Video courtesy of Chris Bernard. Recorded Saturday, Nov. 12.
Over lunch on Saturday at Startup Weekend Kansas City, Kansas City, Kan. Mayor Joe Reardon and Kansas City, Mo. Mayor Sly James stopped to meet some of the participants, deliver remarks on entrepreneurship, innovation and Google Fiber in Kansas City as well as open themselves up to a 20-minute Q&A. We've captured their 10-minute remarks on video (above) and have a one-on-one interview with them coming later this week.
In their talk, they mentioned the Bi-State Innovation Team, an effort established to leverage Google's pending fiber network to create business opportunities that will benefit the entire Kansas City metro area. You can learn more about the effort in our post, "Kansas City mayors form Innovation Team to capitalize on Google Fiber."
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See our coverage of Google Fiber: "Google Fiber on Silicon Prairie News."
A few sound bites
Mayor Reardon:
- "The Google Fiber project has really allowed us as a region to start to talk about how we take steps forward in what I think is really the future of our economy."
- "Perhaps something that's going on this weekend will lead to the next Cerner for the Kansas City region, which would be phenomenal."
Mayor James:
- "Entrepreneurs start small in a lot of instances but they are the backbone of this city and this region – Block, DST … Hallmark, a couple of guys that wanted to have a little greeting card company."
- "The really good news is this city has just this tone and texture and feel right now of excitement because of people all younger than [Mayor Reardon] sitting here now working to do something different and create more business."
