Roger Holmes workshop has done it again.  They’ve put together yet another fine piece of work and they didn’t even need any divine intervention to do it.  This time it’s beautiful spiral staircase.

Needless to say the proud owners of the new staircase were excited to see it finally finished.  It was begun almost a year ago and was installed in a Swedeberg nebraska home last month.  According to Roger Holmes the most challenging part of the project was steam bending the 24 foot hand rail that wrapped around the staircase.

Holmes took care to point out that Roger Holmes Workshops employee Rob Krummel contributed heavily to the project and deserved a lot of the credit.  It was a challenging project, but Krummel never gave up until he finished it off.

“Seeing Rob, who started with me almost three years ago as a fairly raw novice woodworker, take charge of the project and do such a good job with it was very rewarding.” Holmes said.

A top view of the hand finished custom spiral staircase shipped last week to Swedeburg, Neb., by Roger Holmes Workshops.

Anyone who likes tons of free food to go along with beverages and video games played on state of the art equipment should continue reading this post.  Anyone else should go visit Dr. Farritor over at Virtual Incision to have their circuits checked, for they are most likely robots.  That’s right!  It’s time once again for the annual crawfish boil and everyone is invited.  The event will take place, May the fourth at 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.  So, May the fourth be with you …

Boil master Matthew Wegener of ISoft Data Systems will be serving up 120 plus pounds of crawfish boiled and mixed with corn on the cob, potatoes and creole spices until awesome.  Emily Lowell will provide home made corn bread to kick the event up another notch.  It should be the best party this side of Louisiana so don’t miss out!

The boil will also be a great opportunity to check out the newly installed 7.2 surround sound high def 3-D projector in the conference room.  Anyone who can wrestle a guitar to themselves will have the opportunity to rock, like a hurricane, the cradle of love or even the casbah, the choice of rocking will pretty much be up to them.

The food arrives, no complaints to about the freshness.

Hi there crawfish! You look delicious.

This is what a crawfish boil looks like.

Prof. Jeyam Subbiah draws a bead on the ball while playing ping pong with a colleague before the food is served.

Some people decided to kill time by touring the new Allied Strategy offices in the west wing of the building.

Some people chose to honor Star Wars Day upstairs.

Philip Rogers and Isaiah Lohman shoot pool and the breeze up in the new west wing PLAY Creative office.

The mystery machine even showed up ...

and it was carrying gongs!

But when the food was served ...

every body knew where to be.

Mission accomplished, crawfish annihilated, time to go home.

It wasn’t all that long ago that that Aaron Peterson and Adam Lohman were just creative sixth graders at play.  Back then the two expressed their creativity by drawing comics together with their friends.  Fast forward two decades later to the present and they’re back together again and still at it.  So it’s only natural that they brought their fun, innovative style of art to their own marketing and design firm, PLAY Creative.

As the owners of PLAY Creative, Adam and Aaron produce fresh, nontraditional and unique illustrations and print material to go along with innovative and groundbreaking marketing campaigns.  PLAY Creative offers a host of advertising and marketing services, from brand identity management and full scale advertising campaigns to website development and strategic marketing, if you have an advertising or marketing need, PLAY Creative has you covered.

Aaron Petersen shows off an ornate binder created by PLAY Creative and Signature Bindery.

PLAY Creative moved into Turbine Flats four years ago when the building first opened up and has continued to grow along with it ever since.  The company recently hired several new employees and is now expanding into a new, larger office in Turbine Flats’ newly finished west wing.

The move signals an evolution in the company.  Gone are the monkey bars and sandbox, newly arrived are the pool table and shiny hardwood floors, ushering a new and more sophisticated sense of play to go along with the new and more sophisticated services the company is now capable of offering.

The crew from PLAY Creative gather around the new pool table in their new office.

Jordan Schmidt of Play Creative will host the next Turbine Flats Social Thursday, March 22 at 4:30 p.m.  Schmidt will be talking about the process of organizing the information and copy writing that went into a binder made for Perry Reid Properties that Play Creative submitted for the 2012 NAA Education Conference & Exposition.  Play Creative is a Design firm specializing in print, web and branding campaigns.

Kevin Oliver of Signature Bindery will be the entrepreneurial guest.  Oliver will be talking about Signature Bindery’s roll in building the Perry Reid binder as well as giving extra examples of work and projects by Signature Bindery.  Signature Bindery specializes in traditional book binding.

Oliver learned traditional style binding from master binder in Cornwall, England, and provides restoration, design binding and vellum binding services in addition to working on special projects like hand made telescopes, meerschaum pipe cases and leather desk tops.

Play Creative's Aaron Peterson, ISoft Data System's Matthew Wegener and Signature Bindary's Kevin Oliver get together before the Social begins.

Anyone up for some 'za?

The illustrious binder.

Pizza, beer and smart people collide.

Everybody say hi to the new guy!

Kevin Hagemoser introduces Aaron Peterson and Adam Lohman from Play Creative.

Aaron shows off the binder.

The case for the binder as displayed during Play Creative's presentation.

So, how exactly does one make an awesome binder case? Well, adding a secret compartment for your mojito ingredients is a good start.

Kevin Hagemoser introduces Kevin Oliver from Signature Bindery.

Kevin Oliver blew everyone away with his presentation on binding, rare books and history.

Delighted guests chat with Oliver after the presentations are over.

People socialize and finish their pizza and beer before going home after another great Turbine Flats Social.

Holy Californian magazines batman! In case you’ve been sleeping for the last few years, Turbine Flats’ own New Digital Group has done some pretty cool stuff, including co-founding their own magazine!

The magazine, High School Illustrated, was launched in the summer of 2011 in Orange County, Calif., and their newest issue just hit the stands.  It’s full of news, information and other interesting stuff for high school athletes.  New Digital Group is planning on expanding it into several new markets by the end of the year.

High School Illustrated has a circulation of 12,000 and is also published online.  Right now it comes out quarterly but the plan is to move to bi-monthly publication soon.  The magazine is also hoping to step up its day to day coverage online in-between its print releases.

“Join” this event on Facebook – it’s easy, click this link:

https://www.facebook.com/events/190331944408113/

Tony Merritt and Dillon Sadofsky of Presage will host the next Turbine Flats Social Friday, Feb. 17, at 4:30 p.m.   Merrit and Sadofsky will be talking about the research and discovery into the food industry that was necessary to build software for Presage.  Presage was formed by University of Nebraska-Lincoln researchers Harshavardhan Thippareddi and Jeyamkondan Subbiah to track quality and bacteria sampling for the food processing and production industry.

Dustin Clonch and Jacob McElroy of Agilx will be the entrepreneurial guests.  Clonch and McElroy will be discussing Whitehat Exchange, a project they are working on at Agilx currently in its beta stage.  Whitehat exchange is designed to facilitate bid solicitation and bid management between companies and their sub-contractor networks.  Aglix creates long term relationships with clients looking to invest in the automation of process through custom application development and provides innovative solutions for meeting specific business objectives as legacy applications and infrastructure fail to support a company’s continued growth and innovation.

The hosts from Presage Analytics and the guests from Agilx relax and socialize before the presentation.

Dayton and Emily Lowell arrive with Cane's Chicken Fingers. "Always Fresh."

Kevin Hagemoser calls the meeting to order.

Tony Merritt and Dillon Sadofsky take the stage.

Tony Merritt talks the crowd through the finer points of Presage Analytics.

The crowd at Turbine looks on in interest.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln bioinformatics specialist John Wise asks Dillon Sadofsky about Presage Analytics and it's microbial tracking system.

After the Presage Analytics presentation there was thoughtful discussion during the intermission.

There was also time to eat some free Raising Cane's chicken fingers.

As always, there was time to enjoy a free microbrew beer as well.

Then it was time for Dustin Clonch and Jacob McElroy to tell us all about Agilx.

After an afternoon of great ideas, great food and great beer the presenters and their guests mingled a while longer then dispersed back to their respective bastions of productivity.

Turbine Flats is an exciting place to visit for anyone who is creative or technologically savvy.  It is stacked with web designers, software engineers and robotics scientists.  Basically it’s like Willy Wonka’s  chocolate factory but with talent and technology instead of candy.

So when Steve Shotkoski wanted to learn about network and computer security in an office setting for his INFO 1023 class at Metropolitan Community College, he knew just what to do.   He placed a call through to his friend, and erstwhile ISoft Systems Administrator Brian Roy, and not only scored a tour of Turbine Flats for himself but brought his classmates along for the ride too.

The tour consisted of a journey around the Flats to check out all of the interesting people and businesses the building has to offer and ended in the server vault before a question and answer session where Roy answered any questions the students had for him.

Knowledge was dropped, good times were had, and Brian Roy provided just one more example of how Turbine Flats is fostering innovation, education and entrepreneurship every day.

It’s getting near the end of January and that means its time for Ignite Lincoln once again! For the uninitiated, Ignite Lincoln is a free annual event where Lincoln’s greatest minds get five minutes and twenty slides to talk about any subject they can think of.

Throw a good sized rock anytime there’s something positive, dynamic or creative going on in Lincoln and you’re likely to hit someone from Turbine Flats.   So it probably won’t shock anyone to learn that the Turbine folks are in on this little gathering too.

Both ISoft Data and Turbine Flats are “gold sponsors” of the event.   Turbine Flat’s own resident robotics scientist/entrepreneur will be one of Ignite’s 16 presenters this year.  Shane Farritor, a former NASA and MIT and current University of Nebraska-Lincoln robotics scientist just recently wrapped up a series of innovation seminars hosted by UNL and Nebraska Educational Telecommunications.

Farritor’s five minutes will be used to tell people how they can get more creative.  So if you want to know how to get more creative, or perhaps learn how to turn a headwind into a tailwind or how to take great pictures with any camera, get down to the Bourbon Theatre at 7:00 pm, Thursday, Jan. 26, and support creativity and self expression in Lincoln.

Matthew Wegener at last year's Ignite Lincoln.

Does anybody have any idea who would sponsor an event about creative leadership and freedom of expression in Lincoln? Me neither.

No pressure speakers, it's not like a lot of people are watching.

Really, no pressure whatsoever ...

Justin McDowell gets things kicked off.

Shane Farritor wants you to get creative so bad he's willing to bribe you with pens just like the one he's pointing at on the screen. Farritor gave the pens away after the event on Thursday.

Jane Garrity elegantly articulates her case for start-up visas

The Colonel Mustard Amature Theatre Company was pretty entertaining. Check out the expression on the face of the guy in the top hat and scarf, can't put a price on that.

Justin McDowell thanks Matthew Wegener for his generous sponsorship of the event.

“Join” this event on Facebook – it’s easy, click this link:

http://www.facebook.com/events/303513636367465/

Grant Horejsi of Honest Policy will host the next Turbine Flats Social Thursday, Jan. 19, at 4:30 p.m.  Horejsi will be giving attendees a sneak peek of the Honest Policy website.  Honest Policy is designed to be a transparent marketplace for insurance.  After the presentation there will be a brief demo of the honest policy carrier page where users of the site can find reviews, quality ratings, financial stability information and more on each carrier.  There will be a question and answer session following the presentation.

Brian Cary of Vestn will be the entrepreneurial guest.  Cary will be talking about his company as well as giving a demo of the Vestn Profile Beta release and discussing the company’s business strategy.  Vestn seeks to fundamentally change the way job seekers express their talents and abilities to potential employers in addition to providing companies with a new and unique service for connecting with young talent.

Jeff Runyan and Grant Horejsi make the final preparations before unveiling honest policy to the entrepreneurs in attendence.

Brendan Evans introduces Grant and the festivities begin!

Grant gives a demo of some of the features Honest Policy has to offer.

The crowd of entrepreneurs and assorted smart people listens intently.

Now it's Brian Cary's turn to show off Vestn.

The presentation goes over well with the Turbine crowd.

Of course, feeding the masses always makes it easier to appease them.

After the presentation Brian holds court on his end of the room.

Grant fields questions on the other side.

Perhaps the most important lesson learned today is that the beer is free ...

Jeff Runyan hard at work in the Allied Strategy office.

Why is it smart to wear goggles when in the presence of a Jeffrey S. Raikes school of computer science and management graduate?  So that you are not blinded by  science!

But despite his prestigious degree, Raikes grad and Allied Strategy COO Jeff Runyan hasn’t been resting on his laurels.  He is still working hard to make himself better.

Runyan’s most recent effort at self improvement involves him capitalizing on an opportunity to increase his entreprenerial know how by participating in  Gallup’s ® Entrepreneur Acceleration System.

Entry into the program is competitive according to EAS performance manager Ty Delley and there are a lot of testimonials out there from alums who say the program has yielded huge benefits.  So congratulations Jeff, enjoy learning all about entrepreneurship at the EAS.