A new effort born out of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln that aims to facilitate the meeting of entrepreneurial student minds is celebrating its official launch on Thursday and has plans for a full slate of events over the next year. 

HIVE, which is described by its creators as “a student-driven community that uses technology to aid inter-disciplinary collaboration,” kicks things off at 3:30 p.m. Thursday with “The Swarm,” its first official get-together. The event will take place at Lincoln’s City Union Auditorium (1400 R St.).

HIVE will incorporate UNL faculty and Lincoln businesspeople in its efforts, but it’s clearly a community created with students in mind. Or so the HIVE website indicates in its message to students:

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You can do anything.

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HIVE is designed to let students share knowledge and ideas, especially regarding software. The group plans to offer more than 30 software workshops this year on subjects including iOS, Android, HTML5, Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, pitching, project management and culture.

A full list of HIVE programming is said to be on the way soon. The workshops will be free for all students and UNL staff. 

“HIVE is a way for people to get their ideas from paper to a real product,” Sourabh Chakraborty, a senior electrical engineering major at UNL who works at the school’s New Media Center, said in a statement. “HIVE brings together coders, writers, graphic designers, marketing and businesses to collaborate in a way that currently doesn’t exist in the classroom. It builds on people’s strengths and exposes them to other people’s ideas.”

Stay tuned for more Silicon Prairie News coverage of HIVE as the organization gets off the ground.