BlackTech Week curating GEW conversation between founders with ‘true experiences’
November 8, 2018 | Elyssa Bezner
Bringing BlackTech Week to Kansas City for a day — and debuting the event series during Global Entrepreneurship Week — seemed like a natural fit, said Denayja Reese.
Photo courtesy of BlackTech Week
The Miami-based festival draws together black entrepreneur leaders who already are championing the startup hustle of their communities, she said. Powered by Code Fever, which was founded by Felecia Hatcher and Derick Pearson, BlackTech Week is in its fifth year visiting such cities as Philadelphia, New Orleans and Los Angeles.
It comes to Kansas City’s Robert J. Mohart Multipurpose Center on Nov. 16, the final day of GEW. Click here to register for or learn more about the KC event.
Panelists are expected to include Donald Hawkins, founder of CitySmart; Quest Moffat, founder of Project United Knowledge; and Adrienne Haynes, founder of SEED Law.
“[Felicia and Derek Hatcher are] big fans of Kansas City and they’re always telling me that part of what they love about going to Kansas City is that the community there — while it’s small and still growing — it’s incredibly strong and supportive,” said Reese, production and partnerships manager for Code Fever Miami. “We’re really excited to bring what we do into the fold and hopefully bring people together even more so than you already might be.”
Photo courtesy of BlackTech Week
Code Fever was founded in 2013 to provide youth and adult programming aimed at injecting innovation into black communities, she added.
“We really believe that the way that we can empower the black community is by supporting entrepreneurs, supporting black entrepreneurship especially, and now we’re kind of moving strategy of BlackTech Week, and really Code Fever, into affecting policy change,” said Reese. “So what we can do to work with government to really fully integrate some of these ideas and some of these different initiatives into government policy and really affect change on a larger scale.”
The Nov. 16 all-day event is sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the City of Kansas City, Missouri.
Adrienne Haynes
“I think technology businesses exist in all different facets of our communities, whether it’s in the entrepreneurial ecosystem that hangs out at Plexpod or the businesses that are being created east of Troost,” Haynes said. “I think Global Entrepreneurship Week is our opportunity as a community to really just highlight the innovation that’s happening all over, so I think BlackTech Week really just contributes to what GEW is about any way,”
The idea is to curate conversations where everyone is coming from similar places, but each have solved problems or went about their business from different vantage points, added Reese.
“All the people on stage will be speaking from a place of true experience from themselves and not just kind of interviewing somebody about the work that they’ve done,” she said. “So you’re going to be seeing people having conversations about what it means to build a coworking space from the ground up, who has done it, and who’s done it in different states, and talking to each other about the challenges they face with true camaraderie.”
Featured Business
2018 Startups to Watch
stats here
Related Posts on Startland News
Scared away from networking events? Anti-social introverts can turn to tech
Networking strength comes in numbers — even for anti-social introverts, Jeremy A. Smith told a crowd Tuesday at Global Entrepreneurship Week. “Anti-social people, myself included, hate events,” he said. But like all other entrepreneurs, such introverts still must build and maintain actionable professional networks from which they can request and receive value, Smith said. In-person networking…
Longfellow Farm coworking the soil amid KC’s urban food desert
In a city ripe with coworking office spaces, there’s a hunger for similar environments outdoors, Ami Freeberg said. As with maintaining individual workplaces, traditional urban farming also can be isolating and expensive, the Longfellow Farm manager said. By working together, however, the collaborative process allows for shared resources, greater human expertise and, of course, more…
Procrastinating? Eat the frog, don’t chase the squirrels
On the metal wall in front of my desk, I’ve magnetically fastened a famous recommendation from Mark Twain. “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day,” the humorist from Missouri wrote. Though it can become an aspiration rather than a rule,…
KCultivator Q&A: ‘Fashionpreneur’ Jordan Williams on starting with nothing but his smile
Editor’s note: KCultivators is a lighthearted profile series to highlight people who are meaningfully enriching Kansas City’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Check out our features on Plexpod founder Gerald Smith, innovation coach Diana Kander, Victor & Penny’s Erin McGrane, SEED Law’s Adrienne Haynes, Code Koalas’ Robert Manigold, Prep-KC CEO Susan Wally and community builder Donald Carter. Jordan…