If you think the only things to come out of Nebraska are Warren Buffet, football players and corn, you would be sadly mistaken. To make sure you know of the creative energy that exists in the Midwest, Jeff Slobotski founded Silicon Prairie News in July of 2008.
“The goal of Silicon Prairie is to highlight Omaha, and the region’s, creative class,” Slobotski says. “We want to showcase the innovators, entrepreneurs, artists and musicians that make this area great. The creative class is broad.”
A long-time resident and native of Omaha, Slobotski was working for a New York tech company and noticed the same creative energy found in New York, Austin or Silicon Valley also existed in his hometown. So instead of blogging about the innovations he saw where people expected them, Slobotski decided to become an evangelist for the creative class of his hometown.
“While the name Silicon Prairie News may seem to lean toward “Silicon Valley” or “Silicon Alley” in New York, we are focused on the creative class making their homes in Omaha,” Slobotski says. “We realize one of the things unique to the U.S. is there’s growth on many different fronts. Who is telling these stories about the Midwest? We are.”
In an area where there are “more stories to tell than time in the day,” Slobotski is taking the opportunity to give the rest of the country a glimpse into the grass roots, organic creative movement that has popped up here in Omaha. He is highlighting those exciting start-ups and ground-rumbling businesses of tech guys and artists. The existence of this emergence is reinforced on the other end of the scale by big companies like Google, Yahoo and PayPal now calling Omaha and Council Bluffs home. There are amazing tech-shops, artists and the music scene present here that even most people in Omaha are unaware of. These are the stories Silicon Prairie News features.
According to Slobotski, Omaha has a small, big city feel that makes it appealing. For example, the relatively short commute gives back good chunks of time from non-productive driving to be able to spend with families or on personal interests. Silicon Prairie News is as much about letting Omaha and the region know about the world-renowned creative class living in their backyard as it is informing the rest of the world of their existence. This knowledge allows local communities to tighten the connections with and within their creative class to grow the market and keep business here, local, rather than outsourcing it to the coasts or larger cities elsewhere.
In Jeff’s words, “we have kick-in-the-pants” businesses right here, the News highlights those.
Silicon Prairie News boiled down what they wanted to accomplish into a two day event called “Big Omaha.” The event infused energy into Omaha and the region with more than 450 attendees in 2009. The attendees came from all over the Midwest, from Minneapolis, Denver, Chicago, Boulder, St. Louis and all points in between, capturing the great stories that are happening all over the Midwest and recognizing that all entrepreneurs don’t all look like “entrepreneurs.”
“This event blew away my expectations and really humbled us,” Slobotski says. “It drove people to embrace their passion and their failures, something that is avoided at all costs in the Midwest.”
Slobotski pointed out that on the coasts, your failures are almost a part of your resume; a cultural difference from the mindset of the Midwest. What our region has to learn is that you must embrace failure. Failure isn’t just character wrinkles; it’s something you learn from. In many ways, it’s the best way to learn.
“What really hit home at “Big Omaha” was it wasn’t if you failed, but how you reacted to failure that matters,” added Slobotski. “Fail and fail quick, then learn to move on from it.”
With the success of the inaugural “Big Omaha,” a second event is already planned for May 13-15 of 2010. To learn more about “Big Omaha 2010,” visit their website at www.bigomaha.com and to find out about the Midwest creative class visit Slobotski at www.siliconprairienews.com.
Jeff Slobotski founder of Silicon Prairie News [16:34m]: 
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