What is Prairie Moves?

Published Tuesdays and Fridays, Prairie Moves keeps our readers informed about career moves, media coverage, product development and more 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 editor@siliconprairienews.com. And if you have suggestions on how we could improve these posts or any of our coverage, please contact danny@siliconprairienews.com.

Fundings

• Gift Card Impressions (Kansas City, Mo.), a company providing personalization solutions for the gift card industry, secured an undisclosed amount of new capital investment in a round led by OpenAir Equity Partners (Kansas City, Mo.) - Press Release

Career Moves

• Riane Menardi, formerly with Torsion Mobile (Des Moines), joined Goodsmiths as Community Builder
• Eric Heikes, formerly with Arrow Quick Solutions (Oskaloosa, Iowa), joined Goodsmiths as Front-End Developer
• Grant Awes will be joining My Diabetes Home (Des Moines) post-graduation as Coordination Manager

New Creative

• RareWire (Kansas City, Mo.) launched a redesigned website - rarewire.com

Product/Business Development and Milestones

• Social Money (West Des Moines, Iowa) announced plans to more than double its staff - Press Release, Des Moines Register, Des Moines Business Record, SPN
• Goodsmiths moved into a new office in West Des Moines located at 218 1/2 5th Street - Goodsmiths blog
• Dwolla (Des Moines) announced its New York City office is in General Assembly - Dwolla dev blog
• TweetCaster by OneLouder (Kansas City, Mo.) rolled out updates for Android and iOS - TweetCaster blog

Mentions

• OpenIowa by StartupIowa - Des Moines Register: "OpenIowa kicks off, attendees ready to dig through public data all weekend", "Ideas pitched and teams off to work on OpenIowa projects", "OpenIowa attendee pushes forward project for homeless shelter", " 'I code for relaxation' ", "Who donated money to a politician? We’ll Tweet all about it.", "Storify: OpenIowa", "OpenIowa coding teams win with ideas targeting parks, vets", Iowa Public Radio: "Got Government Data? There's an App for That", SPN: "Photos and team details from Day 2 of the inaugural OpenIowa", "With app for safe parks, SuperRanger takes top prize at OpenIowa", StartupIowa: "In case of doubt, openness prevails…" and Drake University: "What we can learn from the startup ethos"
• CityCamp Kansas City - OpenSource.com: "Sharing the open source journey with Kansas City"
• Freebeecards (Des Moines) - Des Moines Register: "Tech Spotlight: Des Moines company offers gift cards redeemable with smartphones"
• Think Big Partners (Kansas City) - Sprout Insights: "Twitter Success Story: Think Big Partners"
• Dwolla (Des Moines) - ReadWriteWeb: "The Real "Mobile First" Companies"
• Brent Beshore of AdVentures (Columbia, Mo.) - Huffington Post: "Young Entrepreneur Council: Quit Blaming the Economy for Why You're Not Making Enough Money"
• University of Nebraska-Lincoln: "Spotlight On Cameron Kochenower"

Recognition

• Mashable named Zaarly (San Francisco-based, Kansas City office) one of "5 Startups Using Tech To Do Good"

Blogged

• Pete Thomas on Tony's Kansas City: "Advice For Midwest Entrepreneurs And How Kansas City Lags Behind Boulder, CO In The Venture Capital Game!!!"
• RareWire (Kansas City, Mo.): "RareWire and the Era of Retina"
• Sporting Innovations (Kasas City): "Don Garber on Sporting Innovation and Kansas City"
• Vernon Delpesce (Des Moines): "Bright Young Entrepreneurs In The Silicon Prairie"

Misc.

• Omaha World-Herald: "Omaha cast net that caught cyberthieves"
• Des Moines Register: "Cities' efforts could secure data center"
• Nebraska Entrepreneur: "Embracing the Mighty Bootstrap" and "Fat Brain Toys co-founder to be a keynote speaker at Infotec"
• KCITP announced Hack The Midwest: A Kansas City Hackathon on May 25-26
• Veel Hoeden (Pella, Iowa) is participating in a video contest for a $25,000 makeover - myturnstone.com
• Omaha Steaks is using ShopIgniter (Portland, Ore.) to power its Omaha Steaks Facebook store - Press Release, Silicon Florist

Credits: Photo by Brian L. via Flickr