We’ll find out Thursday, because I’ll be there to live-blog it all: the proceedings of the annual Minnesota Venture & Finance Conference at the Minneapolis Convention Center, co-hosted as always by the Minnesota Venture Capital Association and The Collaborative. The blue-suit crowd will turn out once more to hash over where, oh, where is venture investing going in our state, and whether Minnesota is holding its own or falling behind in relation to other states. 
This is great sport, people! We can’t beat Wisconsin in college football for seven years straight, but, oh yeah, we got those cheeseheads when it comes to the game of innovation! Or do we? (And, Gopher fans, I won’t even bring up South Dakota. Shees.)
“Innovation? Jobs? Has Minnesota lost it? Not for one day in October we haven’t,” says The Collaborative in one of its promos. “2010 marks our second full year of the worldwide recessionary malaise. Our state’s economy is also not what anyone is calling ‘robust’. Our unemployment rate is higher than it’s been in decades. On the plus side, we’re still one of the brightest economies in the nation,” the pitch goes on to say.
“The positive gap between our jobless rate as compared to the nation is at its highest in 30 years… Yet we also hear many reports of our state losing its way in innovation.”
Can you sense the drama, people? I’m nervously doing finger and hand exercises right now, in great anticipation of the nuances I may be able to capture on my Macbook or iPad (decisions, decisions) as I contemplate the live-blogging nirvana that awaits me Thursday. It has me breathing heavy.
“Last year, in the throes of the recession, 54 companies gave presentations, 400+ investors and entrepreneurs came, shared, and discussed growth in tough times,” 
said Dan Carr, CEO of The Collaborative, in his announcement of this year’s event. “It actually felt optimistic! These companies also go on to create jobs. Lots of them. Minnesota is 8th in the nation in venture backed employment: 365,000 jobs.” (No word on how many of those people may have been laid off in recent times because those ventures couldn’t raise enough money.)
Carr continues: “This year’s ‘homecoming’ promises another day-long celebration of ‘doing’ more than ‘hand wringing’. It’s true that some of our greatest companies rise from difficult times. Our annual conference has a knack for bringing together Minnesota’s best ‘Up & Comers’.”
For five years I’ve been on the mailing list for the U of MN 
