Omaha (Guest post by Paige Reitz.) Today is the day every nonprofit in town wants you to know about. From midnight to midnight, it's Omaha Gives—a 24-hour charitable challenge organized by the Omaha Community Foundation to rally the entire city to give to the local causes they care about. The minimum donation to give is set low ($10) on purpose. While Omaha Gives is about raising as much money as we can as a city in 24-hours, it is also about showing that when we work and give together, we can make a significant impact for our local nonprofit organizations who work day-in and day-out to support our city. And Omaha Gives is not just … read more

Kansas City Late last year over lunch, I was complaining about the lack of diversity in tech to Hack of the Sexes co-founder Jason Carrigan. He challenged that we should do something about it. Although our original idea of a boys vs. girls challenge in the tech space sparked a lot of controversy, much of the heat came from people who were opposed to the premise and thought that dividing the sexes is counter-productive and a step backward. We believe that providing a friendly competition where women are challenged to work … read more

Lincoln Black Girls Code: a bold name for a bold organization. Kimberly Bryant founded the San Francisco-based nonprofit last year with a mission to close the gap of women and people of color in STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) fields. She is getting young girls interested in technology by introducing them to programming. After a successful year of holding workshops across the nation and abroad to introduce thousands of girls to tech … read more

Omaha Inventors—if you are not practicing your sprint drills…you should be. The race to the Patent Office has begun and there is no ribbon for second place. Prior to March 16, 2013, the United States was a first-to-invent country. Although there could be exceptions to the rule, the date of invention in the United States was determined upon execution of a two-step process that included: 1. Conception; and 2. Reduction to practice. Conception was the touchstone of inventorship and represented the … read more

Omaha (Guest post by Dan Gilbert.) How does the millennial generation influence your workplace, our community, and the world? Writer, filmmaker, and millennial storyteller David Burstein tells the nuanced story of a generation that is pragmatic enough to navigate constant change, and creative enough to chart their own paths despite beginning their careers in a troubling economy. Burstein is visiting Omaha … read more

Kansas City This weekend, about 100 hackers, developers and visionaries will gather in the City of Fountains for Hacking the Gigabit City, an event aimed at creating and developing the advanced uses for the ultra-high-speed connectivity that Google Fiber is bringing to Kansas City. Our local organizations—the Kauffman Foundation and KC Digital Drive—have partnered with the national resources of Mozilla Foundation and US Ignite to kick off the event, which works to create advanced "use cases" for the homes in Kansas City that will have gigabit connection speeds. While there are many gigabit … read more