The short version is this: Nebraska Code Camp, a volunteer-run conference focusing on all things software development in Nebraska, made a call for speakers and then published the lineup: 48 men and 0 women. Subsequently a bit of a storm erupted on social media.

Today, Matthew Hansen at the Omaha World-Herald chimed in on the subject, and I thought I might add my thoughts as well. As someone who has organized a few events of all shapes and sizes, I feel like I have a unique perspective.

I’ve been in their situation

For many years at our flagship conference, Big Omaha, people would comment on the lack of female speakers. As everyone knows, the pool of available female entrepreneurs isn’t big to begin with. Add to it the fact that Big Omaha aims to have only the best presenters – those who are notable or have notable companies – and all of a sudden that pool is even smaller.

Eventually, someone pointed out to us that as an organizing group, we were just a bunch of white dudes. How could we be expected to select “strong female” speakers? For 6 years I ran Big Omaha, and will be the first to admit that in the first few years we didn’t give any thought to diversity. We were just a bunch of volunteer guys passionate about startups and tech. 

But I’m also the first to admit that at the top, we were wrong in our approach. In a field that is heavily weighted in one way, not prioritizing diversity yields a fairly predictable outcome.

We shifted our selection committee to include more women – some were employees and some were just members of the community. And we shifted our thinking to favor diversity in all forms. It’s not just white guys. It’s not just tech. It’s not just entrepreneurs. It’s a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences.

I’m incredibly proud to say that through a conscious effort on our part, Big Omaha 2014 is probably one of the most diverse lineups of speakers at a startup/tech event that you’ll see. And it’s not just diversity for diversity’s sake. We know that difference in perspective that comes from a variety of backgrounds is what makes the conference unique, and what allows us to draw such an amazing crowd. It’s one of the reasons people walk away having such great experiences.

It’s 100% possible

I have long been one of the most vocal supporters of not only the Midwest startup community, but the Midwest tech community in general. We’re very grateful and supportive of all of the folks who are working to build and grow these communities, especially those who do it in a volunteer capacity. However, communities are strongest when they are vibrant and diverse. This is not an indictment of the organizers of the event – they’re working hard and making good progress. But as a community we should aim to be better, and strive to be an example of how a community *should* act and not how one *should not*.

We love living in Omaha. I’m often asked “why Omaha?“, and my response is usually the same. It’s where our home is. It’s where our families are. It’s where our friends live. It’s a city where you can make meaningful change if you want to. It’s a city with great food and culture. It’s a city that’s small enough where you feel like it’s a small town. It’s a city where we can affordably live in a nice loft in the urban center. The list could go on and on. At the end of the day, we can travel the world to experience all kinds of wonderful things, and then come back home to Omaha.

I’m sure someday I’ll expand on these points, but I thought it was a good start.  Go check out the About page for that and everything else about little old me.

From a Silicon Prairie News article a long long time ago…

Why was Cornstalks created?

Cornstalks was created to be a forum that allowed high growth entrepreneurs to come out of their labs, garages and basements to meet and discuss real problems that were facing them and their companies. Some issues include finding investors, creating a good capital structure, intellectual property protection and finding good employees. These challenges are typically topics of the presentations and discussed amongst the group.

I remember sitting at a meeting many years ago (Late 2007 maybe?), where the seed for Cornstalks was planted (haha). It was likely at this meeting that I first met Tom Chapman, and a handful of other folks who remain friends and members of the community to this day.

The first Cornstalks meeting took place on January 31, 2008. Almost exactly six years ago! Here’s a few photos I managed to dig up:

Tom Chapman running the show, with Steve Hutchinson and Mary Ann O’brien presenting.

Over the years, Cornstalks has seen virtually everyone involved with a “startup” in Omaha present at one time or another. The funny thing to me is that Cornstalks actually pre-dates Silicon Prairie News, so many of the presenters aren’t recorded in any way.

However, SPN worked to record many of the talks over the years. Here are a few of the highlights:

• Bruce Hoberman – Proxibid
• Ben Milne – Dwolla
• John Wirtz – Hudl
• Joe Olsen – Phenomblue

That’s just a small sampling of the many presenters, some of whom were from outside the region, like Matt Galligan who had just started SimpleGEO at the time.

So when Dusty Reynolds texted the other day and asked if I’d like to speak:

You wanna hold a new record for most times spoken at Cornstalks??!!

Funny, it’s probably true at this point. In fact, I probably have the attendance record as well. It’s hard to really pin down, but I definitely remember talking about Brightmix (likely about culture and internships). I definitely remember presenting with John Grange about Layeredi. And I even pitched Tripleseat at the first Cornstalks Demo Night.

Maybe this past week will be my last :)

The entrepreneurial community in Omaha has changed drastically in the past 6 years, with a lot more things happening than were ever happening before. In a world with 1 Million Cups and myriad other events, there are more opportunities than ever for local entrepreneurs to surround themselves with their peers.

I believe that Cornstalks now needs to evolve to find its place in the world. The attendees have always been a mixed bag, but I truly believe to have an impact, the people in the room truly need to be the “right” mix. I think Tom said it best oh so long ago:

Why haven’t I heard of Cornstalks?

Cornstalks is neither by invitation only nor is it widely publicized. However, meetings are open to the public. All of these things are intentional. One of the issues that was revealed during formational meetings was that existing entrepreneurial groups have become diluted due to the intrusion of lifestyle entrepreneurs or pure service providers seeking new business (lawyers, accountants, etc.). These groups are intentionally excluded from Cornstalks to keep the mission and message pure. Thus, Cornstalks has elected to a word of mouth and light channel marketing strategy to grow slowly but deliberately around the central audience of high growth entrepreneurs and inventors.

That central concept has both been a blessing and a curse.

Cornstalks holds a special place in my heart, and in many ways is one of the unsung heros of the Omaha entrepreneurial renaissance over the past 7 years. Times have changed and I’m not sure what it will become in the future, but I’ll never forget the stories I’ve heard and the people I’ve met through this under-the-radar monthly meetup.

Walking to the cornstalks meeting at the chamber… Hope I don't get rained on!

— Dusty Davidson (@dustyd) May 29, 2008

My second software company didn’t really have competition either. We would often talk about how “pencil and paper” was our biggest competitor. Put differently, the status quo was our biggest foe. Our application was best described as “process improvement” software, and thus our challenge was to convince people who were using pencil and paper to start paying a ton of money for software to make their lives easier.

Now, there were competitors actually. They just weren’t any good. They were old, bloated, client-server installations. We were the shiny new, UI/UX-ified web application. They were expensive with maintenance contracts and whatnot, and we were no-contract pay-as-you-go software-as-a-service. And thus life was good. We would win bids against our competitors all the time. In fact, they were the best customers, as they’d already been converted from the “status quo”, and now we just had to convince them that we were better/cheaper/faster.

In both of these cases, there were indeed competitors – just not *good* ones. Not ones that push you to be better and that make you mad when you’re inferior. And that’s exciting for a while, but over time gets boring. We would from time to time lose business to the competition, but it was never for reasons that made us mad because they had a better product.

Fast forward to my third company. In our space, there’s by my estimation a billion hosting companies in the world. One for every 6 humans on earth. And many of the them are terrible – I call them “hosting companies in a closet”. Rent a server, install cPanel and BAM! you’re a hosting company.

And yet there are some amazing ones. Ones that have amazing custom technology stacks. Ones that have amazing support (Zappos-level almost). And ones that are pushing the envelop with features beyond your typical “web hosting.”

For the first time ever, I find myself jealous of the competition. Yeah yeah I know, focus on our customers not the competition. But given my history of not having competitors at all, I find it perplexing that someone is out there doing good work. It drives me. It makes me want to push, and push our team to be the absolute best.

I’m not typically competitive by nature – not like I was into sports or anything like that. But what I do have is an almost OCD desire for quality. Not perfectionism, quality.

In fact it’s that drive for quality that is what drove me bonkers about the first consulting company – we were beholden to someone else’s definition of quality. Ultimately it wasn’t up to us to define how far to push or what the cost/benefit breakdown was.

Nothing new or surprising here, we see it all the time. Google in the browser war makes Microsoft and Firefox better. Apple in the mobile phone market makes everyone else better. But for the first time, I am experiencing it first hand – and it’s great.

It’s important to note however, that I’m not talking about “copying.” I’m very deliberatly talking about “innovation” or “quality.” How having great competition increases one’s drive for their own product to be the best that it can be. We have incredible ideas on where to take this, and truly innovate in the space. And we’re driven each and every day by the thought that someone else might actually beat us to it.

And that’s what I love about great competition. When I see one of our competitors do something great, it makes me want to be even better. Not change course – be better. We’re steadfast in our vision for what we’re building, and have a shared idea of the level of quality we’re striving for. And we’re confident of our ability to execute, and ultimately come out on top.

We’ve got great competitors, and I love it.

It’s time for me to get back into it though. I find myself needing an outlet for my opinions, of which I have many. Specifically I have very strongly formed opinions about a handful of things I am passionate about – namely food and startups. Anyone who hangs out with me for any amount of time knows that I’m not afraid to voice these opinions either.

And so here I hope to put some of these on paper, and share them with the world. Not all opinions or rants, but hopefully helpful tidbits that we’ve picked up along the past 6+ years of running companies here on the Silicon Prairie.

Enjoy!