This is a brilliant move on the part of the University, especially when you consider the accelerating cost of a higher education as well as the increasing demand to for students to have textbooks they can view on multiple digital devices. With this payment motivator for professors, the University is clearly working to align the incentives of professors with those of a concerted effort on the part of higher education institutions to move toward an open textbook and open courseware.

Below is an infographic from OnlineSchools.org that will give you a glimpse in to the drivers behind the open textbook and open source books movement.

Via: Online Schools

U of MN Paying Professors $500 to Review Open Textbooks is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

The event was conceived and conducted completely by Lief Larson, CEO and founder of Workface Inc., with assistance from a couple of his team members. Workface is a growing startup in Minneapolis that itself developed a SaaS offering it now markets widely, which it calls a “customer engagement platform.” I was extremely impressed with the breadth and depth of the content Lief pulled together for this event. It included a extensive look at market data for SaaS in the U.S. and globally, monetization strategies and practices, selling to the enterprise, negotiating contracts, increasing adoption and retention of your app, marketing your app, creating a channel to sell your app, financing and funding a SaaS business, training your SaaS customer, and ongoing monitoring of your SaaS business. On top of all this, Lief related some really excellent stories throughout the workshop about his journey in funding and building Workface.

I had a chance to follow up with Lief afterwards to get some further perspective on the story behind SaaSCamp… 

Q: Lief, why did you decide to do the event? 

Lief:  I’ve had a great group of mentors who have helped me during my entrepreneurial journey and I try to pay it forward by helping other young businesses and entrepreneurs to find success.  A few of my “mentees” are building applications that are software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings and asked that I consider putting on an event.  That’s why I created SaaSCamp 2012 — to bring together like-minded people working on SaaS.  I think the event is already bigger than me, and I’m hoping the community will take it and run with it. 

Q: In saying you’d like to turn SaaSCamp into a regular event, how often do you mean? 

Lief:  I think meeting up once a quarter or some greater level of frequency is important to stay current with new ideas and best practices in SaaS, but a larger annual event is a must.

Q: Why did you do it as a small, paid event, rather than use the barcamp or unconference model (sponsor-supported, with free attendance), like CloudCamp and so many others? 

Lief:  Whether you’re doing a sponsor-supported or attendee-supported model, the reality is that there are costs for hosting an event.  CoCo Minneapolis gave us a great deal, but they too needed to bring in people and security.  When you do a day-long event, people need to eat and drink.  Having a sponsored model takes some of the objectivity away, plus we don’t have a big list of providers who are focused on sponsoring the SaaS community (yet).  I think this will change over time. In any case, we analyzed the anticipated costs of the event, and used that to be the guide for what to charge for tickets.  Plus, having a cost/value relationship, in my humble opinion, ensures that you keep the event focused on the right type of attendees and preserve a focused and more intimate experience.  We’ve all been to those conferences that are a free-for-all and you often get a heavier mix of vendors that are simply coming to spend a day trying to sell to the attendees.  We had zero selling going on at our event, but rather a 100% focus on how to grow and improve your SaaS business.  SaaSCamp had a 100% money-back guarantee to ensure that the $200 ticket price was a non-consideration in the value received.  If/when the event has more attendees, I anticipate the ticket price will drop through economies of scale.

Q: You mentioned to me that you believe “we have the best place in the world to build a SaaS company here in Minnesota.”  Can’t it be done anywhere?

Lief:  Technically, a SaaS business can be built from anywhere. But I think for highly successful SaaS businesses to get off the ground, it is better positioned in a market where the cost of doing business is relatively low, and the technical talent base to execute against the opportunity is high.  Silicon Valley is well-positioned in terms of financing, but it’s also a very expensive place to build a business and the most competitive technology talent market in the world.  There’s no place in the world I’d rather be building my SaaS company than right here in Minneapolis.  We’ve found highly qualified engineers and programmers, incredible business support, affordable living and reasonable business overhead costs, and we’re well situated for travel to the east or west coasts.  Plus, we have more Fortune 500 companies per capita here than anywhere else in the U.S.  We’re well represented in terms of small, medium, and large companies to sell into. 

Q: What’s the latest with Workface, and what can you tell us about your upcoming plans?

Lief:  Like many SaaS companies, we’ve found a way to scale the business without dramatic headcount additions to the company.  That’s why SaaS businesses can become highly profitable when they scale.  Workface has only 7 full-time employees, 2 part-time, and the rest of our business is accomplished through our contingent force, which includes 16 contractors.  We currently service more than 110,000 users and count companies like Intuit and AAA as customers.  Though our revenues are scaling and we’ve seen double-digit month over month growth, we’re continuing to bring private and institutional capital into Workface for growing our market penetration.  The visibility to ROI with SaaS is usually spread out over a longer time horizon (incremental monthly recurring revenue vs. selling on premise all in one big chunk).  As such, we anticipate taking on outside capital for some time to come.

——–

Disclosure:  Lief Larson is a former client and, I fully admit, one of my favorite serial tech entrepreneurs in this town.

Funny story:  Lief and I traveled to Palo Alto a couple years ago for a conference where Lief was pitching to the Silicon Valley VC community, along with a bunch of other hot startups, and sharing the stage with speakers like the founders of Salesforce and SuccessFactors. We stayed in a funky old, ’60s-vintage Travelodge motel — about as low-priced as we could find in Palo Alto. After we checked in to our respective rooms, we both went online to work. First thing I see is an email from Lief with a photo attached of this gorgeous, expansive hotel room, saying, “Wow, I hope your room is as nice as mine.” I never laughed so hard, because I could hardly turn around in my dinky little room.

Minnesota: A Great Place to Be for SaaS Companies is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Question:

Answer: All have formally or through their employees been recruiting in Minnesota in the past year. There are at least another half dozen well funded Silicon Valley startups doing the same.

(hold on… I am waiting for that to sink in for a moment)

With IT unemployment less than 2%, companies of all sizes from the Fortune 500 to the smallest of startups are recognizing that recruiting in Minnesota has been challenging.

For some the challenge has been a nuisance but not an impossible task.

For others… not having appropriate staff levels is costing business.

To set the stage a little bit, it is important to know that for many in IT, the “Great Recession” was a non-event. 

Most .Net and Java developers were aware of what was going on but were not impacted by the economy. If their company was in trouble and let some folks go, most found jobs within days or weeks.

Around March of 2010, the Minnesota IT job market came off the bottom and, since then, we have experienced a series of upticks and plateaus in hiring.

Has this gradual but persistent increase in hiring created a “war for talent” in Minnesota?

I think “war” is too extreme. Skirmish might be better, and I have seen a few “battles” the past weeks.

Paul DeBettignies

Will we get to a “war”… yeah, I think so. We are essentially back to peak employment levels of November 2007. For those who remember, hiring back then it was very competitive.

In recent months we have seen a number of tech companies, funded startups, and web development shops hiring full-time internal recruiters. Others are bringing in contract recruiters to help ramp up projects and build talent pools.

Many are taking to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Most, however, are doing nothing more than they did two years ago, and it will not surprise you that I think that is a losing strategy.

Som take a step back… think about how your company is doing in recruiting new team members and ask yourself this question… how are you doing?

Are you competing and being aggressive?  Or are you sitting back, waiting for folks to come to you?

If the former, congratulations and keep it up.

If the latter, good luck. You will need it.

Paul DeBettignies is Vice President of Recruiting for HireCast Consulting and can be reached at paul (at) hirecastconsulting (dot) com.

The War for Talent: Are Minnesota Tech Companies and Startups Ready? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Do you know why some people are 1 to 4% Neandertal?

The discovery of modern day humans with some neandertal DNA came as a surprise to many in the scientific community (especially when you consider that most depictions of neandertals show them as very ugly and that “mixing DNA” meant modern-looking humans back then were having sex with these knuckle-draggers!).

It came as a surprise to me too, not because some other people have this DNA within them, but because I have had my DNA profile created by 23andMe and recently discovered that my genetics contain an estimated 2.5% neandertal DNA. Maybe that’s why I have a thick protruding forehead and think about living in a cave!  ;-)

“Your Inner Neandertal” is a 30 minute presentation showing how art can uniquely express science concepts and why some of us may find a little “Neander” in our genes. With examples from “At the Crossroads” video and her very cool DNA Portrait traveling show, Lynn will explain how some genes may be a surprising and generous gift from our ancient and now extinct cousins (and this I gotta hear).

Saturday, April 28th at 11 am
Minneapolis Downtown Hennepin Library
This keynote talk for Minneapolis DNA Days
is free and open to the public. Please register (go here).
For more information, parking and directions (go here).

More DNA Days events at area libraries (info here) will cover topics like genetic testing and screening, capturing family health history and tools for collecting the information.

To learn more about multimedia artist Lynn Fellman, someone focused on “illuminating the human genome through art, design and narrative,” check our her site at: FellmanStudio.com

“Your Inner Neandertal” DNA Day Talk is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Colectica was spun out of Algenta Technologies, a software company that delivered a variety of services that included DNS Hosting, custom development projects, and a series of contracts with the University of Minnesota Computer Science Department. The experience and capital allowed the founders the ability to pursue their interests in data integrity.

Dan Smith

Co-founder Dan Smith describes their platform as “enabling organizations to document the complete life cycle of data. This includes recording why and how the data were created, by whom, for what purposes, where it can be accessed, its representation, and what each piece of data is comparable to. This fine grained description of data, the concepts captured, and the data processes are all recorded using Open Standards from ISO/IEC and research consortiums”.

The data life cycle starts with a study concept, which is tranformed through data collection and other standardized processes, before it is analyzed. This complete data workflow, which is underlying the Colectica platform, serves as a foundation for data analysis. The data that moves through this life cycle is stored in a repository, which is essentially a version control system for metadata and relationships.

This process is completely storage-agnostic, which means that it does not matter if the data is stored in a relational database or in a big data infrastructure like Hadoop for it to be described. Querying for metadata from the repository is also straightforward because it will reflect the client’s infrastructure decisions. Most implementations of Colectica occur within the clients own network because of organizational policies and the sensitivity concerns around their data. However, Colectica does provide a hosted option for added flexibility.

Their platform has provided rigor and commonality for research groups within the National Statistical Offices (NSO). These entities have a need to document and automate many of their data processes, and need to do so using open and standardized models.

In addition to agencies within the NSO, individual researchers who practice survey methodologies are also interested in structuring their data for analysis. These researchers, who are actively creating questions and measuring opinions, behaviors, and experiences of the public, can intelligently document and compare their research to others with this platform.

As more industries turn to Open Standards for structuring the deluge of data, Colectica hopes to play an active role in describing and linking data through identification and versioning techniques. Market research firms, which have traditionally conducted one-off projects like opinion polls, generally did not concentrate on documentation and standards. However, this is evolving as clients become more sophisticated with data. They have started to request complete and portable metadata documentation of their data and the methods used to collect it. Colectica is hoping that this will represent an interesting opportunity for them in the near future.

Colectica is looking to secure phase II funding of an SBIR grant through the NIH this spring. As more organizations turn to Open Standards to make sense of huge amounts of data for analysis, Colectica is well positioned to continue building out their solution through a secure and structured platform.

Improving Data Integrity for Analysis is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Dr. Lisa Snyder

So does this mean we give tablets to kids and education is magically transformed? Hardly. Fortunately we have one of the thought leaders in this space in our backyard. Her name is Dr. Lisa Snyder, she is the new Lakeville MN School Superintendent, and we were pleased to have her on the show to talk about their new iLearn initiative, whether or not it’s magic, how tablets and tech fit in to it, and her perspectives on the challenges adopting new ways of teaching and learning.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson
Music: Dave Hole & the song “Keep Your Motor Running” from the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Tablet and E-book reader Ownership Nearly Double Over the Holiday Gift-Giving Period
• It’s the iPad announcement anniversary: January 27, 2010
• 350,000 Textbooks Downloaded From Apple’s iBooks in Three Days
• How Apple is sabotaging an open standard for digital books (Borsch doesn’t think so: “Too Many Don’t ‘Get’ iBooks Author”)
• Lakeville Schools Using State Funding to Help Technology Push
• Finding Good Apps for Children With Autism
• A Perspective on iPad’s Impact on Your Mind
• Are Tablets Ready for K12?
• Little Falls Gets Real About iPad technology
• Silicon Valley Wows Educators, and Woos Them
• One Laptop Per Child Launches XO 3.0 Tablet 
• Pinterest draws interest online
• JAMF Software 
• The Problem With The iOS Home Screen

Upcoming Events:

• February 10-11: Startup Weekend Twin Cities III, U of M Carlson
• February 23rd: WordPressMSP at The Nerdery
• February 23rd: How to Leverage Digital Media to Raise Capital (a DealPen event at CoCo. Promo code for free ticket: dealpenfriend)
• February 24-25: MinneWIC (Women in Computing)
• March 16-17: Mobile March (Mobile 3D) (Call for speakers)
• April 7th: MinneBar, Best Buy headquarters

Minnov8 Gang 154 – iPad, iLearn is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

I was stunned to learn it is a scam. Not only that, based upon the sheer volume of complaints I found shows that this is rampant, apparently is seeing little-to-no preemptive action on the part of the wireless carriers, and many, many mobile users are being charged monthly fees. This fraud is commonly known as cramming.

I am writing this post for the express purpose of bringing this issue to your attention and that of Lori Swanson, our State Attorney General, in order to get some action and protect consumers. If *I* can get scammed (and I am VERY cautious, careful and savvy about online scams and still don’t know how my number was discovered). I can only guess how pervasive this is in Minnesota and that it appears the carriers are likely complicit in perpetuating these cramming scams due to conflicts of interest and their subsequent inaction.

THE SCAM
This is a mobile SMS (text message) scam which automatically subscribes the user to a monthly plan, in my case a $9.99 one as you can see from the screenshot to your right. What’s curious is that many people on several complaint forums I discovered recommended replying “STOP” to cancel since that would be an explicit opt-out. In my case I didn’t respond (never do to spam) and instead called AT&T Customer Service.

The charges were applied anyway which, I now know, is a common cramming practice. AT&T removed the charge and I explicitly requested they place a “subscription block” under my parental controls for all phones on my family plan. This part of the adventure burned up 45 minutes of my time.

During my short investigation last night for another 30 minutes, I came across these links to other people who have been victims of cramming from this same provider and have had similar charges:

• 800 Notes, a website for 800# scamming, had these reports
• SMS Watchdog, a website for text scamming, had these reports
• Text Complaints had these reports
• Plus all of these other ones…

…and so on and so on. But wait until you see how this cramming is potentially worth tens of millions of dollars per year for the scammers!

AN EXAMPLE OF AN ALLEGEDLY SIMILAR SCAM
While I have NO idea if the company identified below is responsible in any way for the cramming scam which I encountered last evening, I also was not aware of how huge this fraud could be. This example below illustrates the scope of the problem so well I had to include it (and, especially, the video which explains the tactics used by these cramming scammers and how it works).

During my investigation last night I came across another geek site, AZ Disruptors, a tech incubator whose website is similar to Minnov8‘s and Tech.MN‘s but for Arizona. The site’s founder, who is also CEO of Axosoft, Hamid Shojaee, discovered early last year what appeared to be an alleged Scottsdale-based mobile scammer named JAWA, a dba of Eye Level Holdings, LLC, and one of several dba’s of this LLC.

Last March Shojaee wrote a post about how he discovered he’d been a victim of cramming. Two days later he wrote another post explaining how this sort of text messaging cramming scam worked and the video he created to explain it is below. Shojaee’s explanation will give you a good sense of what’s going on with this cramming scam:

After writing subsequent posts JAWA’s lawyers sent Shojaee a cease-and-desist, shut down his blog temporarily, but the AZ Central paper wrote this article pointing out that Verizon alone froze $19 million in charges…so I can only imagine the millions JAWA and the aggregators have already raked in:

Lawsuits filed by Verizon Wireless and the Texas attorney general allege that cellphone-applications developer Jawa used shell corporations, false business addresses, websites that did not comply with industry standards and diversionary software to deceive customers to buy its services.

Beyond the lawsuit, Verizon Wireless has taken other business actions. It instructed four companies, known as aggregators, to freeze $19 million in charges for messaging services already provided by Jawa and for which customers already have been billed.

Aggregators, known as mobile-transaction hubs, enable wireless messages to be delivered to a customer and compile and transmit charges to the customer’s carrier.

As it turns out, Verizon kept 30% of the fees collected and passed the other 70% to the aggregators (see this article). Other articles I’ve read say the same thing about all carriers: they keep 30% of the fees. If those fees number in the tens of millions of dollars, one can see why the carriers have zero incentive to be on their customer’s side and proactively terminate these sleazy relationships.

In my cursory search I was unable to learn if there has yet been a resolution to the Eye Level Holdings, LLC. suit by the State of Texas and Verizon. AT&T and Sprint are also investigating them so there might be a resolution that, if JAWA/Eye Level Holdings, LLC is guilty of cramming, puts these guys behind bars and confiscates their assets.

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO
But as we all know for every scumbag caught there are usually others. Check your mobile phone bill for charges you didn’t authorize. Consider putting a block on your account so, even if a crammer gets your mobile number, they cannot include you in their scam.

If you have already been a victim of this cramming scam, immediately file a complaint with the Minnesota Attorney General’s office.

Mobile Text Message “Cramming” Scam is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

A guy from the Inver Grove Heights Community Schools Office of Communications, Johnny Germscheid, reached out to us here at Minnov8 to tell us about the event. Its focus is about technology, education and breaking down the communication barrier between children and adults. I’m guessing there will be a lot of learning occurring on both sides (student-as-teacher and adult-as-student).

Students in grades K-12 will be teaching adults how to use iPads, iPods, and other devices and software programs. Conference highlights include:

• Produce and publish an eBook using rich multimedia content.
• Create a digital scrapbook to capture family memories.
• Design a webpage or blog to share your story on the web.
• Find out how to set up and manage your own social networking profile.
• Collaborate electronically to edit documents in a more efficient manner.
• Compose original songs to add flavor to your movies.
• Learn how to get the most out of that new iPad.

This is the second year Inver Grove Heights Community Schools has offered this Student Led Technology Conference. Turns out the Inver Grove Heights school district (ISD 199) was nationally recognized in Washington DC by the Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) this winter for this innovative concept.

The conference is free and open to anyone in the metro, or our entire State for that matter. To check out details about the conference, which takes place on Saturday, February 25th from 8:30am until Noon, visit the event mini-site here.

Student Led Technology Conference is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Nick Martin, vice president of innovation and R&D at UnitedHealth Group, gave a quick tour of the booth and some of the innovations within (listed here, by the way):

One thing has surprised both our tech peers in Minnesota as well as we here at Minnov8: Who knew UHG was so active delivering tech innovations? Some of these include: UHC.tv; OptumizeMe (an iPhone/Android app); and Optum’s NowClinic, a virtual Doctor visit/prescribing platform with a corresponding smartphone app.

Might be that these “innovations” are targeted directly at corporate customers and to their respective employees who are under a UHG health plan. It’s interesting that each of their branding, user interfaces and integrations seem to be in separate silos, with no overall direction discernable from their presentation online. Still, it’s good to see a Minnesota employer innovating in the internet and web space.

UnitedHealth Group’s Booth at CES is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

As a fanboy of Workface (disclaimer: was at one-time a services vendor to them too), I pay attention to pings from the CEO, Lief Larson. He just alerted me to their announcement of the first version of the Workface “Chat Live” status button which is rolling out now.

Huh? You’re doing a post about a “status button” Borsch? Yes, but only because I’m personally connected to organizations who are using the Workface toolbar within their sites and would find this instantly useful. These companies are connecting their folks directly to prospects and customers with a toolbar that makes anyone in customer-facing roles like inside sales, support, community management and other functions immediately available to a site visitor in the Workface toolbar.

Brainerd Savings Sam Horn has her Workface status set for "Online! Chat Now". (click for larger view)

Even though that Workface toolbar can be resident at the bottom of a website at all times, some organizations load it only on specific website pages (e.g., a sales or support page). The problem has been that people are usually listed on one or more company pages, like this first-to-deploy Workface customer did on their team page at Brainerd Savings & Loan. This Status button means that wherever a person is listed on their website anywhere their status can be available to a visitor at the click of a mouse.

This Workface Status button alerts visitors to your website whether or not you’re online. If you’re connected to the internet, it says, “Online! Chat now”. When a visitor clicks on it, they can go directly into live text, audio, or video chat communications with you. It can easily be deployed for one person, or the whole company. When you’re no longer connected to the Internet, the button automatically changes to say, “Send a Message” and then your website visitor can drop you a message.

The entire Workface team is eating-their-own-dog-food and using the new Workface Status button. Check it out at Workface and consider signing up for their service.

Workface Adds Status is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Walker Art Center new website (click for larger view)

Earlier this week I had a friend send me a Twitter DM saying, “Man…you MUST check out the new Walker Art Center website.” So I headed over there that evening and spent over an hour reading, poking around and seeing what they’d delivered.

To say I was impressed is an understatement: the design is fresh, exciting to view and the content compelling. The breadth and depth of coverage of art and design quickly shifted my mind toward a completely different place, one of consideration, thought and ideas instead of my typical focus on the tech “flipper-flappers” and “eye candy” of this new website they’d delivered.

Others agree. In his post at ArtInfo “Why the Walker’s new website is a big deal“, Tyler Green calls it a “game changer” since the Walker site is atypical for a museum, usually an informational site intended to lead visitors to the art institution’s building and its exhibits. Instead, argues Green, the site redefines how the Walker sees its role: as both a physical and as a virtual hub.

Walker Art executive director, Olga Viso, wrote this article about their new site, saying in part:

“As the Walker’s name signals, we’re a center: a hub that brings together various pursuits related to contemporary art, from presenting the visual, performing, and media arts of our time to publishing the latest scholarly research; collecting art objects and commissioning new works to hosting artist residencies and convening public discussions about art and ideas. Given these activities—and more importantly, our mission to investigate the questions that shape us and inspire us as individuals, cultures, and communities—I’m excited to introduce our new website, an online hub for ideas about contemporary art and culture, both inside the Walker and beyond.”

Talking about the why of launching such an ambitious site redesign, Viso said, “The intent of the new site is to make visible our role as a generative producer and purveyor of content and broadcast our voice in the landscape of contemporary culture.”

Any downsides or critique? Two, but the first is a biggie and the second not so much.

Neither of these gripes is a deal-killer for the new Walker website, but this first one needs to be fixed immediately.

My preferred device for consuming content is, like many of us, an iPad. The only issues I had on the new Walker site was while attempting to watch videos on the Walker Channel as you can see below. If I did click on the “…direct link to the video on YouTube” link it would, of course, make Safari on iPad go away and then it would launch the YouTube app! NOT a good user experience and one UX hiccup in an otherwise awesome, designed experience that the team should fix ASAP.

Walker Channel won't display YouTube videos on iPad (click for larger view)

The other, more minor issue was the homepage load speed — it loaded quickly on a computer (under 4 seconds) but took over 13 seconds to load on my iPad (that on a non-cached-Safari & wireless connection speed averaging 19mbps download speed. Testing occurred one evening at 8pm, 11pm and 9am the next morning). Thinking it might be a Safari issue, I tried loading it on the iPad using alternative browsers Opera Mini, Terra, Atomic Web and iCab Mobile. All delivered the Walker site between 12 and 14 seconds on average.

Speed matters not just for a great user experience, but Google has been very explicit about pagerank and speed starting in 2012. Part of their algorithm will be set to rank based on current standings and links in, of course, but speed is a close second. It’s because Google’s use of computing resources and bandwidth are so enormous that they are trying to drive us all toward making our sites as efficient as possible so as to reduce their consumption of resources and bandwidth. The unknown is how Google will rank “mobile friendly site speed” in their algorithms and I’ve not tested the site on an Android tablet in my same wireless conditions, so cannot attest to the user experience on Android tablets.

Walker website grades at "C" with performance at 73 (click for larger view)

Running YSlow on the Walker homepage gave it a grade of “C” and a performance metric of 73. As a comparison, Minnov8 gets a “C” and a metric of 72, but we’re a bunch of hacks compared to the top-notch team at the Walker, and we’re long overdue for a site redesign.

I was impressed to see, however, that the Walker team has deployed nginx (pro. “engine x”), a web server known for its speed. When you take in to consideration the richness of their magazine-like homepage, it’s tough to fault them for not having a score in the 90s quite yet. I suspect they will continue to optimize the site over time.

AN ACHIEVEMENT THAT IS AN ASSET TO MINNESOTA
To the team at the Walker, we salute you for an ambitious and amazing new site. There is no doubt it will prove to the world that the Walker is a first rate, thought leading institution that comes from a State with a creative class that is also second-to-none in the world. Your new site will also raise the consciousness of the imperative of great design in everything we touch, the products and services we deliver, and the need to recognize artistic beauty in new ways.

Walker Art Center’s Awesome New Website is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Datuit

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) was a major stimulus initiative enacted by the 111^th United States Congress and signed into law in 2009 by President Obama. The primary objectives to this law were focused on immediate objectives in saving and creating jobs. The secondary goal was to provide short-term relief programs to industries decimated by the recession and also to provide investments in areas like health, infrastructure, education, and ‘green’ energy initiatives.

The healthcare industry received 19.1% percent of the $787 billion in funding at the time this was signed into legislation. The largest allocation of these funds within healthcare went to Medicaid funding, which was followed by health information technology (HIT) investments and incentive payments. For example, these federal guidelines will provide incentives for clinics to meet meaningful use thresholds. Among other things, this would require clinics to adopt structured documents whenever feasible and ubiquitous patient access to self management tools. 

The SafeIX platform is designed to help meet those requirements. Datuit is building this sophisticated platform around document standardization, interoperability, and the concept of having one master patient record. Therefore they are storing data as documents formatted in standards such as the HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) and the ASTM Continuity of Care Record (CCR). These standards specify a universal structure and semantics for clinical documents. Because of the small and distributed nature of these documents combined with the inevitable speed and volume requirements, the SafeIX platform relies on scalable NoSQL technology and a cloud-based infrastructure. This patent-pending system allows for big data to be retrieved and combined with other information from structured documents.

A recent report by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) on big data found that if U.S. health care “were to use big data creatively and effectively to drive efficiency and quality, the sector could create more than $300 billion in value every year”. Clearly, there are other incentives than just those outlined in the ARRA.  The possibilities for health care related research and data analytics is also endless, with the ability to search and aggregate information from patients as well as from physicians and other healthcare organizations.

McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) on big data (click for larger view)

While there are obvious broad benefits to this platform, there are inherently some challenges in this industry, primarily around privacy. Searching across medical records or merely integrating records remains a controversial issue in the United States. Firms like Google recognized there was an opportunity for an entity like Google Health, which started in 2008. However, after three years Google pulled the plug on the service after it failed to achieve the utilization it had hoped. Microsoft HealthVault, which launched in 2007, is still striving for adoption by marketing itself as a “trusted place for people to organize, store, and share health information online”.  There are also some smaller players in this space, showing a very fragmented and immature market.

The healthcare sector will remain transformational for the foreseeable future because of rising costs and an aging population against a backdrop of competitive cost-reducing technologies and federal incentives. As a result, Datuit is planning to complete their prototype by January with an alpha release by Q3 of 2012. Commercial Launch is scheduled for Q2 2013, well in advance of the aggressive Stage 2 regulations anticipated to take effect in 2014. Through their accessible platform, this Minnesota based startup is hoping to tip the scales in health care reform.

Big Healthcare Data is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Our pals at Workface have rolled out yet another great innovation: their chat platform now boasts an integration with Facebook that ensures that your Facebook Page is connected directly with those in your company you want customers and prospects to have access to in an instant. (disclosure: Workface was a client of my Innov8Press group).

One of the keys to Facebook engagement with customers is being there for them. Since the social media “community management” discipline is typically focused on watching, listening and waiting for a customer to post, send a tweet or otherwise go out of their way to connect, often prospects and customers don’t take the time to reach out. Since the Workface platform is embedded directly in your Facebook Page and with one click the engagement happens.

Take a look at the press release below and, especially, the companies who have already jumped on this platform to ensure they receive meaningful results from their Facebook efforts. 

SOFTWARE DEVELOPER WORKFACE BESTS CHAT PLATFORMS

FOR ONLINE ENGAGEMENT AGAIN WITH FIRST-EVER FACEBOOK INTEGRATION

Technology places field sales and services personnel across the Facebook ecosystem where customers spend time online; for new business potential through largest social media channel

 Minneapolis—Nov. 1, 2011—Workface^® Inc., (www.workface.com) a pioneer in online customer-interaction technology continues to raise the bar on online customer-engagement experiences with integration of its portable profile-based customer-engagement platform into the Facebook ecosystem. The only online company with the ability to integrate with Facebook,Workface enables companies to live “virtually” where their prospects and customers are, elevating the online engagement and driving new business through the world’s largest social media platform.

“Companies want to be ‘liked’ on Facebook, but the real issue is how does that develop meaningful relationships with prospects and, more importantly, generate leads,” said Lief Larson, president and product strategist, Workface, Inc. “Workface’s portable Profiles uniquely mobilize field sales and service teams across Facebook to engage at the moment of interest with online prospects, providing an experience that most closely replicates a face-to-face meeting—literally bringing a company’s social media presence to life.”

Integrated into a company’s Facebook page, Workface profiles enable prospects and customers to connect and converse with sales and service representatives while remaining within the confines of the social network. The ability to engage with customers in this manner creates opportunities that traditional online chat solutions are unable to cultivate and nurture.

Unlike online chat solutions, Workface literally gives a “face” to a company and its representatives, and empowers customers and prospects to find and select the right sales or customer service person on their terms. Through Workface, customers can quickly and easily interact with companies in a manner and at a time when they are interested and engaged.

Early customers of Workface using the Facebook application include: Atomic Data Centers, The Foundation, NE Minneapolis Homes, Red Ribbon Realtors, Titan Outlet Store and Travel Leaders of Fargo.

“In Facebook, you can chat with individuals who are your friends, but you can’t chat with a company,” explained Larson. “With Workface in Facebook, prospects can select an individual from an organization and engage in a conversation without having to make the commitment of ‘liking’ them. The added bonus is that the prospect can learn about the background and expertise of the company rep they’re interfacing with in a way that’s much more personal and rewarding than traditional, faceless online chat.”

In addition to the virtual interaction with customers, Workface integration enables Facebook users to share and refer sales and service personnel profiles with among their personal networks. Unlike static Facebook posts, a referral using Workface embeds the sales or service representative’s profile onto the individual’s wall without losing the functionality of the online customer-interaction technology.

Ideally suited for companies with field sales and service organizations/agents that rely on personal interaction to sell and support products and/or services, the Workface platform improves how they react and interact with online customers and prospects that prefer online communication but are turned off by the impersonal nature of most online communications experiences like chat.

About Workface (www.workface.com)

Workface Inc., headquartered in Minneapolis, Minn., is a pioneer in developing online customer-interaction technologies that humanize the Web. The company’s first-of-its-kind product, the Customer-Engagement Platform (CEP), enables organizations to mobilize their field sales and service teams throughout the Web, and to replace the impersonal, dehumanizing, and frustrating interactions of legacy chat platforms.

Workface puts customers or prospects in control of the interaction by letting them choose whom they want to interact with, in what manner, and in which web venue. It uses groundbreaking interactive, searchable, and portable content web-containers called “profiles” (the “Workface”) that are personalized by individuals to help online customers and prospects at the moment of need. These profiles can reside anywhere on the Web, so they can be placed anywhere someone might go on the Web to look for help or ask questions, including being available on company websites, search engines, high-traffic websites, and social media.

More than 75,000 professionals in over 2,500 different companies are now using Workface technology.

###

Workface Integrates Real-Time Engagement with Facebook is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

The Walker Art Center blog, one I recommend you follow if interested in any aspect of art and design, had this post which pointed to a highly interesting factoid about Minnesota:

“A new National Endowment for the Arts survey finds there are 2.1 million Americans employed as artists, including more than 42,000 right here in the Land o’ Lakes. Minnesota ranks fairly well: We’re among the top 14 states that have the highest percentage of the workforce employed in the arts: 1.5 percent, compared to the nation-leading New York, where 2.3 percent of the labor force is involved in arts industries. Minnesota leads the nation in the concentration of jobs in book publishing, with eight times more publishing jobs — largely in the Twin Cities — than the national average. Minneapolis’ concentration of theater jobs is twice the national average.“

Why should you care? If you are a technologist, startup or entrepreneur in tech than you know how great you are at engineering but (hopefully) are aware that your artistic and design skills most likely suck. If you want to ensure your products are embraced by the masses, then make certain you are engaged and collaborating with people whose artistic and design sense is equal to your engineering abilities.

You have A LOT of talent to choose from in our State.

Minnesota, the Arts and Innovation is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

I cannot express enough my thanks for all who helped out:

Lerner Publishing: Kathleen Clarke responded to a blind email request of mine and she put together a big box of brand new, amazingly high quality books, perfect for the English program at Strisuksa school

Meg Knodl

Meg Knodl: As senior librarian in Communications and Community Engagement with Hennepin County (Minn.) Library, Meg had great suggestions on buying surplus books from the library system (a sale was just ending and she connected me with the right folks).

Paul Schroeder

To show the power of social media, I’d placed a plea and link to that Minnov8 post mentioned above on my Facebook wall. Two people responded immediately with a third who joined in:

Paul Schroeder:  A fraternity brother of mine who read about my plea on Facebook responded by collecting several dozen books and even cajoled a friend of his in participating with some novels. These novels, while not perfectly targeted to the students, surprisingly were very welcomed by the teachers!

Sherry Collins: She had several ideas I took advantage of and then recommended a site I’d never heard of, FreeCycle, a kind of “Craigslist for free stuff” and I placed a post in the Minneapolis Group

The very generous donation by Beth Sullivan, volunteer for The Women's Prison Book Project

Beth Sullivan: She responded with 75 classic (and new!) books that were extras from a non-profit she volunteers for, The Women’s Prison Book Project.

As these great volunteers were putting forth such kind efforts to gather books, I’d been interacting with my contact at the school, Lynn Brown. Mentioning the phenomenal work of Project Gutenberg, I asked her to go through the books there and make recommendations and we’d download the books for her (since their internet connections are pretty minimal at the school).

What happened next surprised even me and set me on a course I hadn’t expected. 

Ms. Brown and her colleague in the English department chose 108 Project Gutenberg books. Discovering that the Project Gutenberg books are available in a variety of formats — and offers over 36,000 free ebooks in ePub, Kindle, HTML and simple text formats – I decided to download all of them in these formats as well as two potentially useful for a country in Asia (i.e., Plucker and QiOO Mobile).

After downloading and organizing them in folders I thought, “Hmm…this is going to be tough for the students to find, and download, the books of their choice in their chosen format” so I did what any geek would do: I built an HTML website “front end” for the files.

An (AJAX) dropdown for each book reveals its formats (click for larger view)

Website "front end" for ebooks (click for larger view)

Realizing that the directories with the ebooks in them totaled over 8GBs — and now knowing exactly what technologies they had at their disposal in Thailand — I wasn’t certain if they could read DVD-Rs, would appreciate a bunch of CDs (which, of course, would possibly break the links in the mini website front-end) so I bought a couple of 16GB thumb drives so they would have two copies.

Ms. Brown and her colleagues were quite enthused about receiving this and she then exclaimed, “Oh my gosh…we can put this on the “school” server (vs. just the English department server) and make it available to all students!”

Wish we could have done more for them. Also wished there was a way to get tablets in to the hands of students (or even cheap Kindles) if there was a reliable way for them to download ebooks. Got to think more about this and possible solutions.

So again, thank you to those who helped out and I’ll follow up when I hear how the kids are doing with what you donated!

“Thank You” for the Books for Thai School is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

MIMA Summit 2011: Interview With Tim Brunelle and Ed Boches is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

It turns out, of the 10 startups that were selected to present at the event, none even comes close to the level of adoption these guys have achieved to date, which they announced at the in their presentation at #EduTechMN: 1,000,000 students using the platform, in more than 80,000 classrooms. And all that from a startup that began as just a sideline for Matt to use in his own classroom!

Here’s my interview:

The founders describe their creation this way:  Kidblog is a platform that provides students with an authentic, engaging, and interactive learning experience. It’s designed for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each student with his or her own, unique blog. It has simple but powerful tools that allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over their students’ blogs. And a teacher can set up a class with no student email addresses. 

Matt likes to say it’s “built by a teacher, for teachers, so students can get the most out of the blogging process.” He also points out that teachers who’ve tried other blogging platforms (perhaps with limited success), such as Blogger, Edublogs, or WordPress.com, “will notice the Kidblog difference immediately.”

Best of luck to this emerging, homegrown Minnesota edutech company!

[This post first appeared yesterday on Tech~Surf~Blog.]

Minnesota EduTech Startup KidBlog Now Reaching One Million Users is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

[This post was originally published earlier today on Tech~Surf~Blog.]

I felt it. I didn’t know it then, but it may have been at the precise moment Steve was passing. I was sitting in a room of about 100 people, mid-afternoon, listening to a panel of educators at the EduTech MN conference at the University of Minnesota. I was actually finishing a blog post on my MacBook Air, and hadn’t even intended to stay for the panel (the startup pitches were over).

But I was surprisingly drawn in by the discussion. I was blown away by what these people, senior educators, were saying — showing so much passion, speaking from the heart, talking about how kids are learning today. They just lit up as they described how the new tablet and mobile technologies are opening up worlds for these kids like nothing they’d ever seen before. The iPad, the iPod Touch, and all the great software these Apple devices have engendered.

I found myself beaming from ear to ear as I listened to them describe their real-life experiences, with such excitement in their voices.  These aren’t boring educators, I thought!  These are really dedicated, committed people who work on the front lines, whose worlds revolve around how our children learn, and how they can make that process better for them, every single day. And, thanks to technology and a certain company named Apple, they have more and more amazing tools to help them do that. It was a special experience for me, as someone not involved much in the world of education. I’m so glad I stayed.

I sat there and thought to myself — right at that very moment — “Wow, would Steve Jobs be proud to be hearing this right now.”

I like to think he was.

Steve, you didn’t just change technology, media, music, and retailing forever.  You changed education, too — in a big, big way. We thank you. We will greatly miss you.

But we know we’ll see the mark you made on this world for a long, long time to come, in the eyes of children everywhere.

[Left to right on the panel: Jesse Thorstad, technology specialist, Fergus Falls school district; Dave Eisenmann, director of instructional tech, Minnetonka school district; Jennifer Sly, MN Historical Society; and Jay Haugen, Superintendent, Farmington school district. The panel was moderated by State Senator Terri Bonoff.]

Something Amazing Happened at #EduTechMN Yesterday – Steve Jobs Was in the Room is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

I’ve known of the Center for quite some time and been interested in what they describes as their mission to, “…enhance health and well-being by educating health professionals, empowering consumers, and fundamentally transforming the delivery of health care through the creation of interdisciplinary academic, research, clinical care, and outreach programs that advance integrative health and healing.”

Mary Jo Kreitzer, PhD RN

No question that new models of integrative healthcare are accelerating and what the Center is exploring is proving to be the right path. But an iOS app?

In order to understand a little more about the Center and to understand more about why they delivered an app, I talked with Dr. Mary Jo Kreitzer, the founder and director of the Center and someone who brings more than 20 years of leadership and expertise to the field of integrative health and medicine.

I started off asking Dr. Kreitzer to give me some background on the Center and we took it from there…

U of MN Center for Spirituality & Healing’s Mobile App is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Can you help with books?

I’ve never been to Thailand, but because my wife has put on workshops for Thailand’s Department of Export Promotion three different times, I’ve met many of her contacts from Thailand (and their kids) and they are incredibly delightful people. My bride has also told me so many stories about the country, its people, and how she loves them so much she’d move there, I was very receptive to Lynn’s request to help gather books for her students.

Map of Thailand showing Roi Et (click image for larger view)

The Thailand school Strisuksa (Stree-suk-sah) is located in a province called Roi Et. It is relatively far from Bangkok—which means they are internet-challenged as you’ll read about below—but they have a student group who will be visiting MN in October (arriving late in the week of October 3rd) and will be at Cambridge-Isanti High School in Cambridge, MN . Each student will be allowed 2 pieces of checked luggage. They hope to make the most of that luggage allowance by returning with books for their library.

If you have any ideas (or books!) that might help them gather up English books suitable for 7-9th graders and then upper secondary (10th-12th grade)—and let me know where we can pick them up—that would be terrific! Contact me, Steve Borsch, by email or by phone at 952.232.5040. I will compile a list of those who have helped and publish it here on Minnov8.

Below I go through more information about the school, student learning in English there, and what Minnov8 is doing to help.

Lynn Brown

What Minnov8 is Doing
Besides contacting multiple organizations about them possibly donating English books suitable for 7th through 12th graders learning English, the school also doesn’t enjoy fast internet access which is similar to much of Thailand outside of major urban centers. During our discussions, I pointed Lynn to Project Gutenberg, an online compilation of classic books (many with accompanying audio books for many of them). Lynn was intrigued and she, and another English teacher in the school, compiled their wish-list for me, but Lynn then was lamenting the fact that they’d never be able to download them at the school since the connections are far too slow.

As a consequence, Tim Elliott and I will be taking their desired list of 100 titles from Project Gutenberg, and burning them to CD for them to take back to Thailand and make available throughout the school. We’ll be meeting with Lynn Brown late in the week of October 3rd to give her the CDs and arrange for the books to be delivered to her students with empty suitcases.

More Info from Lynn Brown
The town population is roughly 36,000, with a total of 1.2 million or more in the province. The town of Roi Et has 4 major secondary schools, of which we are the second largest with an enrollment of 4,300. Although originally opened in 1917 as a girl’s school, it is now co-educational, however girls continue to outnumber boys. The largest school in town is the boys school, also co-educational. Both schools maintain such high enrollment figures because students come from all over the province and board in town. Many people feel the quality of education is much better at these two larger schools.

I started teaching at Strisuksa in the first year of the program. At that time, the library consisted of one book case in the teacher’s office / lounge and held about 100 books. The second year we were able to obtain a bit more space and added a second book case, purchased some books and called it a library corner. Next came a small classroom furnished with more bookcases and the real effort to obtain books. We purchased many, and then became aware of the Books for Asia Foundation. A large number of our non-fiction books have come from that source. A second resource was Thailand Book Drive. This foundation was begun in the USA by a young man who knew of the need for English books in rural Thailand. We’ve obtained over 2,000 books from this foundation, and have shared 100′s of surplus books (mainly duplicates) with other schools in the province. ((We feel that others can benefit from the books too, and if we have too many or ones that our students aren’t reading, maybe someone at another school will. We’ve helped at least 4 other secondary schools in this manner.))

Students in Thailand study in lower (7-9th grades) and upper (10 – 12th) secondary levels for 3 years each. At the conclusion of the lower secondary, they have the option of continuing at their current school or transferring to another. The English Program is offered to students at both the lower and upper levels. The Ministry of Education Thailand has set a limit of 70 students per level in lower secondary for the English Program. We split this to two classrooms of 35 each. The upper secondary is limited to one class of 35 students. We have consistently been receiving applications for many more students than we can accept in the upper level. In the upper level students can choose from a major in Math, Science, or language. In addition to English, they may also choose to study Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, French, or Korean.

The English Program must follow the same core curriculum as all Thai classes. Students receive instruction in Thai and English each day from separate teachers. There are now 12 native English speaking teachers on staff to meet the needs of the classes. The only subjects not being taught in English are Art and Music. We have two English teachers who really encourage the students to read – giving both class and outside reading assignments.

Again, if you can help contact me, Steve Borsch, by email or by phone at 952.232.5040. As mentioned above I will compile a list of those who have helped and publish it here on Minnov8. Thanks!

English Books for Thai School – Can You Help? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.