Minnov8: Minnesota Innovation in Internet and Web Technology

Your boss, executive client or any other leader with whom you’re dealing (or perhaps even you, yourself) may not intuitively understand social media. This is not because of a lack of understanding or the technical acumen to use some internet connected device and hosted software, but more likely because you don’t feel the need to put forth the effort or energy to embrace it (or why anyone else would for that matter).

As social media continues to accelerate as a method of connecting people to one another as well as to news, information and other snippets of value, I keep thinking about people who aren’t all that social, are not inherently “connectors,” or are folks who are simply not all that interested in connecting with other people in some virtual way.

Years ago I always thought not being social was, well, being antisocial. Being one of the weirdos who smell bad and can’t be trusted around small animals or children. The guys you see leaving Blockbuster on a Friday night with 10 videos…for the weekend. The hermits whom I always seem to stumble upon when hiking in the Superior National Forest and who abhor bumping in to anyone.

Then I became enlightened. (more…)

UnSummit, the spontaneous tech marketing unconference spawned as an alternative to the sold-out MIMA Summit last October has set the date for their next event as Saturday, March 7, 2009 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The event will be held at the Minneapolis Central Library.

The agenda is still coming together based upon attendee input but the theme of “Hacking the Recession” sounds timely and a good way to frame social media marketing in these challenging economic times.

If you are unfamiliar with UnSummit, you can check out our coverage here and on our podcast or visit the UnSummit blog. A sign-up list for attendees is on the UnSummit wiki. Without the overlap with the MIMA Summit, it looks to be a much larger event this time. Hope to see you there…

Our kickoff podcast for 2009 is a discussion with guest Kevin Matheny, self-described “E-business Architect & Open API guy for Best Buy” and founder of the innovative Best Buy Remix Developer Network effort.

Today’s hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.

Our discussion surrounded a variety of topics:

- How did the idea to open up the Best Buy catalog come about? What is the vision for Remix?
- How does it fit with broader plans or strategies of the corporation?
- Can you talk about how you came to select Mashery as your API delivery partner?
- What about higher level tools to increase access to the Remix API?

As you may have heard, a guy by the name of Keith Burtis (based in Buffalo, NY) was just hired to be community manager of the Remix program and is running the Twitter presence. During this podcast, we discussed the role of the community manager, what Keith is doing, and why it matters.

Links:

+ Kallow.com

+ Blog:  http://remix.bestbuy.com/blog

+ Twitter:  http://twitter.com/bestbuyremix

+ Kevin’s article, Agile Software Development: Bridges to the Future in BusinessWeek.

+ Follow @kevinmatheny on Twitter here.

 

 Minnov8 Gang Podcast - Episode 19 [57:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This just in as an email from Luke Francl, one of the co-organizers (along with Ben Edwards) of MinneDemo:

Happy New Year! We at Minne* hope 2009 finds you well.

Save the date! The next MinneDemo has been scheduled for Friday, February 6 (Registration is not yet open). (This is our first Friday MinneDemo!).

It will be at Intermedia Arts again. You may have heard that Intermedia Arts is having financial difficulties due to the economic meltdown. Renting their space again will help them become sustainable.

We are still looking for presenters. Working on something cool? We want to hear from you.

We also want a volunteer with A/V experience to help us simulcast the demos in the main room and record them for distribution on the Internet. Please contact me if you are interested.

Thanks,

Luke Francl & Ben Edwards

Your Gang members talk about other people’s predictions, make a few of our own, and generally discuss possibilities and opportunities for next year.

Today’s hosts: Steve Borsch,Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Phil Wilson

On our “2009 Predictions” show we discuss:

+ A quick recap of the Social Media Breakfast yesterday

+ Then we move into a discussion of 2009 Social Media Predictions

+ End with a discussion of “general” 2009 Predictions

+ Say very little how incredibly wrong we’ll probably be, lucky to nail a few, and how we hope this mp3 vanishes into the ether so no one can say next December, “Hey! You guys were WAY off.”

Show notes:

+ Technology discussed: Identi.ca; NetVibes; Yahoo Pipes; Twitter API and the Twitter Fan Wiki, a directory of stuff built atop that API

+ “Containers”: Adobe AIR; Microsoft Silverlight; Site-Specific-Browser’s (SSBs) like Prism and Fluid; Sproutbuilder; iWidgets; Gadgets;

+ Peter Kim’s Social Media Predictions for 2009 where he ‘crowdsources’ fourteen big thinkers in the social media space and gets them to predict

+ Optimism: “For Net consultant, a crisis, then a silver lining” Steve Borsch interviewed for CNet article.

 

 Minnov8 Gang Podcast - Episode 18 [54:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Two of the most difficult marketing jobs in Minnesota right now has to be leading local retail giants Target and Best Buy. Although of different scales, Target is about 60% larger than Best Buy, each is facing the same catastrophic pullback in consumer spending that has resulted in each company reporting some of their worst results in years. How each deals with the gloomy outlook in 2009 will be interesting to watch and I expect to see some innovation in their marketing strategies that will help them ride out this tough economy.

As we’ve written here before, Best Buy is one of the leaders in the adoption of social media in the retail industry. Their CMO, Barry Judge, has started blogging and has taken to Twitter. He’s very transparent in his exploration of conversational marketing in interviews like this one. But probably the best overview is a video we posted here last month that features an interview with Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson who clearly is behind their use of social tools and techniques.

Target, in contrast, is opaque on all things social and their CMO, Michael Francis, seems from the corporate model of a brilliant planner, not innovator. Although they have been involved in conversational marketing — I recall meeting blogger Robert Scoble some 3 years ago after a day of meetings at Target — their efforts to date have been mixed. A well planned Facebook campaign was marred by controversy. And there was that episode with bloggers who took issue with a billboard in New York. Not the kind of case studies you would want from a company who clearly is a leading force in retail brand advertising.

So I will be tracking each company and their marketing efforts over the next several months and posting highlights here. If past is prologue, my gut tells me we’ll be seeing a lot of innovation from Best Buy, particularly in their use of social media. But the folks at Target might also surprise us. In these difficult times, the most innovative will likely win.

For those of you not yet on Twitter — and aren’t you feeling so smug you’re not wasting as much time as the rest of us? — you’re likely not aware there’s a site called Twitterholic, which ranks the popularity of Twitter users by number of followers.  Actually, despite what non-Twitter users may think, this social-media “microblogging” tool is proving to be quite useful for many in business, media, and even government, if the list of Minneapolis’ Top 100 Twitterers is any indication.

To better understand who’s doing these rankings, here’s how Twitterholic cutely explains itself:

“A few times a day, we calculate individual statistics for each twittering twit in our database. In other words, WE”R IN UR TWTTR PAGES, READN UR STATZ.  This list is updated daily so you can find out who the most popular twitter users are. To participate, do what you normally do — twitter constantly — if you deserve to be on the list, we’ll find you.”
(more…)

Community strategy, management of the ecosystem and paying attention to social media conversations online is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s an imperative for doing business today, for brand management or for building your own personal brand.

Today’s hosts: Steve Borsch,Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Phil Wilson, Garrick Van Buren

Connie Bensen is a woman who is completely engaged in the social media world and has turned it into a thought leadership position as well as career. She’s not only connected with other social media leaders who are geographically disbursed around the globe, but she’s also involved representing social media analytics company Techrigy…and all from her home 4.5 hours north of the Twin Cities! Who said outstate Minnesota people aren’t connected and fully engaged in the 21st century communications revolution!

Show notes:

+ Book Connie mentioned, “Personality Not Included”

+ Other links mentioned: Brian Brown’s Twitter account (from Ideapark); Graeme’s Twitter account; Fast Company article about “8 Experts Predict How Web 2.0 Will Evolve In 2009“; ComicTwit (and its Twitter account)

+ Connie has several key resources linked to from her home page here…definitely worth reading ‘em!

 

 Minnov8 Gang Podcast - Episode 17 [65:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Social media and networking is pretty fragmented, and it’s important that Minnesota becomes fully invested in using all of it in an innovative way (e.g., Best Buy), and doing innovative startups like OnePlace (think Twitter in collaboration) and Enleiten (group GTD). Thankfully, we’re starting to see a bunch of new approaches that are allowing all of us to gather, consolidate and aggregate our social media and network participation, and keep track of all of these disparate channels of ‘conversation’ as well as all of the digital breadcrumbs we’re leaving all over the Web.

Today’s hosts: Steve Borsch,Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Phil Wilson, Garrick Van Buren

We’re blogging; doing vlogs; publishing photos in Flickr and sending messages on Twitter and Identi.ca; social bookmarking like Cullect and Delicious; on networks like Facebook and MySpace *and* joining specialty affinity groups like, for instance, SMBMSP.Ning.com.

Flock, the browser for Windows/Mac/Linux, came out to try to provide a one-stop-shop of all of our disparate, browser-based social media and networking participation. Friendfeed was the one of the first well accepted, Web-hosted one. Now there’s PeopleBrowsr. We’re also seeing inter-connections between social networks, blogs, social bookmarking and channels like Twitter: posting to a blog can appear in Facebook and be sent to Twitter; Twitter messages can be posted on Facebook; Cullect can capture feeds instantly. 

Without a dozen tabs open in a browser — or using a tool like Fluid or Mozilla Prism to create a bunch of SSB’s (site specific browsers) or building a dashboard in iGoogle or NetVibes — none of us have enough time in the day to keep tabs on what everyone is doing, participating within all of these channels of communication, and ensuring we’re EVEN AWARE of them in order to participate in relevant and important conversations. 

In this show, the Gang discusses where we are and some approaches to solving this chaotic (but fun) mess.

 

 Minnov8 Gang Podcast - Episode 16 [54:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It won’t be long before area web developers are losing more sleep helping nonprofits. Rapidly growing Bloomington-based web development firm Sierra Bravo has announced the second coming of its very successful Overnight Website Challenge — 24 hours of pure nerd energy applied to creating or spiffing up the web sites of some deserving Minnesota nonprofits.  The event is the firm’s signature event to give back to the community. For 100 volunteer web developers and 10 lucky Minnesota nonprofits, the 24-hour clock will count down on the weekend of February 28-March 1, 2009.

“Sierra Bravo is committed to this event as long as there are nonprofits whose websites could be better, powered by nerds,” said Luke Bucklin, Sierra Bravo’s president and one of its founders. In the inaugural Overnight Website Challenge in March 2008, volunteer web pros from Sierra Bravo and the broader Twin Cities web development community donated more than 2,000 hours to nonprofits — providing a real-world market value of donated time worth nearly $250,000, according to the firm’s calculations. (more…)