Yep. The Minnov8 Gang are a bunch of turkeys and as such, we have to take off for our national holiday. We’ll be back next week for episode #102 of the Minnov8 Gang podcast. Stay safe, eat sparingly and stay away from Uncle Zebulon.
Archives for November 2010
Minnov8 Gang 101 – Is Tech a Bubble?
We discuss a range of topics but the “Gang Mentality” segment covers what some are viewing as a “tech bubble” that is bound to burst. Listen and see if you agree or disagree.
Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Graeme Thickins (Phil Wilson is off this week)
Music: Nony Zero & their song “Surfin’ the Blast Wave” via the podsafe Music Alley.
The Podcast
Podcast: Download (Duration: 45:35 — 26.5MB)
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Discussed during the show:
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Links about “the bubble”:
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Internet Trends at Web 2.0 Summit
By now you’ve undoubtedly seen much from last week’s Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. As internet/web/mobile people, it’s always incredibly enlightening to see Mary Meeker from Morgan Stanley deliver her Web 2.0 Summit “State of the Internet” talk (slides as PDF here or embedded–simply click “more” under the video).
It’s always great to see her in action (view below) as well as to see all the videos from the Web 2.0 Summit playlist from O’Reilly & Associates.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yL9yrttESI
Take a look at the presentation embedded as a slide show–>… [Read More…]
A Day At Camp
While most in the Twin Cities awoke to a snowy November day yesterday a hearty band of bloggers, programmers, designers, and assorted geeks braved the slippery, slushy roads for a day at camp…Word Camp. The first such event in the Twin Cities, the day was a resoundingly successful local presentation of the “everything WordPress” gatherings being staged throughout the country.
The first Wordcamp was put together in 2006 in San Francisco by Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of the open-source blogging software, WordPress. Since then, according to the Wordcamp Central site, over a hundred have taken place. Wordcamps have taken place or will take place from Austin to Jerusalem and Bangkok to Melbourne and by all accounts Minneapolis-St. Paul was a standout…at least to us.
The day began with brief yet sincere opening remarks from event organizers including local WordPress Users Group founder Toby Cryns, and designer Lauren Freeland as well as Matt Barker, Brandon Hedges and Jeff Martin. Special recognition was also given to a cast of interns (free help) for all of their efforts. It was the beginning of day of exceptional sessions and presentations (not to mention some pretty nice swag) that ranged from the the exceptionally technical and coder focused to the beginner and casual user levels, all in a well thought out track based schedule.
While the day was chocked full of great sessions by both local and national, let’s call them “Wordies”, I was particularly taken with presentations by Josh Byers on customizing WordPress (though I could have done without quite so much information about the Lord of the Rings) and a somewhat snow-shocked Vegas resident John Hawkins on building plug-ins. Even Minnov8’s own Steve Borsch and Tim Elliott gave a solid overview of WordPress for small business. And, though some of the sessions were a bit redundant or a tad too self-promotion oriented, the day exemplified the community surrounding “the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.” (WordPress’s words, not mine.)
No where was that community more on display than in the Technical Support room. This dedicated tribe of Wordie geeks spent the day selflessly addressing specific questions and fixing problems with sites for anyone who wanted to ask for their assistance. I didn’t even see a tip jar. The energy in that room was similar to the one experienced at the Overnight Web Challenge, a caffeine fueled 24 hour web development event that has gained serious geek cred in recent years.
Kudos to all who spent months organizing the event and to those who braved the snow, and sometimes questionable skills of Twin Cities drivers, to participate. As one who considers himself a WordPress tinkerer I look forward to next year. I can only imagine that the WordPress pros are already counting the days. Bravo!
Bloomington Firm Expects to Add 300 High-Tech Jobs
Twin Cities Business (TCB) magazine reported today that Polar Semiconductor Inc. (PSI) is planning to build a new facility, adding to its existing 200,000-square-foot facility in Bloomington, just East of the Mall of America on Old Shakopee Road. It cited documents recently filed with the City of Bloomington’s planning division. But the biggest news is it the firm expects the expansion will add 300 jobs eventually when the facility is completed.
Bet you didn’t know that we had a big-time semiconductor fab practically in the shadow of MOA, did you now? And it’s been there for more than 25 years, actually, under previous ownership. (More on that below.)
The current 200,000-square-foot facility at 2800 East Old Shakopee Road includes 62,000 square feet of cleanroom space. where the company performs semiconductor wafer fabrication. Chips cut from these wafers are used in a variety of electronic devices. 
TCB reported that company officials are not yet disclosing information about the expansion. Quoting from the story: “Sources close to the deal said the initial phase of construction will likely result in the addition of about 80 new employees, and when completed, ‘the addition will have generated need for about 300 additional employees’.” No target date was stated for the expected completion of the new facility.
A report by the City of Bloomington’s planning and economic development division, said TCB, indicates the company hopes to expand on its existing property by adding 98,000 square feet. The building would occupy space north of the existing facility. (Shown above in an aerial photo.)
TCB said the planning division voted unanimously in favor of the expansion, and the City Council will vote Monday to make the final decision. “I have no reason to believe they won’t approve, but of course, can’t know for certain,” a representative of the planning division told TCB. She said PSI plans to begin construction in early 2011, and once the “shell” of the addition is complete, it will likely finish the interior through additional construction phases…. [Read More…]
Minneapolis ‘Unusually Successful’ and ‘Respected by Tech Insiders’
Interactive map popup explains Minneapolis view (click for larger view)
New Scientist magazine has an interesting article about Stubborn US cities rated in personality test (interactive map is here). Stating that, “Cities have ingrained characters that are stubbornly hard to change – and they’re not necessarily what you expect them to be. New York, for instance, is really quite average.
The findings come from a new way of ranking cities, based on one of the largest and most detailed sets of data on the world’s metropolitan areas.”
Seems that a Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist, Luis M.A. Bettencourt and colleagues “…have now recalculated the violent crime, personal income, GDP and patent rankings for more than 350 US metropolitan areas. The new results reveal that some supposedly exceptional cities, such as New York, are in fact quite ordinary. Other less-heralded places, like Minneapolis, emerge as unusually successful.”
Conjecture by the team is that factors like top-flight universities encouraging creative thinking makes these areas special and they ask the question, “So what is the magic ingredient that makes a city successful?” My gut tells me that Minneapolis has an overwhelming number of creatives, artists, graphic designers, and innovators in many disparate fields…
…or like my San Francisco buddy always says, “It’s so damn cold there you guys have to be creative!” What do you think the magic ingredients are?
Minnov8 Gang 100th Podcast
Wednesday night the Minnov8 Gang gathered at Chino Latino for our 100th podcast. Set up by Phil Wilson with the gracious participation by Christopher Lower (who arranged things with the restaurant), it was a fun and lively evening with good conversation the result.
When Minnov8 was founded in 2008, Dan Grigsby and Garrick Van Buren joined Steve, Tim, Graeme and Phil in building the foundation. Both joined us for this podcast. Our guests for this milestone show included Lisa Foote and Brad Roberts of MixMobi; Christopher Lower of Sterling Cross; and our “fifth Beatle” Julio Ojeda Zapata.
Lisa Foote; Garrick Van Buren; Christopher Lower; Dan Grigsby; Julio Ojeda Zapata
Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: Asymmetry & their song “Next Time Around” via the podsafe Music Alley.
Recording the podcast at Chino Latino. Photo compiled from several taken by Julio (click for larger view)
The Podcast
Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:16:32 — 44.0MB)
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The Death of the Tether? Verizon Wireless 4G for MSP
At an event in downtown Minneapolis yesterday, Verizon Wireless announced “the world’s first large-scale 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network” to the Twin Cities, slated to come online “before the end of 2010” and will be “the death of the tether” according to Verizon sources at the venue.
Graeme Thickins and I attended the event for Minnov8, invited by Albert Maruggi of Provident Partners. Albert was coordinating the blogger outreach and we were thus able to connect with key Verizon Wireless technical staff in order to gain a deeper understanding of what they’ll be delivering on this new 4G infrastructure.
With Sprint and T-Mobile already in this market with their 4G implementations and AT&T coming with theirs in 2011, Verizon’s rollout was expected but both Graeme and I were intrigued by how Verizon Wireless was intending to differentiate themselves in this new 4G LTE space (besides just touting more coverage). What wasn’t expected was how strongly they positioned their IP Multimedia Services (IMS) as “enabling smart services” and APIs they’ll be offering and pushing hard.
For anyone not up-to-speed on all the deliverables, standards and technical aspects of the current state of wireless networking IMS—and the applications they were showing built upon these core services and their network—might have come across as something magical and Verizon-only. IMS is, however, an industry standard. Still, the promise of Verizon Wireless’ network speed and low latency should enable Minnov8 readers to capitalize upon this new 4G infrastructure and thus deliver your applications in a much more efficient manner and with great performance.
The good news is that Verizon Wireless is launching in 38 markets in 2011 and Minneapolis/St. Paul is one of the first. The company expects 4G LTE average data rates to be 5 to 12 megabits per second (Mbps) on the downlink and 2 to 5 Mbps on the uplink in real-world, loaded network environments. These speeds are significantly faster than Verizon Wireless’ (and other wireless providers) current 3G network speeds.
Verizon Wireless' 4G Launch for 2010 (click map for larger view)
But the real story for many of the invited I.T. professionals to this event—and to a lesser extent more technical geeks like us—were the IMS “enablers” (and their performance) which Verizon Wireless will be offering on their smart network. With only a cursory understanding of IMS and the sorts of enablers available to application developers, the promises of this new 4G network—coupled with IMS—will offer features and benefits that will surprise and delight any of us who are heavy wireless data users or those of you delivering mobile applications. … [Read More…]
Entertainment & Sports Law Symposium
Lommen Abdo is holding its 3rd Annual Entertainment & Sports Law Symposium for attorneys and industry professionals who want to know more about substantive entertainment law and business issues. Featured speakers include Lommen Abdo lawyers and representatives from the GRAMMY Foundation®, MusiCares®, Minnesota Vikings, Digital Media Wire, Chrysalis Music Group, USC Thornton School of Music and Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers. Following the panel presentations, the event continues with an official South by Southwest® Mixer.
If you’re in the media, entertainment, gaming, music, film or other such businesses—or obviously if you have a legal practice in any of these areas—this looks to be a fascinating, informative and world-class event.
Register here (yes, it’s one of them PDF thingys that you can print on to paper and snail-mail) and you can view the schedule and speaker bios here. There is a $125 fee which includes continuing legal education credits (CLEs), lunch and the SXSW mixer. 6.0 Minnesota CLE credits requested, including 1.0 bias credit; 7.0 Wisconsin CLE credits requested.
Losing a Friend You May Have Never Known
Today we received the sad news that after much searching the wreckage of a small plane carrying Luke Bucklin and his sons, Nick, Nate, and Noah was found with no survivors. We, along with the rest of the technology community, friends and family are deeply saddened by this loss and send our prayers and condolences to his wife and family.
Many of us at Minnov8 had the pleasure of meeting Luke and if you had that same pleasure I’m sure, even while grieving his loss, you are grateful for having known him. Professionally, if you are a member of the interactive, web, or technology community and had never met him, you most likely know of him or know those impacted by him…thereby, touching you. Luke’s company, Sierra Bravo and it’s Nerdery were, are, and will continue to be true innovators. As a person, you just have to take a look at the Nerdery Blog to see how deeply employees felt about their leader, boss and friend. As a family man, your heart breaks just glancing at his wife Ginger’s blog. Such a brave woman to actively inform the world about the progress and ultimately sad conclusion of the search for Luke and their sons.
Luke’s humble attitude is exemplified by his comment in a Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal article (photo left); “We like to work on stuff and do a good job but we don’t do much chest-pounding.” Because of that attitude many outside the technology space may never know how they were impacted by Luke…but they were.
The technology and interactive community in the Twin Cities, whether you consider it big, small, active, or not, is a close one. Close enough to feel the loss of someone so important to it’s very existence…whether they met him or not.