Lincoln When Jill Thayer Liliedahl, founder of the frozen treat company Pop Art, and Amber Pankonin, creator of the health-oriented recipe app StirList, met on the Lincoln, Neb. startup scene, the pair began noticing a missing demographic at the events they were attending. Both women were startled by the lack of female entrepreneurs. "We would show up to all these startup events, and we were practically the only women there," Thayer Liliedahl said. "We wanted more to show up." Inspired by … read more

Kansas City Rob Sweeney says we're in the midst of a tech-based disconnect, and it's based on age. This generation of digital natives can master an iPhone by age four. But our grandparents could care less about hashtags, Facebook timelines and texting. That's where the failed connection happens. Kansas City native Sweeney sees a starightforward way to alleviate grandma's tech-based communication woes, and he calls it messageQube. The idea is simple: instead of teaching elderly relatives to use text messaging to communicate, messageQube acts as a receiver for the messages, and automatically prints them on a receipt-style sheet. That way, grandma can consume … read more

Kansas City Sharmil Desai was working at STIX restaurant in Kansas City, Kan. when the restaurant owners needed a website for customers … read more

Kansas City PlanetReuse recently gained national media attention for its plan to encourage the reuse of building materials, but InvenQuery, the technology that powers it, is just beginning to grow. The two Kansas City, Mo. companies share the same leadership team of Nathan Benjamin and Willow Lundgren. Benjamin has been building PlanetReuse for four years, and the team has worked on InvenQuery … read more

Lincoln Christopher Kingsley remembers it well – the “aha” moment he experienced while sitting across the table from entrepreneurs pitching for funds. Kingsley is the co-founder and CEO of 42, the Lincoln-based digital agency and software lab formerly known as Roundscapes that in March announced its new identity and the completion of a $1.5 million round of funding from Lincoln firms Nelnet and Nebraska Global. But Kingsley's journey to entrepreneurship started long before that. When he was 12, he had … read more

Kansas City RareWire is nearly ready to introduce its "secret weapon" to a broader audience. The Kansas City, Mo.-based mobile app creation studio and software provider, founded in March 2010 by former Saepio colleagues Matt Angell (below left) and Kirk Hasenzahl (left), saw the potential with the launch of the iPad for a platform that would make it easier for companies and developers to create their own apps. Since then, RareWire has been building mobile apps for local and international clients like the United States Military Academy at West Point … read more

Lincoln Gary Kebbel sees the future of journalism – and the world – in mobile. “Cell phones and mobile devices are the one, only supreme way to bridge every digital divide I can think of,” said Kebbel (left), the Dean of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications and the current driving force behind its new Mobile Media Center (he is recruiting an associate dean to take over the center this fall). “If you want to reach everybody and reach everybody with the same message, you’ve got to do it on mobile devices. Some would argue you can do it on TV also, but who’s watching?” … read more

Lincoln University of Nebraska-Lincoln journalism practice professor Matt Waite will serve as a speaker and mentor at Hack Omaha this weekend. The path that brought him there includes ventures as varied as a book on wetlands preservation, a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting and work on the cutting edge of drone journalism. But it's a path that's perhaps best appreciated chronologically. A native of Blair, Neb., Waite entered the university where he now … read more