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

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

Lincoln (Guest post by Kyle Murphy.) It's damn hard to recruit and hire great user-centered design talent right now. Demand is palpably high. Supply seems depressingly low. Midwestern organizations are competing against every Silicon Valley startup throwing cash and options at the limited talent pool. To win the recruiting battle against companies in hotspots like San Francisco and New York City, your opportunity can't be … read more

Kansas City As I write this, I am sitting on a bus with about 25 entrepreneurs from around the Midwest. We took a busload of tech entrepreneurs to the annual South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival in Austin, Texas. Long known as a great place to launch ventures and build buzz for your startup, we thought it was important for the emerging tech scene in the Silicon Prairie to be well-represented at "South by." So, we rented a bus (courtesy of the Kauffman … read more

Kansas City (Guest post by Nate Olson) This morning was a whirlwind. At 11:00 a.m. CST I joined a Google Hangout with a coffee shop full of smiling entrepreneurs in Reno, Nev., who were launching their very first 1 Million Cups. As I saw the excitement in this room packed with 50 or so entrepreneurs, I was overcome with joy. This joy comes from the realization that we are on the brink of a startup … read more

Des Moines If you are like me when you read something or talk to someone you immediately add a phrase or word to a song, title, proper noun or really anything. Things pop into my head that are loosely correlated to what I am reading or hearing. For example when I first met Ben Milne and he said the name of his company was called Dwolla I immediately thought of the city Kuala Lumpur the capital of Malaysia … read more