Second annual I/OWA conference announces two speakers with local ties

DES MOINES—For its second year, the Des Moines-based I/OWA conference is welcoming speakers with ties a little closer to home. Organizers announced Wednesday that the first two speakers at the conference, to be held Oct. 16-17, will be Rajat Paharia, founder of Bunchball, and Harper Reed, founder and CEO of Modest, Inc.

I/OWA conference logoDES MOINES—For its second year, the Des Moines-based I/OWA conference is welcoming speakers with ties a little closer to home. Organizers announced Wednesday that the first two speakers at the conference, to be held Oct. 16-17, will be Rajat Paharia, founder of Bunchball, and Harper Reed, founder and CEO of Modest, Inc.

If you think the name Bunchball sounds familiar, it probably does. The California-based gamification company has a growing team, currently with six full-time members, based in Des Moines and working out of Gravitate, Des Moines’ newest “entrepreneurial center of gravity.”

Additionally, Reed is an alum of Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, and Modest—headquartered in Chicago—has a remote employee Derek Brooks (who you might remember from his stellar Prairie Portrait) working from Des Moines.

The conference kicks off Oct. 16 at Gravitate with a day of open co-working and educational breakout sessions. This portion of the I/OWA conference is free and open to the public. On Friday, Oct. 17, the event continues at the Kirkwood with a day of speakers from across the country. Tickets for the second day of the conference are available online for $99.

The conference will help close out the inaugural Des Moines Tech Week, 10 days of entrepreneurial-focused events to strengthen and celebrate the central Iowa community.

Learn more about the first two speakers from the I/OWA conference organizers

 RajatPaharia headshot

Rajat Paharia — Founder of Bunchball

Widely recognized as the father of gamification, Rajat Paharia founded Bunchball in 2005. Since then, he has parlayed his unique understanding of technology and design—along with a preternatural ability to recognize patterns—into the creation of a company whose market-defining solutions have helped engage customers and motivate employees at a wide array of companies, including Applebee’s, Mattel, T-Mobile, NBCUniversal, VMware, Coca-Cola, SAP and Cisco. Before founding Bunchball, Rajat had built a technology design career at IDEO, Philips Consumer Electronics, IBM Research and ViewStar. Rajat earned a master’s degree in computer science (with a focus on human interaction) from Stanford University, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of California Berkeley. Rajat also is the author of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller “Loyalty 3.0 – How to Revolutionize Customer and Employee Engagement with Big Data and Gamification.”

 Harper Reed headshot

Harper Reed — Founder & CEO of Modest, Inc.

Harper Reed is a hacker/engineer who builds paradigm-shifting tech and leads others to do the same. Harper loves using the enormity of the Internet to bring people together, whether as CTO of Obama for America, CTO at Threadless.com, or on his own projects. Harper and his team created Dashboard, a site that connects volunteer teams and acts as an online component of the field office. You can often find Harper playing with new technology, looking for something to hack or enjoying life in Chicago with his amazing wife, Hiromi.

 

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

Get the latest news and events from Nebraska’s entrepreneurship and innovation community delivered straight to your inbox every Wednesday.