Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

Entertainment & Sports Law Symposium

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Lommen Abdo is holding its 3rd Annual Entertainment & Sports Law Symposium for attorneys and industry professionals who want to know more about substantive entertainment law and business issues. Featured speakers include Lommen Abdo lawyers and representatives from the GRAMMY Foundation®, MusiCares®, Minnesota Vikings, Digital Media Wire, Chrysalis Music Group, USC Thornton School of Music and Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers. Following the panel presentations, the event continues with an official South by Southwest® Mixer.

If you’re in the media, entertainment, gaming, music, film or other such businesses—or obviously if you have a legal practice in any of these areas—this looks to be a fascinating, informative and world-class event.

Register here (yes, it’s one of them PDF thingys that you can print on to paper and snail-mail) and you can view the schedule and speaker bios here. There is a $125 fee which includes continuing legal education credits (CLEs), lunch and the SXSW mixer. 6.0 Minnesota CLE credits requested, including 1.0 bias credit; 7.0 Wisconsin CLE credits requested.

Product Camp MN

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Unconferences, meetups and ‘camps’ are accelerating in Minnesota. All began as ways to get people together around a topic, platform, software or category and these collaborative, free and participatory events are great ways to learn from one another. As Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems once famously said, “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else” and these get-togethers are ways for smart people to learn from each other about a discipline, profession, joint passion or to simply uncover ways to push their own personal knowledge forward.

ProductCamp (URL removed due to malware on 10/9/13)– also known as PCamp – is a user organized gathering focused on Product Marketing and Product Management topics. It’s described this way on their site:

“PCamp is one of many “unconferences” held throughout the world. Similar to traditional industry conferences, ProductCamp encourages everyone to participate. The only requirement is to bring an open mind. ProductCamps are all over the place and the list is continually growing.

ProductCamp is a great opportunity for you to learn from, teach to, and network with other professionals actually managing and marketing products from Minnesota and surrounding states! PCamp is open to anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn. So, no spectators, only participants.“

Find out more about the basics here or jump ahead and register here.

Without Any Sense of Irony, Almanac Hosts a Panel on New Media

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l-r: Co-host Erik Eskola; McKenna Ewen; Julio Ojeda-Zapata; Co-host Cathy Wurzer; Shayla Thiel-Stern (none of whom probably yet see the irony that this Almanac 'new media' segment won't later be shareable)

This past Friday night on Twin Cities Public Television’s (TPT) “Almanac” program, frequent contributor to Minnov8, Julio Ojeda-Zapata, made his first appearance on the show to talk about new media and I thought he knocked it out of the park. He was joined by two other delightful and very knowledgeable panelists, Shayla Thiel-Stern of the University of Minnesota (where she is an assistant professor of journalism and mass communications) and McKenna Ewen from the StarTribune where his focus is on new media work.

Co-host Cathy Wurzer began the segment by saying, “About once a month we gather a group of people to chat up media…old and new” and then went on to introduce the three panel members and jump in to the meat of the conversation. Julio did a fantastic job on the segment (fun video Julio!) and I was eager to create a post this morning here on Minnov8 and embed the Almanac segment, but it wasn’t until I sat down to write that I discovered that TPT is still living in an old media world:

TPT does not enable or allow video to be embedded in a blog!

“Wait a second,” I thought. “You mean that if I want to embed the “new media” segment with Julio in it I have to click on this link to load a new page and pop up a window just like an “old media, we gotta protect our content” company!?!” Sadly, the answer is “Yes“ and the irony is obviously lost on TPT.

Here is what you need to do, TPT….  [Read More…]

LiveBlog: “MN Venture & Finance Conference” – 10/14/2010

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The Minnesota Venture & Finance Conference, co-hosted by the Minnesota Venture Capital Association and The Collaborative, is being held at the Minneapolis Convention Center on Thursday, October 14.  I’ll be in attendance all day live-blogging the event, right here, starting at 7:45 am when the program begins.  For the latest official agenda, click here.  Initially, I’m going to allow all tweets that contain the event’s hashtag (#mnconf) to appear in the live-blog.  If the volume of those tweets gets to be too much, I may shut off that feature, or choose to allow only certain tweets to appear. It will be a full day of speakers, panels, and startup pitches!

In Its 24th Year, Venture Conference Asks If Minnesota Has ‘Lost It’

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We’ll find out Thursday, because I’ll be there to live-blog it all: the proceedings of the annual Minnesota Venture & Finance Conference at the Minneapolis Convention Center, co-hosted as always by the Minnesota Venture Capital Association and The Collaborative. The blue-suit crowd will turn out once more to hash over where, oh, where is venture investing going in our state, and whether Minnesota is holding its own or falling behind in relation to other states.

This is great sport, people!  We can’t beat Wisconsin in college football for seven years straight, but, oh yeah, we got those cheeseheads when it comes to the game of innovation!  Or do we?  (And, Gopher fans, I won’t even bring up South Dakota.  Shees.)

“Innovation?  Jobs?  Has Minnesota lost it?  Not for one day in October we haven’t,” says The Collaborative in one of its promos.  “2010 marks our second full year of the worldwide recessionary malaise.  Our state’s economy is also not what anyone is calling ‘robust’.  Our unemployment rate is higher than it’s been in decades.  On the plus side, we’re still one of the brightest economies in the nation,” the pitch goes on to say.

“The positive gap between our jobless rate as compared to the nation is at its highest in 30 years… Yet we also hear many reports of our state losing its way in innovation.”

Can you sense the drama, people?  I’m nervously doing finger and hand exercises right now, in great anticipation of the nuances I may be able to capture on my Macbook or iPad (decisions, decisions) as I contemplate the live-blogging nirvana that awaits me Thursday.  It has me breathing heavy.

“Last year, in the throes of the recession, 54 companies gave presentations, 400+ investors and entrepreneurs came, shared, and discussed growth in tough times,” said Dan Carr, CEO of The Collaborative, in his announcement of this year’s event.  “It actually felt optimistic! These companies also go on to create jobs.  Lots of them.  Minnesota is 8th in the nation in venture backed employment: 365,000 jobs.”  (No word on how many of those people may have been laid off in recent times because those ventures couldn’t raise enough money.)

Carr continues:  “This year’s ‘homecoming’ promises another day-long celebration of ‘doing’ more than ‘hand wringing’.  It’s true that some of our greatest companies rise from difficult times.  Our annual conference has a knack for bringing together Minnesota’s best ‘Up & Comers’.”

…  [Read More…]

MHTA Has a Two-Track Mind for Social Media

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The Minnesota High Tech Association is all set to present Social Media: Marketing and Enterprise 2.0 this Thursday morning October 7th. In a time where you may think the conference, meeting, or coffee talk on the topic of Social Media are a dime a dozen, the MHTA is striving to cover two sides of the equation…with two separate panels.

Albert Maruggi of Provident Partners will moderate a panel addressing Social Media in Marketing/PR, a topic that continues to evolve. Panel members include: Bob Brin, Padilla Speer Beardsley, Arik Hanson, ACH Communications, Kate-Madonna Hindes, GirlMeetsGeekMedia, Tyler Olson, SMCPros, and John Bernier, Best Buy. This group will explore the latest Social Media trends.

At the same time, on the other side of the wall at Best Buy, yours truly will be moderating a panel on Social Media in IT/Enterprise (the nifty 2.0 version of the word business).  Panel members; Rick Mahn, Social Media Consultant, Gina Debogovich, Best Buy, Ernest Grumbles, Merchant & Gould, and Nancy Lyons of Clockwork will discuss the internal uses of Social Media as they pertain to employee engagement along with addressing legal concerns.

We look forward to an interesting morning inside the heads of these Social Media thinkers. Get registered to day as it will close Monday, October 4.

MIMA Summit Liveblog: “You Are There” Edition

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Another MIMA Summit is behind us, as well as another day of fleet feet and live blogging by the Minnov8 Gang.   Congratulations to Tim Brunelle, Erin Rauk, Christopher Pollard, Greg Swan and so many others for your incredible efforts.

Covering that many great sessions was a challenge and a real treat. Re-live the magic with the liveblog recap.

Liveblogging the MIMA Summit

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The MIMA Summit is a two day event (day one is workshops and day two is the full conference) and the Minnov8 Gang will be liveblogging the event put on by the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA).

On Monday we’ll be liveblogging/covering the MIMA pre-conference workshops. On Tuesday (during the full conference day) we’ll be covering it live and also be selectively bringing in tweets from people we trust since there are only four of us, ten sessions and one of us (Phil Wilson) will be conducting speaker video interviews for most of the day on Tuesday!

Liveblog #1: You can follow the Monday pre-conference workshops liveblog on this page.

Liveblog #2: The Tuesday full conference liveblog is on this page.

Making Rain in Bloomington

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Today was the first day of the Rainmaker’s Conference, the 7th Annual event that brings together RAIN Fund members (an angel investment fund), entrepreneurs, investors and sponsors. The intent is networking, education, and exposure to RAIN fund entrepreneurs as well as numerous other startups in order to expose their companies to this key group of people.

Ironic that it was raining like mad all day? Yep. My key takeaway? There is A LOT of very interesting and exciting investment and entrepreneurial activity going on in Minnesota! There were well over 200 people in attendance, substantially more than last year and a great turnout.

Opened by Steve Mercil, CEO of RAIN Source® Capital (the largest network of Angel Investment Funds in US), and keynoted by Richard Sudek, an angel investor, former entrepreneur and academic, there was ample opportunity to connect with local and regional startups at tabletops in the lobby. I happened to run in to Lief Larson of Workface (who was showing BusinessCard2 with some new and interesting value added capabilities); Aaron Weber (co-founder of W3i) and his to-be-launched startup Inveni on Tuesday out at Techcrunch Disrupt (and it is HOT so go watch the video); Lisa Foote with MixMobi who has garnered key investments already for their mobile platform; and Jerry Grabowski of Redliner (see Minnov8’s story here) among others.

Two panels rounded out the day: one on Angel Investing in 2010 & Beyond and the second Funding Universe’s Crowd Pitch…a company showcase where six startups pitch their business plans followed by screening sessions and voting on whether they’re worthy of investment. Crowdsourcing at its best (the winner won’t be announced for another hour or so).

Graeme Thickins pulled aside Pete Birkeland, CFO at RAIN Source Capital to chat about the event. Pete is part of a team that manages 23 funds in 6 six states with $40 million under management and is a guy who has worked in this area for 10 years on both the entrepreneurial and investor side.

Podcast (m8-audio): Download (Duration: 3:47 — 4.4MB)

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Minnesota Cup Announces Finalists

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This just in from the folks at the Minnesota Cup, a phenomenal event for startup Minnesota:

“The Minnesota Cup is a statewide entrepreneurial contest that seeks out and supports Minnesota’s newest and most innovative business ideas, today announced the finalists for the 6th Annual Minnesota Cup competition. Finalists include a company that is developing the world’s first multilingual medical communication system and another with a revolutionary greenhouse technology for growers in any climate.

“Given the great success of so many of last year’s Minnesota Cup finalists, we’re thrilled to see some of the best and most promising business ideas in our program’s history this year,” said Scott Litman, Minnesota Cup co-founder. “These finalists are a true testament to the great entrepreneurial ideas that come from the state of Minnesota, and we look forward to honoring them at our awards ceremony in September.”

Read the full release after the jump. …  [Read More…]