It may be December but our heads are still reeling from Global Entrepreneurship Week. For one week in November (and sometimes longer) communities worldwide celebrated entrepreneurship.
We knew our community affiliates were an ambitious, talented bunch yet we were blown away by what they accomplished in just one week. From Twitter contests to summits and even grand openings, our affiliates ruled Global Entrepreneurship Week all across the nation.
No Entrepreneur Is an Island: GEW in Puerto Rico
While this definitely isn’t a ranking of accomplishments, we must mention our friends in Puerto Rico first. Colmena66 made its grand debut during Global Entrepreneurship Week. Our own Maria Meyers and Pola Firestone were in attendance along with 20 Resource Partners and community supporters at the launch event.
With 70 Resource Partners already by their side, entrepreneurs can now easily access a network of service providers and expertise through Resource Navigator while Colmena66 tracks entrepreneurs’ progress with Biz-Trakker, a client relationship management system built for entrepreneurial developers. Read the full scoop on how Colmena66 is identifying and bridging gaps in Puerto Rico’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Entrepreneurship in the Middle: GEW in Kansas City
KCSourceLink, located in in the bistate metro of Kansas City, is always a bunch of go-getters paving the way in the entrepreneurial community. Global Entrepreneurship Week was no exception. While leveraging the immense popularity of Global E-Week (more than 10,000 attendees come out for KC’s region-wide celebration), KCSourceLink hosted a Twitter photo contest to encourage engagement and social sharing using the hashtag #GEWKCgo.
Using the Event Campaign Calendar, KCSourceLink showcased more than 100 events to 10,000 plus participants. The calendar allows entrepreneurs and business owners to create their own itineraries that they can save and email to themselves while KCSourceLink builds its email list, tracks registrations and surveys attendees.
Another affiliate in the Kansas City metro, KC BizCare, teamed up with several vital Resource Partners in hosting three events with 46 total attendees. One event, Avoiding Top Tax Mistakes, was streamed online for entrepreneurs on the go in collaboration with the Internal Revenue Service and the Waldo Branch of the Kansas City, Missouri Public Library. This popular event alone had over 20 participants—online and in-person.
GEW in Kansas
NetWork Kansas hosted 20 events during GEW on their calendar. Through these events, they were able to make several one-on-one connections with business owners in the area. The highlight of the week: two entrepreneurs who previously received assistance through NetWork Kansas made announcements that the businesses are growing and successful.
Rural Entrepreneurship: GEW in Iowa
In Iowa, IASourceLink and the Iowa Rural Development Council (RDC) hosted the first Iowa Rural Development Summit. This unique event brings together 75 rural Iowa communities under 20,000 in population for a day-long strategic planning session as the first step in building a holistic vision for growth and prosperity.
The keynote and session facilitator was Don Macke, co-founder and director of entrepreneurial communities at the Center for Rural Entrepreneurship in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Entrepreneurship in the Southwest: GEW in ABQ
In Albuquerque, the Molino Project launched The Resource Navigator® alongside an impressive list of GEW events—all to build awareness of resources and connect entrepreneurs to the help they need.
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