Big Omaha 2011

  • Fast Company honors faces familiar to the Silicon Prairie community

    We’re thrilled to see Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business” list released on Monday. This year’s list features four faces familiar to the Silicon Prairie community as introduced to us through Big Omaha and Thinc Iowa over the last year. …

  • A complete roundup of Big Omaha 2011 videos

    That’s all she wrote. We appear to have milked every last drop from the content cow that is Big Omaha. With the publication of the final post from our Big Omaha Backstage Pass series on Monday, we have provided an exhaustive look at the energy and emotions, the ideas and insights, the sights and sounds…

  • Big Omaha Backstage Pass – Shervin Pishevar: Mentorship is a gift

    “One, I think mentorship is a gift in and of itself,” Pishevar says. “By mentoring you’re already giving something to the mentor, right, as the mentee. So the value of it is just being in that relationship as a mentor and a mentee. And so if you go about it with that attitude it, as…

  • Big Omaha Backstage Pass – Bo Fishback: The moment

    “So I’ve been around so many startups that I’ve seen a lot of moments,” Fishback says. “You know, I’ve said many times to people from the idea someone has an idea to the time they start a company, it’s almost universally one year. I don’t know why. That’s just, like, law of averages or whatever.…

  • Big Omaha Backstage Pass – Aneesh Chopra: The U.S. need for entrepreneurship

    “What Big Omaha means to me,” Chopra says, “is that there is a whole untapped base of entrepreneurial energy that, if we are organized in the right way, they can be successful as entrepreneurs and help our country meet its goals, from improving our health care system, improving our educational system, building a clean energy…

  • Big Omaha Backstage Pass – Micah Baldwin: Conference of hope

    “Do I think that this is an ambitious conference?” Baldwin says. “I categorize it much more as hope, and I think hope is much more about community where ambition is much more about individuals. And I think, for Jeff and Dusty, they’re very hopeful that the community will grow to what the community will allow…

  • Big Omaha Backstage Pass – Gary & AJ Vaynerchuk: Context & happiness

    “You know,” Gary Vaynerchuk says, “I’ve always known that context — and I didn’t know how to express it — was the whole game, right? For example, you have a feeling towards me right now that is different than you have towards AJ because we engaged together last year, so we created context, right? And…

  • Big Omaha Backstage Pass – Leila Janah: Being useful in the world

    “It’s funny,” Janah says, “I don’t really consider myself that ambitious. I think I’m just frustrated by the way things are, and I think I’m constantly imagining ways that we could do better. I first got interested in poverty alleviation in Africa when I was a student in high school when I was 16, and…

  • Big Omaha Backstage Pass – Marc Eckō: The role of authenticity

    “The journey that I’ve managed to kind of go on,” Eckō said, “in building the businesses I’ve been in has been one where I’ve been very self reflective over the last three years. And I’ve really, deeply thought about the role of authenticity and what that means and how to attempt to — even though…

  • Big Omaha Backstage Pass – Phil Kaplan: Get in over your head

    “The one piece of advice,” Philip Kaplan said, “and this may sound like a platitude or something but I think it’s actually usable – is to get in over your head. Sign up for something that you don’t think you can do. Like, get a job that you’re totally unqualified for or promise something to…