Presentation given at HighlightMidwest.org conference after being redesigned

1. A New Omaha Rising

2. Dusty Davidson
Matt Secoske
Jeff Slobotski

3. silos

4. Artists
Musicians
Innovators
Entrepreneurs
Techies
Web Designers

5. Interesting people
doing interesting
things, without
knowing about
each other.

6. We are
changing
that.

8. Social Media is helping
to bring our divergent
communities (developers,
designers, entrepreneurs,
innovators, etc) together.

11. How did we get here?

13. Sarah Lacy’s money shot

14. quot;Omaha is looking at what is has —
a different culture of innovation, ... a
creative class — and trying to build
a community that will support anyone
who has a good idea and the
stomach to try to start something.quot;
quot;They live and breathe the Web
2.0 movement, are excited by it,
and want to jump in.quot;

15. Barcamp Omaha
• 30+ attendee-led sessions
• 100+ attendees
• 15+ sponsors
• Great opportunity for
networking / sharing ideas
with our “creative class”
• Building Community!

18. Video Updates
Podcasts
Ustream

19. Soo...where to from here?

20. Keep moving forward

21. events, events, events
Infotec 2009

22. BIG Omaha 2009
May 7th & 8th 2009

23. Warren?

24. Bring together
local resources

25. Creative incubator

26. Market-driven
innovation
• National partners
• Identifying key “pain points” amongst companies,
and pairing seasoned entrepreneurs with then to
solve those problems

27. Other
social media
initiatives...

28. Wrapping up
• “Siloed” but lots of people out there
• Number one priority is to keep building community
+ events, Facebook, Twitter, blogging, interviews, stories...
+ without community, the other endeavors are difficult (or
impossible) to foster
• Work with city leaders and other entrepreneurs to
build infrastructure around this community
• Begin to launch companies, highlight existing
companies, showcase cool things

29. Thank you!