One of the key players there is Jonathan Zittrain, a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, a co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and a guy who served as its first executive director from 1997-2000. He’s also the author of “The Future of the Internet—and How to Stop It“.

I came across a 1.5 hour talk called “Minds for Sale” on the commercial side of cloud computing that was posted a few days ago and I’ve been listening to it in starts-n-stops whenever I had some time. It’s worth your time to listen to it closely if you are at all involved in commercial cloud computing, a startup in the web hosted space, or are a strategist or business leader in any thought leading capacity for your organization. In it you’ll hear “…why cloud computing is not just for computing anymore and how a new range of projects is making the application of human brainpower as purchasable and fungible as additional server rackspace.”

Listen by hovering over the speaker icon or download the mp3: Minds for Sale

Jonathan Zittrain on Minds for Sale is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Normally I wouldn’t do a story on an interesting initiative with a marginally innovative technology perspective, but I’ve been writing for nearly six months for Scholastic, Inc. and their Administrator area online with a blog called “Accelerating Change.” As a consequence, I’ve been deeply involved in K-12 education technology study which has given me a unique perspective and I remain focused on uncovering true innovation or even incremental steps along the way toward true reinvention of education.

The PR gang over at Padilla Spears Beardsley, a group of folks whose quality public relations I’m continually impressed by, sent over some information on a Classroom of the Future initiative and their client, Tierney Bros, whose involvement in this worthwhile endeavor is worthy of note:

“People entering the workforce today are expected to have stronger technology experience and capabilities than ever before. Teachers today face the challenge of keeping pace with the latest technological advances – such as interactive presentation and conferencing technologies – with often limited resources.

For the fourth year in a row, Tierney Brothers is helping prepare the next generation of workers by offering a Tierney Brothers “Classroom of the Future” Technology Grant in both Minnesota and Wisconsin. This unique opportunity gives every school in Minnesota and Wisconsin the chance to receive $15,000 worth of technology, integration and training for their school. Students taught in these classrooms will learn using AV technology similar to systems Tierney Brothers, a leading provider of digital projectors, flat panel displays, systems integration, large format printers, graphic and engineering supplies, and audio and visual communication solutions has integrated into John Deere, Land O’Lakes, Wells Fargo and other businesses.”

Certainly a laudable initiative (especially with our State budget shortfalls) and an obviously smart thing for Tierney Bros to do since they’re in the business of selling this sort of gear in to K-12 education, but I’m doubtful these technologies are truly making classrooms future-ready and instead are putting a shiny new cover on a musty old book.

In my research, study and conversations with K-12 leaders and teachers for my Scholastic blog, what I’ve seen over and over again is that the typical “classroom of the future” initiatives are like the photo you see above: same industrial classroom model of teacher at the board in front of the class (a model which would be instantly recognizable to a teacher from 1885!) but made slightly more efficient with projectors hooked to computers or interactive “smart” boards that are, in effect, giant touch screen interfaces for computers. The benefits of these devices, especially the smart board, are truly effective in engaging students with online resources.

But if I go to one more parent curriculum night at the start of a school year and the teachers gush about “all our new technology” and point to a projector or smart white board, I’m going to lose it.

I’ve also learned through various K-12 education studies that kids are usually bored with front-focused, teacher-centric classroom learning situations. Unfortunately teachers are locked in a systemic, assembly line model of moving kids through a curriculum, testing them to measure the learning, and progressing them through the school year to an outcome worthy of moving them on to the next grade level. Most teachers are so heads-down, and are themselves measured on, student performance to educational standards that there isn’t much time left to stand back and take a big picture view of the world our kids will inherit: a world that is moving faster and faster and one in which learning is quickly shifting online.

Anything that can help make the linear, serial educational process more efficient is noteworthy, which is why I laud efforts to help cash-strapped school systems introduce technology of any sort into that industrial age educational model. Though I really like what Tierney Bros is doing with this initative, in my opinion it’s not enough.

What’s needed? That’s outside the scope of this blog and my expertise, but when you see amazing stories like this one last night on 60 Minutes about The Harlem’s Children’s Zone, you realize that it’s not just technology that matters and that reinventing education is a highly complex issue. As I watched the story last night and thought about writing this post this morning, I realized that the leader of the program (Jeffrey Canada) had figured out how to optimize all the variables for his students to succeed within the current system and educational paradigm, but hadn’t revolutionized education with respect to the world his kids will live and work within when they graduate from college.

Amazed at the story, it still doesn’t point the way for preparing our kids for a world they’ll inherit that is accelerating so quickly that issues surrounding medical ethics, genetic modifications, the possibility of sentient machines and how to treat them, and doing ones work when most aspects of it have an internet-centric core and being savvy with dozens or hundreds of technologies will be “table stakes” to be in the game of life, are just a handful of areas our kids aren’t learning about today in that old model.

Classroom of the Future? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Libraries used to be places to go solely to find information and knowledge in containers called “books” that were comprised of “atoms” and organized by Melvil Dewey’s cool Decimal System, but increasingly library systems are morphing in to places to get connected online where patrons can find their information and knowledge in “bits” while interacting with the library in an increasingly virtual and — most intriguingly in today’s participation culture — in an online and interactively social way.

The Gang had a chance to invite Meg Canada on the podcast to talk about the 21st century library, what our biggest Minnesota library system is doing (and what she’s driving within it) to embrace new realities that are internet-centric and deliver a surprising array of services you may not know even exist. Meg has long impressed us with how much she “gets it” with respect to new media and social technologies, but have been quite delighted to see how much of her energy is invested in the social and internet community in Minnesota and the role she plays in nurturing it along with good humor and an eagerness to serve others.

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. Had we known beforehand that she also sings regularly with the Twin Cities chapter of TechKaraoke, we would’ve had her croak out an Etta James tune or something. We’ll get her on another podcast soon and have her sing.

This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Opening & closing music is “38 Special” by Charlie Musselwhite (iTunes link) from Music Alley, purveyor of podsafe tunes.

Discussed during the show:

+ Wired article, “YouTube’s Bandwidth Bill Is Zero. Welcome to the New Net”

+ Libraries & Broadband by Ann Treacy on the Blandin on Broadband blog

+ Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) on Twitter

+ Hennepin County Library (HCL) and their services; Bookspace, a social site for HCL book lovers; eBooks and downloadable audio books and videos; and a remarkably easy to use, searchable database of all events and classes in the HCL system; HCL on Twitter.

Minnov8 Gang Podcast 55: The Connected & Social Library is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

One of those “stars” is Gary Koelling, Best Buy’s Social Media guru and founder of Blueshirt Nation, Giftag and IdeaX. I asked Gary to talk with my broadcast brethren about increasing radio’s ‘signal strength’, a phrase Gary coined during a conversation we had some time back that refers to reaching customers through social media.

I met with Gary about an hour before his presentation because he wanted to show me what he came up with. I trust Gary implicitly to put together a great presentation on this topic…and he did. No surprise! I had expected to politely preview his slides, say “Cool!” and move on.

What I experienced, and what the attendees saw was a deeply personal story reflecting Gary’s passion for this medium and what it has meant to him over the years. He told me that every time he sat down to build his presentation he found himself “yelling” at radio for what it has become. He told me, “That’s not helpful to anyone.” So what he did was take everyone through the emotional relationship he has, and I bet all of have had, with radio.

“Other stations can steal your listeners, they can’t steal your friends.”  

What Gary did at the Conclave Learning Conference was remind broadcasters about the personal connection that they must maintain with their listener’s to survive. A connection, or as Gary noted, a “friendship” that has become less important in a world where making their quarterly numbers.

Gary, thank you for taking an hour of your day to empower broadcasters by sharing your knowledge in such a personal and emotional way. They’re still talking about it…the next steps is to act.

Here is Gary’s opening “story”. See the slide deck (though I think the picture you see in your mind will be better) on Gary’s blog.

I remember as a kid growing up in the 70’s in the middle of a corn field in Iowa feeling radio was the one thing that reliably connected me to the broader world. Locally as in the world ‘in town’ but also the world beyond. Listening during the long summer breaks to KWAY and the daily “Swap and Shop” and lives coming together, lives falling apart. Revealed to me in the items that people needed or needed to get rid of. The stories of lives beginning and lives ending and unexpected twists and detours in otherwise normal, boring lives were told in elaborate and veiled detail from eleven to one every day.

Later, as a car-less young teenager, I got around on tractors and bicycles and dirt bikes up and down gravel roads and through the fields of corn and corn and soybeans listening to radios, discovering popular music, music that was not my parents’ and feeling connected to that agitated, rebellious, horny angst of 38 Special, and Tom Petty and the Heart Breakers and Steve Miller. Then feeling so desperate to be part of it and for it to be part of what I was trying to be. I called the KFMW request line – long distance. A human answered the phone. Older. Male. Deep and busy sounding. I stepped up and said could you play ‘Refugee’ for Christie. What song you want played? Uh, Refugee by Tom Petty and the – . Refugee. Alright I’ll get it right on kid. Click. And my chest felt full of hot blood and breath and my face was hot red and I got on my ten speed and pedaled hard up the road with a radio hanging over the ram horn handle bar of my bike. I prayed I could get to Christie before the DJ played the song.

I wanted to see her face. Take credit. Get laid. But Christie wasn’t home. I hung out under the tree across from her driveway, heart beating frantically, hoping that the song wouldn’t come on. Then her mom’s car crawled up the road and slowed as it passed me and pulled into the driveway. I played it cool as her mom squinted over the wheel at me, the radio playing as it hung from my handle bars. I practiced in my mind how I would tell her that I requested the song for her. Her favorite. That I thought I was falling in love with her. And we’d kiss. That afternoon we talked for hours and hours feeling half drunk from the smell of sun and pool water and sweat and faint cigarette smoke that only a fifteen year old girl can twirl together into the sweetest perfume a fifteen year old boy would ever smell.

Then as the fireflies came out and the sun got low she had to go in for dinner. I rode home slow. And the song came on. And that heavy, hot blood and breath came back into my chest. And then I was a teenager. A teenager as free and angry and in deep and desperate as any had ever been and protected only by a transistor FM radio.

(Re-posted from RemainComm)

Gary Koelling Gets Personal With Radio is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

The SMM houses a Computer Education program that never fails to impress me. I first discovered them about two years ago when I made the decision to merge my traditional media experience with the “new” media world. They offer an incredible array of classes that cover everything from an introduction to computers (Absolutely Terrified of Computers) to network management, HTML, PHP, and a whole host of software training. I’ve found these classes to be concise and very hands on. All taught by incredibly well prepared…and patient…educators at a very reasonable rate.

Throughout the year they host seminars that take on various topics related to web development and design. The topic for this gathering: Refresh Your Pages. Presentations included Maintaining Your Website, PDF Accessibility For All, Benefits of Business Blogging, and Flash at its Finest. These free presentations were made by both SMM staff and guests and, as noted in the photo, attracted a full room of participants. I was particularly interested in the accessibility information as I often find myself short-cutting the process.

I’m always excited to see who shows up at these events. I always know a few faces from the world of tech, marketing, and project management but I also meet plenty of full and part-time designers there to pick up a tip or two. The best part; there are always new faces, people I don’t see at the many tech related gatherings I attend, who are just entering the online world. The guest presenters are also people I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting at other conferences. Getting to know all of them is always very heartening, because more people teaching and more people learning means more people participating online. And that means more opportunities for Minnesota innovation to proliferate.

Science Museum Could Be Minnesota’s Tech Secret is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

As more of us get connected via the internet and through web applications, seek ways to make our collaboration more powerful, shift our old serial and linear processes to ones that are parallel and associative, OSS is a key building block of internet and web technologies and applications. OSS is also gaining momentum globally and affecting all industries and institutions, even educational ones. 

That said, educational institutions often lag the private sector in adopting new technologies until proven, especially the Kindergarten through senior high school (K-12) levels. K-12 is often seen as risk-averse and needing clarity about the efficacy and pedagogy of using any particular technology. It must be proven and the benefits to learning and student achievement crystal clear before any technology is implemented, especially OSS. 

On the flip side, higher education is a hotbed of OSS use and many projects have origins in colleges and universities. One could argue that our public institutions taking risks, researching new possibilities, and pushing against the membrane of the future is at least as important as their educational mission and has contributed code and thought leadership in OSS. 

Though I’ve been aware of the OSS learning management system called “Moodle” (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) for some time, I was both delighted at what I discovered at the U of MN and surprised (stunned might be the better word) by its adoption within Eden Prairie schools where my son attends high school.

There are lessons in this story for all of us about how two very different educational organizations recognized that collaboration, human connection, and the move to parallel and associative learning is at the core of education going forward, and took calculated risk with the OSS Moodle to meet new needs.

MOODLE AT THE U OF MN
While performing some research for one of my clients on learning management systems (LMS), I stumbled across a Powerpoint deck entitled, “Moodle Implementation at the University of Minnesota” (PPT) by Elena Ivanova, I.T. Professional focused on Moodle and Scott Barnard, Emerging Technology Lead in the Digital Media Center.

In the slide deck they discussed why they adopted Moodle. One that came as surprise — and confirms what Minnov8 readers understand about the new collaboration paradigm exploding as the web matures — is that University faculty embraced the Moodle social constructivist philosophy which has, at its core, collaborative learning.

To me, this is a fundamental recognition of the shift occurring with the internet and web. Books like Wikinomics to Wisdom of the Crowds or Here Comes Everybody discuss mass collaboration, an emerging parallel and associative way of learning and collaborating instead of what we’ve always done (i.e., linear, serial learning and collaborating). With more and more opportunities to connect with one another online — and a participation culture of always-on and always-connected continues to accelerate — driving learning models forward that map to what’s happening online is key to the University’s future.  

I reached out to Ms. Ivanova and Dave Sandum, Eden Prairie School’s Director of Operational Technology, to discuss the reasons behind the adoption of Moodle (Sandum could not be reached after repeated attempts and his comments are from this Eden Prairie News article).

On this point about collaboration and the fundamental shift occurring, Ivanova said this, “That would be a question for someone with a PhD in education, but I personally think that (Moodle) does not impose any major obstacles. It still supports and encourages linear structure of a regular academic course.”

You have a site which is broken into the weeks/topics, and every week you add materials to read (pdf, words, lecture notes), and activities to participate in (like assignment, quiz or forums). Once you feel comfortable you may use more collaborative features, like allowing students to rate one another in the forum, add and comment on glossary entries, and more.”

Ivanova also emphasized that Moodle is also easy to use and intuitive, has a rich set of tools, lots of 3rd party add-ons, good design and the University team behind Moodle could point to a highly successful implementation of it at U of MN-Crookston. 

Ms. Ivanova made it clear that this major adoption at the U of MN didn’t come easily and they still have an active license with WebCT and it’s used throughout the University. In fact, she’d worked with WebCT and Desire2Learn (another LMS) for several years, and thus could see that Moodle was missing some features (like releasing courses with certain conditions attached or timed release).

How successful is Moodle adoption at the U of MN?  Total user base has 44,000 users and over 2,000 sites in production (667 are in-use and active), which places UofM in the top 2% of moodle installations by user count. (As a point of comparison, there are approximately 2,600 active sites on WebCT yet at the U of MN). (More statistics here).

MOODLE AT EDEN PRAIRIE SCHOOLS
While attending curriculum night at Eden Prairie High school (where parents get an introduction to teachers, curriculum and the overall high school experience) for our ninth grade son, his American Studies teacher pulled up an orientation slide and talked about access “to our Moodle site.” 

Since my son is in an enriched program with a remarkably challenging textbook (it’s even a dense, difficult read for his Mom and I!), having what our son needs online with Moodle means he can access all of his support materials from home whenever he needs it (and like most kids, he forgets stuff at school but can get it online now).

Eden Prairie News reporter Leah Schaffer wrote this article about Eden Prairie’s adoption of Moodle and comments by Dave Sandum where he emphasizes the collaborative and social aspects of the Moodle LMS and where they’re headed directionally:

“A classroom automation system,” is how David Sandum would describe it. Sandum, the techonology director for Eden Prairie schools, said Moodle gives teachers the ability to organize and conduct entire lessons in classrooms electronically.

“[It] takes things to the next level where you’re able to basically work in a collaborative form.” It breaks down the traditional four walls of the classroom, to create “anytime, anywhere learning [and it] really puts the social networking elements into learning,” said Sandum.

Sandum said they looked at Moodle as a pilot to see if its adoption went well, as far as student learning. It turns out that they may go beyond Moodle. Sandum said their goal is to basically create and support, internally, an Eden Prairie MySpace for education.

In my discussions with various Eden Prairie teachers over the years — including one who was a favorite of both my kids and a credentialed educational technologist, the now retired Sally Knaeble — I was always taken aback with the almost laughable (and sad) lack of technology in the schools. 

Outdated computers, lack of teacher self-publishing tools (K-6 and middle school websites look like they were done in 1997 and blogs? What’s a blog?), inadequate portals and parental tools (like something as simple as shared calendars amongst teachers that we could subscribe to, and/or RSS feeds from pages), a $4.6 million annual bond referendum passed in 2004 with $2M each year for technology improvements is now bearing fruit. Ironically the free Moodle software — with servers, support, training and other costs attached — is a smart use of this funding.

What impresses me more about both the U of MN’s direction and Eden Prairie schools embrace of Moodle is this: a deep and profound recognition of the new paradigm of human and machine connection driven by the internet; the demand for online access to information, materials and each other around learning; and the willingness to adopt OSS and discover how even learning can become more parallel and associative and begin to wean students off of the old ways of serial, linear learning.

Moodle Makes Its Mark is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

In 2005, the University of Minnesota (UofMN) surveyed Minnesota CEO’s and asked for input from members of the Itasca Project (a group comprised of big company CEO’s and key governmental leaders) with the basic question, “What do you want from the University of Minnesota?”

The wish list was extensive and reinforced their challenges in accessing the UofMN’s opportunities and resources: ready-for-hire graduates; continuing education for employees; consulting services from University faculty; research sponsorships; access to research facilities, and more.

After more research with focus groups and outstate Minnesota analysis, in July of 2006 the UofMN created the Academic and Corporate Relations Center (ACRC) and brought on board a guy wired as an entrepreneur, experienced in startup businesses, and full of energy to deliver what has become known as “the front door” to the institution: Director, Dick Sommerstad.

As a Minnesota startup, involved with an emerging company or an intrapreneur within a corporation, you may be thinking, “What in the world could Sommerstad’s ACRC offer me?” As you’ll soon discover, there is a wealth of resources at your fingertips just waiting for you to access them.

My long-standing impression (and admitted bias) toward organizations like ACRC was that most are out of touch with the needs of the entrepreneur and those of us driving forward on making ideas a reality. After opening my mind to the possibilities and opportunities the University is offering, what I came away with both reinforced that bias and slightly shifted my thinking toward the benefits of engaging with ACRC going forward and, possibly, what position the UofMN could play as a leader.

I sat down recently with Dick Sommerstad to lay out the vision and mission of Minnov8, with the goal being to discover what the UofMN might offer to our readers: the creators and innovators in Minnesota building the next generation of Internet and Web technologies.

We began by looking at the resources within the UofMN that existed before the ACRC was formed and the steps, systems and access-streamlining this new group put into place in order to enable businesses to have a much easier time of connecting directly with the University:

• ACRC Business Portal
• Centers & institutes database
• Faculty resumes database
• Licensable technologies
• Facilities and equipment
• Libraries
• Concierge

The Concierge service is particularly intriguing. If you’ve ever tried getting your needs met engaging with a major institution or company you know the difficulties in getting questions answered or pointed in the right direction to get your needs met.

This service has phone and email access (staffed 8-5pm Central, Monday through Friday) and relationship managers for larger organizations.

They’ve reduced dozens of access points to about a dozen with even more streamlining of access coming. A realtime chat feature, database of all UofMN websites, a public engagement database as well as six regional portals throughout the State are in the planning stages.

During our conversation, I was forthright with my perspective on most of these resources being “big company” or “large startup” (vs. early stage) sorts of offerings. Sommerstad agreed, and as we talked about the needs of the Minnesota startup community and that Minnov8 was geared toward helping foster an environment of connection and encouragement for the startup community here — something woefully lacking and in stark contrast to the risk taking, entrepreneurial environment in Silicon Valley — we went off on a tangent about what’s truly needed in Minnesota.

“It’s all about the CEO,” Sommerstad stated emphatically. He was adamant that attracting world-class CEO’s to Minnesota for startup companies was the #1 challenge and said that “ideas are a dime-a-dozen” when I protested that without great ideas, an entrepreneurial and risk-taking climate, angel investing and help to incubate new innovations, those CEO’s wouldn’t even be needed!

We didn’t resolve this chicken-or-the-egg impasse.

As we talked further about exactly which resources would be of interest to early stage companies, we began to zero-in on these:

• Gold Pass: Need employees, $12/hour programmers or $50/hour PhD’s in the summer? This is a free jobs site and recruiting spot with significant promise
• Centers of Expertise: Use this tool to search over 300 interdisciplinary research centers, institutes and programs and discover a wide-range of experts
• Other areas include the Office of Licensable Technology which, by the way, I’d love to go to and just poke through all the possible technologies just lying there waiting for someone to connect the dots and deliver the next great innovation
• The last few areas of interest may be a news site on UofMN innovation brought forth by the Office of the Vice President for Research here, signing up for the “Announce” list (a selectable email update sent out each Friday), or just poke around the website of your choice here
• You’re Invited! ACRC is sponsoring a free (but RSVP required) Annual ACRC-University Enterprise Labs Summer Barbeque on July 30th.

Web-savvy users might be struck by the lack of RSS feeds or a single point of searching all databases, but Sommerstad assured me that both of these are in the works.

Upon reflection there is no question Dick Sommerstad and the ACRC team have done an amazing job of consolidating the UofMN resource base (and all the silo’s of information) into a significantly more accessible “front door” and have been successful in coordinating and orchestrating that access.

That said, it seems that there is a missed opportunity to position the University as the hub of research, education, outreach and the high level coordination and orchestration point for our entire State where it pertains to the Internet and Web.

If you accept the premise that the Internet and Web is the greatest shift in human and machine connection in human history — impacting everything from knowledge and information access; process streamlining;  commerce; social interaction; and its impact on culture — then wouldn’t it seem mission-critical for the UofMN to lead? Wouldn’t part of that leadership be fostering an environment for the best ideas in this space to be incubated and brought forth, within the context of socioeconomic, technological, communications and global trends?

One could argue The Collaborative, Minnesota High Technology Association, GetGoMN, MentorNet and others are doing what’s needed: providing near-term opportunities for startups to connect with those who can assist the startup or emerging MN company in making ideas a reality and forming or accelerating their businesses.

I would argue that we don’t do enough incubating in Minnesota (and is one reason why MinneBar and Minnedemo are so well attended and successful) and these efforts are important, but if a startup, emerging company or even a corporate intrapreneurial effort is roughly a year or so from launching, wouldn’t it be useful and a competitive advantage to understand the trends and influencing factors that will affect that launch a year away? This is where the UofMN could be positioned as the leader in coordinating and orchestrating knowledge, taking a 40,000 foot view of major trends and influencers, and providing guidance and insight to all of us that would go far beyond what any of these other efforts could possibly satisfy.

For instance, what if the UofMN Continuing Education or ACRC offered:

• A scenario planning workshop that looked at all the influencing factors affecting Internet and Web development?
• A comprehensive analysis of key open source software and the ecosystems surrounding them in order to gauge their health before embarking on building your startup atop of one of them or betting your business initiative on it?
• How about understanding global, mobile adoption rates, network speeds and the platforms upon which you could deliver your application

Is there anything for you at the ACRC? If you’re a startup, there are few resources (other than Gold Pass) that seem immediately relevant and ones you could take advantage of today. Many more of these are germane if you’re within a corporation that has big needs where a collaboration or partnership with the University could pay big dividends, but the ACRC is worth you investing some time in understanding what’s there and considering how this public institution could help you.

Entire U of MN At-Your-Fingertips is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Today was the Emerging Digerati Showcase at the University of Minnesota, Weisman Art Museum. The focus was a College of Liberal Arts, new media festival featuring digital technology, art and research.

It was inspiring to see the innovation and boundary pushing being done in this market and the passion people are bringing to digital technologies.

• Starting off was artist Lynn Fellman, who merges art and science with her beautiful DNA inspired digital, vector art. Ms. Fellman has been in the interactive space since the early 1990′s.

• Minnov8′s own Garrick Van Buren showcased his creation, Cullect, a collaborative feed reader with amazing capabilities

• Brad Hosack and David Ernst from the Academic & Information Technology, College of Education & Human Development department showed Video ANT, an innovative way of moving video beyond just content delivery through a tool they’ve developed to allow easy annotating of video

• Justin Grammens and Minnov8′s own Phil Wilson showcased Localtone Radio, an innovative site for local bands to showcase their songs and for music lovers to discover (and vote upon favorite) bands and music. Their buzzphrase? Listen, Share, Learn

• Terry Schubring demonstrated an internal UofMN engine called “MediaMill”, which facilitates transcoding of video and its display on to any web page

• Ali Momeni and students showed their Art on Wheels project and a brief video is below:

At this point I was unable to stay and see Producing New Media Texts; FlashBelt (a conference for new media designers); Recent Sound Works; Blind Side of a Secret and others. A very good day and fun showcase of innovation here in Minnesota. The only downside was that more people couldn’t partake of seeing and experiencing what we did today in this event.

Emerging Digerati Showcase at U of MN is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.