Talk about a discount, folks.

BIG Omaha promises to be a fabulous event. Just look at the lineup of speakers. It’s not often that even one of these thinkers and doers comes to Nebraska. The organizers behind the first-ever BIG Omaha are pulling them in all at once for the event on May 7-8.

Not bad.

What’s better, though, is they’re making students quite a deal: $99 registration for the first 99 to register.

That’s half-off the current registration price of $199.

Look at the schedule.

• Entrepreneurs like Gary Vaynerchuk who draw huge crowds at South By Southwest Interactive will be there.
• Heck, one of the speakers, Matt Mullenweg, founded the company that produces the open-source software that runs my site.
• Love Threadless tees? Yep, they’ve got people coming.
• Think Basecamp’s simplicity is genius? 37Signals’ Jason Fried will be in town.
• That’s just the beginning, though. There’s not a weak spot to be found in their schedule.

The bottom line

If nothing else, ask yourself this: How could this conference not be an awesome opportunity when they managed to work cows into the logo for an event targeting entrepreneurs, creatives and innovators?

A lesson for all you event planners out there: If a cow is in your logo, I’m there.

You should be, too.

Register today to ensure you’re among the first 99 students.

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To most of the country, Nebraska is the middle of nowhere.

We’re considered a wasteland between Chicago and Denver, the flat part of the country that is much better to fly over than drive through, the kind of place that produces produce, beef and little else.

To that I say: What a bunch of hooey.

• Archrival, a youth branding company based in Lincoln, has created campaigns for everything from Spam Singles to Red Bull to the National Collegiate Rock Paper Scissors Competition.
• Plenty of my friends ran their own ag-related businesses before they were out of high school. Yep, small towns can churn out self-employed 15-year-olds.
• You can buy pickled asparagus from Ely Farms, a specialty food company that won a national FFA award for entrepreneurship.
• Saddle Creek Records has blossomed into a powerful independent record label, and the label owners have even opened a nationally recognized music venue, The Slowdown.

Bottom line: People are doing cool things in Nebraska. You just may not know it.

Two entrepreneurs are trying to change that. Enter Jeff Slobotski (@jjsnyc) and Dusty Davidson (@dustyd), the duo behind Silicon Prairie News.

… A website dedicated to providing news and information about Omaha’s creative class which includes, but not limited to, entrepreneurs, innovator, investors, artists and visionaries.

Cool, huh?

When looking at the future of journalism and keep hearing “niche-markets-this and niche-markets-that,” it’s easy to get lost in the macro view.

The World-Herald’s readership base is so broad that the paper can’t focus solely on the Omaha entrepreneurship beat like a blog can.

And judging by their site’s traffic, plenty of readers are looking for the kind of information SPN provides.

And to top it all off, Davidson and Slobotski are truly connected to their readership. They’re planning BIG Omaha, a May conference that is set to reel in some major players from the entrepreneurship world.

The full schedule is available and includes folks from WordPress and Threadless, as well as Jason Fried of 37Signals and the always inspiring Gary Vaynerchuk.

So what’s my point?

Kudos to Jeff and Dusty for showing Nebraska’s young, budding entrepreneurs that they can make things happen right here in the Midwest and for nurturing that spirit of innovation through events like BIG Omaha.

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