No matter where you live in Fort Collins, no matter what you look like, or sound like, your neighbor on City Council should have your back.
My name is Nick Armstrong, your neighbor running for City Council in District 1.
From shopping locally to ensuring our neighbors have a safe way to get to school, work, and businesses around our city, we should do the hard work of making sure we have each other’s backs.
Colorado State University had my back while I earned my degree in Marketing, local businesses had my back to support me as a recent graduate with good work worth doing, and Poudre School District had my wife’s back as she worked as a paraprofessional in our community’s classrooms.
When I started my business, I worked hard to return the favor, teaching free classes at the Small Business Development Center, creating Fort Collins Comic Con to raise $120,000 for the Poudre River Public Library District with a diverse and representative team of geeks. I stepped up to take the lead of Fort Collins Startup Week, organizing an inclusive array of leaders from around our community from small businesses, non-profits, local governments, and organizations to provide free, peer-to-peer resources and support for our local businesses and entrepreneurs.
In this same spirit, I want to have your back on City Council.
In North East Fort Collins, most neighbors inside City limits have no connection to the rest of Fort Collins through sidewalks, bike lanes, or trails. They are served by just two parks east of Lemay and north of Vine. These neighbors must use the bus or drive to get their kids to school, as biking or walking along Country Club Road is not safe.
From Richards Lake to Drake, neighbors know pedestrian and bike safety is a struggle along increasingly impassable thoroughfares.
Local businesses suffer with no alternative to car travel for the places we work, play, and shop. Ever given up on a restaurant visit while circling the block or because of a train?
Another side-effect of over-burdened transit systems, our neighbors in North East Fort Collins can’t access some City services that most of Fort Collins can. Additionally, because they’re served by regional utility partners like ELCO, our neighbors cannot access water conservation rebates for updating fixtures or xeriscaping yards – unnecessary waste easily fixed through smart partnerships.
Expanding neighborhood walkability improves equity, environmental stewardship, and bolsters local businesses. Working to increase infrastructure and reduce book, park, and food deserts will create easily obtainable equity gains.
The status quo is too expensive for our most vulnerable neighbors, local businesses, and the environment. We must team up to build durable solutions to long-ignored historical issues: walkable neighborhoods, representation, equity, affordable housing, safety on our roads, comprehensive support to reduce homelessness, and a strong local economy capable of supporting traditional and creative businesses.
What quality of life do we want for our neighbors? Your answer informs your vote for City Council.
Stick with the expensive, inequitable status quo or invest in a new generation of leader who’s inviting you to the team to solve our City’s trickiest problems through creative collaboration, community-centric action, and open communication?
We can ease the affordable housing crisis and bolster our local service-based businesses through creative collaborations to provide skills-based vocational training and job placement programs.
We can build stronger ties between our non-profits, neighborhood services, and our neighborhood HOAs to solve persistent hyper-local issues.
We can coordinate our support between medical and mental health service providers, local businesses, non-profits, organizations, the County, and the City, to provide 360° support to bring our most vulnerable neighbors in out of the cold for good.
We can insist on collaboration between key partners at the City, conservation organizations, regional utility partners, and neighborhoods to help expand conservation rebate programs to ALL neighbors of Fort Collins and facilitate expansion of our tree canopies.
A brighter future for all neighbors of Fort Collins is possible when we are empowered by a Councilmember fighting for collaborative, community-based solutions between neighbors, the City, County, local businesses, non-profits, and service providers.
My track record organizing communities to solve problems is extensive, creating platforms to share ideas from the smartest, most engaged neighbors, and elevating amazing people from Fort Collins and beyond to work together.
Through FoCo Comic Con, my team raised $120,000 for the Poudre Libraries while creating a platform for local artists and creators to sell their work.
Through StartUp FoCo, I recruited the most inclusive, representative team of entrepreneurs, governmental leaders, organizations, and non-profits in our community to provide free, comprehensive support, resources, and education to over 1,000 local business owners.
I’m Nick Armstrong – a father, Trekkie, CSU grad, TaeKwonDo blackbelt, author, award-winning entrepreneur, and your neighbor asking for your vote in District 1. Join our team to reject the status quo and solve Fort Collins’ trickiest issues. Working together, neighbors like us can accomplish anything for our community.
I will have your back on City Council and I need your help to earn my seat at the table. Whether you have time, money, want to spread the word, or want to invite me to speak, I can only be elected through your help.
A longer read:
I’m a huge geek, a father, CSU grad, TaeKwonDo blackbelt, author, Ignite, PechaKucha, Startup Week, and TEDx speaker, audio drama enthusiast, and award-winning entrepreneur.
I’ve co-organized community events like Fort Collins Comic Con, Startup Week Fort Collins, TEDxFoCo (the first TEDx event in Northern Colorado), Ignite Fort Collins, LaidOffCamp/CareerCamp, PodCamp Fort Collins, and more.
My efforts around Fort Collins landed me a prestigious spot as one of BizWest’s 40 Under Forty in 2016, the Colorado Association of Libraries’ Library Community Partnership Award in 2018, and one of ColoradoBiz’s GenXYZ Top 25 Most Influential Young Professionals in Colorado in 2020.
Alongside an amazing team of super-geeks, I built out Fort Collins Comic Con to benefit the Poudre River Public Library District and have raised over $120,000 to date for the Library to encourage youth literacy through comics.
In 2019, I became the Lead Organizer of Fort Collins Startup Week, coordinating a highly diverse and representative team of entrepreneurs, governmental leaders, organizations, and non-profits to provide free peer-to-peer support, resources, and education for over 1,000 entrepreneurs, creatives, and small business owners in our community.
Through my business, WTF Marketing, and partner organizations, I’ve served a wide array of happy clients ranging from mom-and-pop shops to Fortune 100’s.
I’ve written three books: Psychotic Resumes, a Gen-Y resume creation and job search guide, Mess Hunter, a children’s book that I also illustrated, and a cookbook called Men in Kitchens: A Good Day to Dine Hard. My marketing writing has also appeared in anthologies alongside business and marketing greats such as Seth Godin, Ash Ambirge, and Leo Babauta.
About My Marketing Work
My work for the Poudre River Public Library District helped to increase Library-card-using households in Fort Collins and increase digital circulation (ebooks, audiobooks, and downloads) by 30% and database usage by 37%.
I founded the Digital Gunslingers in 2009, teaching $5 classes on social media and marketing concepts and donating all the proceeds to the Larimer County Foodbank, creating over 4,484 meals for Northern Colorado families over the span of 5 years. I’ve since taken the show on the road by teaching volunteer classes for the Loveland Center for Business Development and Larimer Small Business Development Center.
About My Work Organizing Events
I love to give smart people a soapbox and a forum to share new ideas. That’s why I created BrainChange – a night of smart stories featuring 9 speakers from around Fort Collins in and around the Mental Health space. I’ve also served as the co-organizer and curator of Ignite Fort Collins, a speedy presentation event of awesome topics featuring folks from the Fort Collins community. We had 232 talks from the community over 6 years, several of which have gone viral.
I also introduced Northern Colorado and Fort Collins to TEDx, establishing TEDxFoCo on June 25th, 2011. I hosted 3 separate TEDxFoCos since then placing 26 of Fort Collins’ best minds on a global stage. Together with my buddy Kevin Buecher, I brought LaidOffCamp (later CareerCamp) to Fort Collins 9 times, helping hundreds of job seekers find hope in the recession economy between 2009 and 2011. I also introduced PodCamp to Fort Collins in 2010.
I’ve also served as an advisor to the boards of TEDxCSU and TEDxFrontRange and spoke at TEDxFrontRange in Summer 2015.
