Teaching

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 into a revamped program that would be named the Business Booster Series. That would ultimately not work for several reasons, but I have led some sessions, and helped with the lineup each time.

The problem of the network was exacerbated when I realized how detrimental the disconnectedness was to progress. I met and got to know a huge number of people through that event, but as the months progressed, I saw people move to larger cities at a shockingly high rate. About 20% of my network every month. I knew there had to be something that could be done.

I looked at Wichita like a storage tank. People are coming in, people are leaving, and in between people are colliding - creating the network of people. I can’t stop people from leaving. I’m not in travel & tourism, so getting people to move here seems unlikely. But I can turn more of the regular people into tech people.

Much more happened in between, but finally I sent out a tweet.

I’m looking for beta students for an in-person code school. Interested? Apply here: http://t.co/gtOISh0OgL

— Kenton Hansen (@kentonh) June 10, 2014

As of this writing, there are 70 people on the waiting list. There are 12 who started the beta classes. I am excited for the future.