Highlight Midwest

This morning’s Wall Street Journal has an article cheerily entitled Midwest States Cut Spending in a Hurry as Region’s Economy Deteriorates but hey turns out the news isn’t all bad:

…the outlook is less dire than for states hardest hit by the housing market, such as Florida and California, says Ernest Goss, regional economics chairman at Creighton. “The pneumonia on both coasts is a bad cold here,” he says.

…

The Midwestern economy has diversified since the deep recession of the early 1980s. Cities such as Chicago broadened their economic base from manufacturing to include more professional and financial services. A booming farm economy and growth in the ethanol industry helped states such as Iowa.

A fun video from the Ideas and Angles crew.

• Ignite Des Moines (tonight!)
• Iowa Code Camp Nov 8 in Des Moines
• Emergent Behavior in Design Nov 11 ODYNUG meeting in Omaha
• Day of Dot Net Dec 6 in Kansas City
• Social Media Club Kansas City breakfast Nov 7 @ 7:30

Vince, meet Michael. Michael, Vince…

So somewhere in the trenches on the continuum that stretches from helping others selflessly to Lamborghinis and supermodel wives, there’s a crumpled up sticky-note with this compound question written on it:

What does it mean to be a high-growth company and why should anybody give a damn?

One possible answer: the National Commission On Entrepreneurship says a high-growth company is one that grows their employment by at least 15 percent per year or at least doubles their employment over five years.

One possible take: Those comments we heard at the evening event, the ones stressing the importance of high-growth companies in our region, maybe had less to do with selling to Google for $100 million, having nice things, or engaging in altruism, and more to do with keeping and improving our region’s economic health.

-pete

Silicon Prairie News brings us a great video of the comments by Carl Schramm:

~3:15:

We are committed to the notion of lots more high-growth businesses…we’re committed to that not just because Mr. Kauffman thought it was an important thing to do but increasingly…certainly in the last few months or weeks…it’s become more and more critical we need to understand the actual guts of the American economy…

…pretty sure that was an iPhone causing all that interference..

…you can add up the 2000 census figures for Des Moines, Kansas City, and Omaha and still need another Omaha before you reach the population of Philadelphia? (Yep that’s “both” Kansas Cities, Kansas & Missouri sides combined).

…a 2005 conference was assembled in Chicago to study the fact that “[a]lthough the Midwest is home to significant research and development (R&D) activity, this role has not led to an abundance of start-up companies or rapid growth of emerging technology industries“?

…Over 400 people showed up for Minneapolis’ 2008 unconference, Minnebar?

…Bo Fishback was on the team that published “Finding Business “Idols”: A New Model to Accelerate Start-Ups?

…Des Moines’ Brett Trout has a book on Amazon entitled, Cyber Law: A Legal Aresnal for Online Business accompanied by a 5 star rating? Add did you meet Brett at the event? He was the best dressed guy there…

…Gary Vaynerchuk will be at Big OMAHA this May?

…Dan Connolly lives in KC but couldn’t make it back from Europe in time for the event? You can follow him, btw. Paco Nathan lives in KC too and runs the AdKnowledge technology team. If you saw Florian Leibert at the event, well he works for Paco.

…Omaha’s Brightmix recently had their Tripleseat site featured in Restaurant Buiness magazine? Did you meet Dusty at the event? You didn’t? Next time make it a point to introduce yourself…

…Des Moines’ SmartyPig was recently featured in Los Angeles and Sydney, Australia media outlets?

Didn’t know that stuff, huh?…Well now you do!

…and the list goes on and on…

Moore’s law states that the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has increased exponentially, doubling approximately every two years. More’s Law is much more straightforward and simply states that the more you give the more you get. HMers continue to prove out More’s Law by giving great feedback on the event and getting thanks and appreciation from the likes of us:

• Momentum For Social Media In The Midwest
  

  We have been busy collaborating with insanely smart people from around the country to keep on top of what is happening in the world of social media and emerging technologies so we can pass on that expertise to businesses and people in Kansas City. There has been a lot of positive feedback from the presentation Chris gave at the Kauffman Foundation about the great work by Kansas City technology start ups as well as the expert panel discussion Zach was a part of.

• Geeks, tweeps and entrepreneurs knock Highlight Midwest out of the park
  

  …in terms of Web and new media innovations, things are moving fast here in Flyover Country — very fast. Dozens of smart entrepreneurs are following their hearts and talents and creating amazing new products, despite everyone telling them they are crazy. I learned about StorEnvy, Swindlr and Social Radar for the first time (all born in Kansas City). I was also introduced to BetterOmaha.com — a news resource built by a couple of guys who decided they could build something better, and more intuitive, that any of Omaha’s traditional media outlets.

• Highlight Midwest Presentation: Swindlr
  

  (~19:00) ….anybody can actually pull up featured space over here, another big space we’re getting into is the music space…iTunes has 70%-80% market share, it’s crazy…one of the things we’re looking at doing is selling tickets to musicians events…also having a purchased music section…a lot cheaper than iTunes…but with events, they could host their events on swindr…

Plenty to to reflect upon…

From Wikipedia’s BarCamp page:

Everyone is also asked to share information and experiences of the event, both live and after the fact, via public web channels including (but not limited to) blogging, photo sharing, social bookmarking, wiki-ing, and IRC. This open encouragement to share everything about the event is in deliberate contrast to the “off the record by default” and “no recordings” rules at many private invite-only participant driven conferences.

Let’s see what we have so far: Pictures? Check. More pictures? Check! Videos from internet superstars? Yep. Captured live streams? Of course. Videotaped sessions? I know of two so far and have it on good authority that more are on the way, including a high-definition video of Dr. Schramm’s comments.

We’ll update here with additional links as they are published…