A lot of tech heads here in Central Indiana may lament the fact that they’re so far removed from places like Austin and San Francisco when we hit conference season. Thanks to Sproutbox Founder, Mike Trotzke, however, you can get your tech conference fix right here in beautiful Bloomington, Indiana. 

Last week, Katie Birge gave you 4 reasons that you should attend this year’s Combine. Today, you hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. Mike sat down with our friends at Verge Bloomington to chat about this year’s combine and what it takes to build a great tech conference–and tech community–here in the midwest. Check it out:

All-Star Tech Cast Comes to Bloomington

Nothing gets my jollies quite like great content from great speakers. If you’re looking to learn about the tech space, you’ve got to make it down to Bloomington on April 11th, because Mike and his crew have outdone themselves with this year’s lineup. 

Between bad ass Hoosiers like Jay Baer and Mike Bridavsky, you could easily put together an all-Indiana speaker schedule that would, to quote the great poet, Kelis, “Bring all the boys to the yard.”

This wasn’t good enough for Trotzke.

The Combine is bringing in Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder and Internet cowboy. If you’re into underdog stories, you need to hear Wales speak. As the man who took on the Encyclopedia Britannica armed with nothing but the power of crowdsourcing, Wales is an inspiration to techies everywhere.

LobbyCon Lets You Ball on a Startup’s Budget

In order to bring in big name speakers, you’ve got to charge bigger conference prices. But with a lineup of killer after parties and networking events that should be must-hits for every tech worker in Bloomington, how can you make the conference affordable for bootstrappers?

Enter LobbyCon. 

At less than a third of the price of a full conference pass, a LobbyCon ticket gets you access to everything except the main stage and workshops. Great deal for anyone who can’t shell out for a full pass.

I Can’t Stop Looking at Cornzilla

’nuff said.