravitate Grand Opening Celebration.

Interviews with Ben McDougal, Matt McKinney, Brad Dwyer, Emma Peterson,  Jay Byers, Clyde Evans, Debi Durham, Don Frazer, Jenice Whisenand, Justin Wise and Larry Anderson live from the Gravitate Grand Opening Celebration.

Meet Ben McDougal, the Marketing Director at Drake Homes. Connect with this Des Moines-resident on Twitter or run into him at dmStartupDrinks, on the golf course, experiencing an EDM event or out and about in downtown Des Moines.

By my rough count, we've had 40 of these meetups in Des Moines since. We changed venues a few times, attendance dipped and spiked and the other two initial organizers stepped away for various reasons. At the end of last year, I'd run out of energy for the event. It had become a recurring task rather than something that I was looking forward to each month. It wasn't growing and I wasn't interested in figuring out how to change that. I realized that I needed to hand over the reins.