It was May 2014, and I was within a week of kicking off my first Startup Weekend. I had no idea how it was going to go. but in the three months leading up to that point, I had learned a huge amount about my city and the state of the tech and entrepreneurial community. Primarily:

1. Developers were not well connected. Most of the people who made tech were in one company or had a network that was two or three people deep.
2. There was no unified message or medium. There was a great deal of excitement, but not enough follow-through.

So a week before my first big public event, I decided that my next goal would be to create a better community for tech people, and to do that we needed more developers. I was talking with Wendy Veatch from the Wichita State Center for Entrepreneurship, and I told her that I wanted to teach people how to code. She thought it was great and wanted to incorporate it...

When I first read about Kansas Senate Bill 304, I felt shame. As the morning has turned to night, my feelings have turned to anger. My own Senator, Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, is a member of the sponsoring and introductory group, the Committee on Commerce. Another Wichita senator, Sen. Susan Wagle, is the vice-chair.
Summarizing the bill, municipalities will be prohibited from acting to entice companies into technological infrastructure enhancements. You know, like Kansas City did with Google Fiber. The franchise model that power and cable providers use to gain monopolies will be the law of the land, literally.

This can not stand. I am tired of fighting to change the image of our state, only to have our government, who claim to fight for further economic development, propose legislation, binding the hands of those who would bring faster infrastructure and more innovation.
Senators, find...

That’s what people in more populated areas call Kansas. Kansas’ borders were determined by imaginary lines that divide the earth, making, with the exception of the “tooth-marked” corner, our borders square. And many of the more populated areas of the country think the same of the people, if they give them a thought at all.

Today is Kansas Day. 153 years ago, Kansas became a state. The Historian of Wichita and owner of the Donut Whole, Michael Carmody, posted something on Facebook that I felt deserved more attention.

Happy Kansas Day!

For all its faults, and despite the cartoonish clichés heaped upon it by those who do not appreciate it, this steadfast state was forged in blood on principles of freedom as neighboring territories waged pro-slavery terrorist campaigns against its settlers, and (current leadership excepted) has for most of the past 153 years maintained a record of...

I love Reddit. I hate Reddit.
It is the arm pit of the internet. It has the most uplifting moments that Humanity might ever experience. Some Posts and Replies catch my attention immediately, and some have to percolate for a day or two. This is a story of the later case. If you don’t already, I suggest that you quit lurking, join Reddit, and subscribe to r/bestofreddit. That is where the cream often rises.

There are three of you. Every second that passes adds to the experience of Past You. Every second Present You has new opportunities, and with each tick Future You is steam rolling down our brain’s interpretation of “time.” You know this. This has been true since you had the cognitive ability to cry get milk. I knew it, too. I had been joking with someone about finding a nail in the wall exactly where I wanted to hang something.

“Thanks, Past Kenton. What a great guy.”

The thing that...