Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Phil Wilson and Julio Ojeda-Zapata
Music: Charlie Crowe & the song “007” from the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Google caught circumventing Apple Safari cookie policy
• StarTribune Your Mobile Phone Could Have a Leak  (University of Minnesota researchers found a flaw in AT&T and T-Mobile cell towers that reveals the location of phone users.)
• iOS 5.1 to Require Permission for iOS Apps Accessing Address Book Data? 
• Android Dodges Apple iOS Address Book Debacle: But not by Much
• Will this affect MN startup 8th Bridge?:  Retailers Shut Facebook Storefonts Amid Apathy
• Apple’s new OS X “Mountain Lion” and Apple OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion preview and Mac OS 10.8 Mountain Lion pushes iOS integration further and Apple, Suppliers Test Tablet With Smaller Screen
• Why Pinterest Is So Addictive and Pinterest keeps and engages members better than Twitter, data shows and Pinterest Copyright Issues
• Free Interactive E-Book Publishing Platform—From Inkling, Not Apple and Pressly
• Julio Showing off a tech jacket, RC copter and more on KARE 11 

Upcoming Events:

• 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: MobileMarchTC; Mobile March (Mobile 3D); 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

Minnov8 Gang 157 – More Donuts! is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Listen for the discussion wrapped around Andrew’s best line of the entire podcast (in Borsch’s opinion). While discussing how Ciceron encourages clients to think about what they offer, in a world where everyone is an instant critic who can tell the world, he says in passing, “every product is an iteration of its future self.” Find out what the “new and improved” Andrew 2.0 means.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, and Phil Wilson
Music: “Zydeco Junkie” by “Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band“ via Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Macworld’s “Some Users Having Problems Upgrading to iOS5” (some users?) as well as Julio Ojeda Zapata on Fox9 News about iOS5 upgrade issues
• iPhone 4S Launch & Steve Borsch on Fox9 News about iPhone4S launch & Android
• Google earnings: Larry Page: Mobile Revenues At $2.5 Billion Run-Rate, 190 Million Android Devices
• Oops…Blackberry Outage Blamed on “Extremely Severe” Network Failure
• The end of unbundled cable? Why Hulu’s Owners Couldn’t Find A Buyer and best headline about it: “Hulu: We Couldn’t Get Some Sucker To Overpay For The Company So We’re Not Selling” (Henry Blodgett)
• CruiseCritic
• Clicker

Upcoming Events:

• Tues/Wed, Oct 11th & 12th: MIMA Summit 
• Thurs, Oct 13th: The Collaborative’s Venture Finance Conference (25th Annual!)
• Wednesday, October 26th: Tech Entrepreneurs Rally at CoCo
• Thursday, October 27th: WordPressMSP 
• Friday, Oct 28th: Social Media Breakfast MSP on Community Mgmt
• Friday, November 4th (weekly): Frontend Masters Workshop Series
• Sat, November 12th: ProductCamp Minnesota 3

Direct link to the show

Minnov8 Gang 141 – Everything’s a Beta is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins & Phil Wilson.
Music: “Blue n Boogie” by Norman Hedman’s Tropique via the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Can Google+ Sustain Growth Beyond Early Adopters?
• Google blows out their quarter
• Amazon tablet (NYTimes article)
• TMobile Announces Twin Cities 4G
• Phil is at Conclave Learning Conference for radio folks. Saturday is the RAIN summit
• Steve’s post on the Google Chrome extension security problem
• UPCOMING EVENTS:
• July 28th, 6:30pm-9pm at The Nerdery: WordPressMSP Meetup on Gravity Forms
• Saturday, July 30th, 7-11pm: CoCoMSP/Project Skyway Launch Party 

Minnov8 Gang Podcast 131 – Deals Baby! is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

With all of the hoopla surrounding Microsoft buying Skype, Facebook hiring a PR firm to plant negative stories about Google, and the Google I/O conference releasing a lot of new opportunities with their platform technologies, it’s pretty clear that the ‘table stakes’ to be in the internet/web game are rising…quickly.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: “Straight To The Light” by Alex is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0).

Discussed during the show:

• Microsoft buys Skype and a Reuters article on how investor/analyst reactions
• Google I/O developer conference. Visit their announcement archive here. Some interesting articles reacting to these announcements:
  • Microsoft could lose billion’s in sales to Google’s Chromebook
  • Google Would Like To Wirelessly Control Your Lightbulbs With Android@Home
  • Google’s Music Beta first look: it’s miserable
  • A fun video by Best Buy CTO, Robert Stephens, recapping the conference
• Facebook Plants Fake Stories about Google
• The Minnesota Cup
• The Internet of Things
• Upcoming Events:
  • May 13: MIMA “iOS Strategy, Design, and Development Workshops” (what, SOLD OUT?)
  • Friday May 20th. SMBMSP Social Media and Higher Education. Moderated by Phil Wilson
  • Friday, May 20th – Saturday, May 21st: DrupalCamp
  • Thursday, May 26th: WordPressMSP Meeting

Minnov8 Gang 123 – The ‘Table Stakes’ are Rising is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Joining us on this episode of the Minnov8 Gang is Justin Grammens, co-Founder at Recursive Awesome, LLC, owner of Localtone, LLC founder of the Mobile Twin Cities User’s Group, and co-founder of Mobile March. Justin covers the startups that will be demonstrating their mobile apps next Friday evening (the night before Saturday’s MobileMarchTC) during the Mobile 3D event.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: John Gilliat is the artist & the song is “Nylon Heat” via the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Social Media Club
• CNN tsunami live blog
• Windows Marketplace hits 9000 apps, to reach 10,000 app milestone mid-Marc
• Mobile Nation
  

Upcoming Events:

• Saturday, March 19th: MOBILE MARCH. New part of this years mobile event…Mobile 3D (Note: An additional 25 tickets just released!)
• Wednesday, March 23rd: Cloudcamp MSP
• Thursday, March 24th: MSP WordPress User Group meeting
• Saturday, March 26th: Overnight Website Challenge
• Monday, April 11th: MinneWebCon

Minnov8 Gang 114 – Racing Toward Our Mobile Future is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Our second guest, Fallon Director of Innovation Marty Wetherall, not only has delivered critically acclaimed work at this premiere ad agency, he is CEO of FanChatter, a “chat box” technology that aggregates, organizes and amplifies real-time social conversation. Listen as we discuss how “everything seems to be social” and its implications with these two leaders.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: Profetas is the artist & the song is “Baila” via the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Google Chrome App Store
• Android App Store
• AT&T to Push Atrix 4G to Counter Verizon iPhone
• Storify Raises $2M From Khosla Ventures To Blend Social Media With Storytelling
• Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis/St. Paul
• FanChatter News Coverage:
  • WCCO-TV news segment
  • Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal
  • Sunday StarTribune profile

Minnov8 Gang 110 – ChitChat Chatter is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: Bob Kirkpatrick is the artist and the song is, “Too Much Time.“
Music made possible by the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Gruber on Steve Jobs leaving
• Apple’s $3.9 Billion Investment Was in LCD Displays?
• Public Media 2.0
  • Report: Rethinking Public Media: More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive (PDF)
• Minnesota Video Vault
• New York Times article on Google and start-up mentality
• Google launching competitor to Groupon and Living Social
• Upcoming Events:
  • Now: US Pond Hockey Championships ( @USPondHockey #USPHC). Event now owned by local TST Media
  • Wednesday, January 26th: MHTA Welcome Bash for incoming president Margaret Anderson Kelliher
  • Thursday, January 27th: MSP WordPress User’s Group meeting at The Nerdery
  • Saturday, March 19th: MOBILE MARCH. New part of this years mobile event…Mobile 3D set for March 18th
  • Saturday, March 26th: Overnight Website Challenge

Minnov8 Gang 108 – Interactive Public Media is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off this week)
Music: LA Big Daddys & their song “Why I Sing the Blues” via the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• White iPhone in Minneapolis
• All social media experts “are actually the same person,” Wikileaks documents reveal
• Visi’s ReliaCloud
• Verizon LTE Blows Through Monthly Data Cap in 32 Minutes
• Verizon’s 4G Network Is Windows-Only, for Now
• Comedian Soupy Sales and actress Rita Moreno (starred in West Side Story)
• IDC: IT spending will shift from hardware to software; 25 billion app downloads in 2011
• Events:
  • Saturday, December 4th: (9:00am – 5:00pm) Coworking for startups
  • Thursday, December 9th, 7:30am – 9:30am: MHTA Annual CIO Panel

Minnov8 Gang 102 – Mostly Soupy, Trivial Sales 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.

Discussed during the show:

+ Twitter down (and Dragnet’s “Blue Boy” LSD episode); FanChatter; Blog comment addition vendors: Echo and BackType (and BackType Connect for WordPress); Minnesota startups BusinessCard2 and Extendr as well as Retaggr

+ Federal Trade Commission (FTC) looking in to Google’s Eric Schmidt on Apple’s board (now potentially a moot point)

+ Pending Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proceedings regarding wireless open access and handset exclusivity are in motion, and as part of this the FCC requested more information from the Google Voice app rejection by Apple (good overview of the controversy–and Apple’s overall app rejection policy–in this BusinessWeek article)

• FCC’s letter to Apple
• FCC’s letter to AT&T
• FCC’s letter to Google

+ HTML 5 and the open source video codec rejection; Google acquiring On2 and conjecture it was a strategic move to open source On2′s codec, move away from Flash (and minimize the possibility Adobe could make it a ubiquitous application platform as well as continuing to extend its reach as one for video) and not require licensing H.264

+ The MiFi device and the Wired article referred to by Tim; Comcast getting in to wireless broadband

+ “Social Media on a Stick“: Social Media Breakfast, Minneapolis/St. Paul (SMBMSP) is meeting at the State Fair

+ Blogwell is next week! This is positioned as a must-attend event for anyone interested in corporate social media use

+ Evocam: Steve’s geek fun this weekend.

Minnov8 Gang #46: Addicted to Twitter, Chatter about FanChatter & More is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

“Seed funding is the earliest stage of venture funding.  It pays your expenses while you’re getting started. Some companies may need no more than seed funding. Others will go through several rounds.  There is no right answer; how much funding you need depends on the kind of company you start.  At Y Combinator, our goal is to get you through the first phase. This usually means: get you to the point where you’ve built something impressive enough to raise money on a larger scale.  Then we introduce you to later stage investors or occasionally even acquirers.” (More on Y Combinator’s About page.)

YC’s application process is well explained on their site, a process FanChatter went through earlier this year, before their selection in mid-April.  After sitting on this story for some time, waiting for the TechCrunch post to break first (which is the normal way YC companies get announced), what follows is the result of a phone and email interview I did over the past few days with FanChatter founders Marty Wetherall and Luke Francl, who remain in Silicon Valley through August. (The third founder, Norm Orstad, was not available.)

Minnov8: Tell us about how you came to apply for the Y Combinator program. Why did you think a MN startup would stand a chance, and why did you decide to do it this year?

Luke: It was pretty much my idea, but it was basically for the hell of it. I figured “why not?” We made a pact that if we got in, we would do YC for sure, no matter what. Being from Minnesota didn’t figure into my decision at all; YC doesn’t really discriminate based on geography. As for the timing, it didn’t occur to me to apply sooner. I think that worked out for us, as YC expanded somewhat for the Summer 2009 class, due to the $2M investment they had raised. [That was primarily from Sequoia Capital.]

Marty: I’d always heard about Y Combinator as this program where only the best and brightest startups were allowed.  It just sounded cool like that, even though I wasn’t very knowledgeable at the time about Paul Graham or Hacker News.  All I knew was that FanChatter needed something big to happen, so we went for it.

Minnov8: Give us the quick story on the process — starting from when you applied, to when you were invited to make the trip to Mountain View to pitch, and then how you were chosen as a finalist.

Luke: The application is straightforward. The most challenging part is the video. We spent more than two hours working on a one-minute video. The first inkling we had that we might get selected was when Paul emailed me to say our video didn’t work. Crap! But that showed they were interested.  April 6th was nerve wracking as we waited to hear if we’d gotten an interview. Finally, at 7:30 that night, we got the email that they wanted to meet with us. We picked a time and flew out the morning of the interview.  Afterward, you have to wait around until YC calls you that evening. We got called about four hours after our interview.  YC has standard terms which everyone knows in advance, so you pretty much just have to say “yes” or “no.”

Marty: Couple things.  First, I’m a film and TV guy with well-known Super Bowl spots on my list of credits, and this video was the simplest thing I’ve ever done.  That’s because I didn’t have the brain space to make it into anything more than dudes talking into a web cam — but we must have said something right because they told us it was good!  Second, there’s a photo on our blog of Luke getting the call that we were in.  It was a great moment.  It felt like FanChatter had arrived. [Here's that photo of Luke taking the call from YC's Paul Graham, shot by Marty.]

Minnov8: The amount of seed capital each Y Combinator startup gets is not huge, but give us your take on the other benefits of being selected.

Luke: Yeah, the money is not really the main benefit of Y Combinator for a company like ours. I think if you were fresh out of college and used to living on ramen, $15,000 or $20,000 would go a long way, but we all have mortgages. On the flip side, we already have customers and so we can afford to take a little time and try to make this work. For the company, we get an incredible inside view of how Silicon Valley works, and a chance to pitch to the best angels in the Valley on Demo Day. For me personally, I knew I couldn’t turn down this adventure, even though I’m giving up income and living apart from my wife for the summer.

Marty: Definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity.  I’ve lived and worked in LA and felt how the film industry runs that town.  Colors everything about it.  It feels like that in Silicon Valley, but it’s tech.  In coffee shops, what you overhear is tech talk.  Startups, angels, and VC.  It’s been fun to experience this.

Minnov8: Once you were accepted into the program around mid-April, how were you able to keep it such a secret — and why did you have to?

Luke: Keeping this under wraps has been incredibly difficult, because we wanted to shout it from the rooftops. But we were advised not to blog about being accepted to Y Combinator, because then it wouldn’t be news when we launched, meaning we’d have a difficult time getting covered by tech blogs. This was a tough row to hoe for us because we’ve been around for a while. I kind of wish we’d announced it sooner — we could have easily been the first YC launch of the summer, but that honor went to our friends at Bump.

Marty: Once we knew we couldn’t talk about it until we launched, we decided we’d use a new piece of business for our coming- out party.  We got that with the debut of our new ChatterBox feature on the homepage of the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Minnov8: Tell us what the process was like to apply and, then, once selected as a semi-finalist, get up in front of the four judges to pitch FanChatter.

Luke: We spent a lot of time crafting the application. Every time I looked at the instructions, it seemed like there was some facet I’d missed, and I tried to hew very closely to the instructions, especially around answer length. I also paid close attention to the basics, like spelling and grammar, so there wouldn’t be any excuses to put our application aside. Paul and his partners look at hundreds of applications, so I didn’t want to give them a reason to pass ours by.

Waiting around at the YC office for the interview was the hardest part. I’d read horror stories about how you’d be able to get out two sentences and then Paul was just going to savage your idea. So, I practiced our demo, and Marty practiced our two sentences. There were a few other people waiting around so I showed them the demo, and I got to see theirs.

Once we got into the interview my nervousness was lifted right away. Paul was excited to see our demo. Paul, Jessica, Trevor, and Robert came around to the other side of the table and crowded around my laptop. [There's more about the four YC partners on YC's People page.] Then Paul sort of riffed on things we could do — I think he came up with about two years’ worth of work in about 10 minutes — while Jessica tried to bring things to a close so they could stay on time.

Marty: It’s true.  Luke kept grilling me the whole trip out here. “What are you going to do?” over and over. Not in terms of the interview, but in terms of the company.  So, we were ready.  The interview was easy once we got in there.  It’s definitely the closest I’ll ever get to feeling like a contestant on American Idol.

Minnov8: Being chosen as a winner required you to move to the Valley for the summer.  How did you, Luke, and Norm handle that, with respect to your “other” lives, and how long are you out there?

Marty: My wife and two-year-old daughter came out here with me, which has been both good and challenging. Startup life is round the clock, but we’ve made it work.  In many ways, it would have been easier as a young guy just out of college, as many of our YC classmates are.

Luke: I was already doing independent contract development work (hey, if this startup thing doesn’t work out, let me know if you need a good Rails developer!), so I finished up the contracts I was working on and that was about it.  My wife and I had planned to take a trip to Italy this summer (that was “Plan A”), so I had to pass that up. We’re out here until sometime in September, and then we’ll see after that.

Minnov8: Describe a typical day for you this summer in the Y Combinator program in Mountain View. Where do all these company founders work?  Are there events where you all get together?

Luke: For me, a typical day is programming, programming, programming. We have a quick stand-up meeting in the morning, and then I try to hack away at our products. I don’t see the other startup founders much, except on Tuesdays when we all get together for the YC dinner. That’s the social highlight of the week.  Almost everyone works out of their apartments, though I know of one group that’s living out of their office!

Marty: Our apartment is in Mountain View, just a few blocks from YC’s offices. Those Tuesday dinners at Y Combinator really define the program.  That’s where we meet and listen to amazing speakers from the startup world, including successful YC alums.  It’s interesting to check in with the other founders in our class to see what they’ve accomplished since the previous week.  I think it pushes all of us to keep up the momentum.  [Here's a photo of Luke and Marty, center, at one of the Tuesday night meetings, from a Flickr set by "socialmoth" - a YC alum named Paul McKellar.]

Minnov8: We’ve heard the mantra Y Combinator puts forth for its companies is to “Make something people want.”  What did FanChatter, which is not a brand-new startup, propose to “make”?  Did you essentially propose to improve your offering for consumers in order to be selected?  If so, how are you coming with that new work?  And when will new features be available to your existing users?

Luke: I think an increasing number of companies coming into YC already have products or working demos. They liked that we had customers — that was very attractive. We sort of pitched it as, “Look how far we’ve come working on this in our spare time. Imagine what we could do if we did this full time.” We’ve been rolling out new features to our existing customers all summer, as well as creating the new ChatterBox product. Paul’s been very helpful in helping us figure out the “big picture” of where we should be going: making more revenue for our clients (and getting a piece of that).

Marty: In our case, we’re making something that sports teams and other businesses who have fans want.  More engagement so they can make more money.  I’ve always believed that content sharing is the path to engagement, so that’s what we’re doing with Scoreboard Photo Sharing and the ChatterBox — and that’s just the beginning.

Minnov8: So, what is yet to happen in the Y Combinator summer program, as you’re now about two months into it — and what does the future hold for FanChatter?

Luke: “Demo Day” is what it all leads up to. [That's in late August at YC's offices, attended by many VCs and angels.] After that, we’ll see. We’re working on becoming ramen profitable, but also looking to raise some angel money.

Marty: Who knows?  Hopefully we’re on to something and fan engagement can carry us beyond sports and into music and TV and anywhere fans come together around a common interest.  There’s so much potential for interesting things to happen, and that’s where we want to be.

We at Minnov8 certainly wish the founders of FanChatter all the best as they go forward. And we love the fact that they just happen to be doing great things for our sports teams here in the Twin Cities!  For more, see the news release the company did on August 4. The TechCrunch story that broke August 1 is here: YC-Funded FanChatter Takes Social Media To The Ball Game. And another good story followed that on MediaPost’s Online Media Daily.

If you’re a startup thinking of taking a run at applying for the Winter 2010 Y Combinator program, there are some great tips on YC’s site, and a FAQ page provides even more insight into how you might be able to take advantage of this excellent program.

What’s your take?  Will you apply?  If not, why not?  What are your picks for other promising startups here in Minnesota who should apply?  Tell us in the comments.

FanChatter Goes to the Valley, Tapped by ‘American Idol’ for Startups: Y Combinator is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Called “PR 2.0: The New Tools of the Trade,” the event will be held Monday July 13 from 8:00 am till 4:00 pm at the Westin Galleria, 3201 Galleria, in Edina, MN 55435.   The keynote presenter is Jason Kintzler, founder and CEO of PitchEngine, “a social media release service” that enables PR professionals to package stories and share them with journalists, bloggers, and influencers via the social web.

Jennifer Kane, founder of Kane Consulting (pictured here at left with colleague Kary Delaria), said in announcing the event, “If you’re in the business of sharing facts, telling stories, starting conversations, and monitoring dialogue about your company or client, this is stuff you need to know.”

The conference will also feature eight breakout sessions reflecting the most cutting edge and innovative thinking on how to navigate this rapidly changing industry.

Breakout sessions include:

•  “Using Social Media Behind the Firewall” - Gary  Koelling, Best Buy, and Cameron Gross, GreaterThan Media, a consultant to Best Buy.
•  “Pitching Using New Media Tools” – Eva Keiser, Senior Vice President, Risdell McKinney Public Relations.
•  “Online Reputation Management” – Greg Swan, Digital Strategy Manager, Weber Shandwick Digital Communications.
•  “Incorporating Podcasts and Video Into Your Marketing and PR Mix” - Albert Maruggi, founder of Provident Partners and Producer of the Marketing Edge podcast.
•  “Self Publishing for PR” – Arik Hanson, ACH Communications/Chief Blogger, Communications Conversations.
•  “How to Monitor Your Brand Through Social Media Channels” – Connie Benson, Chief Community Officer, Techrigy.
•  “Optimizing Content of Press Releases and Beyond” – Jolina Pettice, Senior Account Manager, TopRank Online Marketing.
•  “Small Brands. Big Results” – Blois Olson, Executive Vice President, Tunheim Partners.

In addition, there will be open lab periods where attendees can network with others and explore new online PR and marketing tools and applications.

The organizers tell me that remaining space is limited, but registration may still be available as you read this.  To register and see the list of those attending to date, here’s the PR 2.0 event registration page. You can also see the press release for the event here: a PitchEngine release, of course!

Can’t make the event but still want to schmooze?

You’re in luck. Kane Consulting also announced they’re holding a “TweetUp” after the conference from 6:00 to 9:00 pm at Tavern on France!  You may have seen some buzz about this on our local Social Media Breakfast (SMBmsp) site — well, now it’s official.  It’s your chance to meet Jason Kintzler of PitchEngine and hob-nob with the local PR digerati.  But you must RSVP here for the TweetUp.  It’s open to all.  There’s no cost to attend this evening gathering, and you can simpy order food and drinks off the menu.

See ya there!

Event in Edina July 13 to Explore ‘PR 2.0′ is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Last month I posted a 5-point plan to revitalize the Strib on my personal blog. Running through my logic was a focus on embracing electronic distribution and reducing the costs of publishing on paper. But I didn’t address what I now think is the central issue that Star-Tribune management will have get right to assure the viability of the paper:

Improve Local Content.

The Strib can transform themselves into the digital age, embrace blog software and social networking but it will all be a wasted effort unless they are delivering the best quality content relevant to the communities they serve. This means hyper-local coverage, more investigative reporting and local perspectives on regional and national issues. What we have seen happen in many newspapers across the county is the downsizing of the newsroom and increased use of wire stories. This is a death spiral in the age of Google News which does the sorting of these same wire stories in real time and for free. But setting up a local blog network that aggregates into a regional news portal that feeds both electronic and print editions just might be the answer here.

The journalists and the Minnesota Newspaper Guild who have started the ‘Save The Strib’ campaign have a huge challenge ahead but their proactive use of social media just might make a difference. This approach has a good chance of engaging and motivating the community to generate ideas that will save the paper. The following video features readers more than well known citizens which is very encouraging. And those readers almost universally talk about content.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP3_y15ti8g

Cost cutting will only be a part of the solution to the Star-Tribune’s troubles. Improving local content and embracing digital distribution will prove to be the deciding factors.

Can Social Media ‘Save The Strib’? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

On March 18th, I had the delight of lunching with Josh and his colleague Jocelyn Walters, both of Forrester Research. We met at the Cambridge Legal Sea Foods and shared stories and insights collected from our professional and personal experiences. Here is a snapshot of the insights I collected from our conversation. 

We talked a bit about social media analytics. I asked Josh what the key indicators or metrics are for managing on-line communities or sentiment flows, like Twitter. Josh was straightforward. He commented that social media analytics only tell part of the story, that off-line research is still required to validate new methods. Josh also added, that when using social media analytics, two things are highly usable – trends and inflections (spikes). When listening to a sentiment flow over time, one should be able to parse out trends from conversations. Spikes or inflection points require action. During a spike, something materially changes to the conversation and requires attention. Was there a product recall or significant event of similar nature? Spikes should trigger response.

I asked Josh using a baseball metaphor, “What inning is social media in?” He commented “It’s early.”

I also asked Josh about how an organization with a diverse brand portfolio could work across silos. Josh commented that “it’s all about best practices.” And that simple, portable frameworks allow for custom tailored applications per brand. Finally, Josh added that social media isn’t for every brand. You need audience scale or the right mix of technographics.

Josh warned against offering health professionals “widgets” to add to their professional websites. Something about “You’re nuts if you think that will work.”

We talked about the effect of time. What happens to Mom when her kids grow up? If Mom joins a community when her child is 6 months, does she move on to a new community during the toddler years? Pre-school years? We agreed that social media, specifically branded communities, have not done a good enough job of addressing time factors in their design and utility. How should a brand plan for such consumers movements in and out of communities over a lifetime? People change. More research is required.

Classic Josh – “Social media investment is growing. My phone won’t stop ringing. Different industry groups by the week.”

Finally, we chatted about Twitter and Twitter search. Josh gave me a live demo using certain branded keywords. Very cool. It led to this video, my first Flip Mino recording.

Interview with Josh Bernoff of Groundswell is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Any business today can’t function without technology like a telephone, fax machine or email. But when you think about how relatively unchanged office work was from the earliest part of the last century until the advent of personal computers in the late 1970′s, much of the technology used in offices evolved incrementally.

In less than fifteen years, however, there has been a leap. An acceleration of the global internet — and an increasing number of humans connected to it — has made the internet network effect one of the most profound shifts in how we currently connect with people, perform our work and even socialize.

The network effect is the effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other people. The telephone is the best example: if you had a telephone but no one else did, the usefulness of that device would be zero. As more and more people obtain telephones and connect to the telephony network, you can call them, they can call you, both of you can call businesses, schools or the firehouse, and a dizzying array of uses are found to harness this connection and making the tool what it is today: indispensable. 

But times have changed. An expanding number of savvy leaders in businesses of all sizes, individuals and those in various professions, are quickly realizing that this network effect has taken a different turn as people have rapidly embraced social networks and various forms of social media (e.g., blogging, Twitter, text messaging, and location-based “find your friends on a map” services with GPS-enabled mobile phones like Google’s new Latitude, etc.).

Photo, video, maps, restaurant reviews and more have become “socially connected” enabling people who are connected to share, aggregate this data, move it and participate in its creation with digital devices and internet connections instantly. Expectations of these “always-on, always-connected” people is this: you, your business or organization are right there alongside them engaged and participating online.

You’re not? Then increasingly this group will perceive you as not terribly savvy, perhaps arrogant, disinterested or disconnected, and therefore less than worthy of doing business or connecting with going forward.

You may disagree with that argument, but let’s look at a few facts:

• Technorati indexes approximately 1.5 million new blog posts every day
• Twitter grew 752% in 2008 with 4.43 million visitors to Twitter sites in December alone
• Tens of millions of people engage in social network sites like Facebook (150 million +) and the demographics are skewing older
• Even the photo sharing site Flickr boasts members have uploaded 3 billion+ photos.

If you buy into the argument that there is a signficant and growing amount of social activity and momentum with a myriad of online tools, what are you to do about it? How can you get in the game and start playing with social networking and social media?

BUILDING YOUR SOCIAL HUB
Strategic organizational social hub requirements are too complex to cover in this article, so here is a brief overview of what one looks like for an individual, professional or small business.

First you need an “anchor” so you don’t drift all over the internet signing up for services that you can’t easily coordinate or orchestrate. There are too many out there and you’ll get quickly overwhelmed and dilute your effort and participation within them.

Choose a blog as your hub. It should connect to all your other services (e.g., to your Flickr account; Facebook page; LinkedIn profile; etc.) and you’d do that by signing up for them and then displaying links in your blog sidebar. One example is the listing of services that Minnov8 co-founder, Tim Elliott, displays in his blog sidebar here. Make it easy for your friends, family, colleagues, prospects or customers to easily find where you participate and be quickly able to make choices on where and how to connect with you.

Here’s a simple example of one way to coordinate your social activity within a hub: Let’s say you have a blog powered by WordPress and a Twitter account. You install the “Twitter Tools” plugin so that whenever you publish your blog post, it automagically updates your Twitter account “New Blog Post: “Name of Blog Post is Here”. Then whomever is following you has the opportunity to instantly be aware of your post and read it.

There are also ways to have your Twitter “tweets” show up as a daily digest of tweets that are a post on your blog. That post you published can also instantly appear on your Facebook page as it’s automagically updated.

Another example: You go and create a free YouTube channel and brand it. Have a link from your blog sidebar so people that want to see all your videos can do so. But you can easily publish (by embedding) a video right into a blog post so that channel and your blog are connected…

…and on and on. This is the same concept if you sign up for social bookmarking, photo, scrapbooking, and any of the other hundreds of offerings available to you right now.

It’s likely you didn’t wait until 2000 to get a fax machine and until everyone else on the telephony network had one, did you? Before the internet explosion, that device became indispensable for most businesses, relatively inexpensive, and became as integral to doing business as it was having a telephone.

The key to embarking upon a social hub is that you start now. Don’t engage in tons of research, build out a strategy and plan, and choose the perfect services. Blogs and self-publishing are cheap. Most of the key social networks or social media services are free or have inexpensive options. The rate at which people are participating online — and the proliferation of device types like cheap netbooks and smartphones — is not going to slow down anytime soon and increasingly anyone you interact with will expect that you are connected and are social online so just begin and you’ll figure out what works for you as you go along.

Or maybe you should just wait and get that fax machine next year.

Why You Need a Social Hub 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.

In addition, if you’re an investor with any money left in your 200.5k (i.e., half of a 401k) and could stomach some internet investing, then viewing opinions and recommendations on where to invest is key.

In both cases, an analysis of the potential of various sectors of an internet economy — by one of the world’s leading financial institutions, JPMorgan — is reason enough to spend the time necessary go through their “Nothing But Net” report.

Highlights of areas covered within it include:

• US Sector Outlook
• Ad Networks on the Rise
• eCommerce Outlook
• The Mobile Market
• Social Networks Primer
• Cloud Computing Outlook
• Internet for Social Good

…and much more.

The paper is embedded after the jump along with a download link.

Download PDF here.

JPMorgan Internet Investment Guide 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.

http://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.

According to Mayo’s about page positioning this new blog, Each year over 500,000 unique patients from every U.S. state and nearly 150 countries come to Mayo Clinic for diagnosis and treatment. These patients and their families and friends, and 50,000 employees and students are part of a global Mayo Clinic community.

The goal for the Sharing Mayo Clinic blog is to provide a virtual place for this community to connect and share their experiences. It’s the online companion to the new newsletter for patients, also called Sharing Mayo Clinic, and is a hub that links to Mayo Clinic’s pages on other social networking sites, such as Facebook and YouTube.

Unless you’re a constant observer of Mayo Clinic, you may be as surprised as I was to learn how truly significant and holistic the Mayo online presence has become, and how its online initiatives actually spring forth from the innovation DNA of the Mayo Clinic. This premiere healthcare organization is leveraging social tools to extend their reach and to ensure they’re at the points online where people are increasingly focusing their attention: the internet and web with a primary focus on social media applications.

This morning I talked briefly with Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic’s manager of social media and syndication. When I expressed my surprise at how dramatically different their online presence is compared to what I’ve seen in the past, Aase pointed out that innovation is at the heart of Mayo itself and leveraging these social media technologies in an innovative way makes perfect sense and were easily accepted within the Mayo culture. As a way to illustrate that point, he talked about how Dr. Will and Charlie Mayo invented the group practice of medicine and, along with the Franciscan Sisters, they were able to figure out how to prevent surgical infections through completely new and asceptic surgery techniques, so instead of people going to the hospital to die, they lived to tell about their experience…and did. (For more Mayo history, see this page).

Today we expect to live (or at least to know specifics about our odds of survival before surgery) and the Sharing Mayo Clinic blog is really a systemic way for 21st century stories to be told using social media and therefore to be accessible to people worldwide.

Sharing Mayo Clinic builds on Mayo Clinic’s existing social media initiatives:

Mayo Clinic YouTube Channel
The Mayo Clinic Channel has more than 250 videos for consumers to watch and share. They include patient stories, information about Mayo services and programs, background on Mayo Clinic’s history and people, and details about Mayo’s latest research and treatment advances. Through the “Share Your Mayo Clinic Story” campaign, patients are encouraged to post videos about their personal experiences with Mayo Clinic on YouTube. Patients who do not have the technical expertise or equipment to do this may have their stories recorded during their visit to Mayo Clinic.

Mayo Clinic Facebook page (Type Mayo Clinic Facebook in any search engine.)
On this social networking site, patients can tell their Mayo Clinic story, watch videos about Mayo’s latest news and research, become a Facebook “fan” of Mayo, and share it all with their friends. They also can read and discuss what others say about their experiences at Mayo Clinic.

Mayo Clinic podcast blog
Dozens of Mayo podcasts are available on this site. Mayo’s podcasts include extended conversations and news stories on many diseases and conditions, emphasizing conditions that Mayo Clinic experts treat and research. Consumers can search by topic, post comments and subscribe to have new episodes of a particular podcast delivered automatically.

Mayo Clinic news blog
In this blog, journalists and consumers can see and hear video and audio excerpts featuring Mayo Clinic physicians and researchers providing context for stories about their research and other health and medical news. They also can join discussions with other readers through the blog comments.

MayoClinic.com consumer blogs and podcasts
MayoClinic.com offers consumer blogs on topics such as stress, smoking cessation, pregnancy, nutrition, depression, diabetes and more. MayoClinic.com podcasts are available in portable audio files that contain consumer-friendly information from a Mayo Clinic expert. Consumers can sign up for RSS feeds for new blog posts and podcast topics, as well as several other content features from MayoClinic.com.

I must admit that my attention on Mayo hasn’t been too high as of late. In the mid-1990′s, while at Apple in the prepress and publishing space, Mayo remained a strong supporter and key customer of the company and I spent a fair amount of time in Rochester. Pleased that Steve Jobs had returned and new energy was being infused in to the company (e.g., the new iMac), Mayo continued to deploy Mac’s where it made sense (i.e., printing and publishing) as well as within the biomedical computing and research areas.

While calling on this organization and interacting with folks like Dr. Bijoy Khanderia, head of cardiology and chair of the I.T. Steering Committee at the time, I was always struck by: the quality of their vision; hyperfocus on the patient; long history of quality healthcare and positive patient outcomes; solid and atypically nice people with big-city smarts and small-town values; good content; and a work ethic that was pervasive throughout the organization and — combined with all those other factors — are obviously the foundation of their success. That said, it was also clear that this was a conservative organization which moved somewhat slowly on pushing the envelope, and my reaction to most of their online publishing in the past was that everything was basically an online brochure with well scrubbed content.

No more. They’re in-the-game and on-the-net in a big way.

It’s delightful to see Mayo opening up in this way and I’ll be interested to see where their online engagement leads them and how it might mold, shape and influence the course of their patient and employee interactions in the future. I presume the goal of any effort they put forth is to enhance, extend and improve the health and well-being of people in the world. To that end, reading, hearing and seeing the stories of people whose lives have been saved, made better and changed will be a powerful way to move that agenda forward.

Mayo Accelerates Their Online Presence is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.