Minnesota faces a crisis of competitiveness in attracting high-tech industries, and needs a comprehensive science and technology initiative to remedy the problem. A 16 member committee of experts from the public, academic and private sectors have been assembled to assess the challenge and make recommendations to the legislature, and on February 16th, Co-Chairman Dan Mallin (@danmallin, partner in Magnet360 and co-founder of the Minnesota Cup) presented the findings of the committee to the state legislature.

The full report is available on the DEED (Department of Employment and Economic Development) website here. Watch these videos in two parts and listen to the end for the recommendations the committee makes around incentives for investors to accelerate funding for startups and growth of companies in Minnesota:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxQ_-dLcKFg

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DDzQJXW6Kw

Dan Mallin Presents MN Science & Tech Committee Findings is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

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

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

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

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

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

Let the discussion…and action continue!

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

Seriously, this company has a uniquely strong value proposition that has already put them on the map in Eau Claire and in several markets where organizations have adopted TSTMedia’s offerings for mission-critical sports websites.

Founded in 2004, TSTMedia started off as a web development shop but focused their efforts around the sports passions of college buddies and co-founders Justin Kaufenberg (CEO) and Carson Kipfer (COO). Quickly they identified that the sports niche was woefully underserved and filled with group and collaboration needs not being addressed in the marketplace.

They quickly began moving forward with Team Sport Technologies, building out sports-specific web applications. The applications enabled amateur sports organizations to efficiently manage a website with little or no previous technical knowledge. TST Media, under the Team Sport Technologies brand, then released a complete roster of sports specific products for hockey, soccer, basketball, lacrosse, baseball, softball, football, volleyball, swimming and others.

The websites they built and delivered for sports clients included a combination of online tools (online registration, interactive multi-team calendars, highly sophisticated statistic engines, etc.) that made publishing website content, sharing information and communicating with members extremely easy.

In 2009, they combined their Ruby on Rails experience, knowledge of the sports domain, and the engine they’d already created to make it brain-dead-simple for non-technical users to deliver a great team or organization website, and consolidated their various organization products and features into a single platform called NGIN.  

Justin graciously carved out time on two different occasions to talk with me about their NGIN platform, the market spaces they’re addressing, the venture capital they just raised, and he even walked me through the backend administration interface for an hour, showing me how easy it is to setup and run an NGIN created site.

To say I was impressed is a gross understatement and I’m a guy not easily enthused by tools like this one, especially after spending four years of my life at the content management systems (CMS) company Vignette, become a power user of Drupal, Joomla and WordPress, and been someone who has examined nearly every CMS commercial and open source package on the planet. Besides that, in my spare time I’ve analyzed far too many hosted web applications that purport to be perfectly positioned for affinity groups, teams or organizations…but usually they are square-pegs-in-a-round-hole requiring huge workarounds to be usable.

What impressed me? There are so many pieces and parts to the system that blew me away, but here are just a handful:

• Very fast setup. All the baseline required elements are in place ready to be added, subtracted or modified by the user
• Easy site manipulation with features such as inline editing of content and an innovative “admin/user ‘switch’” which shows incredible attention to detail and usability
• Fluid layout and a page hierarchy feature that makes it simple to make wholesale structure changes to the website
• Superb calendaring functions
• Social media aspects
• Member management, the lifeblood of these sports organizations, was easy to use and manage
• Volunteer management, another key need since harnessing the interest, and willingness to participate, by parents and family members in the sports organization is an imperative
• Lots of Ajaxy goodness and a forthcoming API.

One aspect that intrigued me was the positioning of NGIN. As Justin and I talked, it became increasingly clear to me how TST is sitting on a major opportunity to verticalize their solution (which is obviously what they’re doing and likely the basis for VC investment). He and I kicked around ideas of the kinds of organizations that require the capabilities–modified somewhat of course–that they’ve already built for sports organizations and we talked about a half dozen, it’s that obvious an opportunity.

Their engine (NGIN) solution goes beyond what others deliver that’s for sure, but their challenge is moving beyond the sports-oriented domain expertise they own, knowledge that would need to be translated to other market segments. Can they do it?

I’d say “yes” judging by how they’ve already executed and that they’ve created and shipped a highly robust engine. The one last thing to mention was that I was impressed by how much Justin and team “get it.” Every overt and covert query I made while we talked on those two separate occasions (e.g., What about sharing calendars and microformats? Will you have an API? What about leveraging web services and widgets?) were answered with aplomb, honesty and with enough information that I learned they’re on top of their game. I’m sure that we’ve seen just the tip of the iceberg with NGIN and we’ll hear a lot about TSTMedia going forward.

Take a peek at this short video as it will give you a glimpse into the inner workings of NGIN and then check out their site and NGIN:

[flv width="550" height="350"]http://assets.ngin.com/attachments/document/0006/2658/sportngin_intro.flv[/flv]

It’s the NGIN that will make TST Media go is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Wired for 2020 is the Mentoring Partnership of Minnesota’s year long engagement campaign to get more mentors involved with youth in the state of Minnesota. Their mission is to interest caring adults in becoming mentors to youth. Caring adults who are willing to help young people spark their future career interests and expand their possibilities.

Sponsors included names such as General Electric, Best Buy, Target, Federated Insurance, MN Dept of Education, Minnesota Interactive Media Association, Qwest, Science Museum of Minnesota, 3M, Thomson Reuters and many more.

With a daughter in college and a son in high school, you bet I care deeply about the future of education and work, the world they’ll inherit from us, and the value we can add to kids if we can help them locate their own, personal spark within and help them to see possibilites and opportunities that match their dreams.

In a world where high paying, yet low value jobs can be done elsewhere at a fraction of the cost of labor onshore, the challenge is in coaching our youth on how they can each strive and focus on higher value work and that they can, in fact, invent the future. It won’t be easy as global competition continues to grow. 

When it came out, I immediately devoured Thomas Friedman’s book “The World is Flat.” There was one concept that leapt off the pages at me: that even PhD-level, linear and serial processes could (and are) being outsourced because they are defined and understood. I thought about the profundity of that reality and realized that once a process is identified and mapped out — regardless of how sophisticated — it can be handed off to people elsewhere in the world who are willing to do it less expensively.

So do we want to focus our youth as innovators of tomorrow — and mentor them as such — to be more efficient linear, serial thinkers and laborers? I don’t think so and neither do others.

A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age by Daniel Pink accelerated my thinking along these lines about creativity and innovation with his premise: “The era of “left brain” dominance, and the Information Age that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which “right brain” qualities — inventiveness, empathy, meaning — predominate.” In this book Pink describes a new era beginning to take shape in the global economy. This new economy calls for skills and talents that, historically, have been largely discounted in the workplace – creativity, empathy, intuition, and the ability to link seemingly unrelated objects and events into something new and different.

Seeing in parallel, making associations (i.e., connecting the dots), is a skill our kids must have for the future. While they will certainly need to understand how to link seemingly unrelated objects and events, that’s pretty useless if they lack the skills to communicate the idea, the innovation or the vision they have for an outcome. Our youth will need to understand how to grab all the relevant pieces coming at them in parallel, package them up and communicate them to people whom they may never meet in person but rather only virtually through some online venue.

Talk to anyone spending any time on the internet — looking at news, information, Twitter, or just trying to keep up with their friends in Facebook — and you’ll hear things like “river of news” or “I’m drowning in a tsunami of digital stuff” or “everything is getting a lot more complex” as we struggle to keep up with the flow of data that comes with online participation. Dealing with all of this in parallel, and drawing associative inferences from it or finding nuggets of gold within it, is already a skill most need but few possess.

Though my session was entitled, “Creating Online Content: Why You Need a Blog,” it really wasn’t solely about either content creation or blogging. Instead, the themes that ran through it was the imperative that mentors get their heads around the concept of dealing with the online world in parallel, engaging in social participation, why all of it is so potentially empowering for them and a must, and especially how we all are experiencing online media, news and information at different times of the day or night (vs. the old “watercooler talk” from pre-internet days when we walked in to work the next morning after seeing some live show broadcast, and we commiserated with our colleagues about that shared experience).

My overall point was that the only real way to understand this new realm of streams of information and social connection online and to have consistent and ongoing shared experiences today — especially between a mentor and mentee — would be if each was participating online within a social network, uploading photos to Flickr or videos to YouTube (or their equivalents), and sharing experiences while having them at different times of the day or night or even within a week or two.

The skills that both the mentor and mentee learn by participating online by creating and delivering their own content are invaluable (and there is no question that the mentee may become the technology mentor!). I can’t tell you how often I sit with 40+ people who want to know “the process of how to Twitter” or “what’s the workflow in publishing to a blog” or “if I do this participation thing, what’s my return?” as if they were still living in a linear, serial world where Step 1 leads to Step 10. Most savvy online participants are involved with the social web and online pursuits in a highly parallel way, connecting dots on the fly and being very fluid with their creation and delivery and connections to other people. Which is precisely the sort of behaviors that come naturally to youth today and will be a skill set necessary as a worker going forward.

What struck me about Wired for 2020 was how many of the people associated with the event, the organizers, volunteers, speakers and workshop creators (i.e., TEL.A.VISION and see this post on the Wiredfor2020 blog) down to those responsible for the Interactive Lab in which I participated (Mark Kurtz VP of New Media, Gage Marketing Group and someone with more energy than a bagful of bobcats, Wendy Meadley, from WM Consulting LLC), completely understood that there is a shift going on in the world and that they are completely geared toward ensuring our youth are ready to confront the challenges and opportunities facing them in a connected world with ideas and information moving around it at the speed of electrons.

Wired for 2020: Mentoring Our Youth is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

They come to talk shop, learn, share tips, listen to presentations on the latest tech developments and tools, share war stories, listen to startup pitches, and (of course) take notes, blog, and Twitter about all the proceedings on the laptops and smart phones they never seem to have far from their sides.

The nice thing is, especially for the many self-employed among them, is that it’s all free — breakfast, lunch, a closing reception, even a free event t-shirt, and, best of all, more wi-fi bandwidth they they can possibly consume in one day — all courtesy of a bevy of sponsors that covet the attention of this highly influential and hard-to-reach group. The sponsors for this year’s event include VC firm Split Rock Partners, ipHouse, Swarmcast, SierraBravo, FindLaw, and the U of M’s Software Engineering Center (which is a special venue sponsor).

The original organizers of Minnebar — and its companion events called Minnedemo, which are evening gatherings that happen the other three quarters of the year — include three Twin Cities developer/entrepreneurs by the names of Dan Grigsby, Ben Edwards, and Luke Francl. (Edwards and Francl planned the ’08 edition of Minnebar.) The April ’07 event, held in St. Paul, had the distinction of being the largest Barcamp ever held in the U.S. to that date.

Something For Everybody

Sessions at this year’s events — all suggested by and conducted by the attendees themselves, many of them forming into panels, include such topics as these:

• The 7 Deadly Sins of Startup Marketing

• Scaling High-Traffic Web Sites

• Blogging for Benjamins: How To Turn Your Topical Blog Into Cash

• Communication For Geeks: How to Influence Your Boss, Your Customers, and Your Team

• From Programming to Profit: Skills To Pay The Bills

• Merb 1.0: Ruby on Rails that Scales

• The Mathematical Foundations of Music

• Enterprise Information Mashups: Web 2.0 + SOA + Data Visualization

• Distributed Teamwork: Managing Virtual Development Teams

• And much more…

A Soapbox for Pitching New Ideas

Minnebar even has a “Lightning Talks” session that gives anyone the opportunity to sign up to give a five-minute demo or presentation, whether it be a new technical idea or business concept, or perhaps you’re an existing startup that wants to update the attendees on your latest progress or product introductions. Anyone who wants to sign up for a Lightning Talk pitch may simply to go to the event wiki site, specifically to the Minnebar Sessions page, and look for the email link to apply. Or, to sign up for a full session (which can be 15-30 minutes or more), have your session title and description ready, then hit Edit Page and enter that information. Just be aware that time is running short, as the organizers will need to cut things off soon to publish the full schedule for Saturday’s event.

To simply sign up to attend (pre-registration is not necessary, but certainly recommended), just go to that same Minnebar wiki page, click on Edit Page at the top, and enter your name and company name or link at the bottom.

I’ll be at the event, along with the entire Minnov8 team of contributors, reporting on all the action. Watch our blogs or Twitter pages (as identified in the bios in the “About Minnov8″ tab at the top), if you can’t make it. For example, I’ll be posting at www.twitter.com/graemethickins throughout the day. But nothing beats being there in person! This is one fun, high-energy event, and really a must-attend if you’re involved in any way in Minnesota’s Internet or software industry. So, we hope to see you there!

UPDATE (5/5/08):  Forgot to mention!  Minnebar’s organizers have also mentioned there may be a “pre-event mixer” either this Thursday or Friday.  Keep watching the Minnebar site for details on where and when…

‘Minnebar’ Becoming Top Event for State’s Internet/Software Developers and Entrepreneurs is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.