I had the pleasure of attending Big Omaha last weekend, a creative, technology, and entrepreneurial-themed conference devised by the bright minds at Silicon Prairie News in Omaha, Nebraska. It was an incredibly thought-provoking and motivational event, bolstered by presentations from the likes of Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, and Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare. Over the next few posts, Mike Templeton and I will share our conference experiences and takeaways with you. Enjoy.

Scott Harrison, charity: water
Wow. Scott’s presentation about his personal journey and how it shaped the journey of his charity, charity: water, was unforgettable. The lights came down, Scott took the stage, and the audience became engrossed in the story of Scott’s unusual childhood. About an hour later, after choking back tears several times, the audience swelled into a standing ovation. As we adjourned for lunch, it was clear that Scott’s presentation had resonated deeply with attendees. I won’t try to reiterate Scott’s story here, but I will tell you that it’s full of glorious highs and lows, with an ending you’ll commit to memory. I highly recommend you visit charitywater.org and see it for yourself.

Although Scott’s cause is much larger than the messaging and media created to raise awareness, it’s clear that there were a few business decisions charity: water made early on that would work to drive and shape their success.

Design
Charity: water has a simple yet hard-hitting message. Scott wanted to ensure this was conveyed when building the charity’s brand, developing the website, and creating any advertisements, merchandise, etc. Good design matters. For most charities, the “brand” is often an afterthought; for charity: water, it was the essential building block in establishing a strong, unmistakable identity for the organization.

Transparency
Scott wanted to be completely transparent on how donation dollars are used for charity: water. To do this, he split the charity right down the middle—any donations would be used, 100 percent, for direct water project costs. The organization would raise money separately to handle all administrative and operating costs. This donor transparency is meticulous; the charity is currently working to break down the giving by “quarter, country, and partner.”

Storytelling
The organization currently utilizes a network of photographers to document the projects that donors support. They also use GPS and video to capture additional content, sharing how individual lives are affected by the work they do. I’ve talked about how important storytelling is and can be to any organization before—charity: water’s storytelling is rich, personal, and honest. Along with very cohesive and frank messaging and design, there is no mistaking the work at hand and the change effected by the organization (and accordingly, by the donators themselves).

Empower Advocates
In 2008, after more and more people began to champion the charity’s cause in personal ways (giving up a birthday, running a marathon), the organization developed “mycharity: water,” a site for advocates to build their own fundraising pages.  The progress of this site alone is momentous: 26,587 people have joined the site, raising a total of just under $2 million. Building the site has given advocates simple but robust tools to fundraise, resulting in a deepened sense of ownership for advocates, and, more donations.

How can the initiatives (design, transparency, storytelling, and empowering advocates) demonstrated by charity: water be applied to your organization?

In addition to experiencing the nation-wide beard trend, our two days at the South by Southwest Interactive conference allowed us to see the latest in social web innovation and gave us the opportunity to hear from some major thought leaders in the space. We sat through presentations from such luminaries as Twitter CEO Evan Williams and social media wine celebrity Gary Vaynerchuk. More importantly, we met potential future stars developing exciting social platforms and technologies. What follows is a list of key takeaways, many of which we, Senior Analyst Jarad Bernstein and Analyst Abby Harvey, will be expanding upon in future posts.

Every guy is growing a beard these days
From interesting mustaches to completely-covered faces, there was no shortage of facial hair at SXSW Interactive. What does this say about the direction we are heading? We’ll leave that to a later post, but regardless we think you should be aware of this trend.

Customer service rules the world
Gary Vaynerchuk couldn’t talk enough about the importance of caring for and about your customer. Customer service’s importance should be obvious to end users (which we all are), but why doesn’t every company get this? Simply put, everyone wants to be treated like a human being. In Gary’s words, “You can’t scale caring . . . you can’t scale authenticity.” Gary told the crowd that you need to start caring about your customers, or you will lose. Of course, he made this point more passionately—it wouldn’t be a true Gary Vaynerchuk show without a few hundred expletives sprinkled in. In Gary’s world caring is swearing, and Gary cares more than most.

Another main takeaway from Gary’s performance: utilizing social media and the web is a must, and do it now! “This platform [the internet] is a BABY!” he proclaimed. “You [SXSW Interactive attendees] have no idea how ahead of the rest of the world you are; there’s a massive amount of low-hanging fruit, and people are starting to eat the grapes.” Effectively incorporating a web presence hinges on every part of today’s business model—marketing, advertising, sales, and customer service.

Being CEO of Twitter doesn’t mean you are a good public speaker
The hype for Monday’s keynote presentation was palpable. Overflow rooms with giant projection screens filled up equally as fast as the cavernous main hall. We were all anticipating an announcement on the scale of Steve Jobs letting the world in on the next big thing; instead, we bore witness to a dull conversation with Twitter CEO Evan Williams about one of the most exciting technologies Twitter has developed to date—At Anywhere (@anywhere).

Geolocation is more than just Foursquare and similar services
We’ve come a long way from the original Magellan in-car navigation device—a topic expanded upon in two sessions we attended. Geolocation and Location-Based Services (LBS) are growing rapidly; in fact, we learned that global LBS-spending is forecasted to exceed $7 billion by 2013 (yes, that’s less than three years away!). In one session, speaker Jason Finkelstein of WaveMarket, Inc. talked about mobile geolocation developments and shared one of his favorite quotes from Google: “The future of mobile is local.” One interesting stat he shared with us, which we are still thinking about: 55 percent of all text messages ask some form of the question “where r u?” That’s 650 billion location-based texts in the U.S. last year alone. Look at your text message log in your cell phone and we think you’ll realize the truth in these numbers. What are WaveMarket and its competitors planning to do about this? Nothing earth-shattering was shared, but we certainly look forward to their innovations.

While in some cases geolocation rears its head as creepy, clearly causing negative sentiment, it’s hard to deny its importance. Geolocation takes the guesswork out of all those inquisitive, location-based text messages. The company that creates a solution that is both secure and useful will likely profit quite well.

Coming soon
Want to learn more about our takeaways? Our next few posts will focus on the future of open APIs, music sharing, digital magazines, social media in health care, and more. Every session had a hash tag assigned to it, and we have linked to the search results for those hashtags so you can learn from other attendees, as well. One final statistic for this post: registration was up substantially at SXSW Interactive compared to 2009. One rumor even has it that the interactive festival outdrew the music festival for the first time ever. With social media playing a central role in the festival and its growth, we know that social media is not done growing and changing the way we view communications.

Last week our team had the pleasure of presenting at Highlight Midwest, an all-day, annual event where entrepreneurs, technologists, and business owners come together to highlight innovative projects and companies in the region.

Highlight Midwest made Des Moines home this year, following rotation between the three participating cities: Kansas City, Des Moines, and Omaha.

The event was organized so that everyone could listen in on each others’ presentations. With up to four speakers presenting at each session (20+ presenters in all), there was no shortage of greatness at the Des Moines Social Club, the host venue for the event.

Our favorite sessions from Highlight Midwest

Aside from a surprise visit by Senator Grassley, a live podcast recording, and buzzing video cameras, each of us has chosen our favorite part of the day to share.

Ninth Division

Katie Miller-Smith

Ninth Division, a software development company out of Omaha, NE, gave an informative, personable, and entertaining presentation. Andy Peters, the company’s owner and founder, firmly believes in creating applications that he or his employees will actually use. Their work is focused on projects where he and his team are truly engaged and passionate-and their hard work translates into impressive results.

Andy gave the audience a sneak peek into some iPhone applications that Ninth Division is currently working on, and both are likely to be very successful, helpful applications. I also hope to see Ninth Division doing next year’s BIG Omaha app as well (last year’s was smooth and useful).

Dwolla

Jarad Bernstein

Dwolla is a web application that allows users to send and receive money. This may sound pretty simple, but the Des Moines-based startup has a handful of slick innovations that give them awesome potential for quick market adoption. The main idea behind Dwolla is to eliminate the percentage-based fee system charged by credit card processors and replace it with a 25-cent-per-transaction charge. Another factor Dwolla’s creators are pushing, is that it will be easy enough to be used by businesses in local communities.

Once in the system, users have the ability to use an auto-completion based search tool, which effortlessly brings up transactions for easy discovery and categorizing. The company, represented at Highlight Midwest by founder Ben Milne and Greg Anfinson, showed everyone a sneak peak of how the system works. Dwolla officially launches on December 1st, but users can sign up for their private beta on their website.

Brett J. Trout, Iowa Patent Attorney

Mike Templeton

I’ve known Brett Trout for a while now, but I’ve never gotten a chance to hear him speak about what he does. Brett’s focus for Highlight Midwest was to discuss intellectual property for entrepreneurs, the most valuable asset of any new company. The full-spectrum of patent and internet law is a lot to cover (or learn about) in just 45 minutes, but he did a great job providing the basics related to fair use on the internet, pursuing patents and trademarks, and when to call in an expert

I’m still no lawyer when it comes to dealing with issues surrounding this field, but I did walk away with a much better understanding of how everything can impact a business (and especially so when that business isn’t prepared).

Silicon Prairie News

Abby Harvey

Perhaps it’s my journalist background and newly-found appreciation for the Midwest, but I was so impressed with the whole idea behind Silicon Prairie News. For those who weren’t at the conference or weren’t able to see the presentation, SPN founders Jeff Slobotski and Dusty Davidson spoke about their online news publication, which targets regional entrepreneurs, innovators, investors, artists, and other “creative minds.”

With their user-generated content and focus on heartland happenings, they were a voice of inspiration and a perfect addition to the Highlight Midwest faction.

Highlight Midwest was a great event to be a part of, and we appreciate those who reached out to connect during the day. If you’d like to follow up with someone directly, please use our contact form or the direct email addresses listed on our website.

For more on the event, check the #hmdm hashtag on Twitter, search for Highlight Midwest on Google Blogsearch, or view the Des Moines Register photo gallery.