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).

Last week I was invited to give a five minute talk at Steve Case's Rise of the Rest Summit in Washington, DC, about Clay & Milk, a venture I'm involved in to help tell the story on the Iowa startup and innovation community. The Rise of the Rest Summit brought together entrepreneurs, investors and ecosystem builders from the nearly 30 cities who haver participated in Case's bus tours over the past few years. This post is the narrative of that talk.

Today on the blog we feature our members at Insurance Social Media

We’re offering the chance to become a “Founding Member” of Gravitate Ames. Founding Members can join us by purchasing their first month’s membership today at 50% of our normal membership fees. We’ll hold that as a deposit now and you’ll be able to keep that rate for your first three months (yeah!).

Late last week our home for the past 2.5 years, the Midland Building, was sold to a developer that has exciting plans for the place. Those plans require a massive renovation of the 100+ year old structure and that’s an opportunity for us to evolve Gravitate into something stronger—in a new location.

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.