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.