Geoffrey H Wood

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to join some other Des Moines entrepreneurs as guests on a local talk radio show. I wasn't sure what to expect since it was mid-morning on a holiday (New Year's Day) and I wasn't even able to be in studio, we were at my in-laws for a late family Christmas celebration so I had to call in from a rural part of Iowa on an AT&T cell phone.

However, it was a great experience. I think it was the Jan Mickelson show, but Mr. Mickelson was on vacation and the show had a guest host sitting in. The topic was entrepreneurship in Des Moines in 2010 and I was invited by Alexander Grgurich of Foundry Coworking, along with Ben Milne of Dwolla, Joey Hinke of JA Hinke & Co, and a few others.

It was a fun experience and it's already lead to an opportunity, as I was already contacted be a local church men's group interested in bringing in someone to talk about the same topic. Several friends and acquaintances have reached out to tell me that they heard me on the radio proving that it's still an effective medium for telling your story.

Personally, in the age of TiVo, I prefer to listen to podcasts where I can stop and start the programming as I move about my day and don't miss anything. I also like to listen to them on my schedule, rather than the traditional model of tuning in at a certain time.

Continuing on the theme of mainstream media, I've had a ton of folks tell me they saw the profile in Juice last week. Interestingly, many of these folks are barely in the upper bounds of Juice's demographic (25-34) or already beyond it. Many of them pointed out that "they rarely look at Juice" which makes me think that either 1) the cover story on the Top 100 area restaurants was a great attention grabber or 2) my friends have a compulsion for looking at party pictures that they're afraid to admit. Either way, it was a great opportunity and I'm very glad that Brianne and her colleagues wanted to do it.

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of attending the Highlight Midwest (hashtag: #hmdm) event in Des Moines. Highlight Midwest is a regional event that started last year in Kansas City, with the idea of "highlighting" the good entrepreneurial stories from across the Midwest - specifically from the Des Moines, Kansas City and Omaha. Logic would indicate that next year's event will be in Omaha but organizer's have been strangely avoiding stating that as fact.

The majority of the conference featured small businesses owners and entrepreneurs presenting to their peers in hopes of both getting the word out and hopefully spurring collaboration in the future.

I had the chance to sit in Ben Milne's presentation on Dwolla, his new money transfer company in Des Moines that I've been keeping an eye on, as well as one about RockDex, a company spread between Kansas City and Omaha, that tracks information on music play and interest in new media.

I also threw my 2 cents in as my friends Dusty Davidson and Jeff Slobotski, the founders of Silicon Prairie News, talked about the future role of their great service (that I'm proud to be a part of) in raising the tide for innovators in our little region of the country.

By far, my favorite part of the day (in addition to the comped bar by Ames' own Olde Main Brewing Company that opened at noon!) was the keynote speakers. There were three keynotes, one each from the noted cities: Simon Kuo from LightThread in Kansas City, Mike Draper(1) from SMASH in Des Moines and Joe Olsen(2) from PhenomBlue in Omaha. Each is an innovator on an (inter)national scale and the Midwest is better for having them.

It's unfortunate that they were scheduled for 4:30-6:00 PM on a Friday afternoon because a lot of the out-of-state folks had already taken off. However, for those of us that stuck around, we were treated to great presentations. They were inspiring, identifiable and each had a challenge for the future. I had the chance to grab a little video from each and I'll have it up on SPN soon.

Danny Schrieber, the man behind the content at SPN, did a fun video project that day where he grabbed attendees and asked them to: introduce themselves, tell us their "Highlight of the Midwest" and who they met at the conference that they'd like to have lunch with. He cut them together and here's the result.

Renda from the Des Moines Register was at the event and took a ton of photos, check them out here.

(1)Mike graciously did an interview with me for SPN - check it out here (2)Joe's a great guy who helped me network in Omaha when it looked like Hope was bound for Creighton rather than Drake. 

Several week ago, I mentioned SiliconPrairieNews.com an online publication based in Omaha that documents the creative class in the Midwest (in this post).