Michael Gelphman, founder of Kansas City IT Professionals, answers The Pitch‘s questionnaire

Name: Michael Gelphman

Occupation: Founder of Kansas City IT Professionals

Hometown: Overland Park

Current neighborhood: Brookside/Waldo

What I do (in 140 characters): I’ve built a tech community in Kansas City of 12,000-plus over the past six years, and we do tech events like the Compute Midwest conference and Hack Midwest hackathon, as well as educate software developers via the Disruption Institute.

What’s your addiction? Learning about or creating new ideas. Whether large or small, they inspire me.

What’s your game? For sports, tennis and football. When it comes to board games, Monopoly.

What’s your drink? Gin and tonic … or a mojito in the summer

Where’s dinner? Sushi … Domo, Nara, Kona.

What’s on your KC postcard? The Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. This shining beacon on a hill represents the kind of forward-thinking Kansas City we need more of.

Finish this sentence: “Kansas City got it right when …” Google Fiber, Sprint Accelerator and so on [came here]. Kansas City is on a roll lately, and I know it will continue.

“Kansas City needs …” More awesome things that will move us forward and differentiate the city.

“In five years, I’ll be …” Continuing to grow the tech community in the Midwest and working hard on my next idea, whatever that is.

“I’ve been known to binge-watch …” Big Brother. I think I’ve only missed one season since 2000.

“I can’t stop listening to …”Jay Z’s Watch the Throne.

“I just read …” The last book I read was Without Their Permission, by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Everyone should read it. There’s never been a better time to create and launch ideas. This is a great blueprint for that.

The best advice I ever got: To quit my job and work on KCITP full time. It changed everything for me. On July 10, KCITP celebrated its sixth birthday. It started with one member and grew to 12,130. Not only has this community changed people’s lives but it’s changed Kansas City. It just goes to show you that sometimes the best adventures are the ones we start without knowing where they’ll end up.

My sidekick: Can I have more than one? It’d have to be my dogs: Fozzy (German shepherd) and Benson (Labrador mix).

My brush with fame: The one time Mark Cuban retweeted a tweet by a friend and me. Also, in doing tech conferences, I’ve been lucky to meet some awesome folks, like both founders of Reddit and NASA’s engineer for the Mars rover project.

My 140-character soapbox: I’d love to see more people putting themselves out there and taking risks by creating ideas. The hardest step to take is always the first one, but you never know what you might come up with until you try.

My recent triumph: We’ve got our app-building challenge, called Hack Midwest, coming up, with more than 160 software developers and computer-science students expected.

This year, we’ve opened it up to more university students and have been pleased at the response. So far, we have over 20 schools represented, including K-State, KU, MU, Oklahoma State, Iowa State, Nebraska, UMKC, as well as Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Purdue, Notre Dame, Alabama, University of Texas, and University of California–San Diego.

It’s really amazing to think that students are coming from that far away to join our community for a weekend and build something epic. My hope is that their experience here with the event and our massive tech community will convince them that Kansas City is a place worth living (after they graduate).

Hack Midwest is July 19-20 at Johnson County Community College. See hackmidwest.com for more info.