Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

Archives for March 2009

Minnov8 Gang Podcast – Episode 31

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This week’s show is a discussion primarily about the future of newspapers…and the Minneapolis StarTribune in specific.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 43:28 — 25.2MB)

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“Discussed During the Show” Notes:

What’s All This About ‘Moving to the Cloud’? One Minnesota Entrepreneur Can Tell You How

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If you’re in an IT professional or follow developments at all in this field, you’ve undoubtedly been noticing an almost endless amount of media coverage and online discussion lately about “cloud computing”  — one example being a front page story in The Wall Street Journal yesterday.  But, even if you’re just an Internet consumer, you too are hearing your share of the hype.  After all, many consumer Internet applications are also now accessed “in the cloud,” as opposed to being software you install on your own computer — Google’s Gmail probably being the best example.

georgereese-headshot Well, one local entrepreneur, George Reese, is right smack in the middle of all this buzz, and is in a position to help clear up a lot of the confusion about it — especially for enterprises looking to take advantage of the economic benefits of this form of computing.  georgereese-book-200w1 His new book on the subject is scheduled to be released by O’Reilly on April 10.  It’s entitled “Cloud Application Architectures: Building Applications and Infrastructure in the Cloud.” (And here’s the Amazon link.)  George is a Minneapolis-based technologist and startup founder.  I’ve known him since late 2006 and thought it would be interesting to get his thoughts on this very hot topic, and hear the story behind his book.  This is an interview I conducted with George earlier this week, which first appeared on the cloud computing site Cloud Ave. …  [Read More…]

Fallon Releases Free Social App?

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As social media and networking continues its advance and integration in to the very fabric of our lives (which is especially the case as more of us become a part of the always on, always connected online culture) it continually intrigues us at Minnov8 that most organizations are still either taking a wait-n-see attitude toward the whole category while others have quickly become a part of the smart and select few taking calculated risks and subsequent bold actions. We’ve seen very little in-between, even as the shift in marketing and communications has accelerated as traditional media has downtrended rapidly while social media and networking use has increased dramatically (e.g., Twitter grows to 8M users).

Fallon, a division of Fallon Worldwide (a part of Publicis Groupe S.A., based in Paris), has moved forward with an innovative new lifestreaming application called skimmer. Lifestreaming is the practice of collecting one’s online digital breadcrumbs and presence — on sites like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube or Blogger — within applications or services which enable we connected folk to bring all of our friend and acquaintance connections (and everything we’re each doing online in all of these various online venues) together in one central place and with a single, unified application.

What is skimmer exactly? As Fallon describes the value proposition for the app they say, “Skimmer is an Adobe AIR-based desktop application that serves as a dashboard for a person’s social networks, saving people the time and hassle of manually checking Facebook®, Twitter®, Flickr®, Blogger® and YouTube® by consolidating their feeds into a single stream of real-time, relevant content on the desktop.” Skimmer was developed in conjunction with the firm that seems to be popping up everywhere, Sierra Bravo, and the application has performed flawlessly for the few days I’ve been using and feels rock-solid.

I had a chance to to talk with Chris Wiggins, Creative Director at Fallon about the motivations and strategy behind skimmer and what initially appeared to me to be fuzzy reasons why a creative brand agency would deliver such an application. I also wanted to potentially uncover whether the app they’re delivering is intended as a true value giveaway or just another scheme to surreptitiously give away a platform that would end up as another backdoor carrier of ad or messaging distribution.  …  [Read More…]

Interview with Josh Bernoff of Groundswell

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bernoffGroundswell is my playbook for understanding social media and how it integrates with people and business. In it, co-Author Josh Bernoff, provides frameworks for understanding social media and best practices from proven exercises, like Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation. Groundswell defines the POST method, introduces the concept of technographics, and outlines the varying levels of social media complexity, from listening to co-creation. Groundswell transformed my perspectives on social media and inspired me to move ahead in my sabbatical quest. I am a big fan of Josh’s. When I found out that I had a chance to meet him, I was charmed.

On March 18th, I had the delight of lunching with Josh and his colleague Jocelyn Walters, both of Forrester Research. We met at the Cambridge Legal Sea Foods and shared stories and insights collected from our professional and personal experiences. Here is a snapshot of the insights I collected from our conversation.  …  [Read More…]

Standouts and Serendipity at SXSW Interactive

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Last week was a busy one for many in the interactive community here in Minnesota. As chronicled by Minnov8, South By Southwest (SXSW), a name long associated with independent and breaking music and has grown to include Film and Interactive, attracted many of Minnesota’s best and brightest for five days of workshops, events, and parties.

From March 13th-17th the Austin Convention Center, as well as the very Streets of Austin, became a hotbed for computer code, social media, and interactive business. And right there in the middle of it stood the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
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Minnov8 Gang Podcast – Episode 30

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This week’s show is a brief discussion about South by Southwest (SXSW), the freemium model discussion with Guy Kawasaki interviewing Wired’s Chris Anderson held the last day of the event, and a live show Steve Borsch ran yesterday on Mogulus for client TEL.A.VISION.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott & Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off this week).

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 34:59 — 20.3MB)

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Unsummit Leader Interviews

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On March 7th was the Unsummit. Phil Wilson, with Brian Stemmler on camera, interviewed the leaders of the Unsummit. Brian carved out time to do a great job on the video editing of this piece and we bring that to you now:

Zeus Jones & Sierra Bravo Win Phizzpop Final

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Kudos to the teams at Zeus Jones & Sierra Bravo for taking the finals at Phizzpop at South by Southwest (SXSW). Stiff competition from top designers in New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, Austin (TX) and San Francisco…but they nailed it.

The PhizzPop Design Challenge is a web design and development competition. This year PhizzPop expanded from in-person agency challenges to include an online competition for web professionals.

The PhizzPop Tour stopped in seven cities across the U.S. This is the design event of the year — a prestigious design competition combined with a social gathering for top web professionals, brands, designers and developers. You can learn more at the PhizzPop site here.

Two videos below: the Zeus Jones/Sierra Bravo winning pitch…and an interview Minnov8’s Phil Wilson did with Christian Erickson, partner in Zeus Jones and the guy that was on stage pitching the combined team’s work to win the event.