A healthy focus on innovation in rural community development is sweeping across the Heartland this spring, and we are happy to say that our Center is deeply engaged.  Within the past week, we co-hosted a USDA Rural Development conference in Nebraska, with a dual focus on innovating programming and USDA initiatives in rural development.  In mid-April and again in mid-June, we are involved in two regional convenings, both supported in part by grants from the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development.  The first, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, will focus on innovative approaches to rural community development around the nation.  The second, in Moline, Illinois, will bring together practitioners who are using three specific innovative approaches:  HomeTown Competitiveness (HTC), which the Heartland Center pioneered with the Nebraska Community Foundation and the RUPRI Center for Rural Entrepreneurship; Energizing Entrepreneurship (e2), which we developed with the RUPRI Center, and EntrepreneurShip Investigation (ESI), which HTC supported in collaboration with 4-H at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  All three programs are used nationally.  We are also contributing to a 12-state USDA Rural Development conference in Madison, Wisconsin, in May, again with a focus on innovative models and best practices.  These conferences all showcase "the best of the best," as one of our mentors used to say, and we are happy to play a part in sharing programmatic successes in the field.