Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

#Minnedemo Turns Up the Heat in Downtown Minneapolis

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Several hundred tech lovers crammed into Schulze Hall at the University of St. Thomas last night and challenged the air conditioning on another day of near-record highs in the state, for the latest edition of the quasi-quarterly Minnedemo event.  Luckily, there was plenty of cold beer — thank you, sponsors — and a damn nice appetizer buffet as well.  Nothing brings out a crowd more than free beer and food… oh, and a chance to sit in a large, crowded auditorium and listen to startup pitches for half the evening, while you overhear others in the lobby having fun and drinking beer.  I decided to join the outliers after only one demo, exiting the auditorium for what I thought would be a just a while — but then I never made it back in. Oh, well, I’d heard enough startup pitches in recent days and weeks to make my head explode, anyway (including some of those on the evening’s agenda), so opting for schmoozing in the lobby seemed like the sane thing to do.

And it did prove to be a better bet for me, and for several of the folks I did said schmoozing with.  Wow, there were so many great conversations and introductions brokered, my head was spinning. Or was that the beer? No matter, a good tech time was had by all.  And you can read all about those startups that pitched in the auditorium here. A brief stop at the after-party (on the outdoor patio on the second-floor of nearby Brit’s Pub) put a nice capper for me on a very pleasant — warm! — evening, blabbing with so many of the key players in our awesome Minnesota startup community.  Thank you, Minnedemo organizers and sponsors, for another great get-together!

Minnesota EduTech Startup KidBlog Now Reaching One Million Users

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On Wednesday, I stopped into the EduTech Minnesota conference at the U of M. I wanted to catch up with my friends Matt Hardy and Dan Flies, cofounders of Kidblog.org, and hear about the latest with their startup.

It turns out, of the 10 startups that were selected to present at the event, none even comes close to the level of adoption these guys have achieved to date, which they announced in their presentation at #EduTechMN: 1,000,000 students using the platform, in more than 80,000 classrooms. And all that from a startup that began as just a sideline for Matt to use in his own classroom!

Here’s my interview:

The founders describe their creation this way:  Kidblog is a platform that provides students with an authentic, engaging, and interactive learning experience. It’s designed for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each student with his or her own, unique blog. It has simple but powerful tools that allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over their students’ blogs. And a teacher can set up a class with no student email addresses. 

Matt likes to say it’s “built by a teacher, for teachers, so students can get the most out of the blogging process.” He also points out that teachers who’ve tried other blogging platforms (perhaps with limited success), such as Blogger, Edublogs, or WordPress.com, “will notice the Kidblog difference immediately.”

Best of luck to this emerging, homegrown Minnesota edutech company!

[This post first appeared yesterday on Tech~Surf~Blog.]

Something Amazing Happened at #EduTechMN Yesterday – Steve Jobs Was in the Room

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[This post was originally published earlier today on Tech~Surf~Blog.]

I felt it. I didn’t know it then, but it may have been at the precise moment Steve was passing. I was sitting in a room of about 100 people, mid-afternoon, listening to a panel of educators at the EduTech MN conference at the University of Minnesota. I was actually finishing a blog post on my MacBook Air, and hadn’t even intended to stay for the panel (the startup pitches were over).

But I was surprisingly drawn in by the discussion. I was blown away by what these people, senior educators, were saying — showing so much passion, speaking from the heart, talking about how kids are learning today. They just lit up as they described how the new tablet and mobile technologies are opening up worlds for these kids like nothing they’d ever seen before. The iPad, the iPod Touch, and all the great software these Apple devices have engendered.

I found myself beaming from ear to ear as I listened to them describe their real-life experiences, with such excitement in their voices.  These aren’t boring educators, I thought!  These are really dedicated, committed people who work on the front lines, whose worlds revolve around how our children learn, and how they can make that process better for them, every single day. And, thanks to technology and a certain company named Apple, they have more and more amazing tools to help them do that. It was a special experience for me, as someone not involved much in the world of education. I’m so glad I stayed.

I sat there and thought to myself — right at that very moment — “Wow, would Steve Jobs be proud to be hearing this right now.”

I like to think he was.

Steve, you didn’t just change technology, media, music, and retailing forever.  You changed education, too — in a big, big way. We thank you. We will greatly miss you.

But we know we’ll see the mark you made on this world for a long, long time to come, in the eyes of children everywhere.

 

[Left to right on the panel: Jesse Thorstad, technology specialist, Fergus Falls school district; Dave Eisenmann, director of instructional tech, Minnetonka school district; Jennifer Sly, MN Historical Society; and Jay Haugen, Superintendent, Farmington school district. The panel was moderated by State Senator Terri Bonoff.]

Tech Cocktail Mixes It Up In Minneapolis

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We were really honored to have Tech Cocktail in town last night hosting its first startup and entrepreneurial mixer in Minnesota. The event was held at CoCo Minneapolis (on the floor of the historic Grain Exchange in downtown Minneapolis).  I’m here to tell you it was a blockbuster success!  More than 200 people were in attendance.

I’ve been *so* wanting these folks to come to our town, and was delighted to represent Minnov8 at the event, along with my colleague Steve Borsch.  Tech Cocktail’s events have the stated purpose of “helping connect, amplify, and showcase the local technology scene” — and it’s now held such events in more than 20 cities, founder Frank Gruber told me.  The local sponsors who made this one happen were W3i and Ovative Group — kudos to them! (And a special shout-out to our friend Kim Garretson.)

It was a really fun evening, with a group of technologists, investors, bloggers, and entrepreneurs as diverse as I’ve seen at a local tech event, mingling and learning about a great group of local startups that were selected by the TechCocktail folks to show their stuff:


Best Attendance – Take attendance, manage event schedules, and update membership rosters online.

BookBottles –  Reserve VIP service at the hottest clubs in the world.

ByME –  A digital community that is powered through user connections and location to provide an easier way to navigate and interact.

Fantools (Four51) –  Connects businesses and customers so businesses can deliver relevant deals to active consumers.

fitparel – Find correct size apparel no matter the brand – just enter a brand that fits you, and they will recommend other brands.

Proliphiq and Shopntella (Echidna Inc.) – Proliphiq delivers credible people, topics, and content to you, while Shopntella lets you shop with the wisdom of crowds.

My Gluten Free Deals –  Deep discounts at gluten free-friendly restaurants and on gluten free products.

ServerCyde – Build web apps for most platforms, in the least amount of time, with only one language and zero server configuration

TelemetryWeb –  Their AgSphere tool helps manufacturers of agriculture technology build solutions that harvest data from the farm.

Toovio Software –  A real-time decision-making solution that is focused on centralized orchestration of each customer marketing interaction across every channel.

Zingstring – An intuitive, web-based interface for non-technical folks (marketers, customer service people, etc) to create pre-programmed conversations that are triggered by keywords in incoming messages, on Twitter, Facebook, SMS, and other messaging platforms.

I shot some pix during the event and posted a Flickr set.  Thanks again to Frank Gruber and his great team at Tech Cocktail!  We’d love to have you folks back soon — how about twice a year?  : – )

Interview of startup QONQR (MN Cup Runner-Up, High Tech Division)

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QONQR started as the winner of the first Twin Cities Startup Weekend in September 2010, a competition in which teams have 48 hours to build a prototype and pitch their business. Since then, QONQR has been accepted into the Demo Track of MidVenturesLAUNCH in Chicago and was a finalist in the Entertainment Category of the 2011 SXSW Accelerator, competing against Hall of Fame Game Designer, Lord British!

QONQR is the first in a line of geosocial games from the Minnesota-based company of the same name. The six QONQR team-members have been working together for years. In addition to being friends, and passionate gamers, they are experienced designers, deelopers, and entrepreneurs.

I interview Justin Peck and Andy Pickett from QONQR, the Minnesota Cup competition High Tech Division Runner-Up, at the final awards event on September 8th:

T-Mobile Shows It’s Serious About Minnesota, “Not Slowing Down”

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Everyone loves a challenger, and T-Mobile sure seems to be enjoying that role, as much here in Minnesota as anywhere. Yesterday, Steve Borsch and I had the opportunity to sit down with Tim Adams, the carrier’s new VP/GM for Minnesota and Wisconsin (see June 2 news), and have a wide-ranging chat with about T-Mobile’s plans and their latest 4G offerings. Tim has impressive executive experience in tech and retail, and was virtually bubbling with excitement about new T-Mobile’s initiatives in Minnesota and new offerings from the company to keep up, or ahead, of the big guys.

You might think the most important thing happening in T-Mobile’s world would be AT&T’s impending (but not yet approved) deal to acquire the company, and that was of course the first question we brought up with Adams.  Naturally, he could provide no more information than what’s been publicly announced. But he had much more to talk about. “We’re not slowing down. We’re not waiting for the acquisition,” he said. “Minnesota is a very important market for us, and we continue investing heavily and adding staff here.”  Across the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, T-Mobile has invested more than $43 million in continuous network upgrades since the start of 2010, according to Adams, and now has more than 350 cell sites operating 4G service in the Twin Cities area.

Which brings me to the most exciting news that T-Mobile was announcing yesterday:  T-Mobile’s Faster 4G Network Now Available in the Twin Cities — America’s Largest 4G Network is now twice as fast in Minneapolis/St. Paul.  Its super-fast “HSPA+42” (as in Mbps) network is now available “in the majority of the Minneapolis/St. Paul area,” the company’s release said, and customers will experience “speeds twice as fast as T-Mobile’s current 4G network on compatible devices.”  Before you start hyper-ventilating, it also states this:  the recently introduced Rocket® 3.0 laptop stick, its first HSPA+ 42-capable device, offers “average download speeds on our HSPA+ 42 network approaching 10Mbps, with peak speeds of 27 Mbps.”  Okay, it”s not 42 — but, trust me, I’ll take it!  …  [Read More…]

Minnesota Cup Honors ‘High Quality’ Crop of Semifinalists

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I stopped into a reception held last evening at the U of M’s Carlson School for this year’s group of semifinalists in the annual Minnesota Cup.  It’s the seventh year of this business plan competition, which has gained broad support from our business community.  I had a chance to interview cofounder Scott Litman, who talked about this year’s applicants and the process the semifinalists would now be going through as the competition continues.

After an opening reception in the atrium, a series of speakers and presentations followed in an adjoining auditorium. The main focus of these talks was to inform and instruct the 47 semifinalist teams (across six categories, called “divisions”) about how they can best prepare for the ongoing judging.  That includes the opportunity for each these startups to work with their choice of “Mentors” chosen by the Minnesota Cup and the Carlson School (a major sponsor).  A list of 47 such mentors, with their bios, was handed out, and John Stavig of the Carlson School is coordinating the choice of mentors by the semifinalists.  Most all the mentors are graduates of the U of M, the majority with degrees from the Carlson School, and they represent a wealth of business-building experience.

What’s next for the Minnesota Cup semifinalists?  Here’s what we learned last evening about the upcoming schedule:

• Each semifinalist submits a 20-page business plan by midnight July 22nd.

• The division finalists are announced on August 19th

• The division finalists present and winners are selected on Augusts 30th

• The division winners present to the Grand Prize Review Board the afternoon of September 8th

• The Minnesota Cup awards event is held the evening of September 8th at the U’s McNamara Alumni Center

Congratulations and good luck to all the semifinalists! And thanks to the many sponsors and partners of the Minnesota Cup, as well as to Scott and his cofounder, Dan Mallin, for helping another great crop of our state’s startups go through their excellent program.  I really believe all the entrants (1000+ this year) are winners, because they get an opportunity to learn so much from the process. Go, Minnesota startups!

George Reese on “The Cloud’s Shining Moment,” Four Days Later

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(Note: This post first appeared earlier today on the writer’s personal blog, Tech~Surf~Blog.)

The major Amazon Web Services outage that began this past Thursday morning was unlike anything before it.  Countless AWS customers, big and small, went down, many for days. Surprisingly, other biggies like Netflix, SmugMug, and Twilio had little or no disruption.  One hungers to know why…

Over the weekend, George Reese, a cloud expert and author (and CTO of cloud-management tools company enStratus), wrote a fascinating post on O’Reilly about what some would call a cloud disaster — entitling it, ironically enough, “The Cloud’s Shining Moment.” George has a unique perspective on the cloud, and a large following. His post got huge play, and that continues — so I decided to message him on Twitter and set up a coffee so I could interview him Monday morning. I was anxious for him to elaborate on his post and share more of his thoughts, now that the outage is (mostly) behind us. 

Click on the link below to hear the whole chat. What follows here are some snippets from that 30-minute conversation (it was recorded in a busy coffee shop, so there’s background noise, but you can hear us fine):

• Thursday at 3:00 am: “We knew something significant was going down.”
• What happened, who was affected, and why.
• What about SLAs? “They’re not an insurance policy, they’re a refund policy… SLAs are a joke.”
• The “Design for Failure” approach vs. traditional application architecture gives you “control over your own destiny.”
• Why the AWS outage was a shining moment: it’s about learning what you can do in the face of an event like this. “So many survived.”
• The “cloud haters” came out after the O’Reilly post. Flame wars erupted in the comments. George pre-empted what they thought was, ahem, their shining moment!
• In large corporations, the “Department of No” is the real problem.
• George guarantees that CIOs who say their companies are not in the cloud actually are, and just don’t know it. Many others realize the cloud “genie is out of the bottle,” and are now coming to his firm, to be their window into what’s really going on in the cloud.
• George’s company now makes it possible to do “cross-cloud” backup and disaster recovery. Not only can customers do automated DR, but automated DR testing, too.
• He says his company is at “the most important point” in its life and the evolution of the cloud. In the last six months, “enterprise has gotten it.” He noted that he’s never spoken to so many Fortune 100 companies as he has in the past week.

• Download or listen to my interview of George Reese, CTO of enStratus … (MP3)

Two other excellent blog posts we touched on that came out over the weekend:
• “How SmugMug survived the Amazonpocalypse,” by Don MacAskill, Cofounder & Chief Geek
• “Seven lessons to learn from Amazon’s outage,” by Phil Wainewright, ZDnet

(Here’s more about my interview subject: George Reese has been delivering software as a service since 2003 when he founded Valtira, a suite of web-based marketing tools. Prior to Valtira, George held a variety of technology leadership roles with J. Walter Thompson, Carlson Marketing Group, and startups Ancept and Imaginet. George is the author of several O’Reilly books on Internet and enterprise technologies, including Java Database Best Practices and Managing and Using MySQL and the recently released Cloud Application Architectures. He has an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a B.A. in Philosophy from Bates College in Lewiston, ME. Follow him on Twitter @georgereese.)

Full Disclosure: As mentioned during the recorded interview, the writer had a consulting relationship with enStratus in 2009.

Minnesota ‘Brand Storyteller’ Changes Name to Brandpoint

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Hopkins-based ARAcontent, which has been a leader in content-based marketing solutions for more than 15 years, announced today it has changed its name to Brandpoint, underscoring the organization’s evolution from a provider of traditional PR brand storytelling into a comprehensive, content-based digital marketing platform.

Brandpoint offers three core product channels, each enhanced by accurate, real-time reporting of results:

• Media creation and distribution: Consumer-focused feature articles help clients tell their brand stories, and provide high-quality content to a network of online publishers. Brandpoint guarantees clients online placement of their articles through its powerful, cost-effective media creation and distribution service.

• Search engine optimization (SEO): Brandpoint provides full SEO consulting services that range from website audits to keyword analysis. Placement of quality content on trusted media websites is an effective way for brands to increase their SEO relevancy.

• Social media: Brandpoint supports clients’ social media strategies with outreach tools and writing services that help brands maintain and grow their social media presence.

“Changing our name to Brandpoint reflects how our business has evolved from a heritage of print article distribution into a comprehensive content-based digital marketing platform,” said David Olson, SVP and general manager of Brandpoint, in the company’s news announcemnet.  “As the online marketing landscape becomes more dynamic, consumers are connecting with each other and the companies they patronize in new and exciting ways. By following consumer trends and continually integrating new services such as social media and SEO, Brandpoint is nicely positioned to serve as our clients’ strategic partner today and in the future.”

The parent company of Brandpoint, and another product called Adfusion, is ARAnet. It is an article-based digital media company that educates consumers, builds brands, and drives sales through product offerings that focus on digital advertising, SEO, and public relations, and leverage content and technology to achieve clients’ specific campaign goals. The company began life 15 years ago as Article Resource Association, providing copyright-free content to print media across the country. As the digital marketing world evolved, the company maintained its front-runner position by developing new content-based marketing tools and utilizing emerging technologies for a broad portfolio of public relations industry, corporate, and interactive agency clients.

Today, Brandpoint is recognized as a pioneer in content-based digital marketing and real-time reporting of measurable, effective results. For more information, call (866) 287-9168 or visit the company’s web site at www.brandpoint.com, where you can also click on an online demo.

Internet Broadcasting Unit Acquired by Cox Digital Solutions

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Another of my new year’s predictions a year ago (Minnov8 Gang episode 62, January 2010) came true today, sort of, when news came out that at least a part of Internet Broadcasting (IB) has been acquired.  NY-based Cox Digital Solutions announced it acquired the IB Local Network business and advertising sales group of St. Paul-based Internet Broadcasting, in a deal I learned was effective January 1, 2011.

For those who may not be familiar with IB (it has not had a high profile locally), it describes its overall business as “building and growing digital business for local media and advertisers.” Its web site says it “partners with media outlets (TV, newspapers, cable and radio) as well as advertisers, ad agencies and media buyers to build site usage and increase revenue.”

For Cox, it’s been a busy time, as it just announced two days ago the merger of Adify (a firm it acquired in 2008) and Cox Cross Media to create Cox Digital Solutions, which it said now has more than 150 employees in 10 U.S. cities, after the IB deal, who “will deliver a unique mix of local and vertical content blended with industry-leading targeting and provide a truly differentiated offering through (the company’s) deep publisher relationships.”

In a phone interview I did today with Jeff Kimball, IB’s chief operating officer (photo from StarTribune), he reiterated that Cox just bought “an arm of our business,” and called the deal “a focusing event for us.”  He said that selling ads, with the sales staff now going to Cox, was just one of IB’s technology and revenue solutions. Although that staff previously competed with Cox, it will now help them scale that part of their business. He noted that the sale is not just about Cox gaining people, but that they’re “buying publisher relationships.”  The number of IB’s employees going to Cox is just under 50, with about 36 of those in New York City, three in Chicago, one in San Francisco, and “less than 10” here in Minnesota. It remains to be seen if Cox will relocate any of these employees. Cox Digital Solutions said it has begun the integration of the products, customers, and employees it acquired from IB to ensure a smooth transition that will deliver value to customers and partners.

The total number of employers remaining at IB is now 240, Kimball said, 160 of which are located in Minnesota at the company’s headquarters just off Shepard Road near downtown St. Paul. …  [Read More…]