Tickets sales are dismal. Why? Where are the Kansas City entrepreneurs? What should we do?
http://www.entrepreneursunpluggd.com/event/kansas-city-nov-2011
Startup Weekend Nov 11-13: http://kansascity.startupweekend.org/
Silicon Prairie News KC: http://www.siliconprairienews.com/?edition=kansas-city
Red Nova Labs Venture Fridays: http://www.meetup.com/VentureFridays/
Startup Digest: http://startupdigest.com/tag/kansas-city-mo/
Steven Chau and Adam Coomes host Startup Weekends and organize the Startup KC Facebook group. Willis Jackson runs the Startup Digest mailing list. Royce Haynes blogs for Silicon Prairie News. (Clint Hall also hosts 'Geek Night' on Mondays with many entrepreneurial geeks attending, more information in the Startup KC Facebook group.)
I lived in Kansas City for a year before moving to Silicon Valley in September, so that's how I know this. Hope it helps, good luck! :)
-Get media coverage on the event.
-Get influential people in the community to tweet or post about it.
-Lookup local tech companies and try to get though to them.
-Get students from local colleges (CS, CE, EE, MBA). And please give them discounted tickets.
-Go through AngelList and try to find local folks.
-Think about the top ten things startup founders think about (raising money, VC funding, shipping product, finding users etc etc) and then look to see how many of those things your site clearly addresses in the first 5-10 seconds. (I didn't see anything I couldn't find online - but I think it is just a communication issue). You seem to be counting on the guest speaker's star power to draw crowds; I suggest using that in parallel to things that startup founders worry about during the first year.
Hope the above makes sense, and this is a great cause! Good luck!