“Don’t you run out of content writing about Fargo-Moorhead?”

I get this question a lot. As we think back on September, the answer is a resounding…negatory. Let’s take a look and you’ll see what I mean.

The fabric of Fargo

Innovation is alive and well in Fargo, and a huge part of the fabric of this city. We started off September by talking about two locals who have started one of the first funeral webcasting services in the country, and are actively building their client base in the area.

Another local entrepreneur has created a “Keurig for baby formula.” Yep. Pretty genius.

We continue to see progress from innovators like Cooper Bierscheid and his team at Protosthetics, who won the Barnesville Business Pitch this month. Local video game On My Own is on their way to bigger success too, with a recent announcement that they will be the first Fargo-made game to debut on Xbox One.

There are many larger businesses that are an important part of Fargo’s fabric as well; businesses like FBS Data Systems, an employee-owned company that is one of the world leaders for real estate software. At 35 years old with a constantly changing business model, they call themselves “Fargo’s oldest startup.”

We can’t forget about Fargo’s bigger connections either. Australian software company Atlassian, valued at $3 billion, has just announced a filing for a U.S. IPO – and Fargo’s Doug Bugum is their Chairman of the Board.

Around the world to Fargo

This month we celebrated Welcoming Week in Fargo, and featured some community members who have come from all around the world and are now building their ideas here in Fargo.

Local software company Thiken has a team from Sri Lanka, and is working to form a Fargo-inspired startup mentality in their company both here and in their hometown.

Dante Battocchi, started his time here as a student, looking for a way back to Italy. Now he runs his own protective coating business with his wife, Holly.

Betty Gronneberg moved here from Ethiopia with her husband, and now works at Intelligent InSites and has self-published her own book.

Arday Ardayfio came to Fargo from Ghana with only a few bucks, and is now not only a pancake making master but growing his Wifi and IT business in downtown Fargo. (You can even see his face on a billboard over by West Acres.)

Ned Halilovic escaped the war in Bosnia and came to Fargo to start a new life. Now, he’s a Concordia graduate and has started his own successful cleaning business.

These are just a handful of the countless people who come from all over the world, as immigrants, students, refugees, or others, who now choose to make Fargo-Moorhead their home.

A mix of events

This month we saw a huge variety of events, drawing crowds from the worlds of social media, oil, education, software development, healthcare and city leaders, to name a few.

Flint Communications’ FargoConnect event dove into the social media and digital content world, exploring how to remain authentic in a cluttered online world.

From our friends in the western part of the state, the Bakken Backers held a Digital Bits and Bytes event that illustrated how Fargo tech is being used in the oil fields.

Acclaimed venture capitalist Ted Dintersmith also held a large premier showing of his award-winning documentary, Most Likely To Succeed. This event brought together Fargo-Moorhead’s leaders in education, to dig into Ted’s big question: “Are school systems preparing our kids for life, or for standardized tests?”

For a 36 hour event in mid-September, developers and analysts joined together to build projects for the first ever Civic Hackathon. The final projects offer data tracking that could help people avoid mosquitoes and drunk drivers.

Healthcare leaders from around the world gathered in Fargo this month as well, for Intelligent InSites annual BUILD event. Together they discussed the ways healthcare can better integrate technology, and create a more efficient and personalized system.

At the end of the month, Emerging Prairie was able to work with the city of Fargo and Mayor Tim Mahoney to bring Mayors from around the state to the first Mayor’s Summit for Entrepreneurship. Local entrepreneurs shared their stories, and discussed what makes an ideal entrepreneurial ecosystem.

National Recognition

Clearly, something is working. This month we were visited by a reporter freelancing an article for Forbes, who said she’ heard about what was going on in Fargo and was writing a story on the startup activity.

Fargo was also chosen as one of ten cities to represent the global startup boom in an upcoming book by The Kauffman Foundation. Go Fargo!

Ask me again if we ever run out of content. I’m proud of you if you made it to the end of this article – that’s how much is going on.

So let’s end September with four of my favorite words.

Can’t stop, won’t stop.