5 Cool Things That Happened to Me at Big Omaha

I think that the market should reward good work and I believe that has happened with the Big Omaha conference for technologists, creative types, and entrepreneurs.  The conference organizers have certainly been rewarded with brisk ticket sales, selling all available tickets on the second day they were on the market.  If you haven’t attended and you mark yourself as belonging to one of these groups (tech, creative, entrepreneur), you owe it to yourself to check it out next year.  This is one of the hidden gems of the “Silicon Prairie” and it won’t remain hidden much longer.

This year’s Big Omaha experience was filled with great speakers, good friends, great food, interesting stories, fun interactions, emotional stimulation and a boat load of inspiration.  I have listed five examples here.

Thing # 1:  The first wonderful thing that happened to me was that my old college friend Chris Rouw showed up along with his partners at Far Reach Technologies, located in Cedar Falls, Iowa.  Chris was one of the first people I ran into on opening day.  I got to meet the team and he demonstrated an app that they had built for Dwolla which helps you to locate merchants in your area who accept payment via Dwolla.  Pretty neat – these guys are blazing a trail in the mobile payments world, and that is just one example of Far Reach’s, well, far reach.  Sorry (had to be done).  Far Reach is a neat company, just celebrating their fourth “birthday” and it is run by some outstandingly smart and extremely nice people.  You should check them out.

Thing # 2:  Another really neat thing that happened this year was that Big Omaha provided us all with two books to take home – both authors were speakers at this year’s event.  The first was Sarah Lacy (senior editor at Tech Crunch).  Her book, Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky:  How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit From Global Chaos (affiliate link) discusses her forty-week excursion into a host of developing markets around the world and what she observed while there.  Her talk gave brief synopses of a few examples.  You will be inspired by her study of how real-life entrepreneurs in little-heard-of places are making their hustle pay off for both themselves and the customers they serve.  The second was Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, The Thank You Economy (affiliate link). If you don’t know Gary already by reputation, then just look back on any of his previous speeches and you’ll feel the genuine, engaged enthusiasm that he seems to have for every task that he undertakes.  The basic message is to pay attention to how we are being marketed to and to ride the wave as this shifts.  We can all have serious advantage in marketing today because now “the ears are more important than the mouth.”  His talk was encouraging and his book has been, too, so far.

Thing # 3:  For those who know me, all three of you know that I am a huge train nut.  While eating lunch on the last day of the conference, I had the opportunity to briefly chat with John Henry Muller of What Cheer.  Turns out he was the creator of the wildly popular (can we actually say ‘viral’ or did it not meet the definition?) web contest to select the route of the Union Pacific steam excursion this year.  The Union Pacific Railroad runs their Heritage Fleet and their steam excursion program to demonstrate the history of railroading in America.  These are always popular with all the rail fans, but I think even John Henry was surprised at the response that his creation generated for the UP.  It was a pleasure for me to visit with him.

Thing # 4:  The reason I went to the first Big Omaha was simply for the opportunity to meet Gary Vaynerchuk and see if he is as good and nice in person as he seems on video (he is).  The reason I decided to attend again at the second, and now third, event was that this serves as a wake-up call to the spirit.  If you listen to your inner voice, you will begin to hear a set of “New Year’s Resolutions” that we start on in May.  For me this year, the new year’s resolution came with a corollary.  The resolution is “This will be my year to begin a side business that I can develop into a marketable property at some point.”  The corollary:  ”It doesn’t HAVE to be in the technology field.”

Thing # 5:  Finally, the last example I will share here is that I ran into my old programming TA from college.  He was a monitor in the computer lab and would help out with any questions we had while attempting to produce functional Pascal programs.  Tej Dhawan is well established in the tech world and worked for a long time in a specialized  software company.  His new gig is at a tech incubator in Des Moines, called Startup City Des Moines.  It is designed to assist fledgling companies get their wings and fly strong.  Though I didn’t get enough time to talk, I thoroughly enjoyed the time I did have with Tej and I will be following along with the progress at SCDM.  You should too.

Well, there you have it.  Five pretty cool things that happened to me at Big Omaha.  There were more, to be sure, but that’s it for now.  What I hope you take away is that although the event is organized with an eye to even the smallest detail, and while everything is in its place and well-planned, you just never know what serendipitous little moments are going to happen at Big Omaha.  That’s where the memories get made.  Thanks for reading!