Accomplishing MPR’s Mission: Innovation at Work.
You’ll see much on this site about the development of new applications, software, products and systems. We’d also like you to see how Minnesota companies are using them to accomplish their goals.
Minnesota Public Radio has always endeavored to be a leader in employing new technology in the daily business of radio broadcasting. One look around their beautiful facility in St. Paul will tell you that. From state of the art broadcast equipment to the video presentations throughout the building it’s apparent that MPR embraces technology and innovation.
However, MPR isn’t just using new technology to make the lobby look great. There is genuine dedication to improving the listener’s experience whether they are music fans, news junkies or would be residents of Lake Wobegon. In fact, according to Michael Bettison, Director, New Media at MPR, “Our audience is where the power of our medium is going.”
Bettison joined MPR in 2001 after stints with a web development company in New York and worked with the likes of Time Magazine and PBS. His first of order of business was to properly position the information MPR was providing on air, what he terms “legacy content”, on line. Additional attention needed to be paid to correctly orienting the staff to use the assets given to them by broadcast to focus the content online. This also led to web getting “a seat at the editorial table” at MPR,” a place that some companies are still trying to sort out in their overall strategy. In fact, some still see web as a competitor to traditional media. Bettison noted no such trepidation at MPR. “The only concern was that of workload. However, we were able to take advantage of the enthusiasm shown by the staff to address those concerns.” Read more
DJ Edna - The Open Source Music and Art Catalog Engine
One of the persistent issues with selling creative works digitally is the need for a middle man to handle the transaction. Engaging with these middle men - whether MySpace, iTunes, SnoCap, or another vendor - often comes at the cost of loss of rights or increase in fees for the artist. DJ Edna, the latest project from Thomas Bohmbach, is an open-source framework designed to make managing and selling digital works easy while allowing the artist to maintain full control over their work.
“Independent artists, who have a geek friend, could install [DJ Edna] on an extra computer in their basement, and run it that way, with no fees. ” - Thomas Bohambach, founder, DJ Edna.
Full control means, DJ Edna will support any licensing or pricing structure the artist wants to release their work under. Plus, like any polite open-source project, DJ Edna is easily customizable for integration into WordPress, Gallery, and other projects.DJ Edna is currently behind The Skullcranes and Spirit of Salt. For those interested in using DJ Edna for their creative catalog, there’s a DJ Edna wiki with installation instructions in addition, Thomas provides set up, consulting, and hosting services.For more on DJ Edna, listen to my podcast interview with Thomas [mp3]
Locating Your Software Development in MN
With all the accelerated political discussions during this presidential primary season, there has been considerable discussion about outsourcing, protecting the middle class, the economy and jobs. What is little discussed, however, is that the US has already outsourced much of our manufacturing base (thus directly impacting the middle class). What is not as apparent is that we’re also outsourcing more and more of our intellectual work in finance and software engineering.
Of course, this causes me great concern as someone who cares about our country, my children and my someday grandchildren, our State of Minnesota and most of all this premise: if you believe, as I do, that the Internet “platform” is the 21st century conduit for innovation, human connection and collaboration — and is the most “The World is Flat” accelerator of competition in intellectual capital globally — then you’d better be very concerned that we’re essentially shipping our high value, intellectually important work overseas and empowering our future competitors to become the software powerhouses of tomorrow.
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The "Minnov8 Gang" Podcast
