Highlight Midwest

Highlight Midwest 1 - “New Heights for Flyover States”

Focused Highlights

9:00am - 4:00pm at the Record Bar

Some of the region’s finest entrepreneurs, technologists, social media experts, and new media success stories presenting.

Emcees: Alternageek’s Christa Casebeer and Microblink’s Rob Jensen.

New Heights for Flyover States

October 29, 2008 from 5:00pm - 8:00pm at the Kauffman Center of Kansas City

A reception showcasing the entrepreneurs, innovators, and early-adopters using web technology to grow their businesses, advance their careers, and enrich the regional economy in new ways:

1. Three of the area’s up and coming social media strategists will present an overview on how the web is changing their cities for the better and how new opportunities for innovation are expanding the importance of web-based technology in the Midwest.
2. A wrap-up panel: Where do we go from here? After a day filled with all the cool individual things that are occurring in Des Moines, Kansas City, Omaha, and the surrounding areas, we’ll discuss actionable items along the lines of “What now?“.

Why?

• To highlight the best and the brightest web-related success stories in the Midwest
• To connect nearby communities
• To demonstrate local innovation in a rapidly changing economic landscape

Emcee: Kauffman’s Vice President of Entrepreneurship, Bo Fishback.

The region’s [Kansas City, Omaha, and Des Moines] finest entrepreneurs, technologists, social media experts, and new media success stories.

YOU!

This event is open to everyone and limited only by the space available.

Official New Media Correspondent for this event will be none other than Kansas City’s own (jeff)isageek. Fergus Sheppard has nothing on this guy.

Focused Highlights (Tentative Focused Highlights Schedule)

These are the presentations taking place during the daytime event; we’re adding more presenters and activities as they confirm. Can we add you?

1. MobaTalk: Video Twitter, Michael Bailey“…you can subscribe to any video message with your iTunes or Google Reader. As a matter of fact, you can subscribe to either the hashtag itself and receive all of the videos from anyone or you’ll be able to subscribe to the feed containing the videos from a specific individual, regardless of which hashtag they’re in.”–mashable.com
2. Iowa Web Awards and IowaFlood.com, Andy BrudtkuhlWeb Guru specializing in Web Strategy, Consulting, and Development. We build social communities and products for the web. We also help small businesses with their web strategy through web development, internet marketing and advertising, traffic generation, SEO/SEM, and online reputation management.
3. Infegy’s Social Radar, Adam CoomesSocial Radar is a powerful web insights and analytics tool backed by one of the industries’ largest and best data collections of its type. Our clients use Social Radar to measure the chatter of public opinion, pinpoint key influencers, monitor trends and see in to the minds of millions of Web users in real-time.
4. Leveraging Amazon’s FPS, Jon Crawford
   Jon Crawford is the developer and owner of Storenvy, a DIY online store system startup destined for fame, fortune, and online ubiquity. He is involved in the Ruby On Rails community and considers developers who use other platforms to be gluttons for punishment. He lives in the Waldo area of Kansas City with his wife and his little white dog,Stella.
5. Introducing Nurture, Shashank DateNurture is a rule-based software engine for cultivating and nurturing relationships with customers and prospects to drive them towards more engagement and eventually transactions and sales. B2B companies can leverage Nurture to create a personalized automated lead nurturing program delivering lead activity streams for all prospects. Internet companies can use Nurture to build rules-driven outreach and notification system that drives increased engagement and participation from end users.
6. A Better City Web Site, Dusty DavidsonWe develop web-based software solutions for businesses. We have a passion for creating elegant, easy-to-use, and well-thought-out web-based applications. We’re big advocates of Web 2.0 ideals, and we use the latest and greatest web technologies to craft our products, like Ruby on Rails and ASP.NET.
7. Smarty Pig, Mike FerrariSmartyPig is the first interest bearing online saving solution that helps you save for a specific goal by making accounts public, so family and friends can help you reach your savings goal faster. SmartyPig also gives you additional incentive boosts from best-in-class retailers when you reach your goal.
8. Myriad Tech for the Enterprise, Ryan FlannaganMyriad Tech believes in empowering established communities to connect, express and share their interests. Based on this concept, Myriad has developed the next generation of social media platforms which empowers companies to increase audience growth and engagement for their products and/or websites. Myriad’s platform focuses on providing a clean, user-friendly interface that focuses on increasing individual expression, stream lining interaction, and freeing its members from the hassles and headaches of traditional networking sites so they can focus on what matters—self expression, connecting, and building relationships.
9. Sustainable Giving through Real Estate, Joe Frost“Frost said the key to his business model, and to social entrepreneurship in general, is creating a sustainable model for giving that is not dependent on an individual’s generosity or on whether a business is profitable.Mortgage Pledge will work with one title company, 10 mortgage companies and 100 real estate agents in each market. The charities receive 100 percent of the donations, minus credit card fees, and the donation is tax deductible for the real estate professionals, Frost said.” — Omaha World Herald
10. Maximizing exposure to Google, Yahoo or any other Search engine, Joe Hobot
    LiveCrunch.com started in Dec 2007 and not because it’s close to TechCrunch name, but because I wanted to make Live videos but crunched you know something like Loaded with Natali Delaconte, I failed doing that because my schedule got very busy so I am blogging there since.

    Livecrunch.com for the past few months has been very popular due to uniques of some special reports and Apple Software leakage :), I receive between 25-39.000 pageviews per day which quit honestly is good enough for start.

11. Web Applications in the Four Dimensions: Space and Time in the Sales Landscape, Bruce IanniWe have created a consent-driven, “Google for B2B” search engine that communicates buying intentions instantaneously to field sales reps via text message. By combining product search with sales territory geo-coding we have created a landscape where time and space are unified and needs and wants are satisfied immediately.
12. Comics on Rails, Scott Kahler and Doug Sparlinguclick is an operating company of Andrews McMeel Universal, the leading syndicate and publisher of books and calendars in North America.
13. Analyzing and Visualizing Financial Data using Hadoop & Flex in a Clustered Environment, Florian LeibertFlorian is a Sr. Software Engineer at Adknowledge. He is working on the behavioral advertising platform that uses tens of billions of rows of data as input to produce better targeted ads using Hadoop on top of hundreds of cores. He studied Computer Science in Germany and has a background in Natural Language Processing, Distributed Computing and Data Structures. He has published a book “A Service-Oriented Architecture for Social Networks” and holds 5 patents. He has worked on a wide variety of projects from performance critical applications such as payment platforms for mobile devices to processing x-ray imaging data from the sun to visualize solar flares.
14. Messages, Membership, and Money, Christina MakiChristina is 23-year-old social media specialist and web designer from Kansas City, Missouri. She spent the first few years of her life in a small mountain town in northern Wyoming before moving to Olathe, Kansas at the age of six.
15. Spawning Silicon Valley’s, Seth MeinzenSeth Meinzen is a serial entrepreneur that is currently working on DigiRace with the goal to bring social media and animated broadcasts to auto racing’s “minor leagues.” During this venture’s startup, Seth recognized the shortfalls in the midwest entrepreneur community. Together with a handful of local entrepreneurs, develop a framework for inspiring and spawning entrepreneur communities with Silicon Valley qualities.
16. E-commerce for small business, Stephan Miller
    

    Issues that affect my business on the web. New ways of getting traffic. New ways of building interest. New techniques of marketing to the people of the net.

17. Humanoid Robotic Demonstration, Mike Overstreet
    I am a computer programmer. Who is a huge Sci-Fi Fan. My hobby is robots. If you need to contact me about: questions, about an interview, business opportunities, donations, sponsorships, you need a demonstration or presentation on robots or you need me to build a robot for you.
18. Bringing a Japanese Phenomenon West, Elissa Rose and Derek MauneDerek Maune and Elissa Rose created Quillpill to advance literature online. Quillpill is a full-featured platform for authoring, editing, promoting and publishing works. Taking a cue from the Japanese cellphone novel market, Quillpill is developing similtaneously in Japan and America, working to bring the next evolution of the movement to Japan and introduce American writers to the power of microfiction and online mobile literature.
19. Sojern Demonstration, Matt Secoske
    
    Matt has been developing software for over 9 years professionally. He splits his time between working on Enterprise Java applications during the day, spending time with his wife and two beautiful children in the evening, and learning new technologies whenever he can. He is a board member and regular speaker for the Omaha Java Users Group.
20. The Intrinsic Intangibles of Coworking & Open Source, Dan ShiptonDaniel Shipton is passionate about creating usable technology and engaging people in digital and real life communities. His interest in cross-platform development and leveraging Open Source technologies led him to start a software development company called Redship Technologies. His interest in streamlining the business side of small business coupled with his love for Open Source inspired him to open a coworking facility called Impromptu Studio in Des Moines, Iowa.
21. Microblogging, Macro Impact, Mike Templeton
    

    Mike Templeton is a social media geek from Ankeny, Iowa. He has been microblogging since early 2008 (so long ago!) and fell in love with the format immediately. Fascinated by how the medium disrupted what we then knew as social media, Mike saw an opportunity to create a website that would focus on the new medium and discuss news, resources and the way it has impacted our online interactions on all fronts.

22. Online Legal Pitfalls, Brett Trout
    “ Without us realizing it, more and more laws are being passed each year, laws and restrictions that significantly increase the likelihood that you’re skirting, or even breaking some laws when you post that restaurant review, write about the bad date you had last week, or complain about a previous employer.” — Dave Taylor, Entrepreneur and Strategic Business Consultant, Intuitive.com
23. Cleared For Landing: Building a Social Media Business in Flyover Country,Nathan T. Wright and Hillary BrownNathan has over 10 years of expertise in social media, web culture, emerging media, user interface design, branding and digital communications. He founded Lava Row in 2007 after serving as the Interactive Lead at The Meyocks Group, an integrated branding firm. Nathan is dedicated to fostering the creative capital within Des Moines and can often be found organizing/attending local TweetUps.Hillary joined Lava Row in July 2008 after three years at Los Angeles-based Passenger, a provider of branded online communities for Fortune 500 companies. She is experienced in utilizing online communities, social networks, viral marketing and consumer-generated media to develop branded discourse and engagement.
24. Swindlr, Chase Hawkins
    Chase will be sharing the work his team is doing with Swindlr. Swindlr is looking to be involved in the way you plan events and manage the content that comes along with them in an easy and straight forward manner.
25. Mosnaps (mobile photo sharing), Harish Bharadwaj, Mosnaps is a fast and simple Blackberry photo upload application designed for individual users, bloggers and mobile journalists. Now, you can instantly upload and post photos to your preferred web destination in a snap.At Mosnaps, we are about making life simple, especially yours.

New Heights for Flyover States

These are the people who will be giving the evening presentations and/or sitting on panel seats.

Des Moines

• Aaron WebbAaron has over 10 years of expertise in many variations of programming and web technologies. He has recently struck out to form his own company and pursue a variety of entrepreneurial endeavors. Aaron has participated in forming and supporting various groups, conferences,
  and meetups and is passionate about fostering the tech community engagement in Des Moines and the Midwest.
• Nathan T Wright

Kansas City

• Presentation: Chris Culbertson
  Ideas and Angles co-founder.
• Presentation/Panel: Zachary CobbZachary is a freelance photographer and social media consultant with expertise in creative content creation, community building, and social media tools. As co founder of Ideas and Angles he looks to help small businesses use social media to connect with their customers. He is also a blogger of 4+ years and very active in Kansas City social and technology happenings.
• Panel: Adam Coomes Infegy was formed to create innovative business intelligence systems and creative data solutions infinitely useful in a world of advancing social media technology. With the talents of inventive and passionate creators, Infegy has set out to provide needed tools to businesses and people looking to achieve a stronger, more knowledged position in this era.
• Panel: Zena Weist
  Zena Weist is a Digital Practitioner and Social Media Strategist with over 14 years of online marketing expertise including executive leadership in digital start-ups, account management with interactive agencies and client-side roles in online brand engagement, project management, and web implementation with Sprint, Hallmark and, currently, EMBARQ.

Omaha

Jeff Slobotski
Silicon Prairie News is a website dedicated to providing news and information about Omaha’s creative class which includes, but not limited to, entrepreneurs, innovator, investors, artists and visionaries. In short, those looking to make our city an even better place to live! You’ll find video interviews, news & event details and even IPO information…(well maybe).