Highlight Midwest

…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…

Everyone: Thanks for talking and rocking at Highlight Midwest this year. The tweets and blog posts tell the best story of what just happened and someone, somewhere will get the word out about when and where it’s happening again. In the meantime, keep it up Midwest.

Your mission now, should you choose to accept it, is to continue to publish, publish, publish what you captured — pictures, videos, thoughts — lay it all out on the web.

Special thanks to these folks in particular: everyone who showed up and participated.

Oh, and if you missed Carl J Schramm’s surprise visit, I’m betting the Omaha crew captured it on video so look for it soon.

An algorithm must be seen to be believed. — Donald Knuth

During last night’s panel, the overarching question was “Where do we go from here?”  Our discussion was broad sweeping from city plans/ideas, the next Highlight Midwest to very micro-personal goals.

In the post-conference mingling, a few of us talked over some quick tactics that we’re going to be doing to keep the #hm1 momentum going, build up awareness of Midwest expertise and keep the community vibe flowing in a SEO-friendly way.  Pete asked me to share a few ideas (which a lot of you are already doing as I watch my twitterstream on twhirl):

• We’re following each other on twitter now, let’s take that a step further and start reading each other’s blogs.  Do a little exploring on people’s twitter profiles and find blogs/sites that interest you.  Add at least a few of the people from each city to your RSS reader.

1. Don’t just subscribe, but commit to reading their blogs.
2. Don’t just read, take it up a notch by commenting on their blogs.
3. Don’t just comment, share their blogs with your network by tweeting about their posts.
4. Don’t just talk up their blogs, ask them to do a guest post on your blog.
5. Shake it well, repeat. :)

Ok, I’m off to join the post-#hm1 chatter now.

Would love your suggestions and comments.  Let’s keep this share going!

At the Flying Saucer, of course.

An unconference has a lot to offer people and thanks to the web is relatively easy to “organize”, but it also holds the potential to throw people for a loop if they are expecting more of the same relative to traditional conferences in which they’ve participated.

So at the risk of driving this point past the point of usefulness, here’s a generic version of an email we’ve sent to a few people that emphasizes the approach:

So-and-so,

The tentative schedule has you on at blah blah but honestly due to the “dynamic” (read: “somewhat chaotic”) nature of th daytime portion of this event, time slots may very well need to be adjusted and thus change their start times on the day of. A lot of presentations, the awkward space limitations of what is of course primarily a music venue, and limited time in the day makes for an event that will likely have to change with the wind. Anyone who can only attend for a portion of the day, as a presenter, has to take the risk their slot might no longer be available when they arrive. Check out some earlier blogposts on the HM1 site for an even more long-winded explanation:

http://highlightmidwest.org/?p=231
http://highlightmidwest.org/?p=337

On the up side, if you do show up later in the day and your spot is no longer there, you can still hang out and attend the currently running presentations…We realize this isn’t the way a normal conference works but then of course that’s why it’s called an unconference.

Thanks,

Are you old enough to remember this commercial? reeeeelllllaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhx….

See you all next week!

If you like generous people, follow Dan. He’s a very giving guy.

Why-yes.