Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

Rebecca Schatz, Who Inspired Thousands Of Youth To Take On Engineering Challenges, Passes

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rebecca_schatzI’ve had the true pleasure of working with Rebecca Schatz as she continued to inspire and encouraged kids and young women to get into the tech space. The news of her passing, succumbing to cancer on July 13th , was truly a blow.

Rebecca, a software engineer and network manager, founded The Works, a hands-on museum/discovery center that makes technology, science and engineering interesting, understandable and fun for young people in 1987. She went on to found Code Saavy in 2012. That organization spawned programs including CoderDojo Twin Cities, Northside Code Club, Get With the Program (for educators), Code Camps for Kids and TechnovationMN, of which I’m proud to be a board member. Each and every one of them is a source of inspiration for those that might not be exposed to the tech world including kids and young women.

Rebecca was passionate about getting more women into the innovative, exciting, and growing world of technology. I can personally attest to her drive and desire to drive others. She was never content with “what is”, preferring the “what could be.” I would even venture to say “what should be,” especially as it pertains to more women in tech.

Her passion was incredibly infectious. Jean Weiss, Executive Director of Code Saavy noted, “She knew that change is the work of many and she inspired everyone to stretch, grow and develop themselves.” She went on to say, “Rebecca left an inspiring, sustainable, and lasting legacy to encourage kids and teens to explore their curiosity, learn coding and creative problem solving, and for the volunteers, family members, and mentors who make it happen.”

Selfishly, I will miss the chance to work alongside of her to realize her vision. However, that vision will continue to inspire so many…and I know that, in spirit, Rebecca will be alongside of us.

Minnov8 Redesign Launches

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Ole Wolla (front) with two of his workers at his Tioga, ND blacksmith shop (circa 1895)

Ole Wolla (front) with two of his workers in his Tioga, ND blacksmith
shop in about 1895. Ole was Steve Borsch’s maternal great-grandfather.

We’ve been hard at work in the shop hammering out a new website design. The goal was to have our website be easier to read and also to use.

One key criteria was to make it fully responsive in its design. So now whether you’re on an iOS or Android smartphone or tablet, Chromebook, or one of them there old fashioned desktop or laptop computer thingys, your experience with our website should be great.

The only exception is if you refuse to give up Windows 95 running Internet Explorer 5.5 and you’re still using a 300 baud modem (like Phil). Probably won’t have a great experience!

Let us know what you think in the comments below about what else you might like us to do in order to make Minnov8 work better for you.

Welcome a New Author: Kurt Roots

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Kurt Roots

Help me in welcoming a new Minnov8 author: Kurt Roots.

Kurt started his first company, which was devoted to web analytics, in high school at the age of sixteen. He went on to college and then graduate school where he did research in machine learning and data mining along with completing an MBA. After spending five years at Oracle, he landed at Quantum Retail in Minneapolis, a firm devoted to predictive retail optimization solutions.

He has a penchant for writing code, blogs, and research papers. You can also find him in the trenches at customer sites, understanding what they really want.

Kurt will be covering both startups and entrepreneurs in Minnesota and also organizations innovating in web and internet technologies. Welcome on board Kurt!

On Minnov8’s Radar…

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radar

Several items hit the radar today worthy of posting and a few from discussion at this morning’s enjoyable and informative Social Media Breakfast:

Bloggers, particularly moms, are an audience of such growing importance to General Mills that the consumer-goods company has built a formal network to feed them free products and enable them to run giveaways for their audiences.

MyBlogSpark has recruited more than 900 bloggers — over 80 percent are moms — to register to be eligible for everything from sampling campaigns to product coupons to news of a new ad campaign. General Mills plans to use the network to promote its wide portfolio of products in the food and beverage, beauty, home, electronics, health and automotive categories.

Emerging Minnesota Software and Internet Technologies to Take the Stage on February 6

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Entrepreneurs, software developers, and computer professionals of all stripes will be rubbing shoulders again this Friday evening with other hopeful company founders, VCs, angel investors, bloggers, and media people from throughout the Twin Cities and other parts of the Upper Midwest.  minnedemo-logoThey’ll be gathering for what’s become a not-to-be-missed quarterly geek-fest called Minnedemo. Billed as “the Twin Cities’ premier technology demo and networking event,” it features free beer, pop, munchies, and lots of conversation, with product demonstrations mixed in between. The latter are delivered from the stage of an auditorium with theater-like seating. More than 200 people are expected to attend.

Minnedemo is being held for a second time at Intermedia Arts in Uptown’s Lyn-Lake neighborhood, and will kick off about 6:00 p.m. this Friday, February 6, with demos starting about 7:00. (Intermedia Arts is located at 2822 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55408.) According to Minnedemo organizer Luke Francl, “All are welcome, just please remember to RSVP online.” The web site for registering (again, it’s free) is http://minnedemo.eventbrite.com/.  This quarter’s event will feature ten demos — five, then a break, then five more. Most demonstrators will be launching their products or showing off their creations for the very first time. Here they are alphabetically: …  [Read More…]

Minnesota Microblogging

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Every day there seems to be an uptick in the number of people who are online and interested in connecting with friends, family, colleagues or others where even a digital relationship might end up as meaningful.

The continued growth of social networks is the strongest indicator of that trend, but the explosion of microblogging is another that bears watching, is worthy of your participation sooner-rather-than-later, as it’s already beginning to shift how early adopters in Minnesota are connecting with one another.

If you’re reading this blog post — whether directly on Minnov8, through an aggregated feed like the one at CentralStandardTech, or a publication we support with our content, MinnPost — you’re already familiar with blogging.

Though blogging is still one of the best ways to connect with people, inexpensively self-publish, create search engine friendly frequently updated content, or be a ‘container’ in which one can place value and position oneself as a a thought leader, good blogging requires significant time and effort in order to build and maintain an audience.

Microblogging, on the other hand, is a method to quickly publish small snippets of commentary or value — usually 140 characters or less that is somewhat like a persistent instant message, public in nature — and is therefore much easier to update when the mood strikes. Add to that the ability to make a brief comment and include a web link URL if so desired (so people can go out and read or view what you’re pointing them to on the Web) allows anyone publishing in this way to have their “followers” or audience quickly read that snippet, comment on it, forward it on, or let it stream by as other content appears from other followed microbloggers.

Minnesotans have embraced microblogging and its promise is that it will help to shift the way we all connect with one another, are alerted to items of interest, and even to collectively be engaged in running commentary like what has been exhibited during the various presidential or vice presidential debates where people were making real-time comments sent over Twitter….  [Read More…]

MIMA Summit Packs The Depot

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As practically every man, woman, and child in the Twin Cities must know by now, the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) held its annual conference Wednesday, themed “Feed“. These folks are marketers — they know how to hype, as they’ve been telling us for what seems weeks now that the event was sold out.  Prior to that, they promoted that it would sell out and the positioning was…so click and pay, friends, or you will never be able to live with yourself.

As you can see from Phil Wilson’s Unsummit post, there were those who ignored the hype and chose to do their own (free) concurrent event at a nearby pub, thank you very much. (Okay, many of them were too cheap to pay the big MIMA fee.) And the MIMA folks actually cheered them on (even from the stage the day of the two events), since they felt bad they couldn’t have accommodated more people. But the venue — the very nice Depot downtown — could literally take no more. (MIMA has vowed to find a bigger site next year though that won’t be easy — maybe the Convention Center?) This year’s attendance, I believe, was something north of 700. MIMA’s membership is now about 950, but the Summit’s attendees also included some non-members and invited speakers, of course.

So, how did the event go?  This was my first year attending (they have not given press passes to us lowly bloggers in the past), so I went courtesy of my employer, to do some serious working of the crowd.  My assessment: the hype didn’t quite meet the reality as far as the overall content, as quality conferences go. But this is an association, after all, not a professional conference producer. And don’t we all kinda forgive a certain percentage of marketing build-up most of the time?  Nonetheless, the logistics were handled quite well, and my hat’s off to the MIMA officers and their band of volunteers who pulled this thing off. (I’m sure they’ve worked out a lot of bugs over the several years they’ve sponsored this event.)…  [Read More…]

Minnov8 Gang Podcast – Episode 3

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Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Garrick Van Buren, Phil Wilson

After vacations and business travel this summer, we carve out time on a Saturday morning for another Minnov8 Gang podcast with Episode 3.

In it we talk about several Minnesota startups and companies (including our own, with some admittedly self-serving comments!):

– PartnerUp Being Acquired by Deluxe Check

– Former HighJump CTO, Steve Kickert’s new company Riverock and his first product launch OnePlace

– Watching for new companies in stealth mode like BeWiki

– DoApp, Cullect, ComicTwit, Localtone Radio

– Social Media Breakfast, Twin Cities group

– Julio Ojeda-Zapata of the Pioneer Press (personal blog; TwinCities.com) is writing a book being released shortly, “twitter means business: how microblogging can help or hurt your business” (book jacket here)

– Minnesota Ultra-High_Speed Broadband Task Force (Minnov8 posts about this initiative here and here).

Thanks for listening!

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 58:23 — 34.0MB)

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Nabbit Moves Beyond Tagging

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On May 13th a press release announced the new partnership between Eagan-based Jump Technologies’ Nabbit service and CBS Radio, Minneapolis (102.9 Lite FM, 104.1 Jack FM, 830 WCCO AM). This partnership will further move Nabbit from a relatively simple tagging application into a full blown marketing tool. On that day, the eve of the big rollout of said partnership, I sat down with Nabbit chief (“Chief Nabber” on the business card), John Freund, to talk about the Nabbit, where it started, where it is and where it’s going.

Nabbit was born some two years ago as Freund and his team at Jump Technologies were discussing the eBay purchase of Skype. “I remember saying how great it would be to have 50 million subscribers to anything.” The discussion included colleague (and radio fan) Norton Lam’s thoughts about tagging radio content. So was the birth of Nabbit. According to Freund, “The first year we dedicated about 10% of Jump Technologies resources to Nabbit.” That has clearly grown as Nabbit has evolved, indicating a great deal of confidence in the potential of the business.

At first, it truly was a “content play” offering listeners of radio the ability to tag songs and advertisements via internet enabled cell phones. Those tagged pieces of content are placed into the Nabbit user’s account for later action including purchase or artist and advertiser info.

“We found that while users were tagging music they were actually tagging more advertising and the calls to action that they provided.” This led to what Nabbit describes as the first service that allows marketers to combine broadcast, mobile, direct response, and online advertising into one integrated consumer marketing campaign.

Here’s how it works.…  [Read More…]