Gigabit fiber is running at Groover Labs

Our hero of the hour, an IdeaTek installer

IdeaTek, a Buhler company, recently installed our Gigabit fiber, which gives Groover Labs its own dedicated internet access.

Offering gigabit fiber is a key benefit for our coworking space — just part of our 42,000 square-foot collaboration hub at Third and St. Francis.

Our IT manager, Paul Maseberg, said gigabit fiber provides:

• Improved support for multiple users and devices

• Video conferencing

• Fast data transfers and multimedia uploads and downloads

Co-founder Curt Gridley noted that the gigabit fiber at Groover Labs is expandable.

Reminder: Startup Grind Wichita's Pitch Battle is Dec. 12

We're playing host to Startup Grind Wichita's Pitch Battle and holiday party from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Dec. 12.

Tickets are available here.

Our next hotseat open house is Dec. 13

Our first hotseat open house was a success, and we're planning another one from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday, Dec. 13.

Bring your laptop, give a hotseat a trial run and enjoy our special blend of Local Roasters coffee as well as free donuts.

Hotseats are available in the front part of our building and have a coffeeshop vibe. The white oak desks were locally made by Patrick Walsh of Walsh Oak and Iron, and space at them is available on a first-come, first-served basis. 

While you're here, feel free to ask a staff member for a tour of the other parts of our building, including our 14,000-square-foot makerspace and 275-seat event hall. 

We're eager to answer any questions you may have about how we are fueling collaboration and product development in Wichita.

Meet Parker McConachie

What does Parker do at Groover Labs? Parker is our community development manager. His job is to bring new members on board, anticipate their needs and ensure Groover Labs fosters an environment of collaboration. 

What's his background? Parker has a varied background in sales, nonprofit work, technology, financial services and teaching at the college level. "In one way or another, I pull from experiences at each one of those jobs for my job at Groover Labs," he said. A lifelong learner, a master's degree in English wasn't enough to satiate Parker's desire for knowledge. He earned an MBA as well.

But who is he, really? Parker is an adventurer. He climbs, enjoys open-water swimming and does hot yoga on the regular. After spending several years cooped up in a library studying, he longed for the way he'd felt as a child at camp. So he sought out adventure sports as an adult. He's also an adventurer in other ways. Parker read about Groover Labs in a story by The Wichita Eagle's Carrie Rengers and sent an email to our co-founders, not sure if he'd have a chance at piquing their interest. His eager attitude paid off. "When I interviewed for the job, there was no job description and no title. I think Curt and Tracy are caretakers of the vision, and I think of myself as a caretaker of the culture," he said.
 
What else should you know about Parker? Although he no longer teaches English at Wichita State University, Parker is always teaching. He loves talking about the origin of words, world history and poetry. He's been in 21 weddings, not including his own. 
 
What's his favorite dictionary? American Heritage. No other dictionary will do for Parker. 

We have a lot on tap this month

We have a lot on tap this month.

Greetings, friends.

Groover Labs is heading into the holidays with several events and gearing up to fully open after the first of the year. Keep updated with our weekly newsletters and social channels. 

It's your turn in the hotseat 

If you've been curious about our coworking space, stop by between 7:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. Thursday, Dec. 5, for our hotseat open house at 334 N. St. Francis. 

Register and we'll set you up with a hotseat for a few hours so you can get a feel for our community. We'll provide coffee and snacks.

If you want a tour of the building, please let a member of our staff know and they'll be happy to walk you through our 42,000-square-foot space. This is a first-come, first-served offer, so come early to beat the crowd.

Keep an eye out for more hotseat popup opportunities throughout the remainder of the year.

First Friday at WSU ShiftSpace

WSU ShiftSpace, the student-operated art gallery that makes its home at Groover Labs, will be open from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on First Friday, Dec. 6, for its third annual group exhibition, "Future Forward," featuring work by area high school students.
 
As a special treat, Groover Labs has invited up-and-coming musician Evann McIntosh to play in our lobby.

Evann recently dropped her first album, "MOJO," and we're thrilled to share her neo-soul music with you. You'd never guess that she's a 15-year-old student at Derby High School.

Ready for battle: Startup Grind Wichita

We're playing host to Startup Grind Wichita's Pitch Battle and holiday party from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Dec. 12.

Groover Labs' mission is to fuel collaboration and product development, so this event is a perfect fit for our space. Tickets are available here. 

Five selected startups will pitch in front of a panel of judges. The judges are:

• Jason Toevs | Co-Founder/CTO | QuiCC

• Maggie Koops | Operations Manager | Groover Labs

• Gary Oborny | Chairman/CEO | Occidental Management, Inc.

• Josh Oeding | President/CEO | e2e Accelerator

• Becky Tuttle | Council Member | City of Wichita

Each startup will present for the chance to win $500 and a guaranteed 50% subsidy toward their exhibition space at the Startup Grind Global 2020 in San Francisco.

Meet Jeremiah Burian

What does Jeremiah do at Groover Labs? Jeremiah is our metal shop lead. That means he supervises the metal shop, teaches classes and acts as a mentor to members of Groover Labs. 

What's his background? He graduated in 2005 from the master welding program at Tulsa Welding School. Jeremiah is a Wichita native. He was the metal shop lead and served on the board at MakeICT.

But who is he, really? Jeremiah is a teacher at heart. "I'm here to help everyone learn, and everyone learns differently," he said. "I’ve taught a lot of people who thought they wouldn’t be able to do this. I taught someone who was 79 years old how to TIG weld." He recommends that anyone interested in welding as a career take classes at Groover Labs first to make sure "this is something you want to do."
 
What else should you know about Jeremiah?: He co-owns Immortal Metal with our IT manager, Paul Maseberg. Immortal Metal makes and sells home decor, metal sculptures and repurposed items from scrap metal. It also offers custom welding. 

One of Jeremiah's favorite sayings: "I don't cry. Sparks fly from my eyes."

Are you ready to be in the hotseat?

Greetings again from Groover Labs!

We hope you’ve been enjoying our newsletters. For the next few weeks, we’ll continue to use them to provide updates about what’s happening inside Groover Labs as well as any other important information. 

In the future, we’ll use the newsletter as a way to share information about events at Groover Labs. If we have a presentation scheduled in our event venue, we’ll post dates, times and sign-up information. When we have lunchtime talks, we’ll share details about the day and topic. If we arrange for a food truck during lunch in the courtyard, we’ll let you know. And, of course, we’ll make all of this information available on our website too.

Digital Wichita

Earlier this week, Parker McConachie, our community development manager, spoke at Digital Wichita’s and the Wichita Chapter of the American Marketing Association’s event “Adventures in Social Media Marketing: Practical Strategies in an Age of Disruption.” 

During the event, he announced that Groover Labs will host Wichita’s Social Media Day on June 10, 2020. #SMDayICT is an annual celebration that recognizes the way social media and technology impact the world. Attendees will file into Groover Labs for an all-day conference with dynamic speakers who will address topics related to social media, marketing and content creation. We’re excited to work with Digital Wichita and the AMA Wichita Chapter!

Hotseats

In other news, we heard from Patrick Walsh of Oak and Iron that we can expect the first delivery of hotseat furniture early next week. As a quick reminder, hotseats at Groover Labs are first-come, first-served seats located just west of our entryway. Think of hotseats very much like a coffee shop environment but with Gigabit fiber and without interruption by friends having that long-delayed (and loud) chat at the next table over. We will offer three ways to access a hotseat: by the month, by the day and in packages of day passes.

Thank You

We want to take a moment to wish everyone a happy holiday. We’re grateful to all of our friends in the Wichita community and beyond who have supported our mission. To those of you we’ve leaned on for expertise, to those of you we’ve asked incessantly for advice, to those of you who have volunteered your time — THANK YOU. 

These are exciting times for Groover Labs! We’re testing our systems, moving in our hotseats, building out our website and refining our member onboarding processes. Before you know it, we’ll be ready for business. 

The Groover Labs Team

Join us on a tour of Groover Labs

Greetings to our fellow makers and doers.

Carrie Rengers and Jaime Green of The Wichita Eagle toured Groover Labs recently, and we wanted to share the story and video they made. 

Total coincidence: Carrie posted the photo on www.kansas.com on the first anniversary of the day co-founders Curt Gridley and Tracy Hoover closed on the former Printing Inc. building at Third and St. Francis in Wichita. 

Although several organizations have met in our 275-person event space and people have poured in for First Fridays at WSU ShiftSpace, the student-operated art gallery that is situated within our 42,000 square feet, Carrie and Jaime's story and video is the first public look at the entirety of Groover Labs.

Join us on the tour at https://www.kansas.com/news/business/biz-columns-blogs/carrie-rengers/article236994409.html.

Here’s the full story:

The new Groover Labs won’t officially open until the new year, but owners Tracy Hoover and Curt Gridley have started showing off their downtown space through a few events, and they’ve opened the doors to the inaugural users of the $5 million technology hub.

The former Printing Inc. building at 334 N. St. Francis has a gallery, event space, a variety of rental spaces, a studio and a maker’s space, which Gridley calls a first for Wichita.

“There’s no place that has all these pieces in one building.”

Hoover says there are a lot of pockets of activity around Wichita with start-up and technology companies, but she says there wasn’t an easy way to bring them all together. That’s what Groover Labs is designed to do.

“And from that greater things will grow,” Hoover says.

The nonprofit is named for a combination of the names Gridley and Hoover.

The two were involved in a number of different start-ups in Boston, which is where they met and married.

They sold one — Amber Wave Systems, which made ethernet switches — for $50 million.

They’ve been involved with philanthropy since then and also became empty-nesters, which left them with even more time.

Gridley says heading to the beach was an option, “But we’re not really beach kind of people.”

Also, the two wanted to return to their technology and start-up roots while also giving back.

“Here’s a chance to really kind of make a difference in Wichita,” Gridley says they decided.

With the help of Hutton, they transformed the former Printing Inc. building — a 1920s space that grew through the 1980s with additions — from a dark and in some areas dirty labyrinth of rooms into a 42,000-square-foot series of bright, open spaces.

“Like a blank piece of paper, we find that open space leads to creativity and people working together,” Gridley says.

They also incorporated some nods to the building’s history.

Howerton & White proposed using pops of cyan, magenta, yellow and black — the traditional colors used in printing — throughout the building. Gridley and Hoover loved the tie-in. The accents appear in several areas on an otherwise mostly black-and-white canvas.

Just off of a new, sunny entryway on the east side of the building — the opposite side from Printing Inc.’s former entrance — is the Wichita State University ShiftSpace student art gallery. It’s the only long-term tenant at Groover Labs.

Next to that is an event space for up to 275 people and an outside courtyard that events can spill into. There’s a gate that will open to space for food trucks.

In the middle of the building is a variety of rentable space, from hot seats, dedicated desks and offices to conference rooms. Everything is available on a month-to-month lease. Prices will soon be posted at grooverlabs.org.

There’s some original brick and paint around the perimeter of the co-working space, and the building’s barrel roof now has some skylights, too.

“We’ve tried to keep a mix of the old and new,” Gridley says. “We think that’s really cool.”

Hoover says she’s especially excited about a variety of tables that Patrick Walsh of Walsh Oak and Iron has made for the spaces.

In addition to some standard things that renters won’t have to worry about taking care of, such as printers, copiers, a kitchenette and coffee, there will be representatives from legal and accounting firms at least one day a week for lunchtime talks. The idea is to help new companies in their early stages.

Gridley says the focus is on start-ups with just a few employees. Firms with about seven or more people are probably ready to move beyond Groover Labs, he says.

“That creates a pathway of companies starting and growing in the downtown area.”

Next to the co-working space is a 14,000-square-foot maker lab.

It includes studio rental space, a wood shop, a metal shop, an electronics lab and a fab lab with laser cutters and 3-D printers. There also will be equipment for people to assemble small printed circuit boards, which will allow them to take a design from a computer and send it to a machine to produce it.

Gridley and Hoover say they’d love for people to start companies around what they create and then have those products manufactured in Wichita.

They say they don’t want other companies to feel like they’re competing, but they do hope the building will be 65 to 70 percent occupied by late 2020 so it can be self sustaining.

There are four full-time staff members including Hoover and Gridley, and there are four part-time consultants.

In addition to being just north of Wave and the new Cocoa Dolce headquarters along with restaurants such as Nortons Brewing and Bite Me BBQ, Gridley and Hoover say they like that their property is in an Opportunity Zone and think that’s an added benefit to potential users.

“Plus, it’s two blocks away from where we live,” Gridley says.

He says he and his wife took it as a sign to invest in the building.

Gridley says they realized, “If we’re willing to invest significantly in the building, we could have something that’s really great.”

We'll have more news for you soon. 

— The Team at Groover Labs

Grab a cup of coffee and read our first newsletter

Happy Monday, friends.

We’re thrilled that you’re interested in Groover Labs, our region’s newest makerspace, coworking center and event hall. Thank you for signing up for more information about us.

We wanted to let you know what we’ve been up to at 334 N. St. Francis. Even though we haven’t fully opened yet, we’ve certainly been busy. What does opening a 42,000-square-foot space such as Groover Labs look like?

It looks like spending sunny Saturdays stringing four miles of CAT6 Ethernet cable, assembling 502 chairs after lunch, building a stage in an afternoon and staying up till 11 p.m. making 24 awards boxes for the 17th Annual Tallgrass Film Festival. It's road-tripping to Kansas City three times to load (and then unload) furniture, cabinetry and 75-inch TVs from IKEA. It's walking the building, punch list in hand, with Hutton, our design build partner. 

The Ulrich Museum of Art’s Salon Circle kicked off its season, Futurists: Changing the Present, Sept. 29 in our makerspace. FlagshipKansas.Tech, a statewide technology initiative we support, christened our event hall Oct. 16 with its “Scaling Up Tech” networking program.

Students from Wichita State University’s Masters of Innovation Design program participated in design swarms Oct. 24 led by Surya Vanka, a former director of user experience at Microsoft. WSU ShiftSpace, the student-operated gallery at Wichita State University, has moved into our building and is already sharing amazing work with the Wichita community.

The mission of our nonprofit is to fuel collaboration and product development. We’re eager to ramp up Wichita’s startup culture by anchoring a community where people with big ideas can work side-by-side — from concept to market. Entrepreneurship is the heart of Groover Labs. 

We closed on the former Printing Inc. building in November 2018. Hutton began our 42,000-square-foot design build project in April. We’re investing more than $5 million in Groover Labs, a continuation of our philanthropy through the Gridley Family Foundation. 

After hearing about the Printing Inc. location, we purposefully chose Third and St. Francis, situated in an Opportunity Zone, as the home for Groover Labs. So much is happening in this part of Wichita’s Old Town, and we wanted to be part of it.

This was our first construction project of this size, and every day brought new decisions, challenges and discoveries — such as the old barrel ceiling you see below that had been covered by drywall. We opened up the beautiful ceiling to pay tribute to the building’s history and installed skylights as a major design feature of our coworking space. Throughout this project, we've worked with local vendors as much as possible — such as Walsh Oak and Iron, the company that handmade our board and conference room tables of gorgeous white oak.

Ultimately, however, we haven’t invested in a building.

We’ve invested in our community — and you.

When you join Groover Labs, you’ll find yourself surrounded by other people with big ideas. We’re confident that our vibrant culture will inspire your work. We envision our members finding ways to collaborate together for greater success. 

Our board rooms, conference rooms and 275-person event space are all available for booking. If you have an event coming up soon, please reach out to us to see if Groover Labs would be a good fit for it.

Keep updated by visiting our website. We’re on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. 

Lastly, we're expanding our staff! We're seeking a community associate to manage our front lobby. Successful applicants will be punctual, professional, proactive and thorough — a quick-learning self-starter who works well in a fast-paced environment and enjoys interacting with people. You'll need basic computer skills and the ability to lift 50 pounds. Interested or know someone who fits the bill? Email info@grooverlabs.org. 

Thank you again for your interest in Groover Labs, and we’ll be in touch soon when we begin accepting members. 

Cheers,
Co-Founders Curt Gridley and Tracy Hoover
 

Q and A with our co-founders in the Wichita Business Journal

By Shelby Reynolds, Wichita Business Journal

Since closing on the former Printing Inc. building last November, Tracy Hoover and Curt Gridley have immersed themselves in a plan to create a collaborative makerspace in downtown Wichita.

The couple has invested $5 million in a nonprofit called Groover Labs — a combination of their last names — and they're right in the action. 

Hoover and Gridley are in the space every day, monitoring construction progress as crews build office spaces, five maker labs and a 275-person event space. Hutton Construction is contracted for the design-build project. 

Hoover and Gridley celebrated their 27th wedding anniversary last week by shopping for furniture at IKEA for the future Groover Labs space, projected to open next month. It's not unusual for them to roll up their sleeves to load and unload furniture, then actually put it together.

 And the night before their interview with the WBJ, Hoover and Gridley were up till 11 p.m. putting together award boxes for the Tallgrass Film Festival happening later in the week.

Hoover, a software engineer, and Gridley, a software and hardware engineer, have grand plans for the 42,000 square-foot building near Third Street and St. Francis, and what it could mean for Wichita's manufacturing industry. The two sat down with the WBJ — in between their busy schedules — to talk about their vision for the space.

For someone who's not familiar, how would you describe the concept for Groover Labs? 

Gridley: It can be different things for different people, but for us we're sort of trying to create a small version of what's happening in general in Silicon Valley or Boston — a tech center startup hub like that. We found various pieces of some of those things in Wichita, but there was no place where they were close-enough together where they could feed off of each other, and so we were excited about the opportunity to create a facility that had all these various pieces — co-working, event space, gallery space, maker space — all in one building so that all the various people could interact and collaborate.

Hoover: And then there's our emphasis on product development. Wichita has a lot of manufacturing capacity and a lot of manufacturing expertise, but it's focused around the aviation industry and as (James) Chung ... pointed out, our fortunes have risen and fallen with the fortunes of the aviation industry, so if we can help get Wichita, you know, broaden what our manufacturing capacity can do, then that's good for Wichita.

What could the partnership opportunities look like at Groover Labs? 

Gridley: We would really love to engage with local corporations and businesses, big and small. Bigger ones who might share some of their talent as well as maybe their equipment and dollars in order to tap into the community that we'll be developing. And then small businesses. There's a lot of great small manufacturers — advanced small manufacturing — again largely targeted to the aircraft industry. Again if we could connect with some of those people. The ideal thing is somebody comes to us with an idea and we help them turn it into a prototype of a product and then as it comes to market, we can find local manufacturers who can help manufacture that idea.

The concept of collaborating seems to be very trendy right now, which traditionally has been a little taboo among competing companies. Is that something you're trying to break down? 

Gridley: Yeah, in particular with aircraft manufacturers. There are some top-notch advanced manufacturing facilities in Wichita, but they seem to be competing for business, and to me if we could pull some of those people together willing to form partnerships in various ways, I think there's potential new markets that we could go after using largely their existing talent pool and equipment, just targeting a different market. 

What are some other industries you think might be interested in tapping into these partnerships? 

Gridley: It just goes across the board. I wouldn't say there's a particular industry we're going after, and that's where again partnering with local industry, to the extent they show interest and reach out to us and connect, we'll be willing to consider going after about anything. But tech, and in my case electronics, is my bread and butter.

I think in Wichita you get into a pattern of 'This is how you've always done it,' and unless you've been exposed to other ways, I think it's hard to make that transition. So one key component we feel is to bring in talent and potential start-up people from other areas of the country.

-------------------------

CURT GRIDLEY AND TRACY HOOVER

AGES: Curt 61, Tracy, 56.

TITLE: Co-founders of Groover Labs.

EDUCATION: Gridley: BS in math and philosophy, Wichita State University, 1980; master's in math, 1983, Dartmouth College. Hoover: BA, computer science and English, Wellesley College, 1985. 

EXPERIENCE: Gridley: Founded Amber Wave Systems, 1994; sold to USRobotics, 1996; taught Intro to Engineering as an adjunct at WSU two years. Hoover: Software engineer in Boston area until 1997; together established the first Faculty of Distinction professorship in the Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Curtis D. Gridley Professorship in the History and Philosophy of Science; together established The Gridley Family Foundation, 2000; Former board members of MakeICT.

FAMILY: Son, Henry, 23; daughter, Fiona, 20.

FlagshipKansas.Tech christens our event hall

FlagshipKansas.Tech christened our 275-person event hall Oct. 16 with its “Scaling Up Tech” event.

The organization’s mission aligns well with Groover Labs’ own — to fuel collaboration and product development.

FlagshipKansas.Tech endeavors to meet three main goals:

• Raise awareness: Highlight the innovation and ingenuity already at work in our cities and communities.

• Grow our workforce: Develop and help Implement strategies for attracting and retaining tech talent in Kansas.

• Offer educational programs: Develop workforce training and education programs to meet the demand of the tech sector.

True story: Hutton had only turned over occupancy of the event center section of our building about 24 hours before FlagshipKansas.Tech’s event. Timing, indeed, is everything.

Our backup plan was to have the FlagshipKansas.Tech event in our makerspace, where we’ve had occupancy for a while. Many thanks to Hutton, our design build partner, for hustling to make it possible to use our event center and, of course, for creating such a fabulous space for us — and more important, Wichita.

Extra, extra, read all about it: We're featured in Silicon Prairie News

Silicon Prairie News, which covers tech innovation in the Midwest, featured Groover Labs today on its website.

The story is a Q&A with our co-founders Curt Gridley and Tracy Hoover.

We especially like this line: “Groover Labs is an excellent addition to the Wichita startup scene.”

If you’re not yet familiar with SPN, you ought to be. Its mission is “to grow, connect and inspire the tech innovation communities of the Midwest.”

We’re here for that.

Here’s the story:

Groover Labs Opening in Wichita

Groover Labs is a 42,000 square foot coworking center and maker space located in Old Town in Wichita.   Old Town is located on the eastern edge of Wichita’s downtown and is known for its eclectic-ness.  Many claim that Old Town is the neighborhood that sits as the anchor of the startup revival in Wichita.

The nonprofit is the brainchild of Curt Gridley and Tracy Hoover. Gridley founded Amber Wave Systems, a venture-backed Boston startup that he sold to US Robotics for $50 million.

The two co-founders have invested $5 million in Groover Labs. They want Groover Labs to be a place where entrepreneurs take ideas from concept to market. While Wichita has other maker spaces, Groover Labs will be the only one to focus on product prototyping.

Prototyping is a key element of the discovery process.  In a traditional model map regarding the product development roadmap, it is typically the third step behind ideation, design, and then prototype.  According to Wikipedia “a prototype is an early sample, model or release of a product built to test a concept or process.”  Many startup ecosystems struggle to build companies because of a bottle neck in the prototyping process.  So, organizations like Groover Labs fill an important role in the development of startup ecosystems – providing space and expertise in building the first, flawed product.

Groover Labs will offer hotseats, dedicated desks, and private offices and will feature 14,000 square feet of maker space including a PCB assembly and electronics shop, a Tormach 3-axis CNC mill, a CNC plasma table, a stable of 3D printers and a wood shop with a CNC router table and more.

The Groover Labs team is also building a 275-person event center, and Wichita State University’s student-operated art gallery, ShiftSpace, has signed a lease with us.  This event space will be utilized for community space and available for rent.

We sat down with the founders of Groover Labs and asked them some simple questions.

Why are you starting Groover Labs?

We want to create a place to fuel collaboration and product development. Wichita is lucky to have existing maker spaces — and we’ve been lucky to be involved with them. We’re eager to build on that and offer a place where people can take ideas from concept to market — something that’s not really being done right now in Wichita. We hope Groover Labs, with coworking and maker space labs as well as event space, will create a community that not only encourages people to learn new skills but also take risks and launch startups.

Our background in technology — Curt founded Amber Wave Systems, a venture-backed Boston startup that he sold to US Robotics and Tracy worked as a software engineer at Hewlett-Packard — has allowed us an opportunity to pay it forward. Our Gridley Family Foundation is investing $5 million in Groover Labs, which will operate as a nonprofit.

Why in Wichita?

It’s our home.

Curt, who grew up in Kansas, went to college here. We moved back to Wichita in 2005 after making our careers in the Boston area. A lot of great companies and ideas have come out of Wichita because there are a lot of smart people here. But Wichita has some catching up to do, and we want to help drive the next big success story. We’re hoping to grow a culture at Groover Labs where anyone with heart and drive has the opportunity to innovate.

What does success look like?

A bustling community where our members contribute to and celebrate each other’s wins. We want to see high-fives in our conference and board rooms after successful Kickstarter campaigns, members huddled together working out solutions and figurative sparks in our fab lab and metal and wood shops. We want everyone at Groover Labs to feel invested — whether they have a hotseat where they work a few hours a week or a private maker space studio that they rarely leave.

How can the SPN community help you?

We love meeting like-minded folks who understand that startup culture is not limited to the coasts. Conserve your startup capital by doing your initial product development here. We’re in an Opportunity Zone, which opens up funding sources for startups that make their home at Groover Labs. We view Silicon Prairie News as an important way to connect with people who share our passion for innovation, technology and collaboration. We also want to be of service to the SPN community. We have space for your next workshop, class, or event.

Groover Labs is an excellent addition to the Wichita startup scene. 

Also, if you want more about the company or its founders, the Wichita Eagle wrote an excellent piece about the firm in early May when the new space was announced:  https://www.kansas.com/news/business/biz-columns-blogs/carrie-rengers/article229859894.html.

Ulrich Museum of Art's Salon Circle kicks off season at Groover Labs

Patrons of the Ulrich Museum of Art’s Salon Circle got a first look at Groover Labs on Sunday while enjoying wine, beer and hors d'oeuvres. The evening was the first of three events the group has scheduled at Groover Labs as part of its Salon Series: Futurists Changing the Present.

The crowd broke into small groups to take guided tours of the 42,000-square-foot space led by Groover Labs co-founders Curt Gridley and Tracy Hoover as well as operations manager Maggie Koops and community development manager Parker McConachie.

Starting out in the 14,000-square-foot makerspace featuring a metal lab, fab lab and wood shop, guests moved through the former Printing Inc. building at Third and St. Francis streets, first stopping to see studios and a slice of the coworking space offering offices and dedicated desks.

They then moved on to the lobby area, where Groover Labs members will be able to rent hotseat desks on a first-come, first-served basis, and then to the 275-person event space and ShiftSpace, Wichita State University’s student-run gallery.

Gutsy guests took advantage of a photo booth, donning hard hats and other props.

Groover Labs is moving along. Sign up for updates here.

Supporting KMUW and our community

Co-founders Curt Gridley and Tracy Hoover took to the airwaves recently to help KMUW raise $200,000 during its fall pledge drive.

Curt and Tracy once again stepped up as community challenge partners and matched contributions dollar-for-dollar during the 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. shift Sept. 19. They’ve been doing so for the past couple of years.

“We support KMUW because it offers a unique and valuable perspective on both local and national news in a commercial-free format,” Tracy says. “We’re also big fans of KMUW’s weekend entertainment programming.”

Community challenge partners are vital to the success of KMUW pledge drives, says Jessica Treadwell, director of major and planned gifts for the station.

“We have very savvy listeners, and many will wait to make their donation until there is matching money to ensure their support goes even further,” she says. “Our community challenge partners are also the best tool in encouraging new listeners to call in and become a member.

“Curt and Tracy have been incredibly generous and supportive of public radio and community engagement, and we are thrilled to get to continue to work with them.”