Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation
Join the Entrepreneur’s Organization — Minnesota Chapter for an “Entrepreneur’s Rally” on Tuesday, March 13, 2012 at CoCo Minneapolis. Invited by Cem Erdem, founder, President and CEO of Augusoft, Inc. and of Project Skyway to this event, I realized quickly that this year’s event is bigger and better than last year’s and you must attend if you are an entrepreneur!
Details in the embedded PDF below or go directly to the registration page.
Mobile, mobile, mobile. If you had to give advice to some kid you were mentoring regarding an industry they should focus on with their career, anything mobile would be great advice.
We humans are not going to get less mobile (though our waistlines might state otherwise) and new mobile devices, apps, and ways to connect us all will only continue to become better and more prolific. As such, knowing trends in mobile, how to (and what’s involved in) develop mobile apps, and what you should do next are just a few of the things you need to know if you have any interest in the mobile space.
This is the primary reason that you need to make certain you attend MobileMarchTC (and maybe bring along that young person you’ve given advice to!). The agenda just came out and the press release is after the jump which you can read after clicking “(more…)” below.
MobileMarchTC not only looks like a fabulous event, in my estimation you would need to travel to San Francisco or New York to find a mobile event to rival it. Event registration can be found at http://mobilemarchtc.eventbrite.com/.
The Gang shows up for the Social Media Breakfast held at Thomson Reuters to talk the new Kindle Fire, tablets and tablet publishing, and mobile. We didn’t have enough time to be exhaustive in our discussion, but we cover a lot of ground in a short time.
Joining us on the ‘cast is our frequent guest host, Julio Ojeda-Zapata, as well as Albert Maruggi of Provident Partners (the moderator for the panel discussion on mobile social media). Toward the end Lisa Grimm joins us to chime in on mobile social media and what she’s up to at Mall of America.
The panel, hosted by Albert, included Liz Giel, Digital Strategist at Fallon; Kevin Hunt, Corporate Social Media Manager at General Mills; and Breon Nagy, Marketer at Code42 Software.
Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 33:54 — 19.6MB)
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A few photos from SMBMSP:
Discussed during the show:
Upcoming Events
The 5th Annual Defrag Conference was held November 8-10. 2011, in Denver, and I was there once again reporting on all the action during this much heralded meeting of the Internet’s big minds. 
One of the highlights this time for me was the keynote on the final day by Robert Stephens, CTO of Best Buy and founder of Geek Squad. Robert was a huge hit, as I’d been telling all my Defrag friends for years that he would be. (A selection of the scores of tweets during his talk is shown below — screenshots I grabbed from my Defrag 2011 Live-Blog archive. The hashtag #defragcon was lighting up the web over the three days of the event, and still is with the afterglow. One of my favorite tweets, not shown below, was someone quoting Robert saying, “Everything at Best Buy is an accessory to your mobile phone – including your car.” Hmmm, and maybe even your electric motorcyle, a product category that’s been expected to show up in Best Buy stores, and may finally be coming soon — the first hint: there are actually reviews for one already posted on BestBuy.com — but Robert didn’t touch on this topic.)
In a 10-minute video interview I did with Robert while we were having coffee and rolls before the general session started Thursday morning, we covered a range of topics — including the recent announcement that Best Buy is acquiring managed services provider MindShift for $167 million. I also got a sneak preview of other topics Robert was going to talk about in his opening keynote:
The Minnov8 Gang covered the MIMASummit live as well as bringing in tweets with the hashtag #mimasummit.
Click the “more” link to view the post with the embedded liveblog archive within it.
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The president of MIMA, Tim Brunelle, and his team have put together an amazing 10th annual MIMA Summit event. MIMA, as the oldest and largest interactive marketing association in the U.S., with more than 1300 members, never fails to disappoint in drawing excellent, in-demand speakers to its annual event. I had the pleasure of running into Tim chatting with one of those speakers, Ed Boches, who was a founder of the famed Mullen agency in Boston, and is now its chief innovation officer. Tomorrow, Ed will team with a colleague of his, Dave Armano, EVP-global innovation & integration at Edelman Digital, to do a talk they call “Group Therapy for Would-Be Innovators.” It is sure to be a highlight of the event, and I will be there!
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!
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? : – )
At a swanky little affair at the offices of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi, the Minnesota High Tech Association (MHTA) announced the finalists for the 2011 Tekne Awards. In their 12th year the Teknes “honor companies, innovations and individuals that positively impact Minnesota’s technology-based economy.” While many of Minnesota’s largest tech companies are represented, there is a healthy dose of young companies who get to bask in the warmth of this MHTA honor.
Winners will be chosen at an equally swanky ceremony on November 3rd at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Join the crowd as they choose from the following finalists:
ADVANCED MANUFACTURING AWARD
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!