Much respect to the hard work put in by our friends on the eastern side of the state this week in dealing with #Flood2016 preparations. As of this morning, it looks like the Cedar Rapids community did what needed to be done to avoid another disaster like the 2008 flood and that is such a relief (unfortunately, some smaller communities didn't fare as well).

The first Startup Weekend event in Iowa was held in Des Moines in July 2009 (see my post here). Organized by Shane Reiser and held at Impromptu Studio, it attracted 30 participants who created four companies throughout the three day event. 6+ years later, our community staged, supported and executed simultaneous events for the first time ever in four cities across the state last weekend.

At Iowa BIG, we've pushed the envelope of re-inventing education so far and so fast that we're seeing some pushback. This is actually a good sign, as we as a State need to have a serious discussion about the need to change education more rapidly than what we're seeing. One area where we find pushback from peers in the United States is in regards to the concept of academic "rigor."

Since identifying Iowa expats is one of the primary purposes of this blog, I thought I'd start with a the following list: "Ten Iowa expats in tech you should know".