Editor’s Note: We’ve asked Tom Chapman (left), director of innovation and entrepreneurship for the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, to contribute a guest post on his 2011 goals for Cornstalks, the monthly meetup he organizes.
Dusty and I are regular attendees of Cornstalks and we encourage anyone interested or a part of tech startup to become involved. These three-hour gatherings are a great place to meet others in the community, hear from experienced entrepreneurs and participate in the discussion around what it will take to continue to build our region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
If you have any questions or comments for Chapman, you can contact him at tchapman@omahachamber.org.
See our past coverage of Cornstalks: siliconprairienews.com/tags/cornstalks
Thanks to our sponsor
Cornstalks is a group for pre-seed and seed entrepreneurs in high growth businesses. It provides light education and networking on a monthly basis. It is intended to be a group that is welcoming to a select group of entrepreneurs and nurturing of their entrepreneurial efforts.
In 2011, Cornstalks will be attempting to raise its profile. At the beginning of Cornstalks in 2007, it was attempting to provide a place exclusively for high growth entrepreneurs because many similar forums were being overrun by service providers and the entrepreneurs were being forced out. Today, the Omaha environment is much more robust and so Cornstalks is working to increase its visibility with the intent of growing its membership. It is free to be a member, and all that is required is to come to a meeting and express an interest in coming to more.
The meetings usually take place on the last Thursday of the month at the Downtown Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce building. In general, the light education topics cover a range of things but are generally constructed as stories and best practices – rather than formal education sessions. And quite often, the audience hears from seasoned entrepreneurs sharing their do’s and don’ts and how they have failed and succeeded in the past. The nights are fun and the other entrepreneurs in attendance are terrific, knowledgeable and often inspirational.
The next couple of dates, speakers and locations are as follows:
- January 27, 7:30 p.m. (Networking at 6:30), Downtown Chamber – Mark Hasebroock, Dundee Venture Capital
- February 24th, 7:30 p.m. (Networking at 5:30), LaVista Conference Center – Dwight Hansen, Treetop Ventures and Mark Vipond, LoDo Software
- March 31st, 6:30 p.m., Downtown Chamber – Demo Night
- April 28th, 7:30 p.m. (Networking at 6:30), Downtown Chamber – Doug Nielsen, Hayneedle and Xuba
- May TBD, 2011 – Steve Kiene and Patrick Smith, Nebraska Global Fund
As part of 2011, Cornstalks is going to host two Demo Nights. The first will take place in March. These nights will include 5-6 minute demonstrations of new products that Omaha-based startups and technology companies have created and are ready (or nearly ready) to deploy. The goal is to provide 12 slots from 6:30 to 8:30 for people to share their newest technologies and products.
Please join us for Cornstalks at the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce building and thank you to Silicon Prairie News for allowing me to guest post.
