TLDR: Author attends a 27-person startup roundtable where founders pitch AI chatbots, robotaxis, and livestreaming apps, discovers a 6-week founder cohort program she wants to join, then heads to a putt-putt party where she earns 2nd place after bravely joining a group of strangers.

TLDR: Author attends a founders' mental health meetup and a community BBQ-style tech event featuring startup pitches on hyperspectral cameras and AI infrastructure, leaving energized after five people approached her wanting to intern and a VC friend told her to just build with a team of five.

TLDR: Author attends her second Open Claw AI meetup and barely pays attention to the technical demos because she spontaneously invents the perfect name for her edtech app, buys the domain for $6.79, and spends the rest of the event excitedly securing trademark advice and booking calls with mentors.

TLDR: Author joins a Google-hosted virtual event for startup founders to learn about cloud credit tiers ($2K-$25K+) and AI Studio tools, hoping to qualify for the startup program to fund building her edtech platform.

TLDR: Author attends a basic AI tools talk for founders then gets intensive one-on-one startup coaching from a mentor who helps her draft three rounds of her edtech pitch, but the session is marred by repeated boundary violations and unwanted physical advances she documents candidly.

TLDR: Despite terrible audio at a coffee shop venue, the author absorbs valuable VC advice on the team/tech/traction framework for startups and the math behind successful exits.

TLDR: The author attends the Northwest Events Show convention and networks enthusiastically on behalf of other companies, then realizes she needs to channel that same energy into promoting her own business.

TLDR: The author tunes into a Flexport webinar while riding the light rail, learning about how supply chain decisions around modality switches (air vs. ocean), SKU segmentation, and consolidation can dramatically reduce CO2 emissions and shipping costs.

TLDR: Kelly attends an early-morning startup event on preparing businesses for mergers, acquisitions, and exits, covering EBITDA valuations, customer concentration risks, earn-outs, and carve-outs, while reflecting on her own entrepreneurial journey.

TLDR: Flexport hosts a deep-dive seminar on customs audits, the CAPE refund system, and drawback programs, teaching importers how to navigate tariff compliance, avoid CBP scrutiny, and potentially recover duties paid on exports.

TLDR: The author attends Flexport's tariff update webinar covering Section 232 changes that simplified steel and aluminum duty calculations, learning how the new rules affect importers' costs across different product categories.

TLDR: A women's leadership and entrepreneurship event where Kelly arrived an hour late, found the first workshop on "bad business ideas" unhelpful, switched rooms to a career narrative rewriting exercise, and sat through an AI 101 resume talk, with the main takeaway being two consecutive events telling her to replace "hope" with action.

TLDR: The author attends a startup funding event featuring speakers on capital access, company culture, and acquisitions, including an inspiring blind PhD speaker advocating for accessibility in tech entrepreneurship.

TLDR: A disappointing AI workshop marketed as hands-on agentic AI building turned out to be lecture-only with no actual agent creation, leaving Kelly frustrated by the gap between marketing promises and delivery.

TLDR: Kelly attends an OpenAI workshop for small businesses and is frustrated that the content is extremely basic, noting that even the 70-year-olds in attendance already know how to use ChatGPT, while the mayor reads a ChatGPT-generated speech at the event.

TLDR: Author attends a gaming-in-education panel featuring a Portal game designer and school district tech directors, learning that curriculum lobbying cartels and strict Common Core standards make it nearly impossible for indie game developers to get educational games into classrooms.

TLDR: A bank-hosted small business panel covering FIFA World Cup economic preparation, access to capital, scaling strategies, and workforce development, combined with Kelly's "remote viewing" experiment where 13 of 16 predictions came true.

TLDR: A university panel on how big-tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon use internal rituals -- dogfooding, design sprints, OKRs, hackathons, and pizza-team sizing -- to force behavior at scale, with the author offering a skeptical, culture-critical commentary on corporate control systems.

TLDR: Attending a friend's first speaking event about growing social media influence, covering identity shifting, overcoming fear of being on camera, video hook strategies, and how posting consistently for 20 minutes a day can lead to 10k+ followers.

TLDR: The author shares tips and patterns from street busking experiences, attends coworking events, and navigates career fairs while balancing mediocrity and ambition in her entrepreneurial journey.