News

KCPS superintendent to city struggling with violence: When do we all come together?

By Tommy Felts / November 17, 2017

It’s inexcusable for Kansas City to simply accept 130 murders before it’s even December, Mark Bedell said. “Who do you think are committing these crimes?” Bedell, superintendent of Kansas City Public Schools, asked a crowd gathered Thursday for the Lean Lab’s Launch[ED) Day. “Probably people who have been victims of schools that have failed them…

Kauffman Foundation rolls out $1.2M microlending program to help underserved entrepreneurs

By Tommy Felts / November 16, 2017

Amid a swarm of 160 events as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation announced a new microlending program to spur investment in underserved entrepreneurs. In partnership with four microfinance lenders, the foundation issued a series of grants totaling $1.2 million that a will change the way the nonprofit microlenders capitalize their…

Scared away from networking events? Anti-social introverts can turn to tech

By Tommy Felts / November 15, 2017

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

By Tommy Felts / November 15, 2017

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

By Tommy Felts / November 14, 2017

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,…