Each year the Tekne Awards shine a spotlight on Minnesota’s technology industry. Drawing over 1,000 attendees, including our state’s most influential businesses, political leaders and individuals, the Tekne Awards honor advancement in technology areas including advanced manufacturing, information and medical technologies, and biological sciences. Join us as we come together as a technology community to celebrate innovation in Minnesota’s tech-based economy by recognizing Tekne Award finalists and recipients!… [Read More…]
Minnov8 Gang Podcast – Episode 3
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!
The Podcast
Podcast: Download (Duration: 58:23 — 34.0MB)
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Minneapolis Alt.Net User Group Formed
Minneapolis is getting a new affinity group of .Net developers called Alt.Net. Jamie Thingelstad just gave me a heads-up to his post about this group, knowing that some Minnov8 readers might like to attend.
What is “Alt.Net”. From their site:
At it’s purest, the driving force behind the ALT.NET developer community may be described simply as “The pursuit of happiness.” While Microsoft has provided developers with a powerful framework and a bunch of very good tools and packages to build upon, it often feels like too much effort was put into a “one-size-fits-all” design philosophy that can make it complex, tedious, or just plain impossible to do things that don’t follow Microsoft’s prescribed approach.
With other development platforms and languages offering so much choice (Java and it’s many quality open source offerings) and elegance (Ruby on Rails with its “beautiful” code and “convention over configuration” philosophy), .NET developers longed to craft cleaner, more elegant solutions without having to leave a framework that has so much to offer.
ALT.NET is about following your own beliefs about application design, and using the .NET platform to support your ideas, rather than retro-fitting your ideas to the platform.
Jamie had his eye caught by the logo, reminiscent of the old Grain Belt sign that used to caste its shadow over Hennepin Avenue. The moment I hit Jamie’s blog and then Alt.Net’s site, it caught mine too.
As a kid, we used to go down and pick up my grandparents from the Great Northern Railroad depot (my Grandpa worked for the railroad for 44 years and had lifetime free travel on it) and that sign was the first thing I recognized and, of course, Grain Belt was my first beer at 15, so fun logo for your site guys!
Mobile Marketing Workshop
Minneapolis based space150, a full service digital creative agency, is hosting a Mobile Marketing Workshop on Monday, August 11th, at the Fine Line Cafe (map) in downtown Minneapolis.
With mobile poised to make the leap to a viable advertising medium, space150 feels that this is the perfect time to discuss new technologies, relevant trends and best practices.
The event is free, but space is limited so advance registration is required.
Thirty Semifinalists Named in ‘Minnesota Cup’ Business Plan Competition
I attended and Twittered a bit at a reception Wednesday evening, June 25, at the grand, old James J. Hill Library in downtown St. Paul. (You remember old J.J., don’t you, the Bill Gates of his era?) It was an event to honor the startups who made it to the next round of the Minnesota Cup, an annual, statewide competition that seeks out aspiring entrepreneurs and their breakthrough ideas. The 30 lucky semifinalists were selected from a record of 840 entries in this fourth and largest year of the competition, and will vie for prizes that include $50,000 in cash for the first-place winner. An interesting tidbit I picked up at the reception: about 10% of the 840 entrants were Web 2.0 related.
Scott Litman, cofounder of the event, told me the competition this year was the toughest ever, and that many plans that might have made the cut in previous years didn’t. He also told me that, unfortunately, many entrants may have had great business concepts, but they were not understandable — the submissions were either poorly written, or riddled with so many acronyms and buzzwords that the judges flat-out did not know what the heck the submitter was talking about. (So, take heart, rejectees. You may be great at selling your ideas verbally — now work on the written word.)
Here’s how the Minnesota Cup site states its mission: “We’re looking for the next great entrepreneurial success story in our state. This competition is for all entrepreneurs, whether your breakthrough idea is high tech or no tech, whether you are just putting your ideas into a business plan or if you’ve been out building your venture.” Well, I wonder if it’s possible that any who entered, and especially the chosen semifinalists, could really be “no tech” in this day and age? That would be hard to imagine. And, in looking over the list, there’s nary a one that would seem not to rely on technology in their businesses. (Although some without a website certainly have the aura of no-tech at this point, perhaps awaiting prize money to build? And what’s with all the student semifinalists being listed with no websites?) As for the lack of a requirement that the business be new, i.e., that older startups can also apply, I know at least two on the list are four to five years old and still chasing $50k. Ah, hope springs eternal. Here’s the full list:… [Read More…]
Innovation Seminar in Bloomington
Turning Your Innovations into a Successful Business: Attracting Venture Capital and Business Partners While Protecting Your Innovations. This free seminar will take place on Tuesday, June 17th from 7:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. at the Hotel Sofitel in Bloomington, MN.
This year’s sponsors include The Innovators Network and the Minnesota High Tech Association. Andre Carter, Author and President of Irimi Corporation; James J. Paige of Nikolai & Mersereau; James T. Nikolai of Nikolai & Mersereau and Dan Mallin of SDWA Ventures will be presenting. All local technology firms and interested persons—whether you’ve already obtained a patent on your innovation, have a patent pending, or are considering submitting a patent application—will benefit from attending this event.
To Register, please visit this page.
Cost: FREE with complimentary breakfast
For more information call Melissa Moskal at 202.420.7484.
Adaptive Path UX Workshop in Minneapolis
San Francisco firm Adaptive Path, a leading experience strategy and design company, is holding a user experience (UX), intermediate-to-advanced workshop in Minneapolis at The Depot on June 16-19th.
minnov8.com readers get 15% off the registration price by using code UXIM when registering (on top of the Early Bird price before May 31st).
Nabbit Moves Beyond Tagging
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…]
Minnov8 at MinnPost
What could be better than to have been approached by the editor and publisher of MinnPost, an organization whose mission is to bring high-quality journalism for news-intense people who care about Minnesota, and asked if Minnov8 would be willing to participate weekly with one of our posts published there? Maybe bags full of $100 bills dropped on our doorstep would be better, but this is certainly at the top of the list.
Upon their launch, it was clear to me that MinnPost really was serious about their mission and I’ve been a loyal reader since they went live and recently donated as well. While scanning stories in competing publications about puppies, gossip about celebs at the Mall of America, the annual “Get Ready for Summer!” article or the provocative teaser at Digg is interesting when our minds need a cotton-candy-content fix, but more of us crave deep thought, analysis and perspective which those contributing to MinnPost deliver…. [Read More…]
Minnesota’s Internet Tech Crowd Flexes Its Muscle
If one had any doubt about the intensity of our state’s information technology and Internet community, one only had to be anywhere inside the U’s Coffman Union on Saturday for the third annual Minnebar “unconference” (part of an international phenomenon called Barcamp). To say the joint was a-jumpin’ simply does not suffice. And numbers alone don’t tell the story (though attendance was an event record at 430). Rather, it was the intensity of energy through the entire day that could only impress one about this somewhat quiet, and definitely underrated, sector of Minnesota’s economy.
I was there for at least 12 hours of the event — yes, it went on that long, and no one was complaining — and I can surely say that even the most skeptical of attendees who sacrificed part of their spring weekend were impressed with what they experienced, and left beaming with an elevated sense of pride in the industry they’re a part of. One needs only to scan the voluminous talk that went on in real-time — thanks to the magic of Twitter, and all archived here — to see that something big was happening in the Gopher state on this rainy fishing-opener Saturday. (In fact, Minnebar was ranked during the day as one of the top-five conversations going on in the entire, global “Twitterverse.”)… [Read More…]