Omaha Brian Wong, the founder of mobile rewards network kiip, pulled from his personal and professional experience as an entrepreneur to convince the Big Omaha 2012 audience that people can create their own luck. "I'm here to say that you can control it," Wong said Friday. "And I'm going give you 10 steps to do that that's based on sort of the last few years of sort of trial and error – a lot of error – but I hope … read more

Omaha Charles Best created DonorsChoose to make it easy for anyone to help students in need. Last week, the crew from What Cheer made it a little easier Best spoke Friday morning at Big Omaha about DonorsChoose, the website he founded that allows public school teachers to post classroom project requests and, in turn, lets donors pick specific projects they want to support. When Best mentioned the DonorsChoose API during his talk, it captured the imagination of … read more

Omaha From Big Omaha 2012 opening to closing party, morning to afternoon speaker and serious to silly photo booth pose, here's the round-up of the thousands of photos snapped by our stills and motion content partner, Malone & Company of Omaha. You've already been seeing Malone's work featured in our Big Omaha coverage, and in the next couple of months, you'll see their one-on-one video interviews … read more

Omaha Back by a combination of popular demand and this editor being a glutton for awkwardly asking, "Can I, um, take a picture of your T-shirt?" (OK, mostly the latter), it's another edition of the Silicon Prairie Startup Swag Roundup®. Last May at Big Omaha, the first installment of The Roundup left you wanting more. In October, we delivered with the sequel from Thinc Iowa. Today, we make it a startup tee trilogy. And, like the protagonist of another epic three-part series … read more

Omaha Ben Lerer once had his sights set on the grand finale, the part in which he thought his company would receive enough money to "crash planes into boats, or other awesome stuff like that." But over time, he learned that what's more important than the destination is the daily work, the entrepreneurial journey on the way to the destination. With that in mind, at Big Omaha 2012 Lerer shared his story of personal growth that coincided with the growth … read more

Omaha Let's get this out of the way. Big Omaha isn't just a conference. It's much more. Big Omaha is a family. This is not hyperbole. "Who makes you better?" This is the question I posed to attendees as we kicked off an amazing two days of speakers, best practices, laughs, tears, hugs, high-fives, shoulder shakes, relationship building and more. To answer this question all we had to do was look around … read more

Omaha In what has become somewhat of a post-Big Omaha ritual, I'm camped out in the back of a local coffee house attempting to start processing what has taken place over the last week. I know much has already been said and shared, and it will take me a few more days (and coffees) to fully and truly comprehend everything that took place, but I wanted to write down a few of my initial thoughts, reflecting on the experience and giving recognition … read more

Omaha The Big Omaha 2012 Video Series presented by Microsoft BizSpark kicks off today with the opening remarks by our emcee, Antonio Neves of THINQACTION. In line with Neves' welcome, this post serves as an introduction of the series: 18 videos featuring the 14 speakers and two special guests who took the stage at Big Omaha, an annual event to inspire, educate and connect entrepreneurs, especially those … read more

Omaha With another event freshly entered in the annals of SPN history now is the time to remind you that you don't need to wait 12 months to experience more of Big Omaha. Thanks to the support of Microsoft BizSpark, a major sponsor of Big Omaha 2012, we'll be releasing video of the 14 presentations delivered on Thursday and Friday. BizSpark has been a strong supporter of our events … read more