By James McCave

The Jeffrey S. Rakes School of Computer Science and Management gave 12  teams of business students a chance to demonstrate their entrepreneurial spirit at the Design Studio Project Showcase April 19, 2013. In its twelfth year, the annual event is the culmination of a year’s worth of collaborative work with peers and industry  professionals.   At the outset of the project each of the student teams is given a task to complete for a corporate sponsor. The Design Studio Project Showcase gives each team a chance to present what they have accomplished.

Turbine Flats, while not being a Project Sponsor, provided guidance and help for team Hayneedle as a secondary sponsor.  Team Hayneedle was one of the 12 competing teams at the event.  The Hayneedle team, made up of four college seniors and three college juniors, was tasked with a unique project. They were asked to design a web-based gift registry that would be fully integrated with team sponsor hayneedle.com’s already live site.

Ordinary gift registries are pretty common, and can be found in many department stores. What makes the hayneedle.com gift registry different is its ability to roll multiple gift lists into one easily usable interface.  The gift registry also has the added advantage of saving a trip to a brick and mortor store.  Consumers typically have to go to a store and physically scan an item’s barcode into a computer database using existing gift registries. The hayneedle.com registry allows individuals to plan multiple events and choose the items desired from anywhere there is an internet connection.

Team Haneedle’s two team captains, Emily West and Adam Prusa, know that participating in Design Studio will be beneficial as they proceed forward beyond college. Each one looks forward to using the skills they have honed in their upcoming internships this summer. It won’t hurt to have a finished and live product to brag about either.

“We get to show off our projects and what we worked really hard on all year,” West said. “We’ve gotten some real world experience and now we have a product to show what we can do.”

The gift registry went live on April 12, exactly a week before the showcase. Having a finished product made the demonstration portion of the event easy to prepare for. Each member of the team was able to assist those in attendance on a walkthrough of how to navigate the registry on web-connected computer.

“This event is a nice culmination of all the work we have done over the last nine months,” Prusa explained. “(On going live) I know it’s different for a lot of other projects with what they have been able to accomplish. “

Besides showing off their hard work, the Hayneedle team sees this as an opportunity to network with professionals already established in the business world. Maynard Webb, author of the book “Rebooting Work: Transform How You Work in the Age of Entrepreneurship” was the guest speaker to open the event and Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman attended to congratulate and honor each of the teams.

“This event will give us more practice interacting professionally with other people,” West said. Prusa added, “Some of the advantages I see are first, it’s a great place to meet people in the local industry if you want to stay in state. Second it’s an opportunity to practice talking to people publicly, presenting your work, and showing them how great you think the work is.”

To see what the team accomplished with their efforts or to set-up a registry for an upcoming event, go to Hayneedle.com. It is easy and free to access the registry area. Just go to the top-right registry pull-down menu and choose the create option. From there you will be prompted to create an account if you do not already have one registered.  After that it’s as easy as picking out what gift you want and creating a list.

Get ready all you Turbine Flats faithful out there!  The fourth annual Turbine Flats Crawfish Boil is less than a week away and that means free beer, free food, and fun for the whole family.  Festivities start Friday, May 3rd at 5:00 pm.  Don’t be a square!  Be there!

By: James McCave

Eric Moyer left Nebraska after college to pursue starring roles in the bright lights of California. He  wasn’t necessarily looking to be the next Tom Cruise, but a continuous role on a TV show would’ve fit him nicely. Moyer’s limited success finding parts turned out to be a blessing in disguise though, as it led him to expand his range into marketing and entrepreneurship. Ironically, this new range has made him a leading man right back here in Lincoln, Ne.

For Moyer, Turbine Flats has taken center stage since he came back home. In 2009, the actor auditioned there for a leading role in the movie “Blood Rites” which was released in 2011. Moyer landed the role of Detective Joe Frey. Despite renewed success, acting has become less of a focus compared to his role as an entrepreneur.

“Most people fall back on whatever their day job is,” he said. “I fall back on my acting. That’s kinda what has been my pattern throughout my career, I’ve fallen back on that.”

Even though acting is secondary for Moyer, he has recently landed a new role in Midnight Frights’ newest film “Remission.” Moyer has been cast as Reverend Joseph Barnaby in the viral-infestation flick. The movie is currently scheduled for completion later this year.

While Moyer is grateful for any acting opportunities that come his way, it is his new marketing role that has him fired up. Currently, the actor is part of a four-man team that is working on a new venture called Fiscal Circles. Fiscal Circles will be an online tool individuals can use to personally manage their finances.

The four members of the joint venture came together during Start-Up Weekend which began September 7, 2012. Essentially, individual entrepreneurs attend the event to propose new business ideas and network within the business world. The participants form teams and prepare presentations for the top ideas.

The weekend culminates in in a competition where each team presents their idea and is judged by a panel of entrepreneurial leaders. Judges provide valuable feedback and ultimately decide which teams win. The Fiscal Circles team won six months’ worth of rent-free space in the The Flats .

Nathan Chapman, who is the team member in charge of user interface design, has already felt the benefits of the competition as he owns and operates Chapman Studio out of Turbine Flats. He also feels strongly that each member of their team brings an important feature to the table. With Moyer, that strength stems from his acting background.

“Eric has an ability to communicate, when he talks people listen,” Chapman said. “For example: he can take what I say and make it sound 20 times better.”

Communicating will be important for Moyer as Fiscal Circles goes forward. After the design and internet functionality is complete it will fall to him to impress investors with his knowledge and presentation abilities. Winning the free space at Turbine Flats should also be an advantage for Moyer as he will be working on a familiar stage.

“When I left Nebraska, people told me it was a vortex because you always end up back there,” Moyer said. “For me Turbine Flats is like that. Turbine Flats is what I like to call home.”

By James McCave

Husker Racing is on the move again, or more accurately, has moved their base of operations. The racing teams, which were housed temporarily in the Turbine Flats building at 2005 Y Street, have now found a more permanent home in the old Midwest Roadside Safety building located on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s City Campus.

Bumps and bruises are not unfamiliar for the motorsports team, which competes in Baja-style competitions as well as Formula racing. At the end of last season, the students were informed they would have to move out of their home in Henzlik Hall. Having nowhere to go right away, Matthew Wegener from the Turbine Flats Group offered them a temporary solution.

“He was willing to give us some rent-free space until we found a place,” said Zach Blackford.

While Blackford and the rest of the students will always be grateful for the assistance, they were ecstatic to find their current accommodations. The new space is ideal for designing race cars. When they were at Henzlik and Turbine Flats the team was concerned with disturbing the other groups they shared building space with.

“It has plenty of room for both teams” Blackford explained. “It’s kind of a step towards growing for the Big Ten. A lot of teams have facilities similar to this and now we are on par with them.”

He also feels that the spacious layout will attract more students and interest in the program. In their previous locations, room has been limited, so giving tours of their program really wasn’t much of an option.

Another unanticipated benefit is team unity. In their previous set-ups, the design team has had to work exclusively away from the engineering team. Husker Racing now has the space to put both units in the same hangar which should foster improved communication and harmony.

“We now have a friendlier work environment,” Blackford said. “Also, having a computer lab in here will get people wanting to design with the cars.”

Besides fostering better team unity, the new facilities increase safety and accessibility. The additional space ensures that working on the cars will be a safer endeavor for everyone involved. The new location also provides them with more opportunities to work on the vehicles after hours as they now have superior lighting compared to what Henzlik provided.

The people at HIVE are pretty typical of the incredibly cool and innovative presenters that Turbine Flats taps to present at its socials. HIVE is a collaborative student community within UNL dedicated to  train students in computer technology and also to building upon student innovation and helping them to become more marketable university graduates.

As is also typical of cool and innovative people, HIVE wants to spread their awesome sauce around.  That’s why they’re hosting Startup Weekend this Friday starting at 5:30 pm.  But also like many cool and innovative people, HIVE wants to run their Startup Weekend a little differently than other people have.

“We’re going to do three things differently,” Sourabh Chakraborty said.  “We’re doing optional workshops during the weekends.  We’re going to change the mentoring process by pairing teams with coaches beforehand and allowing them three practice pitches with their coach before their final pitch.  Lastly HIVE will offer consultation hours on Saturday and Sunday in partnership with other University of Nebraska-Lincoln students.   These consultation hours will be designed to help people with graphic design and coding issues. ”

Chakraborty said that the HIVE Startup Weekend would also have a full session focusing on cost structure, because teams usually don’t think about the monetary aspect of their startup ideas until four to five hours before they are supposed to give a presentation on their business model, and that is not enough time.

“Something that we’ve realized is that as the teams are progressing from ideas to execution, they aren’t thinking about money,”  Chakraborty said.

The event starts Friday, March 8 at 5:30 pm, and continues until 8:30 pm, Sunday, March 10.  It will be mainly geared towards UNL students, so, if you’re student in Nebraska and you’d like to start a business, check out the HIVE Startup weekend and turn your ideas into realities.

Generally people come to Las Vegas to throw their money away,  but when the Heavy Duty Remanufacturing Group (HDRG) Summit comes to town it’s just the opposite.  They come to listen to industry leaders tell them how to make it.

The key to making money though is to make a high quality product that serves customers well, and when it comes to after market heavy truck inventory management, Turbine Flat’s own ISoft data Systems is a world authority.

That’s why ISoft CEO Matthew Wegener was asked to present at the summit and show his peers how his company is driving innovation in the industry.

The presentation, which was put together by ISoft director of business development and marketing Bendan Evans, focused on ISoft’s current and developing technology, including it’s new mobile phone application and the development of a warehouse mapping function.

“Getting out to Heavy Duty After Market Week and the heavy Duty Remanufacturer’s Group was great, and it was nice to be able to share our expertise,” Evans said.

According to Evans though, the best part of the conference was the growth of ISoft’s name recognition among industry insiders.

“Last year probably one out of five of the people there had heard of (ISoft’s website) heavytruckparts.net.” Evans said.  ”This year nearly everyone knew about it.  It was gratifying to see that our efforts to grow heavytruckparts.net into the world’s largest heavy truck parts website are paying off.”

Play Creative has been hosting First Friday art shows since September of 2011.  This month they’ve brought in yet another talented local artist for their next show.  The Turbine Flats Blog has posted short biographies of featured artists in the past so that people coming to the shows can get an idea of what to look for and what makes each artist unique, but it has never had an artist write their own post, until now.

Pat Leapley has written his own bio with the help his friend Cathy Dickinson outlining his past and the influences that have shaped his art.  His paintings will be up all month, so take a second to read up on the man who made the art and on the influences that drove him to do it the way he did.

————————————————————————————————–

PAT LEAPLEY

By Cathy Dickinson

Pat Leapley is an emerging Nebraska artist whose vibrant, large-scale paintings embody the spirit of the great 19th century Impressionists.  Although he’s a newcomer to the professional art scene, Pat is by no means a novice.  Taking up the painter’s brush at the tender age of four, Pat’s obvious talent was supported and encouraged by his parents through childhood art lessons in his hometown of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

While discovering his artist talent early he had pieces of his art displayed throughout his childhood. When in his teen years he explored the different aspects of styles and mediums which have brought him to the current style that he is working in. During his lifetime as an “amateur” painter, Pat has explored many different genres and techniques, including wildlife, Surrealism, Cubism and others. He has produced a large body of work, which, until now, has not been shown publicly.

In early 2012, Pat retired from a long, successful career in the restaurant industry, and now plans to devote the majority of his time to his real love—painting.  When he’s not in his home studio with brush in hand, Pat enjoys spending time with his family, as well as hunting, fishing, taxidermy, watching Formula One racing on TV, and hanging out at his uncle’s ranch in the wilds of Montana.  The Leapleys reside in Lincoln, Nebraska.

In my own words

By Pat Leapley

The colors of the Impressionist are the driving force behind my paintings.  When I begin a new piece, I don’t usually have a hard and fast notion of what the final result will be—it evolves as I apply paint to the blank canvas.  Once the first few brushstrokes are applied, the piece begins to take on its own unique character and personality, and it speaks to me.  From that connection, I start to develop a clear vision for the finished piece, drawing upon the entire palette of colors stored in my mind.  Hopefully, the viewer will enjoy the same emotional impact that I feel during the creative process.

Every business wants to set itself apart somehow.  How a business chooses to set itself apart though often determines whether it is successful or not.   Reliant Studios CEO and producer Mike Sukraw sets his company apart by striving for authenticity in every video it produces.

“It’s all about what’s underneath.” Sukraw said.  “All of us at Reliant have a deep desire to connect with people below the surface.  From the first discussion with a new client, to putting on the finishing touches in post-production, we always have that connection in the back of our minds.”

Reliant’s focus on connecting with clients on a deeper level allows them to understand and then refine their client’s vision into something truly powerful and real.   That has been the goal since the company’s inception when it landed its first project with the College of Engineering while Sukraw was still a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln taking cinema classes. 

Since then the company has blossomed through a unique combination of professional film experience, ongoing education, psychology, marketing and passion for serving others.  Those strengths are a direct reflection of the character of Reliant’s team of film professionals.

Growing up, Sukraw and his mother moved around the country dozens of times, as his mother was always searching for the ideal spot. That pursuit of idealism pushes Sukraw and his team to constantly learn, grow and try new things. His personal journey through life also led him to the conclusion that people in today’s world thirst for a level of authenticity that the media rarely provides them.

“People want what’s real.” Sukraw said.

Reliant’s president, and Sukraw’s wife, Kristin, has her masters degree in counseling and uses her natural ability as a counselor and a listener to help her ask the right questions to guide clients to their own concrete conclusions as to what their ideal vision truly is.

“I love to apply my psychology background to help organizations tell their stories through video.”  Sukraw said.

Cinephile Jared Staab, Reliant’s director of photography and editor, has loved movies all his life.  He believes passion is too weak of a word to describe his attitude toward film.  His devotion to shooting film compelling enough to exceed his own high standards fits in nicely with Reliant’s pursuit of ideal cinematography.

Allea Grummert is Reliant’s production coordinator and the final member of the team.  Allea’s degree in public relations and advertising is extremely valuable when it comes to understanding and promoting an organization’s authentic brand image, but it’s her love of people that really sets her apart.  She’s not just pretending to care about a company’s image, and that results in a difference in the quality and authenticity in the product that’s impossible to fake.  Reliant strives for authenticity and Grummert is a huge part of that.

As a full service production studio Reliant offers a host of services including concept development, scriptwriting, casting, directing and shooting, in addition to everything else it takes to produce a video that sets itself apart from the rest.  A full list of Reliant’s services can be found at www.reliantstudios.com/services, but while Reliant does offer a host of valuable services to its clients, it’s really their core values of authenticity, idealism and devotion to service that sets them apart.

When Nathan Chapman started designing websites more than a decade ago, he didn’t expect it would lead to a career in web design.

Nonetheless his business, Chapman Studio, is booming right now, and as one of Turbine Flats’ newest residents, he’s definitely fitting right in with all of the other interesting and industrious people in the building.

“I love the sense of community at Turbine Flats,” Chapman said. “Before I was in the flats I was working in my house alone and all of my clients lived out of state, so being around all of the great people I’ve met at Turbine has been nice. It has also led to me getting new jobs, and I think made me a better businessman as well.”

An example of Chapman Studio totem branding. More can be found on the Chapman Studio website.

The Lincoln native bought his first domain in 1999 and taught himself HTML in order to build a website for it. The site was attractive and quickly became popular. But more importantly, it gave him a hunger to create. He quickly branched out to more diverse and difficult web design projects.

Soon Chapman was taking on any web project he knew he could make look better, increasingly honing his skills with each subsequent project. But although he was consistently innovating and improving, Chapman was still an amateur. He was working for free or at very low cost simply because he wanted to get better at his craft.

“Over the course of that time I just did random websites,” Chapman said. “I wasn’t really too interested in getting paid for it. I thought that it was cool and I wanted to express myself through my design and get better at it.”

Chapman pursued web design as a passion from 1999–2004, until he was good enough to make it his job. He started his web design studio, Chapman Studio, in 2005, and said his company really began to come into his own in about 2009.

“That was because of the skill set that I possessed,” he said. “I read business magazines and web design blogs, and 2009 was when I started going through a discovery process with my clients, and sitting down to ask them what they want and what they think they need. That really gave me an understanding of their market base and the demographic they were targeting. Taking that into account really changed the whole design process.”

By changing his approach in that way, Chapman effectively made the jump to designing websites with user experience (UX) in mind.

“I was no longer guessing what people wanted — I now knew what my clients wanted.”  Chapman said.

An example of design work done for Art and Soul Beads, via the Chapman Studio website.

Chapman Studio has been running with that approach ever since and it has produced impressive results. Chapman prides himself on producing high-level web design at a fraction of the cost of major advertising companies. By figuring out exactly what the customer needs, he is able to tailor each project to his client.

One satisfied client, Art and Soul Beads, saw a dramatic increase in business and internet sales capabilities after its Chapman Studio redesign. Another, Art Market Monitor, a world-renowned fine art news website, has seen consistent readership gains since Chapman Studio completely overhauled the visual presentation of its webpage. Its page views have since grown  from around 15,000 page views a month to about 45,000 page views a month according to Chapman.  Chapman Studio is a young company with a lot of room to grow, but Art and Soul Beads owner Emily Aaniasty said Chapman’s work is top-notch.

“Nathan Chapman is pretty much in charge of the way my website works, and that’s testimony in itself because my website is awesome.”  Aaniasty said. “I definitely recommend him to anyone who’s looking to have a website made.”