BarCamp Omaha 2010 served as an exclamation point to a great week on the Silicon Prairie. Above, from left to right, Eric Downs of DownsDesign, Wendy Townley of Nerdy Thirty, Matt Secoske of Nimble Logic, and Rahul Gupta of Planet Water Foundation. Photo by Danny Schreiber.

Since coming on board full-time at Silicon Prairie News in June 2009, I can’t remember a busier content production week than last week. A busier week? Yes. (See: Editor’s Notebook: Big Omaha, content lag.) But a week in which every day we had to choose what stories we’d cover because we didn’t have the bandwidth to cover them all – nope, there hasn’t been a busier week.

Just over two weeks ago, our phones and email began filling up with an unprecedented amount of news leads – Dwolla was going to announce funding, Nebraska Angels provided seed funding, Creighton University’s BioVentures was taking place on Thursday, and more – we did our best to arrange our schedules to cover as much as we could. We missed out on a number of stories, stacks of emails still need to be answered (sorry about that!), and videos still need to be edited and uploaded.

From Sunday through Saturday last week, we published 30 articles. Of those, half of them had the quality of timeliness, while the other half were feature pieces or a part of the disRUPT series. Here are five of the articles that were especially fun to publish:

• Dwolla closes $1M Series A round – interview with founder Ben Milne
• The story of PandoraFM
• Pics from Last Night: BitMethod Open House
• Archrival acquired by Dachis Group
• Q&A with David Hauser, organizer of National Entrepreneurs’ Day

As we look at content in the weeks ahead we expect the high volume to sustain, although you’ll see a break later this week as we step away to spend time with family and friends for Thanksgiving.

Thank you!

With the above in mind, I want to extend a big thank you to two important parties in our news production process: you (our Silicon Prairie News community) and our team of contributors and writers.

You – Without your news leads, tips, pitches and press releases, we wouldn’t be in the know. Please continue to send us those items, or if you haven’t already, do so to info@siliconprairienews.com. We’ll do our best to respond in a timely matter and let you know if it’s something we’re interested in covering. We’re also happy to hold onto and keep confidential any breaking news. We want to work with you to be as timely as possible when we report on product releases, funding announcements, awards, and more.

Contributors & Writers – Over these past couple of months you may have noticed a few unfamiliar authors on our blog. We’re expanding our team of contributors, but before we elevate them to the title of “Contributor” we’re bringing them on as “writers.” After they’ve shown they’re committed to Silicon Prairie News and the community of entrepreneurs and creatives that we cover, we’ll introduce them to you as a contributor. In the months to come, look to be introduced to new faces in Omaha, Lincoln, Des Moines and Cedar Falls.

Future

It’s a bit weird for me to look back three years ago to a time when I was still in my previous job and I was hard on the job hunt, determined to end up in a startup in Silicon Valley. As the events would unfold, I began contributing to Silicon Prairie News in January 2009 and then became involved in planning Big Omaha in March of that same year. Big Omaha took place and shortly afterward Jeff and Dusty offered to bring me on full-time. What a ride it’s been.

Over these past three years, I’ve immersed myself in this community and have met hundreds of incredible individuals, been introduced to a number of promising startups, and have heard countless ideas. Looking to the future, I’m excited to cover some, if not all, of those individuals, startups, and ideas on Silicon Prairie News. Keep up the hard work and hustle – it’s because of you that we do what we do.