Together with The City of Wichita

It is hard to stay on top of all the news in Wichita.

I hope we are part of the solution for that.

But the City of Wichita puts out a ton of info that is hard even for us to cover, so why not get it straight from the source?

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Wichita Life

It has been a while since I talked about who is behind these emails.

Some of you know, some of you don’t, but now that we’re over 27,000 subscribers, it seemed like a great time to reintroduce myself and go over what Wichita Life is and the goal for this email.

As the great Jay-z once said…

Who is Wichita Life?

👋Hi, my name is Landon.

My wife Candace and I are high school sweethearts who graduated from Andover Central (Go Jags).

We went to Wichita State during the (recent) golden age of Shocker Basketball and both graduated in 2015.

I graduated with a mechanical engineering degree and have worked as a pipeline engineer at Koch since we graduated, until about a month ago when I started with nonprofit Stand Together Foundation. Candace worked as a wedding coordinator for a few years and now stays home with our three beautiful kids (3 under 5 keeps us busy).

We moved away for most of 2016 before returning home to Wichita.

After being home for a few months, I thought it would be cool to show why we love Wichita so much.

This led me to create the Wichita Life ICT Instagram in April 2017 which has quickly become a place to highlight all the creative, entrepreneurial, and awesome people/places in Wichita. I had no plans for it to grow like it has, but here we are!

Our following has grown to 53,529 on Instagram, 29,685 on Facebook, and 7,417 on Twitter / X.

​ICT is the airport code for Wichita. Since wichitalife.com and some of the @WichitaLife social tags were created, I tacked on ICT to the end and it still lives on in some places.

(I’ve since dropped the ICT from our name to just Wichita Life, but don’t feel bad if you still call us Wichita Life ICT).

For the first year and a half, we never posted our names or faces. We were nearly 100% anonymous and even most of our friends didn’t know it was us.

If there is one thing I want you to take away from this, Wichita Life is not about Candace or myself. Wichita Life is about our community and highlighting what makes it special.

In early 2019, we decided we wanted to introduce ourselves to the community so we could connect on a deeper level. We posted a video saying hello:

And then KSN caught wind and did a short segment on us. It was awesome to hear the outpouring of people who were happy to see us, but also surprised it was a young couple running it.

Wichita Life Podcast

​Fast forward to June of 2018, I listened to a lot of podcasts at work and thought Wichita could use more long-form conversations which led me to start the Wichita Life Podcast. I’ve published over 80 episodes since then and it has led to a lot of great conversations and friendships.

I’ve interviewed musicians, American Idol Runner-ups, entrepreneurs, small business owners, professional athletes, and much more.

It’s been fun to evolve from recording on my iPhone with no microphones to recording in incredible studios all over town (currently in The Podcast Room).

You can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Spotify. Apple. Youtube. And the others.

I have been slacking for a while, but we have some scheduled, so get ready! (Please also send in any requests or people with good stories!)

Wichita Life Update Email Newsletter

In June of 2020, I wanted a more direct way to connect with Wichita that wasn’t bogged down by algorithms, so I started sending the ‘Wichita Weekly Update’ once a week with a few links and some events. That first email went out to 101 people.

It was uglier than you can imagine (yes…that is the whole, actual thing).

After a year or so, I started sending these out twice a week, before jumping up to 3x per week and now 4x per week.

Fast forward almost 5 years and this email will go out to over 27,000 people. This is an INSANE number!

To put it in perspective…

This is a picture of the record setting crowd of 16,172 people at INTRUST Bank Arena:

and this is an image of a sold out crowd of 10,506 at Koch Arena:

This email went out to more people in Wichita than those two packed arenas combined.

Sincerely, thank you to each and every one of you.

More people move away from Wichita (and Kansas) than many other cities (or states) and I believe a big reason is many people are not engaged in what is happening here.

My goal for the Wichita Life Update is to continue to help people be plugged into their community and know what is going in our city.

The population of Wichita is ~400k and the Wichita metro is ~640k+, so we're just getting started.

I want to provide value to all of these people (at least those who check their email).

Will we always send 4 times per week? Maybe, maybe not. I have a lot of ideas on bumping it up to a daily (weekday) newsletter and shifting formats a little bit, but we’ll see how the year goes!

What do you want to see more of?

Wichita Life Team

Over the years, a couple of people have helped with small things with Wichita Life, but it has primarily been Candace and myself. I couldn't do it without Candace's help and support.

Shout out to Jake Bowling (formerly DJ Tight Pants) for editing our podcast, Troy Trussell for his awesome podcast studio, The Podcast Room, and everyone else who has helped out.

I would be missing the mark if I didn’t thank the last, but certainly not least member of our team, Mama Huslig who helps us with the events side of things and saves me a ton of time. Thanks Mama!

At some point in the near future we may look to expand our team, if that interests you. Just shoot me an email and let me know what you do and how you can help. We’ll keep you in mind when we start having those conversations!

That’s it for today!

What do you think? What do you want see from Wichita Life in 2025? What is Wichita missing? What are your favorite or least favorite parts about Wichita? Let us know!

Like always, please give us feedback. I want this to be the most valuable 5-minute read to start your day. It may take me a few days, but I try to respond to everyone.

We are incredibly grateful for your support, Thank you Wichita!

- Landon

But wait, there’s more!

Wichita Life Party

In ~8 years, we have built one of the largest and most engaged audiences in the Greater Wichita Area.

Our hyper-local digital audience has grown to over 100,000 social media followers, 27,000 email subscribers, millions of views and 10s of thousands of podcast downloads.

All of these numbers are exciting and we are beyond thankful for the support, but Wichita Life has never been about Candace or I, it has always been about you, the community.

Next week we will bring together a bunch of our family, friends, and followers to get to know each other, so we can get to know you, and just to celebrate wins in Wichita.

If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, we would love to see you there.

Get your tickets today!

What do you want to see us go deep on in a future deep dive?

Let us know!

Quick Rundown

• Wichita Jazz Festival | Various | 4/22 - 4/26

• Open Streets ICT | Nomar | 5/4

• Wichita Riverfest | Downtown Wichita | 5/30 - 6/7

• Somewhere Fest & Conference | Downtown Wichita | 6/13 - 6/14

• Nate Bargatze | Intrust Bank Arena | 9/14