A Letter For Utah Tech Week
A Community of Builders Gather
Starting Monday morning 7am I’ll be kicking off Utah Tech Week with a 5k around the 9th & 9th Whale.
What is Utah Tech Week you might ask? It’s a community driven, grass roots powered week of events that celebrates, connects, and educates the people on the tech business ecosystem here in Utah. This is only the third year that it’s taken place and it’s grown in that short of time into quite the spectacle. With funding now from the state and nearly all the Venture Capital firms in the state - the events throughout the week will be even more elevated.
Last year after attending several UTW events and all the festivities had ended the founders of UTW held an open forum for the community to come and give them feedback. I went to the forum and couldn’t believe how transparent and open to feedback they were. Those main organizers, Trent Mano and Scott Paul from Convoi Ventures and their right hand man/event super organizer Kyle Spencer, truly have a lens of making the week as great and empowering for their industry as possible.
That lens has made the week such a powerful force for every person and business in the tech ecosystem. From start-ups and first time founders to established tech powerhouses and government officials. I think that’s a pretty magical thing.
At the end of the open forum last year I asked Trent and Kyle if I could help with UTW next year and offered both my time and a connection to a start-up venture I am involved with, called River. They obliged and we’ve spent the last 6+ months ramping into this week. They took almost all of the public/community feedback from that forum to guide how they approached it this year. They feel a real obligation towards respecting what the community wants to see from UTW and to keep it as community/grass roots oriented as possible.
In fact they’ve always held to the promise that anyone can submit an event to be on the calendar that wants to. I love that.
Most people that know me wouldn’t describe me as a community organizer in any way. It’s not my strong suit, so this endeavor to help UTW has been outside my comfort zone but so rewarding. More than anything I’m learning from great people what it’s like to take on organizing something this big. Such a blessing to be able to absorb how they do it.
That’s really what this post is about today, how grateful and thankful I am to those people. To Trent and Kyle especially for their trust and focus and collaboration. But also to Raechel and Ryan (the founders of River) and their team for stepping up big time and building in-flight the platform to keep pace with such a dynamic and fluid event. I’m truly humbled by what they’ve been able to do and accomplish.
With love and deep appreciation,
-Andrew
P.S. I’m hosting and speaking at an event on Friday morning about Community Building with Raechel and Kyle and Clint Betts (CEO of Silicon Slopes) and would love for anyone reading this to come if they live in Utah.