There's an old adage that the best way to describe a job you love is that you would do it for free. I'm fortunate enough in my role in Microsoft that I've been able to experience that opportunity by working and meeting with investors, entrepreneurs and startups from all walks of life and from all over the world. It's afforded me the chance to develop a perspective – often one that is at odds with conventional wisdom about where the action is. This is an occasional series where I'll share that perspective with Silicon Prairie News readers.

If we look at Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and the Dakotas there is something special occurring. There's an active culture of entrepreneurship that is curated by Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. There’s a robust community of incubators and co-working spaces with the likes of Pipeline, Nebraska Global, Think Big Partners and Bizperc. Finally, there's a robust local community and technology press with events like Big Omaha, Thinc Iowa and Silicon Prairie News.

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Gigabit Challenge organizer Herb Sih turned a potentially embarrassing mid-event development into a moment of pride for the techies who poured into the Kansas City Public Library’s plaza branch on Jan. 18.

But the results of the much-anticipated entrepreneurship contest tied to Google Inc.’s to-be launched network in the Kansas Cities still may have some locals with their tails between their legs.

Sih, managing partner of ThingBig Partners LLC, asked the 250-plus crowd that had showed for the competition (dubbed @GBChallengeKC on Twitter) to give themselves a round of applause.

For the first time in library history, high usage had shut down the Plaza Branch’s free Wi-Fi network, putting smartphones, tablets — including this reporter’s iPad — and other devices in the dark for the latter part of the technology-inspired event. The announcement was met with smiles, clapping and laughter. A Google spokeswoman later told the audience she’d emailed her employer to tell engineers just how much the 1-gigabit high-speed Internet network was needed in Kansas City in light of the technical difficulties.

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The 16 teams that pitched business plans at the finale of the Gigabit Challenge on Wednesday weren't the only ones to introduce big ideas at the event. Think Big Partners, the Kansas City, Mo.-based early-stage business incubator and startup accelerator that put on the Gigabit Challenge, took the opportunity Wednesday to introduce some new projects of its own.

Before Gigabit Challenge awards were doled out to conclude the daylong program, Herb Sih, the managing partner of Think Big Partners, stepped to the podium to announce some of his company's objectives for 2012. Think Big's Allison Way details all of them in a post on the Think Big Partners blog. Below, we provide a few of the highlights from Sih's announcement.

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After some three hours of business-plan pitches and an entire day's worth of events, SEIN Analytics and Asset Management emerged from a field of 16 finalists to earn the grand prize at the Gigabit Challenge finale today in Kansas City, Mo.* 

A global business plan competition sponsored by Kansas City's Think Big Partners and focused on unique applications enabled by Google's one-gigabit fiber network that's coming to Kansas City this year, the Gigabit Challenge started with 113 entrants and was whittled down to 39 semi-finalists before 19 finalists were eventually chosen for today's event.

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The Google-dedicated Startup Gambit competition came to a close and a NY startup that deals with cloud-based software took home the $100,000 prize. The Kansas-based competition was dedicated to Google who have installed their super-high-speed Internet network in Kansas and which is set to go live some time this year. The competition, which was organized by Kansas City incubator Think Big Partners LLC, took entries from startups that could demonstrate how they would leverage the high speed Internet network to grow business and inspire innovation.

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