Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

Archives for October 2008

Great (Meerman) Scott! What a Social Media Breakfast!

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The monthly meeting of the Social Media Breakfast of Minneapolis-St.Paul, held at the PartnerUp Headquarters, also known as Deluxe, was anchored by author/marketer David Meerman Scott on Friday (10/29).

Following opening comments from SMBMSP head cheese, Rick Mahn, Minnov8’s own Graeme Thickins, who coordinated Meerman Scott’s appearance, introduced the online media evangelist to a packed room.

The bulk of his presentation centered around the need for companies to adopt social media and interactive methods of marketing for one simple reason…that’s where customers go to find what they’re looking for. He noted that whenever he asks any group, organization, or gathering what their habits are, when it comes to finding what they want, the web always impacts nearly 100% or them, yet marketers still cling to those methods (direct mail, mass media, etc.) that have much less impact.

He calls the activity of using online and social media marketing as “Spreading the message by word of mouse.” There is a clear need for businesses, individuals, and marketers alike to “think like a publisher” citing that, “We are what we publish.” What reason is given most often as to why a company or individual can’t do that? “We’re a ________! We can’t do that!” where the blank represents a company’s business practice or product.
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10 Startups to Present at MinneDemo

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An estimated 300 Twin Cities tech-heads will gather for an evening of networking and to watch demos of ten of Minnesota’s hottest technology products on November 12, 2008.

MinneDemo brings together entrepreneurs, investors, software developers, designers, and other techies for a night of short demos and long conversations. Founded in 2006, this is the fifth MinneDemo event. It will be held at Intermedia Arts, 2822 Lyndale Ave. S. in south Minneapolis (map). Pre-networking begins at 6:30 pm, and the demos start at 7:00.

The format of MinneDemo is similar to national conferences like DEMO. The rules are simple: seven minutes for each demo, only real/working software allowed, and NO POWERPOINT! However, MinneDemo is free, both for presenters and attendees. All costs for the event are paid for with sponsorship by local technology and services companies.

At November’s MinneDemo, the following companies will demo their products:

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Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge

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The catastrophic cratering of the global economy, falling gas prices and President George W. Bush’s recent executive activities have indirectly prompted Saint Paul gadfly software developers CodeWeavers, Inc., to provide free software for every American on Oct. 28, company officials reluctantly announced today.

In July, CodeWeavers – whose software lets Mac OS X and Linux users run Windows programs without having to go to Microsoft for a Windows OS license – launched the Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge to encourage President Bush to make the most of his remaining days in office by accomplishing a major economic or political goal by January 20, 2009.

The goals focused on President Bush making specific positive accomplishments in areas such as the economy, home values, the stock market, the war on terror and other key issues. Specifically, one goal called for President Bush to help down bring average gasoline prices in the Twin Cities to $2.79 a gallon.

On Monday, Oct. 14, gas prices in Minneapolis and St. Paul did just that.

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Upcoming Book on Hottest I.T. Trend: ‘Cloud Computing’

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Whether you’re in the computer business or not, chances are you’re hearing a ton about “computing in the cloud.” It’s widely being hailed as the top information technology (I.T.) buzzword of the year, thanks to applications many of us use every day — no matter what business we’re in — such as Google Mail or other online applications we simply access through a browser. Other examples would be customer relationship management software from Salesforce.com, or freely accessible word-processing software from Google, Zoho, and others. But there are many more types of these applications, and cloud computing can actually refer to both the software and the underlying infrastructure.

George Reese, a local software developer and tech company founder, knows a lot about the topic — so much so that he was recently commissioned to write a book on cloud computing by O’Reilly Media, based in Northern California, one of the most prominent names in computer publishing.  Reese is the founder of two Minneapolis-based companies: a new one called enStratus Networks LLC, a maker of high-end cloud infrastructure management tools, and an established business called Valtira LLC, the maker of an online “marketing platform” of the same name. Over the past 15 years, George has authored several technology books — with such names as MySQL Pocket Reference, Database Programming with JDBC and Java, and Java Database Best Practices. But his upcoming title, Web Architecture and Programming in the Cloud: Transactional Systems for EC2 and Beyond, may become his most popular yet.

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Minnov8 Gang Podcast – Episode 11

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Regardless of your political views, citizen journalism, social media use in activism, and a massive shift in tools for creating video, audio and then self-publishing and distributing it, is fundamentally changing the way political opinions are shaped and one guy is at the epicenter of that trend in Minnesota.

Chuck Olsen is a cofounder of The UpTake, a non-profit dedicated to training and distributing the work of video-based citizen journalists. He is also the founder of Minnesota Stories (soon to relaunch), called one of the best videoblogs by the New York Times. He is the producer-director of “Blogumentary,” the first documentary film about the rise of political and personal blogs. His work has screened at the Walker Art Center, Get Reel Documentary Film Festival, Harvard University, and on renegade laptops all around the world. He is the Minneapolis correspondent for Rocketboom and works as a freelance producer, videographer, editor and educator.

Chuck’s personal blog, Blogumentary, is here.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Phil Wilson, Garrick Van Buren

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 44:08 — 25.7MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

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Mentioned during this show are:

+ Julio Ojeda-Zapata’s (blog) article in the Pioneer Press that kickstarted Chuck’s notoriety

+ Technology and other links of stuff mentioned includes:

Comcast Delivers: From Broadband to Wideband

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If you’re in need of faster broadband (and who isn’t!) then you need to know what Comcast is delivering starting today, although it may not be as wide open as you might hope.

Comcast announced it is making the leap from broadband to wideband with the launch of next-generation DOCSIS 3.0 in over 10 U.S. markets (including the Twin Cities) and doubling the speed of existing service for most customers.

This move is certain to help them stave off competition in some markets — mainly in the northeastern US covered by Verizon with their fiber service and 50mbps down, 20mbps up service — as well as position Comcast to deliver a host of new services.

As part of this new wideband deployment, Comcast will launch two new premium speed tiers to its residential and business class customers, Extreme 50 and Ultra.

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Minnesota Microblogging

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Every day there seems to be an uptick in the number of people who are online and interested in connecting with friends, family, colleagues or others where even a digital relationship might end up as meaningful.

The continued growth of social networks is the strongest indicator of that trend, but the explosion of microblogging is another that bears watching, is worthy of your participation sooner-rather-than-later, as it’s already beginning to shift how early adopters in Minnesota are connecting with one another.

If you’re reading this blog post — whether directly on Minnov8, through an aggregated feed like the one at CentralStandardTech, or a publication we support with our content, MinnPost — you’re already familiar with blogging.

Though blogging is still one of the best ways to connect with people, inexpensively self-publish, create search engine friendly frequently updated content, or be a ‘container’ in which one can place value and position oneself as a a thought leader, good blogging requires significant time and effort in order to build and maintain an audience.

Microblogging, on the other hand, is a method to quickly publish small snippets of commentary or value — usually 140 characters or less that is somewhat like a persistent instant message, public in nature — and is therefore much easier to update when the mood strikes. Add to that the ability to make a brief comment and include a web link URL if so desired (so people can go out and read or view what you’re pointing them to on the Web) allows anyone publishing in this way to have their “followers” or audience quickly read that snippet, comment on it, forward it on, or let it stream by as other content appears from other followed microbloggers.

Minnesotans have embraced microblogging and its promise is that it will help to shift the way we all connect with one another, are alerted to items of interest, and even to collectively be engaged in running commentary like what has been exhibited during the various presidential or vice presidential debates where people were making real-time comments sent over Twitter….  [Read More…]

Minnov8 Gang Podcast – Episode 10

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In our continuing quest to bring you Minnesota thought leaders on ‘net and web innovation, we invited none other than Pete Birkeland, CFO & Investment Manager with the angel network RAIN Source Capital, to be on this show to talk about funding and his perspectives.

RAIN Source Capital is a multi-state network of RAIN funds that works with angel investors who are interested in supporting growing companies.  RAIN Source® helps bring together like-minded angel investors to form individual RAIN funds – and then provides these funds with additional capital, a process for due diligence, legal templates, management support, access to deal flow and other resources.  RAIN funds share expertise, deals and experience between and among RAIN Source Capital’s multi-state network of RAIN funds, to support growing companies throughout the area.  RAIN funds range in size from seven to 61 members, who have pooled anywhere from $500,000 to $2 million.  RAIN Source Capital is based in St. Paul, MN.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Garrick Van Buren

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 41:13 — 23.8MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

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In today’s show, a few things were mentioned:

+ Annual RAIN Conference

+ A couple of companies RAIN has funded: Ntractive and Flyspy

+ Angelsoft: The hosted software RAIN uses that’s geared for VC’s and angel investors

+ Recent VC moves with startups:

– Sequoia Capital’s meeting with their funded companies and the presentation. Good recap here.

– Paul Graham from YCombinator on Why to Startup in a Bad Economy

– Uncov’s funny post Paul Graham, Just Shut Your Face Already

+ Upcoming events: Richard Stallman at the UofMN (with a gathering at Bullwinkle’s saloon afterwards (map)); Social Media Breakfast on Oct 31st; Visi’s VISION 2008 Conference with keynote speaker, Robert Stephens head of Geek Squad.

David Meerman Scott to Speak at ‘Social Media Breakfast’ in Twin Cities October 31

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I’m really happy to report that I successfully convinced one of my famous-author friends to speak to our next Social Media Breakfast here in the Twin Cities. We call it “SMBMSP” for short, and this is our eighth monthly event.  David Meerman Scott, a very well-traveled and popular speaker, is the author of the top-selling book, The New Rules for Marketing and PR.  He told me back in August that he’d be coming to MInneapolis for a seminar on October 30, so I asked him if he would consider staying over another night if we could schedule one of our breakfast meetings on the 31st.  He was gracious enough to say yes, so we got some sponsors, and now we have it all scheduled.

It will be held at Deluxe Corp’s headquarters in Shoreview, MN, thanks to my friend Steve Nielsen, whose company, PartnerUp.com, was recently acquired by Deluxe. The meeting is scheduled for 8:00 to 10:30 am on Friday, October 31. Attendance is free, open to anyone interested in social media, and the first 100 attendees will receive a free copy of David’s book. (By the way, David blogs here.) To register, go to our group’s social network site at smbmsp.ning.com, click on the “Events” tab, then click on “SMB-Twin Cities 8,” and then look for the “Order Now” button. Or, just go directly to our RSVP page. The Minnov8 gang looks forward to seeing you there!  Oh — and costumes are optional…  🙂

Minnov8 Gang Podcast Update

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Due to a shift in my travel schedule (and I’m the one with the audio gear and setup), I was forced to postpone our next Gang episode until next Saturday.

One of the keys to building an audience for any sort of show is consistency. If you know it’s posted on Saturday and you’re going out to cut the lawn and like to listen to it, then not having it appear in iTunes is a drag. I know…it’s happened to me several times when I’ve subscribed to a podcast series.

I apologize for the hiccup and we’ll back on track next week.