The Gang has Julio Ojeda Zapata on this week to talk about a bunch of stuff…including Google’s killing of Google Wave.

Julio is the Pioneer Press’ consumer-tech reporter and writes a Tech Test Drive column about gadgets, apps and social media (among other things). He is the author of Twitter Means Business, one of the first books about Twitter (and his new one coming out tentatively titled, “iPad Means Business”). See his Posterous geekstream or contact him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: Big George Jackson Blues Band & song “Tell Me” via the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Robert Stephens’ LinkedIn page showing he’s “Chief Technology Officer, Best Buy. Founder, The Geek Squad”
• Google kills Wave
• Rapportive for Gmail
• MailPlane
• Google.me
• FastMall
• Webcams.travel
• LogMeIn Ignition
• ChromeOS
• Jolicloud
• Quite differing views of the onrush (deluge?) of information—and our access to it via the internet—and what Nicholas Carr & Clay Shirky each think of how we’re dealing with it as humans.

Direct link to the show.

Minnov8 Gang 88: Google Waves Goodbye is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: Clintone and the song “Full Circle” via the podsafe music network Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

Minnov8 Gang 87: More Buzz About Mobile is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott & Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off dealing with his woody).
Music by Andre Bisson and the song, “I’m leavin’” from Music Alley.

Discussed During the Show:

• CrowdPitch at Dorsey Ewald Conference Center in St. Paul. A Rain Source Capital/Funding Universe collaboration
• WordPress Users Group on Thursday, July 22nd; Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis/St. Paul “Small Business Gets Social” on Friday, July 23rd; and Blandin’s Broadband Conference October 13-14 (Robert Stephens, Best Buy Company Geek Squad leader, is keynoting the event)
• Twitter’s business model article in Fortune magazine
• Eweek article on a Presidential Memorandum signed by President Obama would nearly double the amount of wireless broadband spectrum
• Clearwire wireless broadband coming to Minnesota; Article on mobile broadband; The Railroad and Minnesota Broadband
• Apple employee #1, Steve Wozniak, and his Segway polo
• Minnesota’s history of innovation arguably began with the explosion of companies in the business of milling grains (specifically wheat) along the Minneapolis riverfront at St. Anthony Falls. See this page at the Mill City Museum website for more and this Wikipedia page for the technologies entrepreneurs saw and the opportunities for innovation they seized. Image above from the Minnesota Historical Society Visual Resource Database located here.
• FUN FACTOID: One of the early milling companies, the Washburn-Crosby Company (which later merged with 26 mills to become General Mills) purchased a radio station in 1924 and renamed it WCCO, standing for “Washburn Crosby Company”.

NOTE: We’re having issues with the podcast plugin so just in case, here’s a direct link to the show.

Minnov8 Gang 84: Seeing Opportunities for Innovation is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Best Buy Co. Inc today announced the availability of its new digital video service CinemaNow which will provide customers same-day instant access to new release movies and TV shows.

This month the service will be available on the CinemaNow website, but also with internet connected BluRay players. Netflix has been delivered on these devices (as well as the Roku box, internet connected HDTVs and more) but Best Buy is in a highly unique position with consumer electronic manufacturers.

Add to that their ability to explain to consumers how to use the service, Geek Squad ‘officers’ to set it all up in the home, and the potential to begin to reallocate the sheer square footage devoted to merchandising TVs and movies on DVD/BluRay discs.and you can see why this is of such strategic importance to Best Buy.

The full press release is after the jump.

Best Buy Provides Customers Same-Day Instant Access to

New Release Movies and TV Shows with Launch of CinemaNow(TM)

Digital Entertainment Platform Debuts on Devices This Month

MINNEAPOLIS, May 18, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Best Buy Co. Inc today announced the availability of its new digital video service CinemaNow which will provide customers same-day instant access to new release movies and TV shows.

The service will initially be accessible through select connected Blu-ray Disc players and HDTVs, and on most PCs via the web at www.cinemanow.com. Beginning this month, the service will be available on all new connected Blu-ray Disc players and home theater systems from LG Electronics. CinemaNow is also expected to launch on an array of other devices from various manufacturers, including Insignia, later this year.

CinemaNow, the result of the previously announced strategic relationship between Sonic Solutions(R) and Best Buy, will be powered by the RoxioNow(TM) technology platform. Best Buy owns the legal rights to the CinemaNow trademark, and will use it going forward to market the service to consumers who will have the ability to buy or rent from an extensive library of premium content, including new release movies and TV shows, with no subscription required.

The platform will also allow customers to seamlessly access their premium content on a wide range of Internet-connected devices from multiple manufacturers. The initial product launch, which is expected to be followed by an improved and updated version later this year, will allow customers to easily browse, search and purchase premium content through a highly-functional, straightforward user interface, and will deliver a high-quality viewing experience through enhanced playback technology.

“With the introduction of CinemaNow, Best Buy continues our commitment to evolve with our customers as their demand for digital entertainment grows,” said Chris Homeister, senior vice president of entertainment for Best Buy. “The convenience, selection and flexibility of the CinemaNow service offers customers more freedom in the way they choose to consume entertainment from Best Buy. This service, which complements our existing suite of digital entertainment brands, will be available to customers in their homes and on-the-go through a broad array of devices and will be brought to life in store with the help of our Blue Shirts and Geek Squad Agents.”

“At LG, we’re committed to enriching in-home entertainment by delivering the ultimate HD viewing experience and limitless content options,” said Peter Reiner, senior vice president, marketing, LG Electronics USA, Inc. “Best Buy, through its compelling CinemaNow service, will provide customers with one of the most interactive entertainment options available making it easy for people to access their favorite content using LG’s NetCast Entertainment Access feature simply from the remote.”

“With a track record for bringing innovative technologies to a broad audience, Best Buy is in a great position to expand the market for on-demand home entertainment,” said Mike Dunn, Fox Home Entertainment worldwide president. “We are thrilled to partner with them and provide a wide selection of entertainment that can be accessed across many popular devices.”

The first update to the CinemaNow service is expected to release on select devices later this year and will include an advanced user interface and expanded video playback features aimed at further improving the video entertainment experience.

About Best Buy Co., Inc.

With operations in the United States, Canada, Europe, China, Mexico and Turkey, Best Buy is a multinational retailer of technology and entertainment products and services with a commitment to growth and innovation. The Best Buy family of brands and partnerships collectively generates more than $49 billion in annual revenue and includes brands such as Best Buy; Best Buy Mobile; Audiovisions; The Carphone Warehouse; Future Shop; Geek Squad, Jiangsu Five Star; Magnolia Audio Video; Napster; Pacific Sales; The Phone House; and Speakeasy. Approximately 180,000 employees apply their talents to help bring the benefits of these brands to life for customers through retail locations, multiple call centers and Web sites, in-home solutions, product delivery and activities in our communities. Community partnership is central to the way we do business at Best Buy. In fiscal 2010, we donated a combined $25.2 million to improve the vitality of the communities where our employees and customers live and work.

For more information about Best Buy, visit www.bby.com.

Best Buy Announces Movies & TV Online is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Graeme Thickins and Tim Elliott sat down with Steve for coffee the morning after he arrived back in Minneapolis for a holiday family visit.  What ensued was a 30-minute+ discussion on a whole raft of topics related to Steve’s new role, the Windows 7 rollout, hints of future plans, other MS initiatives we asked Steve to weigh in on (though of course he couldn’t speak officially for the company), and Steve’s personal experiences in making his big career move.

Show notes:

• Steve Bendt’s social media coordinates: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
• Steve’s personal blog
• truCAST from Visible Technologies
• Radian6
• Crimson Hexagon
• Windows 7 House Party
• Hosting Your Party video
• House Party parody video
• The social conversation aggregator for Windows 7
• Microsoft Looking Glass post at TechCrunch

Listen to, or download, the interview with Steve Bendt

Steve Bendt Interview: A Chat About Windows 7 Social Media and Life at Microsoft is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music by blues singer Candy Kayne and the tune is, “I’m a bad, bad girl.”

Discussed during the show notes:

+ WCCO‘s “The Wire” & their iPhone app by DoApp and Inergize Digital (iTunes link; search in Android store for “WCCO”; or use mobile website at m.wcco.com)

+ WordPress Users Group meeting on December 3rd at 6:30pm

+ Minnebar at Best Buy HQ (sold out) and the sessions

+ Google buys Gizmo5; Toktumi; Google page speed article; Newsy

+ Android and GoogleChromeOS which, by the way, rumor has it will launch within a week.

Minnov8 Gang 58: Defragging Defrag & Other ‘Net Stuff is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

As part of said quest I called the folks at Best Buy to check on the health and/or success of Twelpforce.

For the sake of transparency I count many at Best Buy as friends. That said, my first of impression of the name of this initiative and it’s marketing campaign around the Twelpforce didn’t rank high on my cool-o-meter. To me social media is all about one-to-one contact and I didn’t necessarily think a TV add depicting a stadium of Blue Shirts (Best Buy employees) yelling out answers as the best way to showcase a concept and effort that is so darned positive and forward thinking…just sayin’.

I was curious and anxious to have the conversation. John Bernier, a Social Media Manager at Best Buy, and the one overseeing the Twelpforce initiative was happy to spend some time talking about it. This in itself is a good sign that a level of success is being attained.  

For those of you not familiar with Twelpforce, the concept is quite simple…enlist a legion of customer service representatives from the ranks of Best Buy’s employees to respond to questions and concerns about Best Buy products and services that arise in the Twitter stream. Twelpforce, as John noted is a “tool to talk with as well as talk to” the Best Buy customer or potential customer. He goes on to say that it’s in keeping with the overall focus of the Best Buy to deliver “dream support.” Whatever that means. Ultimately, of course one has to assume that the goal is to increase business and customer loyalty.

John outlined a bit of history as well as some numbers to demonstrate where Twelpforce is today. After three months (the “hard launch” with marketing via TV started on July 19th, 2009.) the original size of the Twelpforce has grown from 400 members (Best Buy and Geek Squad reps) to 2,200. They have responded to over 13,000 very public questions, concerns, and opinions. @twelpforce counts over 10,000 followers (13,404 followers and 2,059 following as of this writing), with about a 50/50 split between addressing actual break/fix issues and opinions. “We have made people realize that a year ago there was one voice (of Best Buy), and now they know that there are thousands of voices.”

So, how are they measuring the response to Twelpforce as they seek to deliver a tool that provides value for Best Buy? John noted, as do so many when you start talking metrics, “There is nothing that we can buy into that measures success.” This facilitated the need to build their own dashboard to at least assemble measurable pieces of the puzzle. That dashboard of course includes monitoring the number of followers but goes beyond that. The volume, or the pace and number of questions, now numbering between 100 and 125 per day according to John, the number of active Best Buy reps per week, the number of new reps, keyword sentiment, retweets and “follow Friday” posts are also monitored. Other tools include Twitter StreamGraphs and TweetStats (many are pictured) that will “Create a way for the business team to see trends.”

So how are those thousands of voices answering those questions? When Twelpforce rolled out and I made a point of following the questions and answers, I noted that many answers were of the “Stop into our store and we can help you with that.” type answers. John deftly answered that he couldn’t say how “many” answers there were like that, he did note that “Some answers will require a store visit.” He also noted that “the 140 character format of Twitter doesn’t always allow for a complete answer.” In fact, Twelpforce has developed some logical extensions to better respond without asking the customer to come to a store. “We’ll link to the Best Buy Forum to facilitate a more extensive answer and we’ll also link to a brand page and sometimes other info sources (like Engadget). We are the facilitator.” moving people form channel to channel. According to John, “You know what we know as fast as we know it.”

So, just who is answering these questions and concerns? What does it take for a Blue Shirt or Geek to be part of the TwelpForce? Are there restrictions or criteria to become a more audible voice of Best Buy? According to John, “There’s no real restrictions.” The fact that those that want to be part of the ‘force’ are employees means “they have been vetted by HR. We provide some training as well as a wiki that helps TwelpForce members best provide service.” He goes on to say, “We expect to be very good, not perfect.” at addressing customer needs. “There will be varying degrees of success.”

Moving forward John highlighted where TwelpForce will be going. In the short-term there will be more engagement, especially over the holiday season and much of that will be driven by another round of TV advertising. In the longer term the hope will be to move it beyond just Twitter. “We’d like it to be platform agnostic.” Of course when I asked how that might impact the name TwelpForce it was pretty obvious that it was a topic of much discussion at Best Buy. (FelpForce on Facebook? YelpForce for YouTube?) John also hopes to use initiatives like this to accelerate the adoption of social media by both employees and customers. “It’s provides us with the ability to prove ourselves every day. It’s not a campaign, it’s a commitment.” says John.

So can this be considered a social media success story? One that might rival that maternal pain reliever or pizza purveyor dust up? Without having an associated video it’s probably not as sexy, but anything that enables the conversation between brand and customer, as this clearly has, must be considered a success. John adds, “We’ve been able to meet our customers at the crossroads of need and time…Being there when and where they need us.”  I’d say that qualifies…

Social Media Success: How About a Little Twelp? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

I have been using a Windows Mobile phone for the past 18 months and have been looking for a way to sync my data wirelessly for some time. A while back I installed the beta of Microsoft’s MyPhone service but never got it working correctly. Not sure if it was something I was doing wrong but such services should just work without a lot of user intervention and MyPhone never got there despite repeated effort in it’s beta form (it sort of worked for me once launched; read on for details).

Last week Best Buy launched their mIQ service which I noticed supported Windows Mobile so I signed up and a couple days ago was sent my account invitation. After a somewhat complex setup process that involved both the handset and computer browser, I was ready to sync. And after quite a while it seemed to be about the same as MyPhone; not really working. So I rebooted my phone, started again and this time let it sync overnight in it’s charging stand. The next morning when I checked the phone had fully synced and after a logout and login all my photos, contacts, calendar entries, text messages and other data was backed up in the mIQ service online, as advertised. My one suggestion is that the status screens on the phone be a bit more clear that something is happening since I think the sync would have worked the first time without my reboot (just a more animated status bar would work here).

Both mIQ and MyPhone are linked to popular social sites. MyPhone supports Windows Live, Facebook, MySpace and Flickr while mIQ links to Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook and Flickr. On the phone the mIQ service lets you update status on these services from their client, a nice touch. mIQ integrates all the communications for each contact in it’s web app so you can see all the text messages and phone calls linked to each contact. It also lets you send SMS messages from the web and easily make Skype calls to your contacts if you have a Skype out account on your computer. mIQ easily allows you to share photos and videos from the web app and seems to be automatically set to push these as they are taken from your phone by default. mIQ also has helpful stats on your phone memory usage that cleverly links to memory cards available at Best Buy making it easy to buy what you need for your phone. Overall, mIQ is very complete, stable and useful for a first release service. Along with Windows Mobile, mIQ also currently supports Blackberry and Symbian (mostly Nokia) smartphones.

MyPhone is a basic backup service with one killer feature in it’s freemium mode. Like mIQ, MyPhone backs up contacts, calendar, text messages, call history, videos, music and tasks but adds the Apple MobileMe-like ability to find your lost phone. For an additional fee, MyPhone will allow you to ring your lost phone remotely (presumably to find it in the cushions or antagonize whoever has it), lock or remotely erase it. This feature alone will be enough to sway many people to use MyPhone but in my testing I found issues that outweighed this advantage over mIQ. The first annoyance was all the photos in my web browser cache were synced and then for no apparent reason replicated back to the internal memory of the phone. Not only did this take a long time but it completely filled the internal memory of the phone causing all sorts of problems. The next issue I had with MyPhone was that contacts, tasks and calendar entries are not backed up if they are linked to Exchange servers. Since I use Exchange sync with my Google account, MyPhone did not back up any of this information. mIQ, on the other hand, had no problems backing up all this data. Lastly, MyPhone’s free service limits you to 200MB while Best Buy’s mIQ gives you 1 GB of storage.

Overall, both MyPhone and mIQ will backup data from your Windows Mobile phone and make media more accessible and sharable. But for me Best Buy’s mIQ service was easier to use and more useful than Microsoft’s MyPhone. If you have one of the supported smartphones, I encourage you to check out mIQ here.

Best Buy’s mIQ Beats Microsoft’s MyPhone At It’s Own Game is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Vendors like Apple and Google recognize that the cloud is central to the mobile experience. Without the ability to access ones data, sync to the desktop, laptop netbook (and soon, a tablet?) with our mobile smartphones whether we’re stationary or mobile, our digital life is fraught with nothing but frustration.

The center of the action in communication and being social surrounds mobile devices as does an increasing amount of our consumption of music, video, news and information (and if you head in to a typical retail outlet selling CD’s or DVD’s, you’ll notice a continual downtrending of floor space devoted to merchandising them because, quite frankly, sales in these categories continue to drop in bricks and mortar stores). With smartphones sporting GPS and applications that allow providers (and the marketers who work for them) to have a HUGE amount of data about usage, consumption, social, demographic and location patterns, if you were Best Buy with only stores and a website with typically limited connection to customers, what would you do?

Get in the game, of course. To that end, Best Buy has announced mIQ, a free, cloud-based service with 1GB of storage that you can sign up and use with smartphones (except the iPhone…go figure). What is mIQ?

mIQ from Best Buy Mobile helps users sync their contacts, text messages, calendar events, calls, photos, videos, and internet favorites from their mobile phones to their private web-based mIQ account. Once in sync, the user can backup and interact with their information, share their experiences with friends and social sites, discover the top solutions available for their phones, and restore their content when moving from one phone to the next.

The four key areas they pitch are: Backup your phone; Access and interact on the web; Share your experiences; Restore your phone content; which are very Apple MobileMe-like (except for Apple’s nifty Find-my-iPhone feature).

Developed by Dashwire, a privately held company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, USA who says about themselves, “The company is backed by investors who built the wireless and technology industries at McCaw Cellular, Western Wireless, Voicestream, Nextel, China Unicom, and Microsoft; and by Best Buy Capital.”

No question this beta mIQ offering has been in development for some time and Best Buy management is planning for the continual shift away from people buying media and interacting by walking in to a store and, instead, to interact online via a smartphone or other mobile device. Having a cloud-based service is table stakes for a retailer like Best Buy to even get in the game…let alone win it.

Want to sign up and give it a whirl? You can make a request by doing so here and submitting your email.

mIQ: Best Buy’s Cloud-based Sync & Backup is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson. (Note: I apologize for the unfortunate ‘clicks’ heard in Lisa’s audio which were indeterminate)

Discussed During the Show Notes:

+ The music was provided by the Podsafe Music Network, the song is PJ style Blues by artist AjT, a 39 year old french geek and Apple lover.

+ Crunchpad and Mike Arrington on Charlie Rose

+ Twitter 101 and how Ashton Kutcher has come out about the fact that “Twitter Will Change Media”

+ Best Buy:

• Twelpforce: the Twitter account and a Techcrunch article
• The Twitter fight between Doug Beacham & Best Buy CMO, Barry Judge (and social media thought leader, Chris Brogan, has his own take on it here)
• Best Buy Social Media Director job that was crowdsourced and an update #2 on it here

+ The iPod as a multi-function device (can tie Touch to local app devs)

+  BlogWell on August 13th at General Mills (get Minnov8 discount code in this post)

+ Our guest, Lisa Foote, sent over these links for our show notes:

• Citation on “app stores not the future” (Financial Times report on MobileBeat, July 17)
• More on Nokia and QT
• Rhodes
• Android’s growth

+ Finally, as a special tribute to Phil Wilson’s curious and instant recognition that the bumper music for this week’s show was, in fact, very “Cialis commercial-like,” I offer up this Cialis spoof video starring the actor Cuba Gooding, Jr. (possibly NSFW) in honor of Mr. Wilson.

Minnov8 Gang #43: Tech Stuff & Mobile Trends is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.

Discussed during the show notes:

+ Crunchpad

+ Hootsuite and CoTweet

+ Ubuntu Linux and G OS

+ Parallels, VMWare Fusion and Sun’s VirtualBox

+ Best Buy’s Reward Zone

The music on this week’s show is in the public domain and the name of the track is The Railroad Stomp by Jolly Two.


Minnov8 Gang Podcast from Savage Depot is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.

Discussed during the show notes:

+ Social Media Breakfast-Minneapolis/St. Paul (SMBMSP) last week

+ Best Buy’s new Twitter initiative

+ MagentoCommerce

+ Upcoming WordPress meetup/unconference on Thursday, July 30th at 6:30pm

+ GDGT.com

+ Vendor Relationship Management

+ Posterous

Minnov8 Gang 41: What if George had an iPhone? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Google describes the Sandbox: “The Developer Sandbox is a new addition to Google I/O. Comprised of “pods” -- demo station areas grouped by product theme -- the Sandbox featured a wide range of developers who have built applications based on technologies and products featured at Google I/O. Representing large and small companies, individual developers, and a diverse group of apps, these developers were on hand at the Sandbox to demo their apps, answer questions, exchange ideas, and meet attendees in person. We interviewed many of the Sandbox developers on the ground at Google I/O to pick their brains on their applications, challenges, and best practices.”

View and listen to Ben and Curtis’ descriptions:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7MlEJC9ZbA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyIh9ncmiN0

Best Buy at Google I/O is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rTzIAWI4Ms

Best Buy CMO on the Cluetrain is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Best Buy clearly recognizes that these digital natives are voracious users and purchasers of the technology they sell, but they also seem to truly understand that there is an entire ecosystem of these digital natives who have become web developers. These folks are adept and using new faster and more efficient tools (e.g., Ruby on Rails), a “web stack” (i.e., Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP or LAMP) — along with leveraging the accelerating number of exposed application programming interfaces (API’s) available digital data that’s exposed — and are building and delivering a dizzying array of new web applications, mashups and remixes.

Curiously, the latter term “remix” is usually used in the context of someone taking an original song and mixing in other elements to create a new one, but in my opinion Best Buy has extended that term to include what they’re offering, an open API called “Best Buy Remix.” This API opens up Best Buy’s product catalog, featuring full product information including pricing, availability, specifications, descriptions and images for nearly a million current and historical products and thinking of using all of this to create a ‘remix’ vs. a ‘mashup’ seems to me to be positioning it as being used for an elegant and lyrical web application vs. what many people think of when the term mashup is used: connecting a database to a Google Map and delivering something of interesting but inherently low value. 

Yesterday, April 24th, Best Buy announced their Remix Challenge:

Think you can build a better Best Buy? We do, and we’re launching the Remix Challenge to prove it!

TopCoder and Best Buy are proud to announce this exciting new series of contests. Over the coming months, we’ll be building applications in a variety of categories, using the Remix open API for BestBuy.com’s product catalog to help find solutions to specific challenges.

Each challenge will begin with an Idea Generation contest, where you will be presented with a problem or issue pertaining to customer experience in a particular category. How would you help a customer through the many decisions they need to make when purchasing a flat panel television? How would you better present the wide array of accessories that are so important when buying a laptop PC or mp3 player? How would you improve the shopping experience for Best Buy’s wide selection of movie & video game titles, or build awareness about Best Buy Rewards Points , or sell more ink & toner for printers?

We’ll be looking for your ideas for the perfect small application to address these challenges in the form of a web app for BestBuy.com, or a widget, a Facebook or mobile app, or whatever else you can come up with.

These guys smartly chose TopCoder to run this challenge since they are, “…the world’s largest competitive software development community with 191,587 developers representing over 200 countries” and have a critical mass of the global developer community. TopCoder will also run this Remix Challenge well and be viewed as a trusted, independent third party making it something developers will undoubtedly flock to and participate in.

This is brilliant on so many levels and really taps in to the best parts of innovating with the collective wisdom of an ecosystem. From creating an incentive to get great ideas for improving their business, to finding amazing and top talent who might work with Best Buy going forward, to creating and developing ways of using all of this data in innovative and creative ways which, most likely, the internal Best Buy folks could never have thought up by themselves.

Best Buy Challenges You to Remix is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

What a gorgeous spring week it was in Minnesota last week: clear, sunny, even sneaking into the ’70s.   The only “clouds” in sight were the proponents and would-be adopters of the latest, new hotness in enterprise computing.  Two events, on Wednesday and Saturday, attracted a wide array of these IT professionals, some 350 all told, who were hungry to learn more about… well, “the orange that’s the new pink,” as Larry Ellison would say. It was beyond impressive that so many people would give up being outdoors last week after the winter we’ve had in these parts!  Goes to show how deep our IT roots run in this state. Geeks are everywhere here and, doggone it, we’re proud of it!  We still have many old-school enterprise IT folks who remember the days of time-sharing on mainframes, and way more than our per-capita share of Fortune 500 headquarters in this state, all with huge (well, getting leaner) IT departments. But, along with all that, Minnesota has a seemingly endless supply of boot-strapped Internet and software startup developers — folks that are finding they love what cloud computing is doing for them.

So, it was an eclectic bunch that gathered at these two Minnesota cloud events, and I was there to take it all in….

The first was a panel at the MN High-Tech Association’s annual spring conference on Wednesday at the Minneapolis Convention Center. The conference drew some 850 attendees overall. The cloud panel, one of several breakout sessions, was billed as “Moving Into the Cloud – Drivers, Benefits, Reality.”  I had the pleasure of moderating this one, which featured the following panelists:

- George Reese, CTO and founder of enStratus, a developer of enterprise-grade tools for security and reliability in cloud infrastructures, and author a new book from O’Reilly, “Cloud Application Architectures.”
- Matt Googins, a solution architect at Carlson Marketing Worldwide who has responsibility for a portfolio of IT services and programs for several of the firms large, Fortune 500 clients
- Robert Metcalf, founder and CEO of Flyspy.com, a third-generation travel search engine that’s been in development for seven years. The service displays all your travel options in the next 60 days in a visual format and will be available in beta in the next month or two.

So, just who was in the crowded, standing-room-only audience of more than 200 in this breakout session? I was shocked when I asked for a show of hands and saw upwards of a third say they were with firms of 1000 or more employees. A similar number identified themselves as senior or C-level execs. About 15% were developers or other technologists.

Big Topic to Cover in 45 Minutes
I led the panel discussion around the normal topics: is cloud computing over-hyped (we opened with the Larry Ellison rant — quite timely, as it turned out), then jumped into what are the definitions, the panelists’ experience with app development and deployment, and the platform-as-a-service approach versus infrastructure-as-a-service. The panelists provided an overview of the industry-leading Amazon Web Services offerings. But we moved quickly into a discussion of the advantages and business benefits of cloud computing, which was what most were there to hear — focusing of course on the economic benefit of greatly reduced cap ex and the pay-as-you-go model.  A statement by Reese that the cloud computing juggernaut is coming more from the CFO’s office than the CIO’s may not have been what many in the audience wanted to hear.  Metcalf added later that we don’t have a Chief Water Office or Chief Electricity Officer, and that many of the duties of the CIO are bound to change in coming years. Googins, after several successful evaluations of cloud infrastructure for his large enterprise clients’ apps, said he was within days of presenting to his CIO his recommendations for significant transformation to cloud infrastructure, and was confident that would be approved. He cited one successful application, for Monsanto, that he’s had in the Amazon cloud for nine months at 100% uptime.

But it was Rob Metcalf who may have wowed the audience the most with his success story, calling himself “the poster boy for cloud computing,” and admitting it may be responsible for nothing less than saving his fledgling startup.  Flyspy is a highly complex app that processes more data in 12 hours than Orbitz does in all it queries in a month, so Metcalf knew it would require massive infrastructure. But cloud computing allowed him to lop-off no less than $150,00 from his cap ex budget, which went a long way toward helping him get funding.  He now has just minimal monthly costs to run his service. After about seven months of experience in the Amazon cloud, Metcalf was now touting what the new infrastructure model has meant for his startup. He spoke in glowing terms about his experience with Amazon’s EC2 service, and also the advantages of its Simple Queue Service (SQS) for his particular huge compute needs. He also is a big fan of management and monitoring tools for the cloud,  such as those from Reese’s firm, enStratus. Googins also will be using those tools in a production environment he said he’d be rolling out in about a week.

Audience questions focused on pricing transparency, speed of deployment, the big issue of dealing with culture of the corporate IT department in moving to the cloud, and the status of legal language in contracts used in the new model. On that latter question, Flyspy’s Metcalf said his firm spent months modifying the contracts his data providers normally use for firms that have physical data centers. He said whole sections had to be cut out, many pages, and lawyers don’t do that easily (whereas “they’ll add stuff all day long”).  He said it was a huge hassle for his firm, and darn-near sunk it. But all is now well.

Serious Geeks Ignore Sunny MN Saturday, Talk Cloud Inside
You could tell those who gathered at CloudCampMSP on April 18 at the U of MN’s computer science building were serious. It was the Twin Cities’ first real spring Saturday, and there were tons of things we all could’ve been doing outside.  Being a free event, the less-dedicated of course didn’t show.  But that was a good thing, because the more than 100 who did pretty much filled the schmoozing space and the main room, anyway, and there was a ton of energy in that building.  We first heard lightning talks from local firm Visi.com, then Aserver, enStratus (also local), Microsoft (a local .Net architect) , Slicehost/Rackspace, and Rightscale — so, three of  those came to town just for this event.  Following was a lightning panel featuring three of the above, along with myself and a developer of some new cloud apps for Best Buy (Curtis Thompson), a proponent of PaaS (Google App Engine).  Audience participation was lively, prompting discussions of PaaS vs. IaaS, how businesses have to do more with less today, private vs. public clouds, bandwidth (esp in rural areas), nonprofits’ use of the cloud, and more.  Breakout sessions addressed a number of hot topics (see photo). I attended one on cloud mobility (led by Uri Budnik of Rightscale, all the way from LA), and another on security/reliability/regulation/compliance, led by Jim Hanlon, chief architect at Digital River (DRIV). I was impressed by the amount of intelligence in the room, in both sessions. Highly experienced, senior architects, some from huge firms — along with some pretty damn smart young guys, too, including startup founders (like Lukas Dickie of Gimigo).  Cool mix of cultures! 

In the mobility session, we talked about how we’re starting to hear of the promise of easily moving apps from one cloud to another (or data center to cloud), though Rightscale’s approach, I learned, is about moving servers from one to another; what they do is keep the server config consistent.  Later, in the security/compliance session, we talked about how compliance issues don’t change with the cloud; we still have the hard questions to ask. One big difference now: where is the server physically located?  And what about legal issues of, say, someone subpoenaing all the server records of a cloud provider when it has nothing to do with your company? (Witness the recent FBI example.)  We certainly don’t have all the answers. As Digital River’s Hanlon said, “This regulatory/compliance stuff is really hard, and that’s why companies want to outsource it” — citing it as a major reason they’re in business.

[For a further rundown on CloudCampMSP, go to search.twitter.com and enter "cloudcampmsp" or "ccmsp" -- both hashtags were used variously during the day, along with "cloudcomputingmsp" till I realized my mistake..   The event was one of the top trending topics on Twitter this sunny day in April, and a big success by all accounts. A ton more conversation transpired at a NE Minneapolis watering hole during the reception following...but, naturally, there weren't many tweets from there. And I know you'll thank me for not doing any of my podcast audio interviews while we were all drinking.]

It Was Cloud Week in Minneapolis, and All the Cool Kids (and Old Guys!) Were There is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Minneapolis Phizzpop Winners & Best Buy Remix at SXSW is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Today’s hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson. (Photo credit: Lee Odden (TopRankBlog; Flickr).

Joining us on the podcast is a brand new Minnov8 contributor and participant, Gary Koelling, who is Senior Manager, Social Technology at Best Buy Inc. After interactions with Graeme Thickins — who isn’t bashful about promoting Minnov8 — Gary decided he’d like to create for Minnov8 and completed the form (hint: you could too!).

Gary is the founder of BlueShirtNation.com, Giftag.com and leads several social technology projects within Best Buy. He describes himself as a tinkerer, gadfly (and an aspiring iconoclast), reader, tryer (someone who tries), teacher and listener (with a fairly tuned bullshit meter). Due to the success of the efforts he’s involved in, and the high profile of our hometown consumer electronics retailing giant, Gary has been able to talk to lots of people and companies around the country about social media and social technology.

Our favorite quote about his speaking around the country from his LinkedIn profile? “I don’t know if it’s helping, but I enjoy it.” We sure think so since he’s in-the-game, taking risks, experimenting and driving towards high value outcomes for his employer.

LINKS
Here are links to sites, products or other resources discussed during the podcast:

• Good economic news for MN tech firms in Q4 2008: MTS revs up 9%, EPS up 21% (view MTS “Test Suite“) and NVE up 24%, EPS up 44% (view NVE “Fun Facts” page)
• Mashable article on 40 Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them (Scroll down to the “Retail” section)
• Fortune Top 100 Best Places to Work: Mayo (24th) and General Mills (39th) as great places to work (via MNHeadhunter)
• Forbes listing America’s Top Most Wired Cities: Minneapolis is #7 on the list
• The (mostly mythological) “Osborne Effect” but is there some reality to it in an online world?
• Macintosh image editors increasingly used by Tim Elliott: Acorn and Pixelmator
• Gary headed to Etail in Phoenix and a Computerworld event (both he and his cohort and colleague, Steve Bendt)
• EVENTS: Social Media Breakfast 1/30/09; Minnedemo (RSVP if you want to get in!) 2/6/09; Unsummit 3/7/09.

Minnov8 Gang Podcast – Episode 22 is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=whzN-7uCiZw

(found via @graemethickins and @garykoelling)

Open for Business: Best Buy’s Social Strategy is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Ed is a web strategist working within the real estate industry to help companies and agents make better use of the web to build their businesses. Outside of that, Ed’s an avid blogger on subjects ranging from Technology, to Jucy Lucy Burgers, to local community issues. He also takes on some entrepreneurial projects from time to time like his new 3rdPartyFeedback and LunchTalks.

One local news story Ed is passionate about is the plan for legislation to make yellow pages distributors provide easier opt-out systems.

Other items discussed include:

• Couple of other of Ed’s sites: TheDeets and HayStackInANeedle
• Go2Web20.net
• 3rdPartyFeedback example from Garrick Van Buren’s Cullect initiative and his post about the results
• Julie Gilbert, Best Buy SVP and founder of the Women’s Leadership Forum (WoLF) who took a buyout and is leaving to setup similar programs for other companies
• Gang member Phil Wilson’s favorite site (PerezHilton) and how pumped he was to spend all day Saturday at the Mall of America since his idol Perez was in town.

Minnov8 Gang Podcast – Episode 20 is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.