“I wonder what the conversations will be like a year from now.” This is a paraphrase of a statement Doug Pollei made at the recent MinneBar hosted by Best Buy, which he said to me at the end of a startup session led by Luke Francl.

I heard some folks say how they look forward to a year from now to look back and see what has been accomplished within our startup community. I did not take the comment that way.

Most days and in most ways I am an optimist — my glass is half full and usually running over. Want proof? I have been attending Gopher football games for 28 years. (Or, hmm…maybe that makes me something other than an optimist?)

During this particular session at MinneBar there were many thoughts on what could be done to support, make better, and grow our startup community.

I hate to be one the one to rain on the parade, but almost all of those things were suggested in May of 2008 at the last MinneBar, and very few if any have been acted upon, nor have any noticeable results been achieved.

Hence the title of this post: we need to stop talking and start walking.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: We welcome guest blogger Paul DeBettignies for this post.  Please tweet your questions to @Minnov8 now so we can answer them on our Minnov8 Gang podcast tomorrow,  on which Paul will be our guest.  Please add the hashtag #MNwalkthetalk.)

Oh, I hear you now. Many of you are saying, “But Paul, I do not have time. I have a day job, plus my ideas I am working on. No way can I fit something more in, to help my community.”

Here’s my reply: “You (we) cannot afford NOT to.”

Our community is fragmented and siloed. How do I know? Luke asked those in the session who were leading a startup to introduce themselves. After the session, all I heard was, “Who was that guy? I don’t know him.”  And that was if you were fortunate enough to even *hear* these entrepreneurs introducing themselves. I was in the fourth row and could not hear 80% of the people introducing themselves. For the love of Goldy Gopher, these folks were in a room of their peers — this was not a time to be shy!

Luke asked what is the difference between Silicon Valley and Minnesota startups. I tweeted something like, “In Silicon Valley, they stand up on their chairs and scream. In Minnesota, they whisper.”

What really made me almost spontaneously combust was the number of startups saying they could not find people to work with them. My response to one entrepreneur was that I needed a racquetball. He asked why and I said that, because when I throw it, someone will get hit in the head, another in the shoulder, it will land in someone’s pizza, and then tip over a Mountain Dew onto somebody’s lap.

Those were the first folks this guy should talk too.

How can you be hiring, be in a room of tech professionals, and not mention you are hiring?!  That is crazy (among other things).

Minnesota meet passive aggressive.

There are good things going on in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul.  Here are a few:

Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis St Paul (SMBMSP)
Rick Mahn had heard about how a group of social media, PR, and marketing folks were getting together in Boston. He contacted Bryan Person and asked if an event could be done here. It was suggested to Rick that he start a group, which he has, and it’s now the longest running and largest Social Media Breakfast group in the country.

Coworking
This summer. I heard something about coworking but I had no idea what it was. Then, in November, I heard that a group led by Amy Bryant and Zack Steven had space one day a week at Crema Cafe. In the weeks since, Don Ball has opened CoCo, and Zack has started 3rd Place.

Minnov8
I am not including the guys and this site because they are posting this rant of mine.  This is a group of guys who saw a need to showcase Minnesota innovation, including our startup community, and they did it — all the way back in February 2008.

TECHdotMN
I’ve had a few conversations with Jeff Pesek, who’s also working on highlighting the local startup scene, to include a calendar and maybe a job board.

MN Lean Startup Group
I was referred to this LinkedIn group and, from what I have seen, it’s a group of local tech people who are networking and sharing experiences of bootstrapping early-stage companies.

MinneDemo & MinneBar
Back to how this rant started.  What was once a few guys doing demos has turned into must-attend tech events, where hundreds show up.

I point out these people and groups because we do not need to have a mass inflow of cash, advisory groups, etc.  We need people to take action.  We need people to better communicate with each other.  We need more meetings and events.  We need more sharing.

We need to be an actual living and breathing community.

Here’s what I want to leave you with:  If we do not take advantage of the organic activity going on in our community, if we do not help it better grow, and if we do not start working to achieve the “wish list” from the last MinneBar, we are going to lose a fantastic opportunity.

Two years from now — or whenever it is the economy will be clipping along again — we’ll all be really busy trying to maintain what we have going on.  At some point (maybe the next recession), a group of people will get together, have the same conversations we are having now, and say we really messed up by not doing this back in 2010.

So, let me start by saying here’s what I can do to help:

• Facilitate sessions on how to recruit, hire, and retain employees
• Facilitate sessions on networking, career, and job search
• If someone were to build a job board, I can moderate, promote, and grow it
• Until a job board is created, I will post tech jobs for free on my blog

My challenge to you is this: what can you do to help support and grow the Minnesota Startup Community?  Have at it — let’s hear your comments and questions!

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Please leave a comment below, OR tweet your questions or comments to @Minnov8 now, Friday 1/22, or tomorrow morning up until about 9:30 am — so we can address them on our weekly Minnov8 Gang Podcast, on which Paul will be our guest.  We start recording at 9:00 am. Please add the hashtag #MNwalkthetalk.)

Paul DeBettignies is Managing Partner of Nerd Search, LLC, a Minneapolis IT search firm, author of the “Minnesota Headhunter” blog, cofounder and coordinator of Minnesota Recruiters, listed as a Top 20 Minnesota Social Media Innovator, and a frequent speaker and article contributor on recruiting, career, networking, and social media topics with his related site, “Be Your Own Headhunter.”  He may be reached at paul (at) mnheadhunter (dot) com.

Minnesota Startup Community: The Time Has Come For Less Talk and More Walk is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Well, one local entrepreneur, George Reese, is right smack in the middle of all this buzz, and is in a position to help clear up a lot of the confusion about it — especially for enterprises looking to take advantage of the economic benefits of this form of computing.   His new book on the subject is scheduled to be released by O’Reilly on April 10.  It’s entitled “Cloud Application Architectures: Building Applications and Infrastructure in the Cloud.” (And here’s the Amazon link.)  George is a Minneapolis-based technologist and startup founder.  I’ve known him since late 2006 and thought it would be interesting to get his thoughts on this very hot topic, and hear the story behind his book.  This is an interview I conducted with George earlier this week, which first appeared on the cloud computing site Cloud Ave.

Graeme: How long have you been involved with cloud computing, and what made you decide to write this book?

George: I suppose that depends on what you mean when you say “cloud computing.” I’ve been developing SaaS [software as a service] systems for the past five years, but got into Amazon Web Services and Infrastructure as a Service in late 2007 when my company Valtira needed an alternate approach to a high-availability infrastructure. During this time, I’ve developed a body of experience in putting transactional database applications into the Amazon Cloud.  My editor at O’Reilly, with whom I’ve written several books in the past, heard I was doing cloud work and asked me to put together a book on the subject.

Graeme: Why is cloud computing gaining adoption like it is?  What is its attraction?  We know Internet and IT startups love it, but do you think it will catch on in any significant way with larger enterprises?

George: The primary attractions to cloud computing are cost and flexibility. Cloud computing enables you to build out a world-class IT infrastructure with no up-front capital investment and pay for the growth of your infrastructure as the business it is supporting grows.

I believe enterprise IT has a strong need for the benefits of cloud computing, but they have higher expectations with respect to reliability and scalability than startups. My company enStratus is all about dealing with these two concerns for enterprise IT, and I talk a lot about that in the book.

Graeme: For what types of readers did you primarily write the book? What will they get from it that they can’t get elsewhere?

George: The book is for people tasked with making the move into the cloud and guiding them through that move. I start by establishing what the cloud means from my perspective and what its value is to an organization. The book covers how you evaluate what makes sense to move into the cloud and, once the decision is made, the security, availability, and disaster recovery planning necessary to operate at an enterprise level in the cloud.

Graeme: Do you deal in the book with the issue of choosing a cloud computing provider?  In not, why not?  Do you attempt to compare providers?

George: No. Anything I might say in the way of a comparison would be out of date by the time the book hit the shelves. Jeff Barr from Amazon reviewed the book for technical accuracy, and E.J. Johnson from Rackspace and Randy Bias from GoGrid both provided appendices describing their offerings.

Graeme: What are some of the other key issues you deal with in the book, such as security and reliability of the cloud?  And what does the book deliver that’s not available elsewhere?

George: Given my role at enStratus, cloud security and reliability are obviously key concerns of mine. I spend an entire chapter on security issues and cover how to architect your applications for maximum availability throughout the book. I have not seen much of this kind of talk available on the Internet; mostly warnings about how security and availability are things you should worry about.

Graeme: Readers of the book will also learn about the management tools you have developed for use in your own company, Valtira, which offers a SaaS marketing platform. Please tell us how those tools led to the formation of a separate, spinoff company.

George: Valtira was looking to build out a new service offering that required a high-availability infrastructure. We priced out a managed services infrastructure to support our needs, but that proved too costly for a new product offering. We then turned to the Amazon cloud to see if it would meet our needs. We ran into a number of obstacles along the way. Some of these obstacles have since been addressed by Amazon through new service offerings like Elastic Block Storage. For other obstacles, we built out tools to take care of things. It turns out that people who were not Valtira customers really wanted our tools, so we spun them out into enStratus.

Graeme: You began working on the book many months ago. The release of the book seems now to be right at a time of intense focus on cloud computing, undoubtedly driven in part by current economic conditions.  What’s your take on all the hype?

George: Cloud computing is the most disruptive technology to hit business since the Web. It’s not hype. Like any disruptive technology, however, there’s a lot of misinformation flying around. To make matters worse, every person has a different internal definition of “the cloud” that frames their discussions on the subject. So, the hype is warranted, but everyone needs to pay particular attention to context and definitions in their discussions.

Graeme: With the book’s release, your speaking schedule is naturally heating up.  Please tell us where people can find you in coming weeks and months.

George: Well, first, I’ll be presenting at CloudCamp in New York City on April 1. Following that, O’Reilly has a webcast scheduled for April 8 on “Getting Started with Amazon Web Services.” In Minneapolis, I’ll be speaking at the Minnesota High Tech Association’s spring conference on April 15, and then at CloudCamp Minneapolis/St. Paul on April 18 at the U of MN.  Recently, my company enStratus was chosen as a presenting startup at the Under the Radar conference in Mountain View, CA, on April 24.  The following month, I’ll be speaking on the topic of information privacy and security in the cloud at the Glue Conference in Denver on May 12. Then it’s off to London, where I’ll be speak on May 15 at WebTech Exchange 2009 on the topic of hardening an EC2 infrastructure.

Graeme: That definitely qualifies as a whirlwind, George! Thanks for taking some time to tell us about your book, and I look forward to seeing you at some of these upcoming events.

(Disclosure: the author has a consulting relationship with George Reese’s company enStratus.)

What’s All This About ‘Moving to the Cloud’? One Minnesota Entrepreneur Can Tell You How is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.