What pray tell is the purpose of Social Media Day? The folks at Mashable are glad you asked. It’s “A day that honors the technological and societal advancements that have allowed us to have a dialogue, to connect and to engage not only the creators of media, but perhaps more importantly, one another.”

Um…yeah. Allow me to translate; It’s a day to get your butt up from behind the monitor, your nose out of your smartphone, relax you thumbs and meet the people you tweet, poke and follow face to face.  A day to put the social in social media. Oh, and there’s booze and munchies. Of course, Mashable’s Pete Cashmore embellishes it a bit more in his welcome video. (Really…the video was meant to be played at gatherings around the world. Kinda creepy…) Perhaps he has a desire for this to be much more of a “revolution”. No matter, the intent is to get you out and about.

The local Minneapolis meet up was superbly organized by our friend and social media maestro, Mykl Roventine. Mykl is responsible for, or part of, everything social media from Social Media Breakfast, to Unsummit, to Tech Karaoke and beyond. When Mashable sent out the word to have a Minneapolis Meetup, Mykl stepped up and secured Chino Latino in Uptown, gathered up some sponsors (SMBMSP and Sterling Cross Media) and rallied the troops. Mykl tells the story in the video below.  (Forgive the sound quality..I guess the EVO 4G won’t replace my Flip cam, at least not without some sort of outboard mic.)

At 6:30pm some 50 of the 70+ who signed up began to congregate, the drink flowed and the tasty appetizers were savored. Much of the Twin Cities’ Social Media actives were in attendance and some new faces were spotted and welcomed. It was a great time. Of course, those of us who dig the social “media” are never really far from it as everyone checked-in, tweeted and posted photos throughout the evening. Yep, there was a tweet wall. However, well…there was just very little discussion of this “revolution” of which Mashable was speaking. It was just plain social.

Perhaps it’s because we, here in the Land o’ 10,000 lakes, already get the whole social part. While the concept of Social Media Day is all well and good, there are any number of meet-ups, tweet-ups, happy hours and  breakfasts of which you can attend during any given month in and around the Twin Cities. It makes me feel kind of sad for those in other cities who must look to, or be prompted by, Mashable to get together in “real life”. While no specific date for another gathering has been past down from the social media mount, you’re encouraged to once again step away from the warm glow of the screen and meet and greet your friends and followers in person at a location of your choosing. Oh…and don’t forget to check in on Foursquare.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqjwUlIFk0E

How Many Social Media Day Cards Did You Get? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

It’s not just the dough, though, it’s the “professional services” mentioned that can make a huge difference in the life of a startup enabling them to “…connect with local business leaders and mentors arranged by the Gary S. Holmes Center for Entrepreneurship at the Carlson School of Management.”

The 2010 semi-finalists will be honored with a reception at the James J. Hill Library on Tuesday, June 22 from 6:00-8:00 p.m and Minnov8 will be there covering it live. Read the press release here.

MN Cup Announces Semi-Finalists is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Founders Ben Edwards & Luke Francl address the crowd at Minnebar

It was a good thing there was plenty of room. The session list was chocked full of a diversity of topics. What struck many of the attendees, myself included, was the challenge of deciding what session to attend…I always feel like I might miss something. That, and the inability to meet more than a handful of people who’d carved out a Saturday to attend, makes Minnebar a venue that will surely continue to grow and solidify its place as the premiere event for entrepreneurs and startups in Minnesota.

Sessions were all relatively well attended and ranged in adherence to the Barcamp-unconference expectations. Some were very engaging and some were straight ahead presentations…and those “presos” resulted in a less than stellar 40 minutes of time spent. Then again, that’s the fun, and risk, of the unconference style.

Steve Borsch w/Chief Inspector Robert Stephens

Fellow Minnov8er, Steve Borsch noted of defacto host Best Buy executive Robert Stephens, Chief Inspector of the Geek Squad, as “…passionate believer in entrepreneurship and a steadfast supporter of the Minnesota startup community. It was a delight to see him totally immersed in sessions, more than willing to talk to anyone willing to engage in conversation with him, and demonstrated Best Buy’s commitment to innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit simply by acting as a catalyst for this Minnebar.”

Our own Graeme Thickins added, “We need that — more big players who get it!  It’s heartening to know that so many people at Best Buy realize that new innovation often comes from the small companies, the startup teams, the individual developers. Robert had just gotten back from the huge Google IO event in the Valley, and wanted to talk about Google TV and all that. But he was also fired up to talk about ideas and technologies going on right here. It’s impressive that he and so many others dedicated a Saturday to talk about ways we can make tech in MN stronger.”

Mykl Roventine leading his web session

For one writer to try to indicate the highlights and lowlights would be pointless. No one person could truly appreciate all of the sessions. Minnov8er  Tim Elliot points out, “As we recounted in our podcast recorded at the event, MinneBar this year was quite varied than in past years…” He goes on to note topics like, “…web innovation, design, application development or social media.” Tim also said, “Mobile technology was a theme that ran through many of the sessions with iPhone, Android and iPad applications being featured on stage and in the audience as participants tweeted the proceedings.”

The real take away is the simple fact that the Minnesota innovation community continues to grow, it continues to draw energy from itself and those involved…and there is no sign of that letting up.

Graeme summed his experience up in one tweet, “..best evah!“

Strong Community of Innovation In Attendance at Minnebar is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music by Kahuna Kawentzmann w/tune, “Late Bird” from podsafe Music Alley.
Modified image based on the James Bond 007 knockoff from the 1960s, the Matt Helm movies series starring Dean Martin.

Links discussed during the show:

• Stillwater company Nibipedia led by Troy Peterson
• Internet Broadcasting, the departure of their CEO, David Lebow, partner Mashery
• Mentioned by Tom Bergerding: Polyvore
• Graeme mentioned Involver
• MOJO MN; Minnebar
• Visi Open House Friday, May 21st
• Open source alternative to Facebook, Diaspora. Just a concept, as of this writing they’ve raised $143k and have over 4k supporter/donators!
• Facebook controversy links:
  • OpenBook
  • New York Times stories compiled here
  • Excellent essay by social media researcher Danah Boyd (now w/Microsoft)
  • The case for staying with Facebook
• Fix your Facebook privacy settings or delete your account altogether
• FASCINATING infographic by a developer with the Visual Communication Lab at IBM Research Center for Social Software. The views expressed on it are his own, and do not reflect those of IBM (and read his disclaimers below the graph) BUT make sure you click on the years on the right in succession from 2005 until 2010 so you can visualize the erosion of privacy on Facebook since 2005. If your reaction is not “Holy Sh*t!” I’ll be surprised.

Minnov8 Gang 79: The Facebookers is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Join MHTA on Monday, May 24 at the ADC Auditorium for MHTA’s Angel Tax Credit Panel.

Registration:  7:30 a.m.
Program:  8:00 – 9:30 a.m.

The Angel Tax Credit Panel will feature an outstanding line-up of panelists who will discuss the recently enacted 25% tax credit for angel investors who invest in Minnesota high tech start-up companies.

• Dan McElroy, Commissioner, MN Department of Employment and Economic Development
• John Alexander, Chairman, Twin Cities Angels
• Dan Mallin, Co-founder, Minnesota Cup & Managing Partner, Magnet 360 (and Co-chair of the Science & Technology Economic Development Project Task Force last fall)
• Jay Hare, Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers
  
• Moderator:  Joy Lindsay, President, StarTec Investments and chair, MHTA board of directors
  

The cost for this event is only $25 and free for start-up companies. Start-up companies can indicate their status by selecting “start-up company” on the registration page.

This event is being co-presented by the BioBusiness Alliance of Minnesota, MN Nano and the Minnesota Cup.

MHTA Angel Tax Credit Panel is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

The event features two identical half-day sessions (8am – noon and 1pm – 5pm) and the cost is $129 but you can visit them here and if you’d like to attend, use the discount code ‘minnov8‘ and get in for only $49.

Google, Bing & Nat’l Experts on Internet Marketing is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

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

Minnov8 Gang 76 at the Minnesota “High Tech” Association is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

MHTA positions the conference this way:

As we enter the second decade of the 21st Century it is time to examine the assumptions and approaches that are fundamental to our success.  The New Deal of the last century was about getting the basics right – productivity and efficiency, providing people with meaningful work, getting the economy on its feet – using production lines and automation tools.

Today, the New Way Forward is about achieving these same goals while using distinctly different tools and approaches. As Minnesota business leaders look at a greatly changed global economy, they know their companies not only measure up – they frequently outperform global competitors.

Join us April 22, 2010 at the Minneapolis Convention Center for another outstanding program filled with immediately applicable strategies and practices to help you do the same.  Collectively, these ideas will do more than just get us back on track – they will propel us forward faster than ever before!

MHTA 2010 Spring Conference & Minnov8 Liveblog is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Please stop by this liveblogging page and watch the real-time updates.

You can also email us if you have comments or suggestions.

MinneWebCon 2010 Liveblogging is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Mobile March Twin Cities Live Tweets is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Kris Layon with keynoter Doc Searls from the 2009 MinneWebCon Photo credit: Peter Fleck (@pfhyper) from his Flickr account

What most of don’t get to do before making a decision to attend an event that costs money is to understand the vision, depth and texture that lies behind a conference. Knowing this helps to determine the level of the sessions, their quality and whether it’s worth your investment of both time and money.

MinneWebCon, the full-day, three-track, conference for Web professionals, is directed by Kristofer Layon and I had a chance to talk with Kris today about the upcoming event, some background behind it, who it’s targeted towards and other sorts of deeper meaning stuff most of us don’t have a chance to discover in advance.

After hearing this podcast and visiting the MinneWebCon website, I’m confident you’ll immediately signup for this conference. Hope to see you there!

Direct Links:

+ MinneWebCon website w/keynote speakers
+ Schedule and Session Details
+ MinneWebCon social media: Twitter; Facebook

MinneWebCon: An interview with its director, Kris Layon is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Here’s the latest from MinneWebCon Director, Kris Layon, about the region’s 3rd annual web design and social media conference:

1. Schedule:  This year’s conference schedule has now been finalized. (subject to change, of course, but we’re hoping it’s final)

2. Registration: 210 of our 300 available spots have been filled!  Rates remain the same as in 2008 and 2009:

• Standard registration: $200
• With University of MN staff discount: $150*
• With student discount (any school): $100

3. Pre-conference Facebook discussions: You’re invited to help kick off the Social Media unconference session by joining any of the discussions now available on the MinneWebCon Facebook page. Three topics, “Social networking and your marketing strategy,” “Monitoring and managing your social networking sites,” and “Measuring social networking” are online now. Participate in a discussion on the MinneWebCon Facebook page by clicking on the “Discussions” tab. We’d like to hear your thoughts and comments!

4. Yahoo! Developer Network: We’re pleased to announce that we have a third national sponsor for MinneWebCon this year, Yahoo!  Specifically, the Yahoo! Developer Network group (that develops great open source projects such as the Yahoo! User Interface, or YUI, library).

5. Free stuff reminder — tech books: We’re once again giving away a limited number of tech books to the first people who check in on the morning of Monday April 12 (check-in will begin at 7:45 a.m., one hour before the morning keynote). The first shipment of books arrived last month from New Riders. Another batch from O’Reilly should be arriving shortly!

6. Free stuff reminder — commemorative poster: This year there’s something completely new and very exciting — we’ve commissioned art!  Every conference attendee will receive a limited edition, silkscreened Adam Turman cityscape poster. Adam is a graphic design graduate of the U of M, so we couldn’t be happier to partner with him on this poster.

For more information and to register, please visit: http://www.minnewebcon.umn.edu/

MinneWebCon: Less Than 3 Weeks Away is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

In case you missed it, I joined fellow Minnov8er Tim Elliott’s Team, dubbed Full Court Press as a bond to the WordPress platform we used, for the 3rd annual Nerdery sponsored event. This unique gathering pairs 10 person teams of web site professionals with deserving non-profit organizations. Those non-profits, some who have no web presence, receive brand new websites valued at well over $25,000 at the end of the 24 hour period. (Check out the Minnov8 podcast that originated from the Challenge.)

You couldn’t help but be taken by the dedication of these web pros. It’s not easy to spend a relatively short period of time with a “client”, then accelerate the design and creation of a website that accomplishes the goals of the non-profit…much less spending part of it in a sleep deprived state.

This being the third year of the event the folks at The Nerdery do a great job providing what teams need including entertainment and food. The carnival-like atmosphere is definitely not what you would expect from a bunch of web site developers. From human pyramids and massages to oxygen bars and ice cream the 24 hour period was anything but sedate.

The winner of the Challenge was Team Placeholder and they produced an incredible site for Dakota Wicohan, an organization working to preserve the Dakota language. However, all of the teams built great sites and all of the non-profits benefited from this 24 hours of design and production. All of the challenge participants deserve to be applauded for their commitment, ingenuity, patience, and generosity. Remember, these teams accepted only gratitude as their reward. Bravo!

Here’s a brief light-hearted recap of our 24+ hours that started at 7:30am on Saturday and ended just after 10:00am on Sunday…

Arrive and set up (“We didn’t bring enough stuff.”)…Coffee, pastry and bananas, yum…Observe other teams in the room. (These guys brought a lot of stuff, including really big monitors. Note case of monitor envy.)…Arrange tables for work-flow. Choose a “w” shape to reflect dedication to WordPress…Meet rest of team…Rearrange tables for real workflow. (You saw that coming.)…Snacks and coffee…DesignWise Medical draws Team Full Court Press. Brad and Janine appear to be great…Coffee…Get acquainted, planning and design meeting….DesignWise Medical is great…Note team spreadsheet indicates plenty of Red Bull and coffee consumption (Do we have a problem?)…Coding….Found the ice cream…Team meeting…Coding…Spicy lunch…Browse raffle prizes-iPad, 30″ monitor (more monitor envy), Threadless gift certificates, robot, bacon gift set, light saber and Ton-Ton sleeping bag?…Geek-meter pegged…Grab raffle tickets inside a giant blower…coding…Power past design disagreement…Tim Elliott displays strong penchant for Arnold Palmers (Iced-tea and lemonade)…Coding…Snack time and coffee…Team meeting…Burritos for dinner. Spicy again…Coding…Note funky smell…Minnov8 Podcast-Ask indecipherable question…Coding…Team Meeting…Visit to oxygen bar…Coding…Midnight pizza for 2nd dinner…Is that my colon screaming?…Coding…Team meeting…(Insert unexplained gap in time here.)…Bagel for breakfast…Final touches on site…Present to judges…Prepare for group presentation “just in case”…Watch finalist presentations (we aren’t one)…See raffle prizes awarded (didn’t win one)…Watch winner announcement…Clean up…Walk back to car (glad we didn’t bring a lot of stuff)…nap time!

Special thanks to all of Team Full Court Press: Tim Elliott, Mitchell Hislop, Carl Bliss, Patrick Lewis, Josh Leuze, Crystal Colby, Bharadwaj Parthasarathy, Toby Cryns, Ben Wallace as well as our chosen charity DesignWise Medical’s Brad Slaker and Janine Johnson. Look for their new site soon.

24 Hours, a New Site and Real Fun. is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

I think my reticence stems from a desire to compare SXSW-i to the dozen library conferences I have attended over the past decade. Without any disrespect to the professional organizations of librarians both local and national, this blew all of them out of the water. Of even more consequence, the sessions I attended at South by Southwest- Interactive were more pertinent to my profession than I ever dreamed. I hope the library world is paying attention. We may not be able to afford the speakers, but let’s start ruminating about the right to delete, content strategy, and the future of search. That said, I was in Texas, by the grace of my occasional employer, good friend and Southby roommate, Minneapolis’s Nicole de Beaufort of Fourth Sector Consulting.

I was proud of the turnout of Minnesotans, and ran into friends at every turn. Friday night included a meet-up of epic proportions: 22 people, 20 from Minnesota for seafood at the Boiling Pot. Sometimes you have to leave town to meet people who live in your own backyard.

At its surface, Southby is simply a conference held in the Conference Center in Austin, Texas spilling over into a neighboring Hilton and Mariott. Punctuated by parties, meet-ups, and strange buses that take people to places called the Social Media Clubhouse, there are three or four possible sessions a day. Each day at 2pm, a keynote speaker fills a huge space for an hour. I heard danah boyd (social media anthropologist), Valerie Casey (Designers Accord author), and Evan Williams (Twitter founder) speak.

The measure of success of a session or keynote is the retention of an audience. If it starts to get dull, a presenter’s ego fills the room, or the session’s content doesn’t match the description, people move. They left Evan Williams session in droves after it was dubbed as a dull disaster on par with the Facebook CEO’s interview style keynote of 2008.  There are high expectations to challenge the intelligent designers, artists, information architects, and digital entrepreneurs, and this not an easy crowd. danah boyd has been addressing the backchannel ever since the debacle at her remarks at the Web 2.0 Expo, but the audience seemed rapt with her message about privacy (I know I was).

So as a librarian, here are authors and sessions about books I loved:

• Tim Sander’s author of Love is the Killer App (http://www.timsanders.com/)
• Ramit Sethi’s blog and book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich (http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/)
• REWORK’s author Jason Fried of 37 Signals (http://37signals.com/rework/)

Other highlights… I traveled with my beautiful foodie friend so gourmet food from a truck, watching people play foursquare (with chalk and a ball), and giving the developer of Google Wave some feedback. It was an incredibly well-done conference. Now, if only there were more than a dozen librarians in attendance….

Meg Canada (@megcanada) is a frequent guest, and now contributor, to Minnov8. Meg is a senior librarian for Web Services and Training at Hennepin County Library and currently coordinates public training and social media efforts for the library. She volunteers helping with the Unsummit, recently presented at MinneWebCon, and is a regular contributor to Social Media Breakfast.

One Librarian’s Trip to SXSWi is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Tim Elliott started a team for the Overnight Website Challenge called “Full Court Press” and the team members are comprised of folks in the Minneapolis/St. Paul WordPress Users Group. He and Phil Wilson hosted an on-site podcast this week by having a conversation with Mark, one of the Nerdery founders of the Challenge as well as with Brad Slaker, head of the non-profit DesignWise Medical, Inc. whose site Full Court Press is building out.

When it comes to websites and technology that can improve outreach and increase donations, many nonprofits are lagging far behind. Thus was born The Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge.

Beginning the morning of March 20, 2010 and concluding the next day, The Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge will again provide a fun forum to highlight creative ways for nonprofits to strategically use web technology to accomplish their missions.

Hosts: Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Steve Borsch is off today and Graeme Thickins is on his way to DEMO & will liveblog here)

Music by Dexter Freebish and their song, “Everybody Knows Somebody” from the SXSW Music Showcase.

Update: Apologies to Brad Slaker (sounds like laker) of DesignWise Medical for the name mispronunciation by an already punchy Phil Wilson.

Minnov8 Gang 71: At the Overnight Website Challenge is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

You may not know it but the clock is clicking down to Google’s deadline, March 26th, for nominations of cities interested in being their laboratory for an “ultra high-speed fiber network”. In fact, that clock can be found at the top of the page at GoogleTwinPorts.com, just one of the assets in Duluth’s well choreographed campaign to become a high-fiber community.

According to Google, the city chosen will be built out with a fiber network that will deliver “Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today, over 1 gigabit per second” at a “competitive price”. And it will provide that network to anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 people in the chosen community. It’s all part of their plan “to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better, and faster for everyone”.

Oh sure, there have been more than a few cities that have made very public pushes to be chosen for this slice of web-surfing nirvana, but none have done it with quite as much panache as our own Duluth.

They have dedicated a website, Facebook page, Twitter page, and YouTube Channel to the cause. There’s a Fiber Business Idea award being offered, web badges, a coloring contest, a pledge to sign, Google Fest on March 20^th and there’s even a movie in the offing. (No details on the plot…hopefully a romantic comedy…there aren’t enough of those, ya know.)

Then there’s the celebrities…Hey Topeka, Kansas we’ll see your Mayor renaming the city to Google, KS for a month and raise you a State Senator.

The most recent addition of voices to the campaign is Minnesota State Senator Al Franken.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2i_piWVXuc

The fact is that Mr. Franken, back in his days working with Tom Davis, was the “Duluth Answer Man” in a series of commercials for the city. Here’s a little known fact: Franken filmed these commercials just two years ago. Boy those Senate bids can age a guy. (OK, not a fact. He actually filmed them in the 80’s). In the video he even credits Google with freeing him from his duties as the Answer Man so that he could join the Senate.

Details of when Google will announce which city will be the recipient of all this fiber are still a bit sketchy. Their website only goes as far as saying “We plan to announce a target community or target communities this year.” When would the network be up and running once a community…no…once Duluth is chosen? Google gives no time frame.

Needless to say, though vague,  the Google initiative is an exciting one. Hopefully, like the FCC Broadband Plan, it will yield a low cost way to bring a bigger pipe to all of the US…not just one city. Our collective digital future, with all its applications, opportunities and business ventures, really depends on it.

In the meantime, a city on the shores of Lake Superior can dream, as well as showcase it’s innovative community…and have a lot fun doing it.

Google’s High-Fiber City: Why Not Duluth? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

The two track conference will offer sessions that appeal to active software developers as well as mobile users including marketers, advertisers and enthusiasts. Attendees can choose a single track of learning and information or pick and choose from either track to maximize their experience.

According to event founder and organizer, Justin Grammens, “There are plenty of meetings focused on mobile development or mobile marketing and use. We wanted to bring the two groups together to better understand the overall mobile platform.” Grammens, President of mobile development firm Recursive Awesome and founder of Mobile Twin Cities noted, “We have assembled an agenda of mobile experts and users that will offer unique perspectives on the opportunities with the local, national and global mobile community.”

The agenda, available online at www.mobilemarchtc.com, includes technical sessions addressing the development of applications for the iPhone, Android and Blackberry mobile devices. These sessions will be presented by local developers Aaron Kardell, Robert Green and Shawn Butler respectively. The technical track also includes Beyond the Code: User Experience, Testing, and Support presented by Breon Nagy.

The non-technical mobile users track includes What Do They Want, providing results from a consumer study presented by Carlson Marketing’s Doug Rozen and On the Air and In the Papers, featuring a panel of representatives from local TV, Radio and Newspaper companies. Other sessions slated are Show Me the Money, discussing the future of mobile commerce with Farhan Muhammed, and Mobile Marketing: Watch That Step presented by a panel of marketers highlighting the process of initiating a mobile strategy.

Other agenda items including a keynote to start the day will be announced in the near future.

Registration is now open for Mobile March, Saturday July 27th at the Hilton Garden Inn in Downtown Minneapolis via the Mobile March website or directly through Eventbrite. The cost is $20 and includes lunch.

Minnov8 is pleased to be a sponsor of this event* and joins other event sponsors including: Verizon Wireless, Fusion Room, Best Buy, The Nerdery, Recursive Awesome, Focus Business Development, and RemainComm Media Strategies.

*Minnov8 contributor Phil Wilson is a Mobile March organizer and is the founder of sponsor RemainComm.

Day-Long Conference Highlights Mobile’s March is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

A panel of successful IT entrepreneurs will talk about their startup success and will include: Kelly Schaefbauer of Danbury IT, a 14 year old I.T. services firm; Mike McBrady of ImageTrend, a 120 employee software firm; and Michelle Jennings of Netmajic, a web asset development shop; all people with solid companies and a wealth of experiences.

It will be held Thursday, February 18th from 4-6 pm at Old Chicago Pizza (map) in Apple Valley. Cost is $10 (appetizers are provided). If you’re interested, RSVP/register by contacting Cindy Johns (email).

Event: Grow Your Own IT Business is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

And that was just the schmoozing part! 

There were lots of live demos going on in the theater adjoining, if you could squeeze yourself in there:

1. ArtsApp – like Monster.com for artists to submit multimedia (Dejen Tesfagiorgis)
2. ReliaCloud – a cloud computing platform that allows people to build scalable computing infrastructure on demand (Jason Baker, VISI)
3. Pedal Brain – advanced cycle computer based on the iPhone platform combined with web-based data analysis (Matt Bauer)
4. MinuteBids – an online bidding platform that makes it easy for property managers/owners to request and get bids for their property maintenance needs from top rated service providers (Jon Coudron)
5. Pedair – a many-to-many market place for people who love bikes (Andrew Korf)
6. MobileRealtyApps.com – Custom branded MLS home search apps for realtors on iPhone and Android (Aaron Kardell)
7. MileMarker - helps organizations capture ideas and prioritize them, making it easier to understand what to work on first (Bill Galfano)
8. Live Information Manager for Business – connects employees of an organization to their data and each other from anywhere in the world, all from within a single workspace (Roger Peters)
9. Mobile Roots – customized iPhone applications for campaigns (Lynn Smith)
10. WebSlide – provides you and your clients with a private, secure, easy-to-use system for uploading, sharing, and collaborating on designs without ever leaving your browser (Paul Armstrong)

Kudos to Luke Francl, Ben Edwards, and their team of volunteers for pulling off another great Minnedemo!  And a shout-out and huge thanks to the sponsors this time:

• TECHdotMN
• ipHouse
• W3i
• Livefront
• Split Rock Partners
• New Counsel

MN Tech Rocks – Last Night Was Proof is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Thomas, currently residing in the sunny climes of San Francisco, is familiar to most in the Minnesota tech and social media world through his time working as a web designer here. He made the move west in 2008 to work with Seesmic and has since since gone freelance, working with the likes of Swordfish.

Though this would appear to be a result of the recent discussion surrounding Paul DeBettignies’ article on less talk and more walk when it comes to our own start up community, it had it roots well before it. “I was motivated by the startup atmosphere in San Francisco and wanted to get more of that vibe back to Minnesota.” He goes on to note, “There are so many people that are working on startups here. In fact, I know two baristas that have real, viable projects going on the side.”

The timing isn’t lost on Thomas. “I originally wanted to talk culture but it morphed into a call to action in response to the current local startup discussions. Paul outlined what he would do to help and I felt I should to the same.”

The roundtable discussions will highlight the differences between here and ‘the valley’. What type of differences for example? “Here we are so secretive. We keep everything quiet, rather than share it with the community. In San Francisco you are constantly putting out ideas. So many that you hope someone will pick it up and run.”

If you plan on attending the event there is some homework. Follow the links on the Eventbrite registration page to become familiar with the discussion so far and most importantly the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach Thomas is planning on including to move ideas into action.

Let the discussion…and action continue!

Startup Roundtable to Convene, Huzzah! is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.