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Sunday Video: charity: water launches 2010 September campaign

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Today we wanted to remind you of something that Scott Harrison, founder of charity: water, shared in his presentation at Big Omaha 2010. Four years ago, Scott came up with the idea of giving up his birthday for charity: water. He held a party in New York City and asked everyone who came to give 20 dollars to his philanthropy. That party generated enough money to build six wells in Uganda.

The next year, Scott asked others who shared his birthday month of September to give up their birthdays in a similar fashion. Together they generated 150,000 dollars. As of last year, charity: water had raised more than 10 million dollars in total to provide clean water all over the world. Each September, charity: water launches a new September campaign targeted at a specific group of people. September is only a few days away so we wanted to share the new campaign launch video with you.

I happen to be a September baby myself and was inspired by Scott to give up my 32nd birthday in a few weeks. If you'd like to help me reach my goal of raising 1,000 dollars, go to mycharitywater.org/geoffwood

If you're a September baby and participating in the September campaign, we'd like to know about it. Leave a link to your page in the comments below.


UNI student is finalist for 'College Entrepreneur of 2010'

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Screenshot of Entrepreneur Magazine's website for their Entrepreneur of 2010 awards.

University of Northern Iowa (UNI) student Nick Cash is a finalist for Entrepreneur Magazine's College Entrepreneur of 2010. Nick is being recognized for his startup, Book Hatchery, a publishing platform for ebooks. The contest is open to all to vote until September 10.

You can view Nick's entry video and vote for him at entrepreneur.com.

We recently interviewed Nick to learn more about his startup, the support UNI has given him and what's next.

Silicon Prairie News: What is Book Hatchery and where did the idea come from?

Nick Cash: Book Hatchery is a suite of community and publishing software intended to bring authors together online and help them publish their works digitally (known as ebooks).

The idea behind Book Hatchery evolved slowly over many months. I often tutor computer science freshman here at Unversity of Northern Iowa, and there was always a nagging problem: computer science textbooks are filled with pages of computer code, but there is no way to get the code onto the computer without retyping them. Also, most textbooks are not friendly for young computer science majors, so I figured I would write a simple ebook to use with the students I tutored. As I pursued this idea, I decided to see how hard it would be to make it publicly available. It turns out there was no easy way to publish it to all of the online ebook retailers, so I figured I would create the solution.

How has the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center (JPEC) at UNI helped you bring the idea to fruition?

The JPEC here at UNI runs many programs to support entrepreneurs. The JPEC runs incredibly helpful workshops, our Student Business Incubator (SBI), provides one-on-one counseling, hosts monthly lectures with entrepreneurs or related professionals, and runs our Certificate of Entrepreneurship program. All of these programs are free to students thanks to our generous donors. I've taken part in nearly everything the JPEC has to offer, and all of it has proven to be incredibly valuable.

In particular, the SBI has been helpful on a number of levels. One of the obvious benefits is that it provides office space, furniture, technology, equipment, and some supplies. This helps keep costs extremely low.

However, the most valuable thing about the SBI is the environment. I am surrounded by other student businesses all struggling with problems similar to mine. Even more importantly, I'm just down the hall from professionals dedicated to helping make our businesses successful. There are few things more valuable than having people to bounce ideas off of or talk through some problem you are having.

The SBI also provided me with the confidence to get rolling. Before I got into the SBI I felt like I was just a student with some big ideas hacking away in my apartment. Once I had space in the SBI, it all started to feel very real. The SBI helped me pull my head out of the clouds and take action.

How big is the Book Hatchery team?

I get this question a lot. Legally, I am a company of one. However, Book Hatchery has a large support structure that works behind the scenes to make it possible.

Book Hatchery would not exist without the support of the JPEC and its staff. Specifically, Laurie Watje and Katherine Cota-Uyar provide extremely valuable expertise. Most of my background is in software development and technology; they help me with just about everything else!

Book Hatchery's infrastructure is built using free, open source software. Thus, Book Hatchery owes a lot to the communities that help create, support, enhance, and fix this software.

There are also a number of professors and friends who provide help with things without asking anything in return. There have been many times where their expertise helped me fix some previously unsolvable problem or remedy a nasty situation quickly.

What stage is the product in and how has the development process gone?

Book Hatchery will be launching our beta product in October. It will include our core functionality, including format conversions, publication submission and management. Some of our more advanced features will roll out a few months later as we get more feedback from our authors.

The development process was pretty much what I expected – about 80% of it came together pretty quickly, but that final 20% has been a bit of a struggle. This tends to be true of most software development. I have become quite accustomed to spending long nights tracking down extraneous errors, reconfiguring our servers, and tackling other random problems that seem to crop up.

One of the bigger problems Book Hatchery has had was with web hosting. We initially got a good shared hosting package that seemed like it would be adequate for quite some time, but they over-promised and under-delivered. After some constant struggles with them when the site was barely grabbing any traffic, I decided to bite the bullet and grab our own servers. This gives us much greater control and dedicated resources, but it is also a big time sink I hadn't counted on having just yet.

Sojern announces additional $9M in venture capital funding

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Omaha-based travel advertising company Sojern announced today that they have secured an additional $9 million in venture capital from Focus Ventures, Trident Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners. This new round of funding brings the total amount raised to $28.3 million, which includes a $16 million previous round, and $3.3 million from the founders and angel investors (from the Sojern press kit).

We often use Sojern as a shining example of high-growth startups on the Silicon Prairie, and as one of the few examples of outside venture funding taking place in the Omaha area. This funding today helps to solidify that position and will help the company to further expand their efforts and reach.

You can read the full press release at BusinessWire. We've also covered Sojern and its founder, Gordon Whitten several times in the past:

Prairie Moves: Halo Institute, UNO4sq, McClanhan Studio & more

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Photo by davedehetre via Flickr

The goal of Prairie Moves is to keep our readers informed about career moves, press coverage, and product development from the companies and individuals we cover on Silicon Prairie News.

If you or your company would like to submit one of the items below for our next Prairie Moves post, please email info@siliconprairienews.com. And if you have suggestions on how we could improve these posts or any of our coverage, please contact me at danny@siliconprairienews.com.

Media Coverage

Product Development

Misc.

Tune in Tomorrow: Tony Hsieh live presentation at 8:30 a.m. CDT

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Tony Hsieh speaks at Big Omaha 2010 this past May. Photo by Malone & Company.

Tomorrow morning, Wednesday, September 1, Tony Hsieh, author of "Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose" and CEO of Zappos, will be speaking in Omaha about his book and the culture of Zappos that inspired him to write it.

The event – details at bustouromaha.eventbrite.com – is sold out, but the live stream of the entire talk will be available to the public free of charge. Open this post tomorrow and press play below.

This event is made possible with the assitance of the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, Ms. Smith, Dr. James & Karen Linder, and the Omaha and Lincoln chapters of the American Marketing Association.

Learn more about Tony Hsieh and his talk tomorrow in our post: Live Stream: Tony Hsieh speaking in Omaha next Wednesday, September 1

DevOps, Social Media Intern, Web Designer & VB Developer

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We're excited to bring you our twenty-sixth Opportunities on the Prairie today with positions from Pongr and Dwolla in Des Moines and YourPoolHQ.com and Mayday Systems in Omaha.

If you or your company has one to add, please contact Danny at jobs@siliconprairienews.com with the listing and a short description of your company. We're looking for all types of opportunities, from a week-long project to a full-time position. We hope to help you make a connection.

If you apply to one below, make sure to mention that you found it on Silicon Prairie News.

Pongr – Engineering Operations / DevOps (Des Moines)

Pongr is an image recognition-based mobile marketing platform built on award winning technology.

We need someone who has managed a fairly large number of Linux servers for several years.  Web servers, mail servers, user accounts, security, monitoring, automation, Ubuntu, and Amazon EC2 experience are all important. This person will be responsible for our production environment, so needs great sysadmin skills.  Also, will be doing some coding (automated recovery scripts, setup scripts, monitoring scripts, etc) so need good programming skills.

Startup culture, desk at local development office, laptop, salary + stock options, beer, awesomeness, etc.

Full job post

Dwolla – Social Media Intern (Des Moines)

Dwolla allows users to send and receive money for 25 cents per transaction.

Looking to cut your teeth in the social media world? We may have just the thing for you. We have a paid internship available to fill.

Job duties will include:

  • Supporting the Des Moines Startup Community via Twitter.
  • Supporting Silicon Prairie tech via Twitter.
  • Supporting Dwolla users and clients via Twitter.
  • Managing Twitter DM’s and ensuring they make it to the correct support representative.
  • Building Dwolla’s brand and support via Social Media.

Full internship post

YourPoolHQ.com – Outsourced Web Application/Designer (Omaha)

YourPoolHQ.com is an online source for pool supplies, pool chemicals, pool cleaners, hot tubs and spa accessories.

We're looking for a web application/designer to help with a "social/customer service" buildout to accompany our ecommerce channel at YourPoolHQ.com. We're looking to incorporate a "Q&A" element, a "ideas/suggestion" element, our blog, twitter, facebook, and other social elements down the road. We're looking for someone to take control and put all this together (design, collaboration, functionality) wether it be separate elements or one large element that contains all pieces.

This would most likely be an outsourced project with continued upgardes and more projects to come down the road. Contact Brad Podraza at bpodraza@yourpoolhq.com, please include sample work and contact information.

Mayday Systems – Part-Time VB Developer, Professional Services Support (Omaha)

Mayday Systems provides Point of Sale software to specialty retailers.

This 20 hr per week work-from-home position will provide various levels of support to our customers. You will answer direct customer calls and assist them with our application. Resolving issues will require you to leverage your knowledge of Visual Basic, SQL, networking, and basic computer troubleshooting. This is an opportunity to have a real impact and gain a sense of ownership on a piece of our business.

Responsibilities include:

  • Troubleshooting various issues ranging from network connectivity, to bugs in code
  • Maintaining code: Fixing bugs, enhancements if necessary, testing code changes, and deploying to customers
  • Being a friendly, patient contact for our customers

Required Skills for Ideal Candidate:

  • B.S in C.S. or equivalent
  • Proficient in Visual Basic 6.0
  • General SQL experience
  • Strong troubleshooting skills
  • Ability to port from VB 6 to .NET a plus

Compensation is negotiable

Email resume to mayday.systems@gmail.com

Social networking platform Bumpr launches into public beta

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Screenshot of my Bumpr.net wall, taken Wednesday, September 1.

Bumpr, a social networking platform with a goal to "simplify digital life," launched into public beta last night. As of now, users can integrate their Twitter and Facebook feeds into the website, and in the coming months the team plans to integrate the top 20 social networks. When fully developed, its creators see it as "a social network hub."

"The idea here is that right now you get on your computer and you log into, you know, Facebook, Twitter, your email…our concept is instead of opening 4-5-6-8 windows, do it all from one window," product developer Dan Griffiths said. "It's complete integration."

Features of the site include:

  • Twitter and Facebook integration
  • Photo galleries
  • Groups
  • Blogs
  • Social bookmarking
  • Music player
  • Private messaging

Two features not yet released but have place holder icons are a location-based service as well as a gaming interface. The latter being one of the site's potential revenue streams in addition to a planned service similar to Twitter's sponsored tweets and another similar to Facebook's targeted advertisements.

Of the features they're launching with, the team boasts three on its homepage:

  1. Social Search: Pulls in and categorizes results from Twitter and Facebook as well as the web
  2. Pictures and Videos: Videos, pictures, and audio are embedded in a user's stream
  3. Social Integration: Connects all of a user's social networks in one place (example below: my profile)

Bumpr's competition, Griffiths said, is quite broad, from other early stage startups similar to Bumpr to the social networks themselves since Bumpr has essentially built their own social network. When compared to other aggregators such as FriendFeed and TweetDeck, Chris Lausten of Bumpr's management team said, "[Bumpr] has those same capabilities and then just adds more on top of it."

With regards to funding, the team has completed an angel round with local investors, including themselves. Lausten said that depending on how well the site is received, they're in talks with other institutional investors. "[We] have been interviewing a few of those," he said. "We haven't really made a decision on what we're doing as far as size of a round going forward, it's just something we're evaluating right now."

To hear Lausten and Griffiths speak about Bumpr's three strongest features, its competitors, and the funding they've recieved, view the following video highlights from our interview yesterday. And to give Bumpr a try for yourself, visit Bumpr.net.

See you at The Combine, September 9-12

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Though we're a little late in announcing, we're very excited to be heading to Indiana next week for The Combine. Jeff and I will be making the trip to Bloomington, Indiana for this first-ever event which celebrates many of the things that we talk about on a regular basis:

This four day event from September 9-12 brings together movers and shakers in creativity, community, culture, capital and code from all over the country. It provides a unique opportunity to learn, network and be inspired by some of the nation's top experts in internet marketing, product development, revenue generation, content creation and entrepreneurship.

We're huge fans of anything geared towards spurring entrepreneurship in places outside of your typical startup hubs, especially in the Midwest. Two of The Combine's organizers, Mike Trotzke and Brad Wisler have been huge supporters of Big Omaha from the very beginning and they are doing amazing things with the startup culture in their home state of Indiana.

It's no secret that I think that regional events such as Big Omaha, The Combine and others play a huge and significant role in helping to shape startup cultures in lesser-known areas. As we've witnessed first-hand, the bringing together of a region's smart, innovative and creative people and providing them with inspiration and connections can kickstart a community and provide great awareness. I believe it to be a critical and vital component of a healthy, vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Enough rambling, I highly encourage you to check out The Combine. Jeff and I will be there, ready to soak it all in and learn from our friends in Bloomington. 

What: The Combine 2010

Where: Blooomington, Indiana

When: September 9-12, 2010

Tickets: Get your tickets now for $199

If you're interested in going (and you should!), we have a 15% discount available for friends of Silicon Prairie News and Big Omaha. When registering (thecombine.org/register), just use the code BIG15. Hope to see you there!

Here is The Combine's list of speakers:


Live Stream: Tony Hsieh presentation at 8:30 a.m. CDT

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Starting at 8:30 a.m. CDT, Tony Hsieh, author of "Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose" and CEO of Zappos, will be speaking in Omaha about his book and the culture of Zappos that inspired him to write it.

The event – details at bustouromaha.eventbrite.com – is sold out, but the live stream of the entire talk will be available to the public free of charge. (Live stream below.)

This event is made possible with the assitance of the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, Ms. Smith, Dr. James & Karen Linder, and the Omaha and Lincoln chapters of the American Marketing Association.

Learn more about Tony Hsieh and his talk tomorrow in our post: Live Stream: Tony Hsieh speaking in Omaha next Wednesday, September 1

MedLetters aims to improve patient-physician communication

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MedLetters, a new interactive and convenient tool for physicians, is about to become available online. The company was created to help physicians more effectively communicate with patients about their health care, medication usage, and explanations about illnesses in a quick and convenient fashion.

Dr. Doug Morin, medical director of MedLetters, founded MedLetters after years as a Catholic priest. He left the priesthood and taught English at Metropolitan Community College and then attended medical school at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. His new business combines all three of these chapters in his life.

MedLetters had its beginning in 2009, after Morin's stepson was hospitalized due to an accident and was treated for a lengthy hospital stay. During that time, Morin wrote a blog for family members to udpate them on his stepson's progress and to break down the medical side of it by making it less technical and easier to understand. The positive feedback led Morin and his wife to start MedLetters. Morin and his wife paid for the fees for the business and took out loans to cover the difference. About seven months later, MedLetters launched. They don't have outside funding yet, but are hoping to receive funding in the future.

"There is a huge need for communication with patients to get them in the loop," Morin said. "Right now, in this particular period of history, there's a huge need for this type of communication."

When doctors sign up and use MedLetters, they log into the site, type the patient's name, click the illnesses, medications and other things the patient should know and an automated letter explaining all of the above is instantly provided to the physician and patient (left, image from medletters.com). The work is already done and only a few clicks leads to one of these useful letters.

The timing of MedLetter's launch is ideal because of the continuing trend for the medical industry to move to electronic systems and the changing laws in the health care system. Morin sent out nearly 400 postcards with information about the roles and functions of MedLetters.

These promotional postcards broke down the business into the following areas:

  • MedLetters is a tool for physicians allowing them to communicate with patients quickly, easily, and with top software.
  • These letters explain the condition, medications (with dosage), recommendations, and signs of things to look for.
  • The purpose is to be so fast, the doctor can have a printed letter before the patient leaves the office.
  • The descriptions of medical treatments are broken down into "plain English."

Morin believes all these points are attractive for physicians because most patients respond well to this type of communication.

"I estimate it's going to take about 20 to 30 seconds to generate a letter," Morin said. "This helps build a more personal relationship between the doctor and patient."

"The patient is the real beneficiary and hopefully the physicians realize that."

For more information (including registration, sample letters, and testimonials) about MedLetters, visit medletters.com.

Weekly Wrap Up: Meet the new co-host, Analog the Prairie Dog

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First Friday Lunch Review: ingredient restaurant

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The cup says it all: "Personalized entrees with your choice of over 75 fresh ingredients." Photo by Danny Schreiber.

As today is the day we set out for our third First Friday Lunch (place: TBD), it's about time that I post the review from our second outing, which was to ingredient restaurant located at 32nd & Farnam.

The lunch crew: the BrightMix team (Kevin Zink, Tony Noecker, and intern Rick Knudtson) and the Omaha Silicon Prairie News team (Dusty Davidson, Jeff Slobotski, and myself), as well as Marlina Davidson (Dusty's wife).

The line was pretty long but moved pretty quickly. Photo by Danny Schreiber.

A shot of the table just after our order arrived. Photo by Danny Schreiber.

Here are our reviews (out of four stars), this time with what we ordered:

Tony (Sausage Grinder Sandwich): 2 – Look man, keep the tapioca out of the pasta.

Kevin (Peppercorn Steak Sandwich): 2 – My meat sandwich needed more meat and less bread.

Marlina (Salmon BST Sandwich): 3 – Very fresh ingredients but I would've chosen a different bread for my sandwich.

Dusty (Mahi Tacos): 3 – Any restaurant that serves DMD (Diet Mountain Dew) on tap is a winner in my book.

Andrea (Mahi Tacos): 2 – Mahi mahi tacos needed a little more ingredient, it was a little bland.

Rick (Tuscan Chicken Sandwich): 2 – Seriously though, what's is the pasta?

Danny (me) (West Coast Veggie Burger): 2 – The veggie burger was way above average but the pasta salad really sunk my lunch ship.

Overall: 2.3/4

A closeup of the pasta salad in question. Photo by Danny Schreiber.

And if you're craving another ingredient restaurant review, check out Nichole Aksamit's review in the Omaha World-Herald: Choice is key at Ingredient.

Tune in to this blog, Little Office on the Prairie, each month for more First Friday Lunch reviews. And if you have an ingredient restaurant review or your own or a suggestion for our next outing (today!), please leave it in a comment below.

Weekly Startup Links: Fred Wilson, TechDirt, and more

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Every day I comb through my Google Reader reading sites like Hacker News and others, and star articles that are especially interesting about startups, entrepreneurship and miscellany. These are some of my favorites:

And my personal favorites:

If you have any startup-related links you'd like to share, shoot me a note!

Sunday Video: OWH cartoonist Jeff Koterba explains his process

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Today's video takes us off the web and onto the drawing board, literally. It's a profile on Omaha World-Herald editorial cartoonist Jeff Koterba, who has been with the publication for 22 years. In that time, Koterba estimates he's drawn nearly 6,000 cartoons – he sends six cartoons to the editor's desk each week.

What I found interesting about Koterba's process was that while other departments in the newsroom have turned to the computer to complete their duties, Koterba has stuck to pen, paint brushes, paper and, his single use of technology, a copy machine. Although, he does use a computer daily to peruse the news, from Omaha.com to other news website, looking for inspiration for his colorful pieces of commentary.

I hope you enjoy this video profile as much as I did. And for some technology-related humor from Koterba, check out our post: Sunday funnies from Jeff Koterba.

To read Koterba's writeup that accompanies the video, visit Omaha.com: Cartoonist loves feel of ink, paper, paint.

Holiday Video: Marc Andreessen Q&A at Stanford

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It's Labor Day weekend, and since most everyone will be relaxing today instead of working (including ourselves), we thought we'd present another video for your enjoyment.

Anyone who knows me knows that I believe Marc Andreessen to be one of the smartest individuals on the planet. Not only is he smart, he's also enjoyable to listen to. So even though on several occasions our Sunday Video has featured Marc already, I thought it would be good to share another. I could watch these videos all day long.

This video is all Q&A, and is provided by Stanford University's Entrepreneurship Corner.  


Behind the scenes of the Delivering Happiness Bus Tour

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The Delivering Happiness bus takes a rest stop at Kearney's Great Platte River Road Archway on their way to Omaha. Photo by Ryan Walker of the Delivering Happiness team.

Last week the Delivering Happiness bus descended on Omaha, Nebraska. It was the second time that Tony Hsieh along with members of the Zappos and Delivering Happiness team were in our city, the first being Hsieh's talk at Big Omaha 2010.

When I heard that Hsieh was planning a bus tour across America on behalf of the release of Delivering Happiness, which is now a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, I connected with Holly McNamara to let her know we'd love to host them while they made their journey along Interstate 80.

The details were worked out and the date was set, Omaha would host the team, and bus, on August 31st and September 1st!

We were thrilled to be included as one of the cities on the 20-city tour as visits like this help to build and solidify our city and region as one that support authors and movements that originate outside of the Midwest.

Once the team rested from the event in Boulder the day before, we set off on a day filled with visits to deliver happiness. The first stop was the AIM Institute where the entire staff assembled in the lobby of the building to greet and wake the Delivering Happiness team with an enormous welcome.

Photo left: Kathleen Berg of the AIM Institute preparing to deliver the "Welcome to Omaha" basket to the Delivering Happiness team. Photo by Ryan Walker of the Delivering Happiness team.

After visiting with the AIM team, the Delivering Happiness crew joined Dusty and I at the Joslyn Sculpture Garden to hear our thoughts about what brings us happiness and learn more about Silicon Prairie News and Big Omaha.

Next up was a Children's Hospital visit, which was coordinated by hospital staff Rob Harding and Cherie Lytle. The visit was a bit overwhelming and eye-opening for all of us, and we left encouraged by the spirit and energy from those kids, smaller than us, but with a bigger heart and enthusiasm for life than many of us.

Laura Lombardi of the Delivering Happiness team sharing the joy with little Issac. Photo by Ryan Walker of the Delivering Happiness team.

Omaha Steaks was the next stop on the visit. There we were accompanied by Omaha Steaks' Bob Bezousek, vice president of production, Beth Weiss, corporate communications director, and Dave Link, social media coordinator. Touring the production floor was informative and interesting and Omaha Steaks sent the Delivering Happiness team on their way bearing great beef jerky and more for their travels ahead.

Photo left: The Delivering Happiness team suited up and ready to go. Photo by Ryan Walker of the Delivering Happiness team.

The day wrapped up with the Delivering Happiness Happy Hour at Loft 610 where over 75 people from the community came out to mix and mingle with the Delivering Happiness team. Special thanks to Mayor Jim Suttle who crafted an official proclamation declaring August 31st "Tony Hsieh Day" in Omaha.

Mayor Jim Suttle talks with Holly McNamara and Joey Vanas of the Delivering Happiness Tour. Photo by Ryan Walker of the Delivering Happiness team.

On Wednesday morning, over 200 people gathered at Marcus Theatres' Midtown Cinema to hear Hsieh give his "Delivering Happiness" presentation and talk more about the culture at Zappos that inspired the book. I encourage you to read great writeups about Hsieh's talk by Ross Boettcher of the Omaha World Herald, Zappos.com CEO promotes culture, and Robert Murphy of RamHatter.com, Delivering Happiness Bus Tour.

All in all the many stops along the way on Tuesday and Hsieh's presentation on Wednesday morning helped to raise the spirit of many of those that were involved.

Another special thanks to the Delivering Happiness team for coming in to our city. We hope you enjoyed your time here, and return again very soon!

Prairie Moves: Shane Reiser, Chris Burns, Ben Sinclair & more

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Photo by Derek Purdy via Flickr.

The goal of Prairie Moves is to keep our readers informed about career moves, press coverage, and product development from the companies and individuals we cover on Silicon Prairie News.

If you or your company would like to submit one of the items below for our next Prairie Moves post, please email info@siliconprairienews.com. And if you have suggestions on how we could improve these posts or any of our coverage, please contact me at danny@siliconprairienews.com.

Career Moves

Media Coverage

Misc.

Adrian Blake of TownCommons.com, a 'Google News for local events'

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I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Adrian Blake, CEO of Omaha-based TownCommons.com. Adrian comes from an interesting background of management consulting with a history of working with large organizations, and he brings a unique and fresh perspective to the his startup.

Simply put, Town Commons is a website that aggregates event information from websites across your city (currently only in Omaha), and allows you to create a customized feed of events specific to your interests. Think of it as Google News for local events.

Recently launched in beta, the site already features a wide array of events for the Omaha area. You can sign up and customize your list of events and elect to receive a weekly digest of events tailored to your liking. Adrian is quick to point out however, that the beta is far from a complete product:

You want to start with something thats a "Minimum Viable Product". Our Town Commons Beta is not as pretty as it's going to be, right now it's very functional. We got something out as quickly as we could, got real people looking at it, and telling us where we have messed up. And that's immensely useful.

Town Commons' history is rooted in a site many in the Omaha area may be familiar with: OmahaWiki.org. Founded by Creighton University professor John Workman (left), OmahaWiki was at one time one of the largest city-wikis in the world, as measured by number of user-submitted articles. The core of the site focused around articles that didn't change all that often, such as venues and landmarks. This presented a business challenge for the site, as users would look up facts about landmarks once or twice, but wouldn't frequently return.

This led to the development of Town Commons with a focus on events, paired with this regional wiki data. The goal is to make Town Commons the definitive resource for event information online in mid-sized markets, thus generating a reliable repeat base of traffic.

Adrian explains:

Once you get below market 20 or 21, around the size of St. Louis or Cincinnati, there aren't very many distinctive pure-digital plays in these local markets. We feel confident that once we get the recipe correct in Omaha, that there will be opportunities in other medium-sized markets around the country. That's really the sweet spot, where you have enough stuff going on, but you don't have an incumbent doing a super job serving up digital information.

In the interview, Adrian goes into more detail about his own background and expereience, more detail about the history and goals of Town Commons, and how they are leveraging the Lean Startup Methodology to build out their site and organization.

Video Outline:

  • 1:15 - What are the origins of Town Commons?
  • 3:45 - What is your background?
  • 5:27 - How are you utilizing Lean Startup principles?

Here's a video screencast showcasing some of the features of Town Commons:

GeoClip.it: A mobile app discovering deals around you

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Screenshots of the GeoClip.it iPhone app, from itunes.apple.com.

Eliason Media, the Urbandale-based company behind Twittad, launched a mobile product last week called GeoClip.it. The product delivers deals (coupons) to users on their mobile device based on their location. Users can either open the application directly to see available deals or choose to be push-notified based on their use of other mobile products that tag location, such as Twitter and Foursquare.

James Eliason, the company founder, answered a few questions about the product for Silicon Prairie News:

Silicon Prairie News: What is GeoClip.it and how does it work?

James Eliason: GeoClip.it is a location based deal delivery platform currently available on the iPhone. A major part of GeoClip.it is giving the consumer the ability to set their preferences. After download and setting the categories you like we will deliver deals into the app.

Photo from twitter.com/jameseliason.

How does GeoClip.it fit into the overall EliasonMedia strategy?

Eliason Media’s strategy is provide technology solutions to brands, retailers and agencies. With GeoClip.it, we can white-label the technology for retailers and or agency clients for a complete mobile solution for their loyal consumers. This gives retailers the ability to deliver deals or content to consumers who have downloaded their app. We can also insert the GeoClip.it technology into the retailers existing mobile apps to provide the location based technologies that many retailers are looking at integrating throughout their marketing channels.

You launched with Yellowbook as your initial content partner, will you be adding other partners later?

Yellowbook has been a tremendous partner for us out of the gate. By partnering with Yellowbook we have deal content into GeoClip.it that will continue to expand over the coming months. Yellowbook recently launched their own group buy platform called WeForia, which is currently available in a few select cities. Yellowbook’s attention to providing small/medium sized businesses the tools they need to enter into social and mobile is what we were most impressed with. Through WeForia they have direct access to their millions of existing customers and their sales reps are on the ground already selling that platform. As retailers become more aware of that platform, the deal content coming from Yellowbook into GeoClip.it will increase substantially. Yellowbook is our sole provider of business information and deal content and we will not be adding anymore Yellow Pages listings into the app.

What's next for the product?

Over the course of the next few weeks we will be adding in more deal content from Yellowbook. Currently, data is available in GeoClip.it for approximately 200 cities nationwide. By the end of the month we will have all content loaded in. We are finishing up the Android app right now and that will be available by the end of the month as well.

[We're working on] adding in more deal of the day content from a whole host of sites including Groupon and Living Social. This will allow us to notify a consumer of a nearby deal of the day available based completely on their preferences. By the end of the year (if not sooner) we will be rolling out a web interface for customers to upload deals on the fly.  This will enable retailers or businesses to enter deal content on a daily basis, with that deal content being distributed to our mobile app and other partners. If a restaurant always has empty seats on a Wednesday night at 7 p.m, they can come onto GeoClip.it and enter “Half off your order tonight after 7 p.m.!” We feel like there is tremendous upside to that side of the business.

For more on GeoClip.it, check out James' blog post about the launch at jameseliason.com.

Two days left to vote UNI student 'College Entrepreneur of 2010'

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Screenshot of Entrepreneur Magazine's website for their Entrepreneur of 2010 awards.

Voting for Entrepreneur Magazine's College Entrepreneur of 2010 comes to a close at the end of the day this Friday, September 10. One of the five finalists vying for the title is Nick Cash, a junior at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI). Cash was selected for his work on Book Hatchery, a publishing platform for ebooks, which he currently runs out of the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center at UNI.

The contest is open to all to vote. You can view Nick's entry video and vote for him at entrepreneur.com.

Learn more about Cash in Geoff Wood's interview with him a couple of weeks ago:

UNI student is finalist for ‘College Entrepreneur of 2010’

Silicon Prairie News: What is Book Hatchery and where did the idea come from?

Nick Cash: Book Hatchery is a suite of community and publishing software intended to bring authors together online and help them publish their works digitally (known as ebooks).

The idea behind Book Hatchery evolved slowly over many months. I often tutor computer science freshman here at University of Northern Iowa, and there was always a nagging problem: computer science textbooks are filled with pages […]

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