Compute Midwest Contest: Win Free Tickets!

Do you want to win tickets to the conference section of Compute Midwest on Nov 9th?
Enter our contest for a chance at free passes to the event!

What Is Compute Midwest?

Compute Midwest (CMW) Compute Midwest is a 2 day convergence of tech: new people, new ideas and innovation in Kansas City.

With 1 conference, 8 amazing speakers, a hackathon and 2 parties, Compute Midwest provides a fantastic opportunity to connect you with 400+ forward thinking tech minds.

Engage in conversation about the future, exchange/build new ideas and gather several takeaways that can move your career or company forward!

Imagine The Future: Nov 9th

Join us on November 9th at the beautiful Kauffman Center For Performing Arts.

Get inspired & learn about what’s next in technology – straight from tech leaders, startup founders & visionaries.

Hear the stories of innovators who are building companies that change our life, our work & our business.

Gain insight into their vision for the future, learn where technology is going and discover how Kansas City can capitalize on Google Fiber.

Create The Future: Nov 10th

Over 100 developers & designers will come together on Nov 10th at the Google Fiber Space for a 24-hour code-fest focused on building awesome apps with APIs!

You’ll share ideas, collaborate and possibly start new ventures! You’ll also discover tools & new APIs to experiment with.

Build your app solo or with a team of up to 5 people. Teams can be pre-organized or find fellow coders to collaborate with at the event! Present it and compete for thousands of dollars in great prizes as well as community recognition!

Prizes: So far we have these items up for grabs :

• iPhone 5
• iPad3 16GB WiFi
• Parrot AR Drone 2.0
• iPad3
• Go Pro Hero camera
• $500 in amazon gift cards
• $500 “mystery prize”
• Sphero Robots/Kindle Fires

…and more….. with more prizes coming soon.
[What is a hackathon?]

For more info about a previous hackathon we did back in June, see Hack The Midwest

Who’s Speaking?

Here are a few people that will be speaking on November 9th…. look for more speakers soon!

Brad Abrams – Product Manager for the Cloud Platform Team, Google

Brad Abrams is a Product Manager for the Cloud Platform team at Google, where he is responsible for the developer and admin experience for the platform. He is author of several books from Addison Wesley, including Framework Design Guidelines. Previously, Brad was the Product Unit Manager of the Application Framework team at Microsoft Corporation. He graduated from North Carolina State University in 1997 with a BS in Computer Science.

Scott Chacon – CIO of Github

Scott Chacon is CIO of Github, the largest code host in the world. Github recently closed $100m Series A investment, primarily from Andreessen Horowitz – one of the top VC firms in Silicon Valley.

Scott is a Git evangelist and Ruby developer, the author of the Pro Git book by Apress, the Git Internals Peepcode PDF as well as the maintainer of the Git homepage and the Git Community Book.

Zach Kaplan, CEO of Inventables

Zach Kaplan is the founder and CEO of Inventables, the hardware store for designers.

Zach has spoken on product development and innovation to audiences at conferences across the country, including: a talk at TED, entitled “Toys From The Future”

His work has been covered by Business Week, Fortune, Forbes, CNN, NPR and other leading media outlets. In 2006 he was honored by Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry as a Modern Leonardo da Vinci and currently sits on the advisory committee for the Fast Forward exhibit.

Prior to Inventables he created Lever Works, a custom web application and hosting company that sold to Leo Media, a multimedia firm, in 2001.

He holds a bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois.

Dan Levin, Chief Operating Officer, Box

Prior to his engagement with Box, Dan served as interim CEO of Picateers. Before that, he spent 6+ years at Intuit in a variety of roles including Senior Vice President & General Manager of the Small Business Group, Vice President & General Manager of the Quicken Health Group, and Vice President of Product Management.

Previously, Dan spent thirteen years in venture-backed startups, including senior executive roles at ReplayTV which was acquired by Sonic Blue (SVP and CTO), GuestConnect which was acquired by 4th Network (founder and CEO) and Books That Work which was acquired by Sierra On-Line (co-founder and President).

Dan received a bachelor’s degree in applications of computer graphics to statistical data analysis from Princeton University.

Jason Hoffman – Founder and CTO of Joyent

Jason the founder and CTO at Joyent, where he is responsible for overseeing the development and implementation of Joyent’s cloud computing technology.

His specialties include bioinformatics, grid computing, cloud computing, distributed systems, collaborative applications and deploying and scaling web applications. Jason earned a BS and MS in Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA, and a PhD in Molecular Pathology at The Burnham Institute and UCSD School of Medicine.

Joyent is a key contributor to Node.js code development. Node.js is a platform built on Chrome’s JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

Naithan Jones, CEO and Founder, AgLocal

Naithan “Nait” Jones founded AgLocal in late 2011 to be a web and mobile platform that will match the supply of independent and family farms that produce meat to the demand of wholesale and retail buyers that seek a direct buying connection to these farms.

Nait hails from a family of chefs and farmers, and this background served as the chief influence and inspiration for AgLocal. His professional career is in enterprise technology and technology start-ups, with successful career stops at Sprint Corporate, Gartner Research and the Kauffman Foundation.

Ben Milne, CEO & Founder, Dwolla

Ben is the founder of Dwolla a revolutionary mobile payments company that removes the need to use a credit card.

Charging only .25 cents per transaction, you can use your mobile phone or computer, your social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin) as well as physical locations to send and receive cash.

Ben started his first company, Elemental Designs, at the age of 18. Ben began leveraging the internet to drop ship custom made speakers. His adventures lead him all over the world, establishing operations in Southern Asia and California. An original $1,200 investment would turn into a multi-million dollar company by the age of 22.

After heavy research in 2008, Ben and partner, Shane Neuerburg, approached a Midwestern bank with an idea to establish a new payment network that would upend the financial services industries. They called it Dwolla, and Ben sold Elemental Designs to focus on the new payments venture.

In 2009, the privately funded Dwolla launched in Iowa and California, boasting the nation’s cheapest payment platform of only 25 cents per transaction.

Michelle Munson, CEO & co-founder, Aspera

Michelle is the CEO and co-founder of Aspera, a company named to GigaOM’s “Top 50 Cloud Innovators” list.

Michelle is co-inventor of Aspera’s fasp™ transport technology and is responsible for overseeing the company’s direction in collaboration with co-founder Serban Simu.

Michelle was a software engineer in research and start-up companies including the IBM Almaden Research center before founding Aspera in 2004.

She has dual B.Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering and in Physics from Kansas State University and was a Goldwater Scholar for achievement in Science and Mathematics, and later a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge University where she received a postgraduate Diploma in Computer Science.

Michelle was the 2006 KSU College of Engineering Alumni Fellow (the youngest recipient ever), and has received national achievement awards from Glamour Magazine and USA Today.

Contest Entry

Today we’re announcing an awesome contest that will provide you with a chance to win free ticket(s)!!

More on that in a second, but first I want to take a moment let you know about great job openings at growing companies:

Mobile Front End Developer

Consultant

Senior Software Engineer

Associate Software Engineer

If you know anyone for the above jobs, please feel free to forward this info on!

CONTEST HAS ENDED, here are the winners: