Silicon Prairie News

It remains to be definitively defined, but we think it stretches as far west as Denver and as far south as Dallas. With our base in Omaha and contributors on the ground in Lincoln, Nebraska, Des Moines, Iowa and Sioux Falls, S.D., we're proud to be a part of it, and arguably, at the center of it.

Entrepreneurs are the backbone of our country from its founding. Individuals who fit this mold will continue to shape our world for years to come. Knowing that entrepreneurs are not unique to one particular city, our goal is to find, highlight and connect these groups with other like-minded individuals.

The Silicon Prairie is home to an amazing group of people within the creative class that may not always classify themselves as entrepreneurs. What is unique about our region is the incredible amount of energy and collaboration within the creative class, and when coupled with innovators from other industries, the results are spectacular.

We define community as the group of individuals who are as passionate and interested as we are in building the region into a hotbed of talent and innovation. The Silicon Prairie News community, or tribe, is an inclusive and supportive group whose common interest is to share, encourage, network and strengthen one another.

They're business owners, technology mavens, journalism school graduates, night owls, social media gurus...okay, take back that last one, but they are a lot of things. Overall, they're individuals who care about and are interested in seeing our region's entrepreneurs and creatives succeed. To see the current team of contributors visit our contributors page.

Send a brief email to danny@siliconprairienews.com explaining who you are, why you want to contribute to SPN, what you like best about us, and your answer to the trivia question: Where was the Reuben sandwich invented?

Send a brief email to danny@siliconprairienews.com explaining who you are and what you'd like to contribute to SPN. Please do not put the time into writing a guest post or recording a guest video before you've contacted Danny. It's best to decide on a direction together.

We automatically add events to our events page that we think would be of interest to our audience. If you believe you have or know of an event that is just that, please contact danny@siliconprairienews.com. For events that we choose not to add, we offer a paid listing.

Send an email to jobs@siliconprairienews.com with the job or internship listings and a short description of your company.

The official SPN Advertisement & Sponsorship Opportunities package is still under development, but in the meantime, please contact info@siliconprairienews.com to learn more. We're looking forward to speaking with you.

Our mascot, Analog, is a prairie dog, which according to Wikipedia is a burrowing rodent (not an actual dog) native to the grasslands of North America. I won't offer up any puns between the work we do at SPN and the activities of prairie dog, I'll let you dig into that yourself, but here's the short story: It was illustrated by Andy Van Engen and named by Robert Murphy, who suggested the name in a contest we ran in April 2009.

SiliconPrairieNews.com Version 2.0 (the current version) was a combined effort of the SPN and BrightMix team. User experience and design was led by Erin Standley of BrightMix and development by Dusty Davidson of both SPN and BrightMix. The site runs on a custom content management system developed by BrightMix using Ruby on Rails. If you're interested in learning more about the backend, check out our company blog or email dusty@siliconprairienews.com.

Email info@siliconprairienews.com and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Our primary focus is to highlight entrepreneurs and creatives on the Silicon Prairie, whether it's an interview with an individual or reporting on a startup's latest product. Additionally, we post event announcement and recaps that we feel would be of interest to our audience. We also have features, such as Five in Five and Tools for the Trade, which add a different element to our stream of content. Occasionally we'll post something that doesn't fit our regular mold, but rest assured, there's a good reason to the madness. If you have any questions regarding our content, please contact danny@siliconprairienews.com.

Amongst other considerations, we're interested in passionate, hard working and dedicated individuals. If that's you or someone you know, please email info@siliconprairienews.com and fill out the form under News Tip or Pitch.

Whatever your reason for blogging — recreation, work, networking, etc. — we encourage you to submit your blog. Here's how:

1. Record a five minute or less video or submit written answers to these five questions:

   1. What is the name, subject and URL of your blog?
   2. Why do you blog?
   3. How long have you been blogging and what blogging software do you use?
   4. What’s your favorite blog (besides your own)?
   5. What do you think the state of the blogosphere is in our region?

2. Post your video to a video sharing site that allows it to be embedded by us or send me, danny@siliconprairienews.com, an email with your written answers and the following information:

   1. Name(s)
   2. Full-time job(s)
   3. City you’re blogging from
   4. Name, subject and URL of your blog
   5. Link to your video

3. Wait to see if it makes it up on SPN (we'll be sending you an email if and when it does)

City Editions is a feature that delivers relevant content to Silicon Prairie News visitors based on their location. Our current City Editions include: Omaha, Des Moines and National.

In September of 2009, Geoff Wood of Des Moines joined our team of contributors to tell the stories of entrepreneurs and creatives in his hometown. With a consistent stream of posts from Geoff, and his determination to strengthen the community in Des Moines, we launched City Editions on January 14, 2010 to better direct relative content to our Des Moines audience.

All our RSS feeds are located at siliconprairienews.com/subscriptions.

Yes. We ask that you follow four rules:

1. Keep comments on subject: reactions to the companies, products, events or things presented in the post are welcomed, personal attacks, on the other hand, are not tolerated. We'll remove your comment if we feel it's racist, sexist, obscene, offensive or irrelevant.

2. No spamming: selling, trolling or writing gibberish, all types of spam will be removed and repeat offenders will be blocked from the site.

3. Use relevant links: if you need to add a link in your comment to expand on your thoughts please do so, but make sure it's relevant to the topic at hand, if it's not, the entire comment will be removed.

4. Be yourself: we don't have a standard verification process in place but we have our ways of looking deeper, if needed. Anonymous comments are accepted but impersonations will be removed.

We reserve the right to modify or change the rules as well as delete any comment at our discretion.

You likely offended one of the rules above. If you're still curious, please email danny@siliconprairienews.com with an approximate date and description of your comment.

The comment has been removed because its in violation of one the rules above, but we keep the user comment stamp intact to show the true comment stream.

They're your words and we leave them as such (unless we choose to remove based off rules). Our recommendation: add another comment explaining yourself, e.g. the reason you wanted the comment removed.