Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation
Two of the four Gang members made it to Minnebar at the headquarters of Best Buy this past Saturday. All feedback was it was a fabulous event and Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson recorded this week’s podcast live at the event.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 28:11 — 16.3MB)
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After our week hiatus, the Minnov8 Gang is back at it with a podcast covering Graeme Thickins’ trip to the DeFrag conference and his liveblogging of it. After that we discuss local events (e.g., Minnebar), WCCO, WordPress and much more.
This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music by blues singer Candy Kayne and the tune is, “I’m a bad, bad girl.”
Podcast: Download (Duration: 57:09 — 33.2MB)
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Discussed during the show notes:
+ WCCO‘s “The Wire” & their iPhone app by DoApp and Inergize Digital (iTunes link; search in Android store for “WCCO”; or use mobile website at m.wcco.com)
+ WordPress Users Group meeting on December 3rd at 6:30pm
+ Minnebar at Best Buy HQ (sold out) and the sessions
+ Google buys Gizmo5; Toktumi; Google page speed article; Newsy
+ Android and GoogleChromeOS which, by the way, rumor has it will launch within a week.
Phenomenal discussion at today’s Social Media Breakfast – Minneapolis/St. Paul (SMBMSP) at the Summit Brewery where the meeting was held. The discussion was on “Social Media and Journalism” and was facilitated by Julio Ojeda-Zapata (@jojeda), a technology writer and columnist at the St. Paul Pioneer Press and author of the book, Twitter Means Business (and a frequent guest on Minnov8 Gang).
This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 42:11 — 24.2MB)
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Panel members:
We were fortunate that the SMBMSP facility host, Summit Brewing Company, provided us with a boardroom to record in after the panel discussion and, though the room had a bit of an echo, we were able to get in a solid podcast with Julio and David Brauer joining us for a continuation of the discussion about journalism and social media.
The Gage Group had a video shooting area at the MIMA Summit ’09 and these interviews were being done by Wendy Meadley (@socialwendy). Wendy grabbed three of the four Minnov8 Gang to get us on camera and recap the event from our perspective.
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
One of the Twin Cities most active social media participants, Lisa Grimm (LinkedIn; Twitter; Facebook), headed out last week to the Blogworld/New Media Expo held in Las Vegas and two of the four Minnov8 Gang sat down with Lisa to find out what happened, her impressions of the event, and what she took away from it.
As someone engaged in PR, marketing and product management, Lisa has impressed the Gang with her knowledge and passion for the shift in social and human communication at the heart of the social media phenomena, so we actively sought her out when we discovered she was heading out to Blogworld and asked if she’d be willing to recap it for Minnov8 upon her return. Our hope? To get a fresh viewpoint from a Minnesotan directly in the demographic sweet spot for social media and in full-scale seek mode learning all she can about all of its moving parts. The result? Exactly that (and much more) from a woman with the confidence and intelligence to soak it all in, make the connections shaping her opinions, fully engage with the Blogworld speakers, thought leaders as well as key attendees at this event (plus we got to interview her before she becomes famous).
We also discovered something about Ms. Grimm and gambling. Did she help the economy of Las Vegas and the consumer confidence of gaming industry personnel?
This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch and Phil Wilson (Tim Elliott and Graeme Thickins were not available midday on a weekday).
Show Notes:
+ Blogworld
+ Chris Brogan and his book
+ Perhaps this is one reason why Ms. Grimm has the opinion she does about gambling.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 40:39 — 23.6MB)
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Apparently our Governor has decided not to publicly release the communication issued by a state agency to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) relative to the Administration’s funding priorities for federal broadband stimulus projects, specifically the Minnesota-focused NTIA/RUS broadband stimulus applications stating in comments to the aggregator of public broadband information, StimulusBroadband.com, that, “…the communication issued by a state agency to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) relative to the Administration’s funding priorities for federal broadband stimulus projects in Minnesota is not considered a “public document.”
Thankfully I follow Blandin on Broadband‘s Ann Treacy and was alerted to this gubernatorial non-release. She had this to say about it:
It’s frustrating. The Minnesota Ultra High-Speed Broadband Task Force has been so transparent with their information. I’ve gotten spoiled. Also I think the NTIA/RUS has made strides to be transparent with their processes so it seems against the spirit of the stimulus ideals not to maintain transparency. There are a lot of applicants in Minnesota waiting to hear about what their chances are for funding. Should they be getting ready to hit the ground running with the money; should they be coming up with a contingency plan?
Ms. Treacy ends with speculation in an attempt to understand:
Lots of folks are wondering why the list is closed. As the article indicates, Minnesota maybe trying to avoid criticism for their choices. The article says, “the decision to treat the NTIA response as non-public fuels a growing debate over whether States preferred public and government projects over private ones. It would appear that Minnesota could be shielding its rankings from the same type of criticisms other states are facing.” An underlying factor, may be the criticism they received for endorsing the Connection Nation mapping proposal. (I’m not making excuses, just trying to understand.)
Hopefully this is simply a delay before becoming public and not an obvious ploy to block Federal broadband stimulus funds due to the recently released Federal Communication Commissioner’s rules on net neutrality and the GOP’s anti-net neutrality stance and moves to block it.
Governor, lay this data out on the table under the light of public scrutiny.
Libraries used to be places to go solely to find information and knowledge in containers called “books” that were comprised of “atoms” and organized by Melvil Dewey’s cool Decimal System, but increasingly library systems are morphing in to places to get connected online where patrons can find their information and knowledge in “bits” while interacting with the library in an increasingly virtual and — most intriguingly in today’s participation culture — in an online and interactively social way.
The Gang had a chance to invite Meg Canada on the podcast to talk about the 21st century library, what our biggest Minnesota library system is doing (and what she’s driving within it) to embrace new realities that are internet-centric and deliver a surprising array of services you may not know even exist. Meg has long impressed us with how much she “gets it” with respect to new media and social technologies, but have been quite delighted to see how much of her energy is invested in the social and internet community in Minnesota and the role she plays in nurturing it along with good humor and an eagerness to serve others.
Meg is a senior librarian for Web Services and Training at Hennepin County Library and currently coordinates public training and social media efforts for the library. She volunteers helping with the Unsummit, recently presented at MinneWebCon, and is a regular contributor to Social Media Breakfast. Had we known beforehand that she also sings regularly with the Twin Cities chapter of TechKaraoke, we would’ve had her croak out an Etta James tune or something. We’ll get her on another podcast soon and have her sing.
This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Opening & closing music is “38 Special” by Charlie Musselwhite (iTunes link) from Music Alley, purveyor of podsafe tunes.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:03:58 — 36.9MB)
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Discussed during the show:
+ Wired article, “YouTube’s Bandwidth Bill Is Zero. Welcome to the New Net”
+ Libraries & Broadband by Ann Treacy on the Blandin on Broadband blog
+ Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) on Twitter
+ Hennepin County Library (HCL) and their services; Bookspace, a social site for HCL book lovers; eBooks and downloadable audio books and videos; and a remarkably easy to use, searchable database of all events and classes in the HCL system; HCL on Twitter.
Unless you’re independently wealthy and cost is no object, in these tough economic times you probably are interested in saving money. Add to that the acceleration in all of us doing more and more of our work virtually — and that work is moving toward a time when we’re more like “free agents” than employees — and it’s likely you’ll be interested in any opportunities to save money now and position yourself for the future.
There’s an old idiom to describe a person who is living beyond their means as someone with, “champagne taste on a beer budget.” But what if you could have a “champagne presence on a beer budget” and cut your costs while maintaining, or more likely exceeding, your current professional presence?
If you haven’t taken a serious look at every single one of your fixed and variable costs in the past six months to a year, you need to do so right now since you’re probably paying far more than you should for many of the services you use and feel are simply “table stakes to be in the game” and a must-have to project a professional presence. In this post, I’ll point out some ways that you can save money, meet or exceed your current professional presence and position yourself for an increasingly virtual future. … [Read More…]
The Minnov8 Gang was delighted to report on, and be a part of, the UnSummit ’09 unconference, held today at the incredible facility at the Hennepin County Central Library in downtown Minneapolis. Hats off to Meg Canada, Don Ball and Mykl Roventine — as well as all of the sponsors — who made it such a great event. We did some light liveblogging which you can see on this page.
We were pleased to have a slot to record our first live version of the Minnov8 Gang podcast. Hosts today were Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is up north searching for colder weather, we presume).
Podcast: Download (Duration: 33:49 — 19.5MB)
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If you’re trying to stay warm on this chilly Saturday and couldn’t make the Unsummit, three of the Minnov8 Gang are liveblogging Unsummit ’09 here.