Minnov8

Wouldn’t it be great to have a chance for a 1:1 mentoring from former Apple evangelist and current VC Guy Kawasaki? Or time with the former CEO of GE, Jack Welch? Or a chance to ask Wired magazine’s Chris Anderson about all the things he sees that might be germane to your startup? Or talk about your social media startup with Charlene Li, co-author of Groundswell?

Here’s your chance.

Patrick Tedjamulia, one of the founders of a non-profit in Utah called the International Mentoring Network Organization (IMNO.org) reached out to me about a “Mentorship Auction” they’re holding and their Get in Their Shoes Campaign to promote it (thanks to Doug Pollei for the connection). Thinking a post about it might be a bit of a stretch for Minnov8’s mission focused on internet and web innovation in our state, I reached out to Patrick by email and tossed the ball in his court to give me a call so we could kick it around.

Tedjamulia is a brand manager at General Mills and he grabbed a few minutes to launch a call to me this morning. As we talked I quickly realized that yes, this sort of thing would definitely be of interest to the Minnov8 readership!

The first auction is currently running and is a 1-on-1 mentoring opportunity with one of my favorite authors Daniel Pink, the NY Times Best Selling author of “A Whole New Mind”, and “Drive”. Daniel’s auction ends Feb. 11th so there is still time for you to bid. The winning bidder will get a thirty-minute phone conversation (mentorship) with Daniel Pink.

Today, Feb. 8th, the next auction is opening and will be a mentoring opportunity with Caterina Fake, the co-founder of Flickr and now Hunch. Coming up are auctions posted for mentoring opportunities with the following individuals:

• Fernando Aguirre, CEO and Chairman of Chiquita brands: Feb 15- 24
• Lawler Kang, author of Passion at Work: Feb 22-Mar.3
• Dave Logan, author of Tribal Leadership and The Three Laws of Performance: Mar. 1 – 10
• Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine and author of Free!: Mar. 8-17
• Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group and co-author of Groundswell: Mar. 15-24
• Stephan Roche, CEO of Kapitall: Mar. 22 – 31
• Dr. Clotaire Rapaille, author of The Culture Code: Mar. 29 – Apr. 7
• Geoff Colvin, Senior Editor, FORTUNE and author of Talent is Overrated: Apr. 5 - 14
• Robbie Vitrano, CEO of Trumpet Group: Apr. 12 – 21
• Jeff Hayzlett, CMO of Kodak: Apr. 19 – 28
• Jeffrey Veen, web design and development guru and co-founder of Adaptive Path: Apr. 26 – May. 5
• Aaron Magness, Director of Brand Marketing, Zappos: May 3 – 12
• Rafe Furst, entrepreneur, investor and business leader: May 10 – 19
• Guy Kawasaki, managing director of Garage Technology Ventures: May 17 – 26
• …and more.

Proceeds from the campaign will go directly to the International Mentoring Network Organization (www.imno.org), a 501c3 non-profit organization aimed at making professional mentoring available to everyone and truly founders of what they term the “Open Source Mentoring Movement”. Also, stop by their site to listen to some recorded calls to get a sense of what these sorts of mentorship opportunities are like.

Don’t miss the chance to be mentored by Daniel Pink, Guy Kawasaki, and many others and bid today at Get in Their Shoes.

Is it true that “Flat Is The New Up?” Not if you’re a company just outside St. Cloud, Sartell-based w3i, which is consistently proving that “Up Is The New Up” every quarter through quite impressive and sustained growth. Our guest on this week’s podcast, co-founder Rob Weber (@robertjweber), tells us how they got started and what they’re up to now.

W3i was marketing apps when apps weren’t even cool and their founding is a great story. In 2000, the three Weber brothers (Ryan, Aaron and Rob) discovered the power of free and launched Freeze.com. Along with their team, they developed applications to satisfy users’ pent up demand for free content while pioneering new revenue models to spread the development and marketing costs across millions of installations — over 250 million to date.

This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson (and thanks to Phil for tossing out the meme “flat is the new up” on the podcast!)
Music by Josh Woodward and the tune is “Stickybee”. From the podsafe music network Music Alley.

Discussed during the show notes:

If you weren’t at Minnedemo last night, well, you ain’t….  Seriously, for those few of you players in our Internet/IT community who weren’t there, you missed a damn good one.  I tweeted as I left about 10:30 pm (okay, I admit I tweet from my car) that I thought it was the best ever.  There was an energy that was not to be denied!  I’m including a few pix here — admittedly blurry as I swung a beer in my other hand. (Most are after the jump.)  It was some 300 people shoulder-to-shoulder in an art gallery talking about tech, great new startups coming on in Minnesota, with lots of new relationships being formed, old friendships and contacts being renewed, partnerships being discussed — and, yes, investment opportunities, too.  And that was just the schmoozing part! 

There were lots of live demos going on in the theater adjoining, if you could squeeze yourself in there:

1. ArtsApp – like Monster.com for artists to submit multimedia (Dejen Tesfagiorgis)
2. ReliaCloud – a cloud computing platform that allows people to build scalable computing infrastructure on demand (Jason Baker, VISI)
3. Pedal Brain – advanced cycle computer based on the iPhone platform combined with web-based data analysis (Matt Bauer)
(more…)

So, if you haven’t seen the news Wired broke late Saturday (updated Sunday afternoon) about Steve Jobs going off on Google and Adobe at the Apple all-employee meeting, here it is:  Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Mantra is ‘Bullshit,’ Adobe Is Lazy: Apple’s Steve Jobs.

Here’s an excerpt:

“After a big public announcement of the sort Apple had this week for the iPad, CEO Steve Jobs often takes time in the day or two afterwards to have a Town Hall at One Infinite Loop, making himself available for questions from employees bold enough to stand up and take one right between the eyes.

This time, the big topics included Google and Adobe — no surprises there… And the absence of Adobe Flash support on the iPhone for three years and counting, and now on the iPad, is either celebrated by users as a poke in the eye of one of the web’s most dextrous tools, or the most over-rated and overused crutch for decent design.

Jobs, characteristically, did not mince words as he spoke to the assembled, according to a person who was there who could not be named because this person is not authorized by Apple to speak with the press.

On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: “It’s bullshit.” Audience roars.

About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.”

I decided to ask three local observers with a special perspective on Apple for their reaction. Two of them are former Apple employees, the other a 26-year user of both Apple and Adobe technologies. (more…)

Thursday’s Apple iPad launch was the most hotly anticipated technology launch event in years. To say there was enthusiasm for the device amongst many is obvious, but the disappointment felt by technologists and geeks is palpable. We explore the iPad — it’s good points and bad — with Julio Ojeda Zapata, the St. Paul Pioneer Press (TwinCities.com) technology reporter who was at the event and had hands-on use of the device and he was live tweeting and posting photos which you can see on this page (http://minnov8.com/tablet/).

As you probably already know, Julio writes a Tech Test Drive column about gadgets, apps and social media (among other things). He is the author of Twitter Means Business, one of the first books about Twitter. He is also a sometime co-host of the Minnov8 Gang podcast (and will join us this Saturday to discuss this Apple event in more detail) and focuses his commentary on tech trends. See his Posterous geekstream. Contact him by e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music by Duane Andrews and the tune is “Mr. Butler”.

Discussed during the show notes:

+ Like to see the iPad Nano?
+ Mary Meeker’s Web 2.0 Summit presentation (PDF) & we referred to slide #38
+ Video of Walt Mossberg at the iPad launch, a portion of which he’s talking with Steve Jobs
+ Bill Heyman of Minnesota-based Codemorphic (mobile app developers) post on the iPad
+ Steve Borsch’s article on MinnPost about the iPad & his Apple A4 chip post and another post on Apple opening up VoIP
+ Leo Laporte head of TWiT and tech journalist Natali Del Conte
+ Stanza was acquired in 2009 by Amazon & The Wall Street Journal’s take on Apple vs. Amazon
+ Hitler’s response to the iPad

Recently I had a chance to join local IP Attorney Ernest Grumbles for an edition of his BP/G Radio Intellectual Property Podcast. Along with his co-host Joe Bennett-Paris we had the chance to talk with Mary K. Engle, Associate Director, FTC Division of Advertising Practices about the infamous Guides for the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising as they apply to bloggers.

As we’ve talked about on past Minnov8 podcasts and as I pointed out in a post on my own blog, these guides are nothing new in the broadcast world, but seem to have a few bloggers and online marketers a bit twitchy. How do you feel about them?

It was good to have the chance to talk with Ms. Engle and get a very clear explanation of the guides straight from the source. Thanks to Ernest for allowing me to join in.

Be sure and keep Ernest’s blog and podcast on your radar. He is a great local and national resource and offers plenty of great info on IP law on a regular basis.

Zipnosis is a 2008 Minnesota Cup winner (Student category) and a pre-launch healthcare startup in Minneapolis that is zeroing in on the always-on and always-connected generation with a very interesting and potentially disruptive healthcare business model.

I sat down this week with founder Jon Pearce to discuss Zipnosis and what they were trying to accomplish. ”When you’re sick and need to go to a doctor or visit a clinic, you have to take time off work, pay a co-pay, sit in the waiting room, and then just get seen by a nurse,” says Pearce. This occurs even for fairly routine and minor issues such as bacterial infections (e.g., strep throat) or viral ones like the flu, and Pearce has data-backed opinions about the percentages of office visits that are routine like these.

Those are the types of visits that require a considerable time investment for the patient and are low value ones for a clinician, and speeding up that process virtually and online (called a “zip”) is what Zipnosis is making more efficient for both the patient and clinician (minutes for a Doctor to turn around a diagnosis vs. 15-20 minutes of time for that same thing in-office, and undoubtedly 2 hours or so of time for the patient). What if instead you could use your computer or cell phone, answer a series of very structured questions about your symptoms, get fast clinician or doctor feedback and, if needed, a prescription sent to the pharmacy of your choice? (more…)

The multi-talented tech giant Julio Ojeda-Zapata was on hand for the debut of the iPad in San Francisco on Wednesday…then he got his hands on one. We can’t help but feel a bit giddy that he loaded up Minnov8 on the “magical” device.

See a recap of Julio’s Twitter coverage and photos here.

Thomas Knoll is gathering the Knights of Tech Entrepreneurship for a meeting at the MN Startup Culture Roundtable, scheduled for February 5th.

Thomas, currently residing in the sunny climes of San Francisco, is familiar to most in the Minnesota tech and social media world through his time working as a web designer here. He made the move west in 2008 to work with Seesmic and has since since gone freelance, working with the likes of Swordfish.

Though this would appear to be a result of the recent discussion surrounding Paul DeBettignies’ article on less talk and more walk when it comes to our own start up community, it had it roots well before it. “I was motivated by the startup atmosphere in San Francisco and wanted to get more of that vibe back to Minnesota.” He goes on to note, “There are so many people that are working on startups here. In fact, I know two baristas that have real, viable projects going on the side.”

The timing isn’t lost on Thomas. “I originally wanted to talk culture but it morphed into a call to action in response to the current local startup discussions. Paul outlined what he would do to help and I felt I should to the same.”

The roundtable discussions will highlight the differences between here and ‘the valley’. What type of differences for example? “Here we are so secretive. We keep everything quiet, rather than share it with the community. In San Francisco you are constantly putting out ideas. So many that you hope someone will pick it up and run.”

If you plan on attending the event there is some homework. Follow the links on the Eventbrite registration page to become familiar with the discussion so far and most importantly the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach Thomas is planning on including to move ideas into action.

Let the discussion…and action continue!

Totally out of the blue I came across the video below tonight, a producer reel done by Brian Stemmler (@bstemmler). I had no idea he’d won an Emmy for his video work.

For those of you who don’t know Brian, he’s a videographer and photographer who has shot many interview videos for Minnov8 — and covered events like the UnSummit — for us and other organizations in town (here is a fun one he did with Minnov8’s Phil Wilson). He’s a great and generous guy that you should know if you need professional level video or photography.

Here’s why this is relevant to a Minnesota ‘net and web innovation story: Brian has thrown himself in to the social media sphere, is leveraging YouTube, and has planted himself all over the ‘net wherever it’s relevant. He’s volunteering for video shoots simply to get himself integrated in to this community (he came here from California) and is doing so effectively. Active on Twitter, Brian has connected himself very well. Great lessons in hustle for all of us.

Take a peek at his producer reel to get a sense of what he does: