Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

Minnov8 Gang 374 – Who’s Driving?

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whos-driving-main2Quite an interesting set of stories to discuss this week and we also have on as our guest Mark Wilkie, CTO, for the new Who’s Driving app.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson
Music: Blues Menor by EMCA L’Hospitalet under a CC by 3.0 License

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 54:40 — 32.8MB)

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Past Week’s Top Minnesota Stories
Other Top Tech Stories
This Week’s Guest

Mark Wilkie photo

Mark Wilkie (Twitter), CTO, Who’s Driving app. Mark spent the early part of his coding career in Minneapolis. He moved to New York City and joined Buzzfeed in it’s earliest days. After leaving his role as CTO there early this year, he moved his family back to MN and is now CTO of startup Who’s Driving.

Cool Thing of the Week
Upcoming Events

DocuMNtary Debuts Sept. 22nd

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documntaryDocuMNtary: The Story of TECH in Minnesota, will be released right after the upcoming Minnesota Cup event on September 22, 2016 and tickets are available now.

Knowing many of the people in the film, hearing them enthusiastically discuss the experience, and my own watching of the trailer a few times, this documentary is undoubtedly going to have a big, positive impact on Minnesota’s tech scene.

nick-ericThe documentary team is comprised of producer Nick Roseth and videographer Eric Jenson, two accomplished techies who have all the requisite skills to make this film one worth watching and for promoting to everyone you know OUTSIDE of Minnesota who is relatively clueless about the tech scene here. Their about page is here which will give you a synopsis of their motivation, focus, objective and how the film itself is structured:

  • We have an incredible community, we are growing, we need tech talent, and we don’t do a very good job of telling our story. 
  • DocuMNtary is a project to build awareness of technology in Minnesota by telling our story through a documentary series.
  • The project objective is to help Minnesota become a top 5 tech community by retaining and attracting top technology talent.
  • DocuMNtary will be distributed primarily as a web experience along with other channel partners such as public television. The web experience allows us to ensure that this story is available to all people and organizations in Minnesota and beyond.
  • The series consists of the 30-minute high-level story, and individual 5-10 minute stories from specific people, companies, industries, or other components of our ecosystem. The documentary format allows us to tell the world not only about our great community, innovation, and company stories, but also gives us opportunity to talk about our great music scene, values, outdoor life, culinary wonders, and a booming craft beer industry to name just a few things that make Minnesota what it is.

The Trailer

When Will It Be Released?

Join community leaders, technologists, and many others to celebrate and advocate our tech community.

WHEN: 

WHERE: McNamara Alumni Center, University of Minnesota Campus – 200 Southeast Oak Street, Minneapolis, MN 55455 – View Map

How Do I Get a Ticket?

Register Here

 

Minnov8 Gang 373 – Smooth, Sexy & Social

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phil-bf-main

Photo credit: Nancy Kuehn for MSPBJ

Our own Phil Wilson has a profile story by Katharine Grayson in this past week’s Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal. Titled Face Time: BuzzFeed General Manager Phil Wilson, the story requires a subscription to MSPBJ, but Phil gives an overview of what’s in it and it’s a nice introductory piece of Phil in MSPBJ’s “Face Time” series.

Tim and I were a bit disappointed after seeing MSPBJ photographer Nancy Kuehn‘s photo for the story. We both thought that Katharine didn’t title it correctly and it should have been: Face Time: BuzzFeed GM Phil Wilson is Smooth, Sexy & Social. Perhaps a followup story will probe Phil’s smooth, sexy, social persona.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson
Music: Swing Swing Blues by DJ Ecklectic Mick  under a CC by 3.0 License

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 35:44 — 21.5MB)

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Past Week’s Top Minnesota Stories
Other Top Tech Stories
Cool Thing of the Week

Upcoming Events

Minnov8 Gang 372 – The Zamfir Fanboy

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zamfir-tim-mainBefore we started the show we were talking about our kids and I mentioned playing Raffi for my daughter (over-and-over-and-over again!). But it wasn’t until this show that Phil and I learned that Tim has been a closeted fanboy of the pan flute master, Zamfir. How could we have known? We didn’t ask, but probably should have found out if Tim runs this video’s audio on an endless loop during his workday.*

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson
Music: Bottle Blues by BASIL under a CC by 3.0 License

*You’ll have to listen to the show to find out if Tim is actually a fanboy, or is being tweaked.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 45:00 — 26.9MB)

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Past Week’s Top Minnesota Stories
Other Top Tech Stories
Cool Thing of the Week

Phil: Mercedes Maybach Concept

Tim: THE SIOUX CHEF: A Native American Restaurant

Steve: New lithium metal tech can create ultralight car batteries and thinner phones

Upcoming Events

Minnov8 Gang 371 – The Poopening

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doggie_mainAn amusing story went viral this past week from a guy whose dog left his “deposit” on the floor one evening and later, when this guy’s Roomba scooted around the apartment doing it’s vacuuming job, it smeared the deposit everywhere! This story was Phil’s “Cool Thing of the Week” and he links below to the original Facebook story so you can read this guy’s horrific account for yourself.

NOTE: Save for that one story, we take the ‘high road’ on the rest of the podcast and talk about important tech stuff. 😉

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson
Music: May Your Life Be Sweet And Simple by Walker Winn under a CC by 3.0 License

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 46:12 — 27.6MB)

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Past Week’s Top Minnesota Stories
Other Top Tech Stories
Cool Thing of the Week

Upcoming Events

Minnov8 Gang 370 – Privacy, Security and a Dead Man’s Switch

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train-mainTwo of our top Minnesota stories had themes of privacy, security, and what happens to our digital life when we leave this earthly realm. One of the startups we discuss, SecretValet, has what is essentially a dead man’s switch so that important digital documents and files end up in the hands of those who need them after we’re gone.

Macabre? Not really…if you have life, health or homeowner’s insurance you are protecting against the possibility something might happen, so why not do the same with your digital life?

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 36:51 — 22.1MB)

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Past Week’s Top Minnesota Stories
Other Top Tech Stories
Cool Thing of the Week
Upcoming Events

Minnov8 Gang 368 – Got Your Drone License Yet?

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drone_mainWe’ve talked about drones several times on the show and this past week our pal, Julio Ojeda-Zapata, wrote a really good story about how you can study, take and pass a test, to get your drone license (or take the FAA training course).

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 32:46 — 19.6MB)

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Past Week’s Top Minnesota Stories
Other Top Tech Stories
Cool Thing of the Week

Upcoming Events

Minnov8 Gang 367 – MN’s Tech Hub No Longer ‘Emerging’

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tech-hub_mainOne thing that riled us up this week was Twin Cities Business Magazine’s article Twin Cities: An Emerging Tech Hub? which ended with a question mark? None of us think that Minnesota is emerging but rather that we have absolutely already emerged!

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 39:30 — 23.6MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Past Week’s Top Minnesota Stories
Other Top Tech Stories
Cool Thing of the Week
Upcoming Events

Minnov8 Gang 366 – Go Pokémon, Go!

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pokemon-go-mainThe three of us are not true gamers like our kids are, but we couldn’t help but notice the wildly successful game Pokémon Go and how it is seemingly taking the world by storm. Though it had barley a mention in our podcast toward the end, this game appears to be the first augmented reality app that is likely to change the paradigm for this category. If you haven’t seen it in action (or yet downloaded it yourself and played it) you can do so right now for iOS and Android.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson.
Music: Angry by Doug Barrs under a CC BY-SA 3.0 License

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 40:21 — 23.8MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Past Week’s Top Minnesota Stories
Other Top Tech Stories

Cool Thing of the Week

Upcoming Events

DocuMNtary, The Story of TECH in Minnesota, To Be Released

By

documntaryDocuMNtary: The Story of TECH in Minnesota, will be released right after the upcoming Minnesota Cup event on September 22, 2016. Knowing many of the people in the film, hearing them enthusiastically discuss the experience, and my own watching of the trailer a few times, this documentary is undoubtedly going to have a big, positive impact on Minnesota’s tech scene.

nick-ericThe documentary team is comprised of producer Nick Roseth and videographer Eric Jenson, two accomplished techies who have all the requisite skills to make this film one worth watching and for promoting to everyone you know OUTSIDE of Minnesota who is relatively clueless about the tech scene here. Their about page is here which will give you a synopsis of their motivation, focus, objective and how the film itself is structured:

  • We have an incredible community, we are growing, we need tech talent, and we don’t do a very good job of telling our story. 
  • DocuMNtary is a project to build awareness of technology in Minnesota by telling our story through a documentary series.
  • The project objective is to help Minnesota become a top 5 tech community by retaining and attracting top technology talent.
  • DocuMNtary will be distributed primarily as a web experience along with other channel partners such as public television. The web experience allows us to ensure that this story is available to all people and organizations in Minnesota and beyond.
  • The series consists of the 30-minute high-level story, and individual 5-10 minute stories from specific people, companies, industries, or other components of our ecosystem. The documentary format allows us to tell the world not only about our great community, innovation, and company stories, but also gives us opportunity to talk about our great music scene, values, outdoor life, culinary wonders, and a booming craft beer industry to name just a few things that make Minnesota what it is.

The Trailer

When Will It Be Released?

Join community leaders, technologists, and many others to celebrate and advocate our tech community.

  • 7pm, September 22nd, 2016
  • McNamara Alumni Center, University of Minnesota (map)
  • Immediately following MN Cup Awards Presentation

How to Get a Ticket

  1. Get on the mailing list: Some time ago we signed up to get on the list for when DocuMNtary would be released. We’re so close…so it’s time for you to sign up now!
  2. Then watch your email: Ticket release will be August 15th. Keep an eye out for an email with ticket release info.
  3. Share this post and/or email it to one person and tell them to check out the trailer.

sponsorshipSponsorship

Interested in sponsorship? Sponsorship info can be found here (PDF).