Minnov8

The Gang talks about a meetup with entrepreneur, VC, artist and all-around renaissance man, Gary Smaby, and his spearheading of what’s euphemistically dubbed “the collaboratory”, but is officially an Innovation by Design framework to incubate startups, tap into the University brain-trust, and create a culture of innovation within the University of Minnesota (read more in this PDF).

We also talk at length about Minnedemo, the event itself as well as people we met there and reactions we had (Note: we’ll have a video up shortly of a few interviews we did at Minnedemo) and get into a discussion about URL shortening services.

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

Discussed During the Show Notes:

• Best Buy Idea Exchange (Best Buy is on a tear. Makes one wonder: are these guys going to single-handedly showcase ‘net and web innovation in Minnesota?)
• Shorpy.com; Fieldnation.com; CentralStandardTech.com; StartupShoppe; Magnet360 (MNCup); Reside, LLC
• Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) Events
• Fallon’s Skimmer app, coded by SierraBravo (& led by Chris Black who did an awesome job demo’ing it!)
• Glue Conference
• Garrick Van Buren & Cullect
• Steve Gillmor’s “Rest in Peace RSS” post on Techcrunch (note he also wrote about “The Death of Podcasting” in July of 2005….oops)
• Steve Borsch’s post, “It’s the Value, Stupid” in the mention of the disheveled and disorganized late William F. Buckley
• The bit.ly win over tinyurl; Mashable’s post on “90+ URL Shortening Services“

Podcast: Download (Duration: 48:16 — 33.1MB)