Don’t Call It A Comeback
Today, we announced Silicon Slopes and Beehive Startups have joined forces inside a newly-formed non-profit. We’re also renewing our commitment to storytelling and community journalism. It’s the reason why we got in this game in the first place, and it’s important to us that it remains the heart and soul of this organization.
Led by a team of talented journalists and writers, we’re redoubling our efforts to conduct extensive reporting on the most important startup and tech news in Utah. This organization will also continue to write and publish in-depth feature stories on the most compelling entrepreneurs, companies, leaders, and issues facing Silicon Slopes.
In the past, due to limited resources, Beehive Startups had to be selective when choosing what stories and updates to publish on our various channels. We found ourselves constantly having to choose between the following:
- An in-depth piece on a startup or entrepreneur’s journey
- An investigative story on a particular issue or organization that’s timely or underreported
- General updates on fundraising, acquisitions, community announcements, and promoting community events
We take our role seriously. We’re honored to have the opportunity to report on important issues facing Silicon Slopes and to tell your stories. We believe all of the different stories and updates mentioned above are important and necessary in our effort to inform and educate Utah’s startup and tech community.
But we need your help. We can’t cover everything happening in Silicon Slopes on our own. Internally we need to renew our focus on in-depth and informative pieces. At the same time we need to make sure the community knows what’s happening.
We believe moving both websites to Medium will allow us to concentrate our resources on important stories — and, of course, funding poems — while also opening up our platform and audience to contributions from the general startup community. By doing this, we hope to kill two birds with one stone:
- Free up time for our writing staff to focus on the issues and news that’s most relevant to the startup community.
- Provide a platform for every morsel of Utah startup and tech news and information to be posted by members of the community.
With our small editorial staff, we can’t possibly write about every company update, startup event, and Forbes list that passes through our inbox. Medium solves this by providing a platform where anyone can create a profile and submit their own writing to our websites, ensuring every voice is heard.
Today, we’re announcing two new sections on the website dedicated to these community-based efforts.
- Community Board: Where Utah entrepreneurs, companies, organizations, and community leaders provide general updates and community-centric announcements.
- Community Voice: Where Utah entrepreneurs and community members communicate directly to our audience. In particular, this section will feature advice columns, “how-to” articles, war stories, “lessons learned” articles, “failure” stories, and opinion pieces on issues relevant to our community.
Our hope is that with your help, these two sections can be useful tools and a powerful source of information for every entrepreneur in Utah.
Moving forward, our internal editorial focus will be dedicated almost exclusively to our newly revamped News and *Features *sections.**In another post, we explain how/when to pitch our editorial team and when to publish something yourself in the Community Board or Community Voice sections.
In addition to the launch of the News, Features, Community Board, and Community Voice sections SiliconSlopes.com and Beehive Startups.com will now also feature the following:
- Events section showcasing all upcoming community events
- Podcast section listing all episodes of The Silicon Slopes Hour and The Beehive Podcast
- Newsletter section publishing our two weekly newsletters (events and news)
- Sponsors section showcasing our valued partners — without whom Silicon Slopes wouldn’t be possible
In the coming months we’ll be launching a job board, community directory, ecosystem map, a community store, and a section dedicated to the latest Silicon Slopes deal flow.
We hope you’ll add your events to our new community event board, become a writer for these publications, and help us keep the Community Board up to date with the most recent and relevant information in Silicon Slopes.
Thank you for allowing us to continue telling your stories and report on the most important issues facing our community. We hope to always speak for you, the reader.
