Omaha The Nebraska Angels, a six-year-old, 47-member consortium of individual angel investors, has hired former investment firm controller and financial analyst Laura Classen as its executive director, a post held the past two years by Randy Nitz. "With Laura's experience as a controller, financial analyst and executive administrator, she brings a great background in helping run and manage a group like the Nebraska Angels," said Bart Dillashaw, the group's president and a partner at the Koley Jessen law firm. "When you add in her experience as a small business consultant and her clear … read more

Kansas City Carrie Royce recently resigned from the company she co-founded, Red Nova Labs, to pursue her own startups. With her involvement in the Kansas City startup community—she started Red Nova's Venture Fridays event and spearheaded the KC Startup Crawl—we recently conducted an email interview with Royce to learn more about her journey. | Silicon Prairie News: What triggered your jump from Red Nova Labs into a startup? | Carrie Royce: The decision wasn’t really triggered by anything in particular. I’d been thinking about it … read more

Des Moines To a room of classmates, professors and members of the Des Moines tech community, 29 Drake University students Wednesday presented the apps they've spent the past semester researching and developing. "Looking back from where they started, I'm incredibly happy with the progress they made … read more

Kansas City Regional tech council KCnext on Tuesday announced the addition of three members to its board of directors, including Silicon Prairie News community builder Regan Carrizales. Kevin McGinnis, senior vice president of product platforms at Sprint, and Kyle Mallot, vice president at DST Systems, also joined the board, which includes Greg Kratofil, a Polsinelli attorney who's worked with several area startups. KCnext's mission is to grow the city's existing base of technology firms, recruit … read more

Indianola In January, Simpson College began a collaboration with the city's economic development organization and its utilities provider to make Indianola an even more desirable location for startups. At the end of April, the more than 30 students participating ... read more

Kansas City Two friends want to build a Maker Village for engineers, entrepreneurs and designers to create under the same roof. Nick Ward-Bopp and Sam Green weren't getting satisfaction out of their work, so they decided to take on a tangible project. That ended up being the rehab of a building on the west side of Kansas City in exchange for rent. Called The Jarboe Initiative, it was the start of a larger mission to lower the barrier of entry for local makers. They made an agreement to revitalize the building while they lived on the property … read more

Des Moines For Paloma Velazquez, writing HTML is a pretty big shift from her previous writing experience. Last May she graduated from Grinnell College with degrees in English and political science. At the time, she was working as a communications coordinator for BitMethod with their app, Change. But after winning a two-year scholarship for Treehouse—a web development education tool—and teaching herself to code, Velazquez recently landed a position as a front-end developer at Des Moines' Webspec Design. … read more

Omaha Social media news isn't a norm on SPN, but when Nebraska's best-known resident joins Twitter, it becomes news, at least for Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune and of course, Mashable, among others. Warren Buffett this morning signed up for Twitter, and during a live video chat with Fortune, he sent his first tweet: Warren is in the house. … read more