124: Top 20 Countdown

Top 20 Countdown: Week 4

Welcome to Innovation City—powered by Venture Cafe—where Tyler Kelley and Michael Johnson, Co-Founders of SLAM! Agency, interview innovators, creators, and disruptors to discover how business is changing in the modern world.

Created and produced by SLAM! Agency in cooperation with Venture Cafe St. Louis and Venture Cafe Miami, Innovation City gives you an inside look at how rapidly business and culture are changing thanks to increasing diversity and inclusion, heightened creativity, and a stronger and better-connected business community. Venture Cafe is the largest combined gathering of entrepreneurs and innovators anywhere in the world. Events are held every Thursday in St. Louis, Miami, and other leading innovation cities around the globe.

Today’s episode is the fourth of several highlight shows where we are taking a look back at our top 20 favorite interviews and conversations of all time. Today’s featured guests are Allison Babka and Lee Broughton from the STLMade movement. STLMade is a movement that wants to help establish St. Louis’ narrative through storytelling and shining a light on the innovators, thinkers, doers, & makers in the St. Louis region.

Some key points from Allison and Lee from STLMade:

• What is the STLMade movement?
  • The movement is shining a light on the innovators, thinkers, doers, & makers in the St. Louis region who are driving St. Louis into a renaissance era
  • Wanting people to look back at this time in the region and realize the significance of how well St. Louis is/was doing
  • The movement wants to help establish St. Louis’ narrative through storytelling
• Cities are competing for investments, residents, & startups to help create a narrative that the city is desirable and “the place to be”
• They have found that people are generally neutral about St. Louis
• Trying to target St. Louis residents to help them understand all of the great innovation happening in their own backyard
• Through storytelling, STLMade wants to demonstrate how individuals are torch bearers in the work they are doing that is moving the region forward
• The issue of people not seeing what’s happening outside of their own neighborhoods, so they can’t see the big picture
• Weaving together stories to create a strong narrative people are proud to tell
• Creating an identity of what St. Louis can build around i.e. doers and thinkers in the communities
• St. Louis is the place where you can Startup, Stand out, and Stay
• If you want to get into storytelling, you need to learn your own story first
• The future of St. Louis with STLMade’s help
  • A clear narrative to both residents and non-residents
  • Stories being heard
  • Hub of innovation in any industry
• Listen or watch Allison and Lee’s full episode here