As a natural part of what I do, I’m constantly thinking about the role of a “community” in helping to support innovation and particularly those building startup companies. For most of the past year, however, I’ve also been thinking a lot about the role of startups in a broader community context as I’ve participated in the Greater Des Moines Leadership Institute’s Community Leadership Program.

Des Moines recently started working on the next phase of our community-wide vision plan called Capital Crossroads 2.0 and I was invited to participate in a few meetings with the consultants, yesterday, to help represent the view of the entrepreneurial community. It was a lot of fun—I'm never shy about sharing ideas and I kind of nerd out on things like this going back to my undergrad days in the Community and Regional Planning program at Iowa State. Several times in the discussion I found myself pointing out ideas from Paul Graham's recent post: How to make Pittsburgh a startup hub.

I've been a judge at a lot of pitch competitions and my favorites ones always involve students. Usually these are business students or others on campus who have found their way into the entrepreneurial programming offered by business schools. For the first time, last week, I had the chance to judge student pitches for an "Entrepreneurship in Agriculture" class at Iowa State and I didn't know what to expect. It was great! Despite growing up in Iowa (or maybe because I grew up in Iowa) I've never embraced agriculture but I've recently had my eyes opened to the possibilities in the ag-tech market for the Iowa startup community and I'm excited to see it develop.

A few weeks ago I participated in a panel discussion on technology and innovation at the Business Record (the story is here behind their paywall and the video is available for free on YouTube). Brian Waller, President of the Technology Association of Iowa, was also on the panel and he brought up the idea of an ongoing "global war for talent" that they are seeing through their members every day.

I published my first Power Rankings for the Iowa startup community this past week. As I mentioned earlier, the idea is to recognize the companies that are moving and shaking statewide at any given time and to help highlight their accomplishments on a regular basis.