Just got back this morning from the Big Omaha conference and it was amazing, probably the best conference I've ever attended. The organizers only allowed 300 or so attendees to view a lineup stocked with some big names in the tech/entrepreneurship, including Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library fame, Jason Fried of 37Signals, and Jeffrey Kalmikoff of skinnyCorp.

Highlights:
GaryVee. That guy just gets me amped up about being alive. He delivered an uncompromising keynote on basically growing a set and doing what it takes to get to where you want to be. As I type this out and read it I realize that I can't really do him justice, so check him out at http://garyvaynerchuk.com/ or at http://tv.winelibrary.com/.

Micah Laaker of Yahoo! Open Strategy. His talk was by far the most technical and I think it sailed over the heads of a lot of the crowd as it was pretty heavily stocked with guys on the artist end of the spectrum rather than the engineer end. But I learned about something new, Yahoo Query Language, which is basically an engine that Yahoo has developed for people to be able to use a SQL-based syntax to query the internet and aggregate information. I think you probably have to be a developer to get how amazing YQL is, but I'm super excited to start using it.

The Impromptu Panel. One of the speakers dropped out at 3:00AM on Saturday morning, leaving organizer Dusty Davidson of Brightmix scrambling to fill the post lunch time slot. It ended up that Jason Fried, Gary Vee, Micah Baldwin, and Jeffry Kalmikoff just hung out on the on-stage couches for about an hour, talked between themselves and answered questions. It was spontaneous and awesome.

Size and scope. I've been to a lot of conferences and this was one of if not the best. Why? Location, atmosphere, and size. The Kaneko building was an amazing venue, with a very free flowing interior architecture and context-relevant art installations. The atmosphere was very friendly and unpretentious, with two of the day's presenters sporting tattoo sleeves and another presenter using some colorful language to drive a few points home. And the size was the best thing...Dusty and Jeff Slobotski kept the conference size around 300, which allowed attendees to get familiar with each other without feeling overwhelmed by a mass of humanity.

I'm really looking forward to attending next year and to staying in touch with all the awesome people I met. Big big kudos to Jeff, Dusty, and lots of people whose names I don't know for an amazing couple of days.