Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson
Music: “Johnnys Deathray Boogie” by Johnny Nicholas from the podsafe Music Alley

Guest Segment: We were pleased to have on the always delightful and incredibly mobile knowledgeable Lisa Foote, CEO and Co-Founder of MixMobi (Twitter)

Discussed during the show:

• Best Buy’s Brian Dunn out: Best Buy: Dunn Is Done; Is The Retailer Doomed, Too? and Why Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn Had To Quit and Best Buy: CEO Brian Dunn resigns over ‘personal conduct’ issue and Cringley’s article on why Best Buy is Doomed
• Is Instagram Really Worth $1B? Really? Facebook and Instagram: Made for Each Other and Insta-rich: How Instagram became a $1-billion company in 18 months and Instagram and Facebook: the next tech bubble?
• Does Windows Phone Have Any Chance Of Market Traction? Nokia, AT&T launch the Lumia 900 amid few lines, strong buzz and Windows Phone will only account for 2% of app downloads in 2012, firm says
• 11 Startups That Could Get Bought For $1 Billion Tomorrow
• Apple’s New WYSIWYG App Development Tool for iOS? Will Apple’s patent granted Thursday enable app development for the masses? 
• Minnebar 2012 sessions
• Jason Calcanis post about Apple as trillion dollar company due to payments
• Tim Elliott’s team (Full Court WordPress) non-profit site built during the Overnight Website Challenge: New site; Old site

Upcoming Events:

• April (various dates): dSchool at CoCo 
• April 16-17: MinneWebCon at the U of MN
• April 21st: SaaS Class: Software-as-a-Service Smarts (SaaS Camp 2012) at CoCo Mpls
• April 25th: MSP WordPress User Group Meeting at 7pm, The Nerdery
• April 25th: MHTA Spring Conference, Minneapolis Convention Center
• May 21st: Predictive Analytics Forum, Medtronic’s Mounds View Campus
• June 5-8: eyeo Festival, Walker Art Center
• Weekly: TechMasters is a new Toastmasters chapter in Twin Cities for tech professionals

Press to Play Podcast:	Direct Link to Podcast MP3

Minnov8 Gang 164 – One BILLION dollars!?! is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

It just keeps getting bigger and bigger — and better!  A pre-party the night before was a new, fun twist this year, held at Vic’s, across the river from Downtown Minneapolis.  On Saturday, some 60 breakout sessions provided a wide array of learning and sharing experiences, along with awesome hallway discussions that were in full swing all day long — from 8:00 am all the way through the closing reception well after 6:00 pm.

Kudos to organizers Ben Edwards, Luke Francl, and Adrienne Peirce of Minnestar.org, and their many volunteers who work so hard to make this event successful. And thanks to all the great sponsors: Code42 Software, Fredrikson & Byron, 8th Bridge, W3i, ipHouse, August Ash, Bloom Health, Barcamp Tour, Split Rock Partners, ChowGirls, and Ech03.

It seems I say this every year, but it’s true (I’ve attended the last six annual events in their entirety):  the level of energy and enthusiasm about Minnesota Tech was more than I’ve ever experienced!  You can just sense the growth and excitement in our tech community. And, if you’re like me, you keep meeting so many more new and amazing people — technology and business professionals who are contributing to great new startups here in Minnesota, as well as to the broader technology industry in our state.  It was a pleasure to behold.  I had so many excellent conversations, trust me — there isn’t enough room in this blog post to tell you about them all <haha>.

But I can show you pics I shot Friday night and all day Saturday, which I posted on Instagram. Here’s a selection of those pics that I put into a Minnebar 2012 Flickr set.

Minnebar 2012: Tech Geek-Out Extraordinaire! is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Marty Wetherall

Social media ‘chatter’ seems to be growing exponentially and the services capitalizing upon it are being launched, or accelerated, by the week. Marty Wetherall, Director of Innovation at Fallon and co-founder of Fanchatter, joins us to talk about what’s happening with his startup and about the growth of social chatter overall.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson
Music: Mario Tomic & the song “Blue Note” from the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Project Skyway’s new class of entrepreneurs
• Google: I’m Being Followed and Keeping Google From Watching Your Searches
• Mobile World Congress
• Introducing Windows 8 Consumer Preview 
• Facebook introduces Premium: A marketer’s dream, a user’s nightmare?
• iPad: New, faster Apple iPad expected next week and Apple expected to unveil 16GB and 32GB iPad 3 as well as 8GB iPad 2 and Apple likely to begin production of 7.85-inch iPads in 3Q12 and Channels as apps? How Apple could reinvent television
• Fanchatter has ‘chat’ at the Lady Gaga & Oprah event at Harvard 
• Bruce Springsteen Online Listening Party
• Startup Bus to SXSW and CNN on Tech Trends at SXSW
• MN Council of Non-Profits Tech & Comm event (PDF) 

Upcoming Events:

• March 16-17: MobileMarchTC; Mobile March (Mobile 3D); NEW! The Agenda
• March 24-25: Overnight Website Challenge by The Nerdery
• April 7th: MinneBar, Best Buy headquarters
• April 16-17: MinneWebCon at the U of MN
• June 5-8: eyeo Festival, Walker Art Center

Press to Play Podcast:	Direct Link to Podcast MP3

Minnov8 Gang 159 – Social Chatter is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: LA Big Daddy is the artist & the song is “Him Number 100” via the podsafe Music Alley.

Note: The Minnov8 Gang would like to express our appreciation for the incredible work of Ben Edwards and Luke Francl of minne* for setting up the country’s largest barcamp, MinneBar, and for their tireless efforts on behalf of the startup community. Additional thanks go to the sponsors of this great event without whom it wouldn’t have happened.

One person that deserves significant praise for his nurturing of the startup community in Minnesota—and who has been willing to make available the best possible venue one could hope for with an event like MinneBar or others held at Best Buy’s headquarters—is Best Buy CTO, Robert Stephens.

Minnov8 Gang 122 – Crashing is Not an Option is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Minnov8 Gang 120 – Is the Cloud our Idol? 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.

This week’s show comes to you from Minnebar 2010 held at the headquarters of Best Buy. We talk about Thursday’s MOJO MN event, Friday’s Social Media Breakfast and Saturday’s Minnebar. Huge turnout (no final count but at least 500 were there) and big thanks to Best Buy’s Geek Squad Chief Inspector, Robert Stephens, who made this such a smashing success and, of course, to the herculean efforts of event visionaries and organizers Ben Edwards and Luke Francl.

Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Phil Wilson, and our guest Erik Blakkestad.

Minnov8 Gang 80: Minne-this, Minne-that is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

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

Links discussed during the show:

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

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

MinneSpark is an initiative from the team that brings you MinneDemo and MinneBar

What could you do with $1,000 for your best idea? Could you turn it into a scalable business? Let’s find out!

MinneSpark will award 1 to n grants of $1,000 to Minnesota-based teams who demonstrate to their trustees the ability to take that money and turn it into something real. This is about doing more with less, and building a profitable business from day one.

Winners will get some help along the way in the form of mentoring from the trustees and services from sponsors.

Applications are due by April 30, 2010. Winner(s) will be announced at MinneBar on May 22, 2010. Find the FAQ, application and more here.

MinneSpark Has $1,000 (Potentially) For You 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 Endlouz and the tune is, “Bad Advice” (Disclaimer: This was NOT chosen as an indictment on the commentary by the Gang!)

Discussed during the show:

+ Clove (by Spice Apps)
+ Analyst Noise on the Apple Tablet
+ IDC predictions for 2010
+ Minnebar
+ Mary Meeker’s Internet presentation at Web 2.0 Summit (video)
+ Jolicloud, Google Chrome OS
+ Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis/St. Paul (SMBMSP)
+ Don Ball and his new collaboration workspace concept (announcement; pictures; pricing)
+ Overnight Website Challenge (please note the AWESOME faux dot matrix printer feed on the page…nice job nerds!)
+ Chuck Olsen (@Chuckumentary) in Copenhagen and here is TheUptake
+ 91st PGA Tournament at Hazeltine in Chaska and hundreds of Tiger Woods jokes.

Minnov8 Gang 60: Staying Ahead of the Storm in 2010 is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Minnov8 Gang 59: Live from Minnebar 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.

One favorite meme about our current situation discussed is, “the world is undergoing an economic reboot”. In a nutshell, here’s our choice: Focus on the bad news, continued negative reports on poor economic indicators, and sit and do nothing (or continue on with business-as-usual as if nothing has happened). Or…look at this as an opportunity to grab market share, reinvent your business, or accelerate your startup.

Today’s hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
 

ANNOUNCEMENTS
+ MinneDemo will be live-streamed over uStream…and Minnov8 will be conducting video interviews there and we’ll then be delivering both the recorded live stream and our interviews here at Minnov8 as quickly as we can post-production done and them posted.

LINKS
+ That user generated YouTube Trader Joe’s ad mentioned by Tim Elliott is here

+ The group Phil is involved with as their new Director, The Association for Downloadable Media, whose mission surrounds providing standards for advertising and audience measurement for episodic and downloadable media. If you’re an individual podcaster, media company, publisher, syndication company, distributor offering downloadable media, advertising agency, marketer, technology supplier, hardware and software manufacturer of portable media products and services, market research firm or audience and advertising effectiveness measurement company, you’ll undoubtedly want to join.

+ Sprout, iWidgets, TubeMogul and Vimeo.

Minnov8 Gang Podcast – Episode 23 is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

If one had any doubt about the intensity of our state’s information technology and Internet community, one only had to be anywhere inside the U’s Coffman Union on Saturday for the third annual Minnebar “unconference” (part of an international phenomenon called Barcamp). To say the joint was a-jumpin’ simply does not suffice. And numbers alone don’t tell the story (though attendance was an event record at 430). Rather, it was the intensity of energy through the entire day that could only impress one about this somewhat quiet, and definitely underrated, sector of Minnesota’s economy.

I was there for at least 12 hours of the event — yes, it went on that long, and no one was complaining — and I can surely say that even the most skeptical of attendees who sacrificed part of their spring weekend were impressed with what they experienced, and left beaming with an elevated sense of pride in the industry they’re a part of. One needs only to scan the voluminous talk that went on in real-time — thanks to the magic of Twitter, and all archived here — to see that something big was happening in the Gopher state on this rainy fishing-opener Saturday. (In fact, Minnebar was ranked during the day as one of the top-five conversations going on in the entire, global “Twitterverse.”)

Speaking of Gopher, that’s when the Internet industry really started here — back in the early ’90s with the invention of the browser by that name. It flourished for a few years, but, alas, was disrupted by a little thing called Netscape (first called Mosaic), and soon was relegated to just a note in history. But our state’s involvement in Internet development began thriving in the ’90s and has continued in many ways ever since.

The industry has some notable local companies, who collectively employ thousands, such as Digital River, Internet Broadcasting, and Dow Jones’ local operations (which began life as BigCharts and was soon acquired by MarketWatch), not to speak of Minnesota being home to top-50 ecommerce destinations like BestBuy.com, Target.com, and ShopNBC. But the core of Minnesota’s Internet industry are the developers, designers, engineers and other technologists, marketers, and entrepreneurs who gathered on Saturday at Minnebar, and the many hundreds of smaller entities many of them work for, not to speak of the countless new startups and products they’re building, or just beginning to plot in their minds.

What did the attendees do all day, throughout the many meeting rooms of the wonderful new Coffman Union? Well, the event was organized by two volunteer developers named Ben Edwards and Luke Francl (and anyone they could get to help them), and it featured no less than 40 sessions, all proposed and led by attendees themselves, on a wide variety of technical, design, business, and marketing topics, as we identified in this blog last week here. Several sponsors, who picked up the tab for everything, included the U of M’s Software Engineering Center (the venue sponsor), Split Rock Partners, SwarmCast, FindLaw, SierraBravo, and ipHouse. Probably the biggest highlight of the day was the noon panel on The State of Technology in Minnesota (see our previous post for the audio link). But it became apparent as the day progressed that it was really the networking — the interchange between the attendees — that was surpassing even knowledge-sharing as most valuable benefit for most of the attendees.

Some Key Takeaways

As someone who attends many of these local gatherings, and reports on several national Internet industry events as well each year, I can truly say I was impressed with the impact this event had — on so many levels. As I thought about it over the weekend, I realized I left with not only a much-renewed excitement for Minnesota’s Internet technology and software community, but many great takeaways. Here are some of them:

• Networking is something our community needs more of, getting out from behind the keyboard and meeting people, mixing it up. One panelist talked about the need for more “dense networks” as something Minnesota’s tech community can learn from Silicon Valley. (And I say that means local, national, and social networking — everything.)

• We may focus too much here in Minnesota on our own state/region. We must remember we’re really in a global market, and must constantly strive to be world class — not just to emulate other, better known tech regions in the U.S. We need to benchmark against the best, wherever they may be, and that can be anywhere, to build great companies here in our state.

• There’s a real pride here in Minnesota. Techies love it here, and don’t want to leave! Many who did previously have returned. This is a strength that we can very definitely build on.

• We need to do more to connect the outstanding technology students on the East Bank with the great business students at the Carlson School on the West Bank.

Minnesota’s Internet Tech Crowd Flexes Its Muscle is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

One of the highlights of Saturday’s Minnebar was a panel discussion entitled, State of the State: Technology in Minnesota. The panelists included: Douglas Olson (Microsoft), Jamie Thinglestad (formerly of Dow Jones), Michael Gorman (Split Rock Partners), Robert Stephens (Geek Squad), Dan Grigsby (Unpossible), Matthew Dornquast (code42).

Ed Kohler at Technology Evangelist has a post with highlights here. You can also listen or download the one hour podcast below.

State of the State: Technology in Minnesota. A Minnebar Panel Discussion 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.