The event – details at bustouromaha.eventbrite.com – is sold out, but the live stream of the entire talk will be available to the public free of charge. (Live stream below.)

This event is made possible with the assitance of the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, Ms. Smith, Dr. James & Karen Linder, and the Omaha and Lincoln chapters of the American Marketing Association.

Learn more about Tony Hsieh and his talk tomorrow in our post: Live Stream: Tony Hsieh speaking in Omaha next Wednesday, September 1

Though we're a little late in announcing, we're very excited to be heading to Indiana next week for The Combine. Jeff and I will be making the trip to Bloomington, Indiana for this first-ever event which celebrates many of the things that we talk about on a regular basis:

This four day event from September 9-12 brings together movers and shakers in creativity, community, culture, capital and code from all over the country. It provides a unique opportunity to learn, network and be inspired by some of the nation's top experts in internet marketing, product development, revenue generation, content creation and entrepreneurship.

We're huge fans of anything geared towards spurring entrepreneurship in places outside of your typical startup hubs, especially in the Midwest. Two of The Combine's organizers, Mike Trotzke and Brad Wisler have been huge supporters of Big Omaha from the very beginning and they are doing amazing things with the startup culture in their home state of Indiana.

It's no secret that I think that regional events such as Big Omaha, The Combine and others play a huge and significant role in helping to shape startup cultures in lesser-known areas. As we've witnessed first-hand, the bringing together of a region's smart, innovative and creative people and providing them with inspiration and connections can kickstart a community and provide great awareness. I believe it to be a critical and vital component of a healthy, vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Enough rambling, I highly encourage you to check out The Combine. Jeff and I will be there, ready to soak it all in and learn from our friends in Bloomington. 

What: The Combine 2010

Where: Bloomington, Indiana

When: September 9-12, 2010

Tickets: Get your tickets now for $199

If you're interested in going (and you should!), we have a 15% discount available for friends of Silicon Prairie News and Big Omaha. When registering (thecombine.org/register), just use the code BIG15. Hope to see you there!

Here is The Combine's list of speakers:

Screenshot of my Bumpr.net wall, taken Wednesday, September 1.

Bumpr, a social networking platform with a goal to "simplify digital life," launched into public beta last night. As of now, users can integrate their Twitter and Facebook feeds into the website, and in the coming months the team plans to integrate the top 20 social networks. When fully developed, its creators see it as "a social network hub."

"The idea here is that right now you get on your computer and you log into, you know, Facebook, Twitter, your email…our concept is instead of opening 4-5-6-8 windows, do it all from one window," product developer Dan Griffiths said. "It's complete integration."

Features of the site include:

• Twitter and Facebook integration
• Photo galleries
• Groups
• Blogs
• Social bookmarking
• Music player
• Private messaging

Two features not yet released but have place holder icons are a location-based service as well as a gaming interface. The latter being one of the site's potential revenue streams in addition to a planned service similar to Twitter's sponsored tweets and another similar to Facebook's targeted advertisements.

Of the features they're launching with, the team boasts three on its homepage:

1. Social Search: Pulls in and categorizes results from Twitter and Facebook as well as the web
2. Pictures and Videos: Videos, pictures, and audio are embedded in a user's stream
3. Social Integration: Connects all of a user's social networks in one place (example below: my profile)

Bumpr's competition, Griffiths said, is quite broad, from other early stage startups similar to Bumpr to the social networks themselves since Bumpr has essentially built their own social network. When compared to other aggregators such as FriendFeed and TweetDeck, Chris Lausten of Bumpr's management team said, "[Bumpr] has those same capabilities and then just adds more on top of it."

With regards to funding, the team has completed an angel round with local investors, including themselves. Lausten said that depending on how well the site is received, they're in talks with other institutional investors. "[We] have been interviewing a few of those," he said. "We haven't really made a decision on what we're doing as far as size of a round going forward, it's just something we're evaluating right now."

To hear Lausten and Griffiths speak about Bumpr's three strongest features, its competitors, and the funding they've recieved, view the following video highlights from our interview yesterday. And to give Bumpr a try for yourself, visit Bumpr.net.

If you or your company has one to add, please contact Danny at jobs@siliconprairienews.com with the listing and a short description of your company. We're looking for all types of opportunities, from a week-long project to a full-time position. We hope to help you make a connection.

If you apply to one below, make sure to mention that you found it on Silicon Prairie News.

Pongr – Engineering Operations / DevOps (Des Moines)

Pongr is an image recognition-based mobile marketing platform built on award winning technology.

We need someone who has managed a fairly large number of Linux servers for several years.  Web servers, mail servers, user accounts, security, monitoring, automation, Ubuntu, and Amazon EC2 experience are all important. This person will be responsible for our production environment, so needs great sysadmin skills.  Also, will be doing some coding (automated recovery scripts, setup scripts, monitoring scripts, etc) so need good programming skills.

Startup culture, desk at local development office, laptop, salary + stock options, beer, awesomeness, etc.

Full job post

Dwolla – Social Media Intern (Des Moines)

Dwolla allows users to send and receive money for 25 cents per transaction.

Looking to cut your teeth in the social media world? We may have just the thing for you. We have a paid internship available to fill.

Job duties will include:

• Supporting the Des Moines Startup Community via Twitter.
• Supporting Silicon Prairie tech via Twitter.
• Supporting Dwolla users and clients via Twitter.
• Managing Twitter DM’s and ensuring they make it to the correct support representative.
• Building Dwolla’s brand and support via Social Media.

Full internship post

YourPoolHQ.com – Outsourced Web Application/Designer (Omaha)

YourPoolHQ.com is an online source for pool supplies, pool chemicals, pool cleaners, hot tubs and spa accessories.

We're looking for a web application/designer to help with a "social/customer service" buildout to accompany our ecommerce channel at YourPoolHQ.com. We're looking to incorporate a "Q&A" element, a "ideas/suggestion" element, our blog, twitter, facebook, and other social elements down the road. We're looking for someone to take control and put all this together (design, collaboration, functionality) wether it be separate elements or one large element that contains all pieces.

This would most likely be an outsourced project with continued upgardes and more projects to come down the road. Contact Brad Podraza at bpodraza@yourpoolhq.com, please include sample work and contact information.

Mayday Systems – Part-Time VB Developer, Professional Services Support (Omaha)

Mayday Systems provides Point of Sale software to specialty retailers.

This 20 hr per week work-from-home position will provide various levels of support to our customers. You will answer direct customer calls and assist them with our application. Resolving issues will require you to leverage your knowledge of Visual Basic, SQL, networking, and basic computer troubleshooting. This is an opportunity to have a real impact and gain a sense of ownership on a piece of our business.

Responsibilities include:

• Troubleshooting various issues ranging from network connectivity, to bugs in code
• Maintaining code: Fixing bugs, enhancements if necessary, testing code changes, and deploying to customers
• Being a friendly, patient contact for our customers

Required Skills for Ideal Candidate:

• B.S in C.S. or equivalent
• Proficient in Visual Basic 6.0
• General SQL experience
• Strong troubleshooting skills
• Ability to port from VB 6 to .NET a plus

Compensation is negotiable

Email resume to mayday.systems@gmail.com

Photo by davedehetre via Flickr

The goal of Prairie Moves is to keep our readers informed about career moves, press coverage, and product development from the companies and individuals we cover on Silicon Prairie News.

If you or your company would like to submit one of the items below for our next Prairie Moves post, please email info@siliconprairienews.com. And if you have suggestions on how we could improve these posts or any of our coverage, please contact me at danny@siliconprairienews.com.

Media Coverage

• Halo Institute (Omaha) highlighted by Omaha World-Herald: Halo Institute makes its mark  
• Graffiti Tracker (Omaha) credited in Whittier Daily News article: Sheriff's deputies crack down on Rowland Heights taggers
• Dan & Alex McClanahan of McClanhan Studio (Ames) highlighted by Go{4}Pro: Inspire Me Friday Interview #21} McClanahan Studio
• Juan Carrillo's project UNO4sq (Omaha) covered by AboutFoursquare.com: College uses foursquare specials to guide students to alcohol-free venues

Product Development

• Sojern (Omaha) announces additional $9M in venture capital funding – via businesswire.com
• Jim Boutcher of Smelly Puppy (Omaha) released a QuickCal Apple Dashboard Widget update – via email

Misc.

• Charlie Wittmack (Des Moines) will continue the bike leg of The World Tri solo and unsupported – via theworldtri.com

We often use Sojern as a shining example of high-growth startups on the Silicon Prairie, and as one of the few examples of outside venture funding taking place in the Omaha area. This funding today helps to solidify that position and will help the company to further expand their efforts and reach.

You can read the full press release at BusinessWire. We've also covered Sojern and its founder, Gordon Whitten several times in the past:

• New Omaha company Sojern gives airlines new way to make money
• SPN interviews Gordon Whitten of Sojern
• Sojern releases fourth iPhone app, AirportRemote
• Launching a top ten iPhone app: Gordon Whitten on AirportRemote

Screenshot of Entrepreneur Magazine's website for their Entrepreneur of 2010 awards.

University of Northern Iowa (UNI) student Nick Cash is a finalist for Entrepreneur Magazine's College Entrepreneur of 2010. Nick is being recognized for his startup, Book Hatchery, a publishing platform for ebooks. The contest is open to all to vote until September 10.

You can view Nick's entry video and vote for him at entrepreneur.com.

We recently interviewed Nick to learn more about his startup, the support UNI has given him and what's next.

Silicon Prairie News: What is Book Hatchery and where did the idea come from?

Nick Cash: Book Hatchery is a suite of community and publishing software intended to bring authors together online and help them publish their works digitally (known as ebooks).

The idea behind Book Hatchery evolved slowly over many months. I often tutor computer science freshman here at Unversity of Northern Iowa, and there was always a nagging problem: computer science textbooks are filled with pages of computer code, but there is no way to get the code onto the computer without retyping them. Also, most textbooks are not friendly for young computer science majors, so I figured I would write a simple ebook to use with the students I tutored. As I pursued this idea, I decided to see how hard it would be to make it publicly available. It turns out there was no easy way to publish it to all of the online ebook retailers, so I figured I would create the solution.

How has the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center (JPEC) at UNI helped you bring the idea to fruition?

The JPEC here at UNI runs many programs to support entrepreneurs. The JPEC runs incredibly helpful workshops, our Student Business Incubator (SBI), provides one-on-one counseling, hosts monthly lectures with entrepreneurs or related professionals, and runs our Certificate of Entrepreneurship program. All of these programs are free to students thanks to our generous donors. I've taken part in nearly everything the JPEC has to offer, and all of it has proven to be incredibly valuable.

In particular, the SBI has been helpful on a number of levels. One of the obvious benefits is that it provides office space, furniture, technology, equipment, and some supplies. This helps keep costs extremely low.

However, the most valuable thing about the SBI is the environment. I am surrounded by other student businesses all struggling with problems similar to mine. Even more importantly, I'm just down the hall from professionals dedicated to helping make our businesses successful. There are few things more valuable than having people to bounce ideas off of or talk through some problem you are having.

The SBI also provided me with the confidence to get rolling. Before I got into the SBI I felt like I was just a student with some big ideas hacking away in my apartment. Once I had space in the SBI, it all started to feel very real. The SBI helped me pull my head out of the clouds and take action.

How big is the Book Hatchery team?

I get this question a lot. Legally, I am a company of one. However, Book Hatchery has a large support structure that works behind the scenes to make it possible.

Book Hatchery would not exist without the support of the JPEC and its staff. Specifically, Laurie Watje and Katherine Cota-Uyar provide extremely valuable expertise. Most of my background is in software development and technology; they help me with just about everything else!

Book Hatchery's infrastructure is built using free, open source software. Thus, Book Hatchery owes a lot to the communities that help create, support, enhance, and fix this software.

There are also a number of professors and friends who provide help with things without asking anything in return. There have been many times where their expertise helped me fix some previously unsolvable problem or remedy a nasty situation quickly.

What stage is the product in and how has the development process gone?

Book Hatchery will be launching our beta product in October. It will include our core functionality, including format conversions, publication submission and management. Some of our more advanced features will roll out a few months later as we get more feedback from our authors.

The development process was pretty much what I expected – about 80% of it came together pretty quickly, but that final 20% has been a bit of a struggle. This tends to be true of most software development. I have become quite accustomed to spending long nights tracking down extraneous errors, reconfiguring our servers, and tackling other random problems that seem to crop up.

One of the bigger problems Book Hatchery has had was with web hosting. We initially got a good shared hosting package that seemed like it would be adequate for quite some time, but they over-promised and under-delivered. After some constant struggles with them when the site was barely grabbing any traffic, I decided to bite the bullet and grab our own servers. This gives us much greater control and dedicated resources, but it is also a big time sink I hadn't counted on having just yet.

The next year, Scott asked others who shared his birthday month of September to give up their birthdays in a similar fashion. Together they generated 150,000 dollars. As of last year, charity: water had raised more than 10 million dollars in total to provide clean water all over the world. Each September, charity: water launches a new September campaign targeted at a specific group of people. September is only a few days away so we wanted to share the new campaign launch video with you.

I happen to be a September baby myself and was inspired by Scott to give up my 32nd birthday in a few weeks. If you'd like to help me reach my goal of raising 1,000 dollars, go to mycharitywater.org/geoffwood

If you're a September baby and participating in the September campaign, we'd like to know about it. Leave a link to your page in the comments below.