Tech Groups in Kansas City
Kansas City is home to a surprising large number of technology groups. There is probably a social law that states individuals with similar interests will eventually concentrate. Through the four years I have lived in Kansas City, I have come to recognize three social categories: general user groups, institutional business organizations and large events. In this blog post, I will introduce the organizations and events I recommend to get a taste of the culture in Kansas City.
Joining a professional or trade organization is the simplest and easiest way to get involved. There is a user group for every programming language available as well as groups based on professional job title. I’m a frequent participant of the Kansas City Ruby Users group as well as a connector to several other organizations such as Social Media Club of Kansas City, the Cowtown Computer Congress, AIGA-the professional association for design and a few others. A list of groups I have visited and/or participated will be listed below.
Did you know Kansas City is home to one of the world’s leading organization for entrepreneurship, the Kauffman Foundation. There are also many other established resources for entrepreneurship such as the Entrepreneur of Johnson County, KC Source Link, The Chamber and KTEC. These groups are what I consider as institutional business organizations, they indirectly relate to technology. StartKC and OfficePort are entities that recently came into existence.
Larger events hold a special interest of mine, mainly because I am an organizer of a few events. In the past two years this category covers BarCamp, Highlight Midwest, Pre Dev Camp, Startup Weekend, Coders 4 Charity and a regional Ruby conference that my friends and I are organizing. This summer Kansas City will be hosting a Designer/Developer conference and a Kansas City Developer Day. I’m sure there are a few more events that I am unaware of.
Each social category attracts a different individuals. So don’t let one meeting or event spoil your desire to meet others and participate in the community.
Now here is a list of groups I’m connected to organized by memory:
- SMCKC – Social Media Club of Kansas City
- KCRUG – Kansas City Ruby Users Group
- KCJava – Kansas City Java Users Group
- DotNext – Meetup Group for Tech
- KCDOTNet – Kansas City .Net User Group
- Mobile Mondays – Mobile Discussion Group
- Adobe Design Core – Adobe Design Products User Group
- Adobe Film Core – Adobe File Products User Group
- Adobe Web Core – Adobe Web Product User Group
- Adobe Dev Core – Adobe RIA Product User Group
- AgileKC — User Group for Agile Software Methodology and Techniques.
- IFC – Independent Filmmaker’s Coalition of Kansas City
- AIGA – Association for Design
- Jelly – Group for Co-Working
- CCCKC – Cowtown Computer Congress of Kansas City [Hackerspace]
- MakeKC – User group of DIY and Builders
- KC/IABC – Kansas City International Association of Business Communicators
… and lets just stop there
I’m personally involved with a number of weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly events. I don’t have specific list of roles for involvement, but just know for now involvement opportunities are available. I’m going to save it for another blog post tomorrow.
Here is a list of events I had involvement with and events I’m currently involved in.
- Ruby Midwest
- Startup Weekend KC [note there talks for another event in 2010]
- Pecha Kucha Night
- Social Media Club of Kansas City regular events
- CCCKC
- Pre Dev Camp
- BarCamp
Lets leave it at that. Please comment if there is an organization you have questions about and I will try my best to answer it.
Social Media Club Awareness Chair Candidate
The month of May will mark the date that I have been in Kansas City for four years. The last three of those years, I have been actively raise awareness of creative tech professionals in the city of Kansas City through annual events. Since DotNext in 2007, I work with my fellow colleagues and friends to organize events such as Startup Weekend, BarCamp and StartupKC Drinks.
For all the events that I have thrown, I still feel there are many individuals outside of our social networks who would be interested in Social Media Club and all the other interest groups Kansas City has to offer. Events are one of the best ways to raise awareness, but the single most helpful thing We call can do is talk about to others.
If you have an event that you want to see happen, lets talk about it. I’m always reachable by email, Twitter and phone. I’m sure we can make it happen. Planning events and spreading the word is what I love to do.
For those who are not aware of what Kansas City has to offer, I encourage you to join in and voice your thoughts and desires. Kansas City is home to many groups, from hackers actively building hardware in the CCCKC caves, to entrepreneurs hashing their ideas during Startup Weekend, or artists speaking about their latest projects in 6 minutes at Pecha Kucha. If you have an interest, there is another person in Kansas City who is interested in the same.
If you are a member of the Social Media Club of Kansas City, please vote for me.
http://socialmediaclubkc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/voting-is-now-open-for-the
Reaching the Breaking Point
If you don’t know, I have been out of the country for a good 5 months of my life. During that time I worked a crazy amount of hours that generated a total sum of 625 hours for the first quarter. That means many hours of personal time was spent as an employee. After working so many hours, I have come to the realization that I can do a whole lot more than just programing in an obscure language. With my two year mark coming up and my experiences it will make the decision to move on a different career easy.
Since I have been back in the States, I feel I am growing more into myself. These past few weeks a boat load of money was spent on electronic parts and books. I am happy and proud to say that I am a geek, a creative geek who needs to express himself through projects and art work. My anger is constantly bottled up that without an outlet, my emotions are so depressing.
Well, that is just a sort brief on my life so far. Tomorrow I will be working in the normal office. Lets see what this weekend brings–who has meetings on Saturdays?
Techcocktail… hmm hmm goose beer
Lunch with my team’s VP when rather well. We discuss my career goals and aspirations. After the conversation he arranged a lunch meeting between myself and another manager of his–which also when rather well. Looking back, I still do not know what I what out of a career. I can discuss about my dreams all I want, but at the end of the day the thing that matters the most is my actions. And so far my actions has been mediocre.
The single thing that amazes me the most is luck. Seriously luck. Luck because of the random decisions that has given me opportunity. For example… Nov 15th, Thursday morning, I hopped on an airplane and was magically transported to Chicago for a two day trip. The overall goal was to attend a cocktail event (google tech cocktail) and hopefully gather information for creating a cocktail event in KC for techies too.
So it was 6:30 and there I was with my friend Dan, who by the way is also from KC, we were the probably the only few participants that were from out of town. And gosh, I have to tell you it was an exciting experience. Going up to random people and asking them the simple question of “What do you do for a living?” Then from that simple question an array of answers. Answers ranging from small oohh and ahhs to hey I know someone who is looking for a job. Seriously, I met this girl Caroline who organizes PR events for Hollywood clients. She started as a volunteer writing down name tags, etc but eventually through that contact was given a job as an event planner. Simply Amazing.
So to sum up my experience. Learn how to use Linkedin to track and visualize your network. Have a stack of business cards on hand. Not only are they good for handing out your contact info to other people, they are your raffle ticket to free stuff.
Moving on
Just bought airplane tickets to Chicago for the Tech Cocktail event coming up in November. I am so excited at the opportunity to other high-energy entrepreneurs, VCs, etc. The sad part is I do not believe I have anything to offer so I will need to have some great questions ready to keep the conversations going.
In other news, at work I have a technical mentor set up and tomorrow I will be having lunch with my team’s executive–oh boy this will be interesting. The technical mentor will help out tremendously. From what we have discussed so far, I can’t help that my current skills and wants are more gear towards prototyping and development rather than the small crappy development I am doing now. Money still rules the day, but I really hate dealing with money, such as figuring rates and charges–I hate that.
My life outside of work has been composed of halo3, programing and board games. Life is so much better when play is involved and working on my own projects feel so good and exciting again. Seriously, it sounds strange to programing when I programing so much during the day, programing for yourself has a different meaning…
Alright time to go to work.
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