Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

Jonathan Zittrain on Minds for Sale

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One of the thought leading places I follow is the Berkman Center at Harvard University and their podcast/webcast delivery vehicle called MediaBerkman, whose focus is to “…feature conversations with and talks by leading cyber-scholars, entrepreneurs, activists, and policymakers as they explore topics such as the factors that influence knowledge creation and dissemination in the digital age; the character of power as the worlds of governance, business, citizenship and the media meet the internet; and the opportunities, role and limitations of new technologies in learning.”

One of the key players there is Jonathan Zittrain, a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, a co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and a guy who served as its first executive director from 1997-2000. He’s also the author of “The Future of the Internet—and How to Stop It“.

I came across a 1.5 hour talk called “Minds for Sale” on the commercial side of cloud computing that was posted a few days ago and I’ve been listening to it in starts-n-stops whenever I had some time. It’s worth your time to listen to it closely if you are at all involved in commercial cloud computing, a startup in the web hosted space, or are a strategist or business leader in any thought leading capacity for your organization. In it you’ll hear “…why cloud computing is not just for computing anymore and how a new range of projects is making the application of human brainpower as purchasable and fungible as additional server rackspace.”

Listen by hovering over the speaker icon or download the mp3: Minds for Sale

Podcast: Download (62.5MB)

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Pew Internet’s “Future of the Internet IV”

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If you rely upon the internet in any way for your startup, business, learning or to feed your addiction to World of Warcraft, you’ll be interested that Pew Internet has released their fourth report on the internet’s future entitled, “Future of the Internet IV“.

It’s a survey of nearly 900 Internet stakeholders which reveals fascinating new perspectives on the way the Internet is affecting human intelligence and the ways that information is being shared and rendered.

The web-based survey gathered opinions from prominent scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers and technology developers. It is the fourth in a series of Internet expert studies conducted by the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University and the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. In this report, Pew covers experts’ thoughts on the following issues:

“Three out of four experts said our use of the Internet enhances and augments human intelligence, and two-thirds said use of the Internet has improved reading, writing and rendering of knowledge,” said Janna Anderson, study co-author and director of the Imagining the Internet Center. “There are still many people, however, who are critics of the impact of Google, Wikipedia and other online tools.”

Yeah…like my former boss (now 69 years old) who insists that the internet is just a fad and that we’re destroying civilization with it. Or a former teacher I know who still believes that all relevant information we need must be stuffed in to our brains vs. looking it up via Google.

Visions of Tomorrow, Yesterday

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From Matt Novak's PaleoFuture blog (click on image to see Matt's post)

If you, like I, follow the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) Twitter feed (@MNHS) then you might already have stumbled across an interesting lecture which may also have led you to a delightful St. Paul blog.

Stumble indeed.

It was pure happenstance that I came across a compelling MNHS lecture called, “History of Hip: Yesterday’s Tomorrow” and features historian Brian Horrigan and blogger Matt Novak (the guy with that cool St. Paul blog called “Paleo-Future“). In it they highlighted some of their favorite trends in science fiction of the past while they shared their own thoughts about the future of this genre.

With only three lectures posted (on a WordPress blog in a new category called Minnesota History Lectures), the innovative thing is that MNHS, like many historical societies around the country, are exposing more of their content and compelling attractions digitally and online. Most of the MNHS efforts succeed — like my favorites Family Search and the great images of Minnesota digitized and available through the Collections — but I must admit feeling a profound sense of disappointment that this particular lecture was delivered in video as a 320 x 240 window in M4V format. Perfect for an iPod or iPhone, but unacceptable for how I usually watch long-form video (through my Mac mini on my HDTV).

I downloaded the 513MB file and watched it on my iPhone and now wish I’d known about the lecture in advance (it was that good) and also so I could scrub through it and see portions of it again. There is some great content in it and in particular some of the retro future videos Matt shows in his portion of the lecture in the second half are really fun.

The challenges MNHS faces delivering long lectures of this type (and doing so affordably) isn’t lost on someone like me who has analyzed the economics of video. But so many of us now are streaming video over our computers or connecting our Roku (or next month the Boxee Box) to our HDTV’s, the stepping up of the qualitative delivery of video is an imperative and, I believe, will be “table stakes” to be in the game of delivering long form video content going forward.

All that said, I so appreciate the efforts of MNHS and that more and more of the content they hold is available online. I’d heartily recommend you head over to their site and check out what’s going on there and this lecture in specific and, by the way, Matt Novak is launching a magazine in April, you can help him raise the initial dough by donating, and this retro future magazine ought to be a fun one!

Your Customers are Watching You

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While many internet and web technology sites and blogs have published their 2010 predictions (including Minnov8), this post serves as a warning and a wake-up call to Minnesota companies that the power you once held — not just in communication, marketing and public relations surrounding your products, services and company — but that power is quickly shifting to your customers in new ways that you need to understand and strategically prepare for or suffer the consequences beginning now.

The acceleration in mobile internet use — and the devices exploding in number to access it — is enabling the masses to understand what you’re doing as an organization, comment to one another on your activities but (and perhaps most disturbingly to those of you with previously publicly unavailable or difficult to obtain data) it is enabling customers to examine your products, your company’s record on the environment, your labor practices (onshore and offshore) and much more.

How can your customers do that? …  [Read More…]

GiveMN: Charitable Fundraising Meets Social Networking

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GiveMN logoThis morning my Twitter stream was filled with tweets about GiveMN an online charitable donation site which launched today. The idea is simple; provide an online resource for the more than 36,000 Minnesota charitable and religious organizations to raise money for their programs. GiveMN.org is built with Razoo, an online platform optimized for charitable giving based in Washington, DC. This platform not only makes it easy for charitable organizations to publicize their programs to attract donors and accept contributions but also is fully integrated with existing social networks Facebook and Twitter extending their promotional reach.

Online fundraising costs about a third of what traditional direct marketing does which makes GiveMN a much more efficient way to raise funds. The foundation that administers GiveMN plans to cover much of the 4.75% credit card transaction cost from corporate and private donations so that 100% of the contributions will go to the designated charity.  Their partners and funders page lists a number of well known organizations such as The Saint Paul Foundation, Greater Twin Cities United Way, The Minneapolis Foundation, The Bush Foundation and The Minnesota Council of Nonprofits along with corporate and media sponsors.

To kick things off, GiveMN has designated November 17th as “Give to the Max Day” where several of their donors have pledged up to $500,000 in matching contributions to fund programs and cover the transaction costs. More details will be posted on the GiveMN site in coming days about this event as well as on their Facebook page and Twitter account.

GiveMN looks to revolutionize charitable giving here in Minnesota but also might inspire other such efforts in other states. You never know where Minnesota innovation will strike next.

Transparency Please, Governor Pawlenty

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Pawlenty_Governor-MN

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.

Comcast Launches 100Mbps Tier in MSP

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ComcastThe Twin Cities is the first market in the nation to enjoy Comcast’s newest high speed offering: 100 megabit per second business class service, leveraging their investment in DOCSIS 3.0, a cable internet standard. Their new service offering delivers up to 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) downloads and up to 15 Mbps uploads for $369.95 per month.

If you haven’t heard of DOCSIS 3.0 (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification which is explained in this video) and don’t know why this is important, it’s the next generation of cable standards for delivering data over cable with theoretical speeds between 170mbps and 340mbps download with upload speeds of 120mbps.

Not only is Comcast’s new offering significantly faster than what a telecom company offers (e.g., a T1 line speed is 1.544Mbps upload and download speed), it is also substantially cheaper than a T1 usually offered at $500 or more. Even three T1’s, combined in a T3 offering, is only 43Mbps and can run in to the multiple $1,000’s per month. Once this new speed tier hits other major markets, the telecom companies will have a hard time winning the race for broadband internet connections in the SMB space.

Not only is this significantly faster than telecom company offerings, such as a 1.544mbps T1 line, it is substantially cheaper than a T1 usually offered at $500 or more.
If you haven’t

Comcast clearly sees the market need in small to midsize businesses (SMB) due to the acceleration in cloud computing and SMB adoption, VoIP services, online storage backup and other bandwidth hungry uses. Having an affordable high speed option is an SMB imperative and I’m really pleased to see Comcast rolling this out in the Twin Cities first.

TED Hits Town, Throngs Converge

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TED Hits Town, Throngs Converge
And a lot more Minnesotans were wishing they could have gotten this hot ticket, it turned out.  Screw the Fair, this was the place to be in St. Paul last night.  There was nothing on a stick — in fact, no eats or drinks at all that I ever saw (more on that later).  But it was the first time any TED event had ever hit town — and it was freeee! — so it was a no-brainer that demand for seats would far exceed supply.
TEDxTC http://tedxtc.com/, an “independently organized TED event,” as they labeled it, was held last evening at the Science Museum of Minnesota in downtown St. Paul, from 7:00 till something approaching 10:00, I suspect. (I bailed early.)  The very nice theater-style auditorium could only hold about 280, and it was indeed maxed out. Those of us who saw the somewhat obscure promotion for this event back in mid-August, and signed up, even got a special followup email on August 26, begging us to please let them know if we could not attend, because the waiting list was already up to 221!  That was a sure-fire way, of course, to get everyone registered to be certain to show up, knowing they had something so many others wanted. And they got that ticket for absolutely nothing, just by responding to an email. Such a deal.
TED originally stood for “Tech, Entertainment, and Design” when the conference series was launched in the 1980s. But, several years ago, the organization began positioning its events (including the pricey national conferences) with the tagline, “Ideas Worth Spreading.”  How’s that for a broad-reaching mission, huh?  And now they’ve essentially gone worldwide by letting local volunteers and sponsors roll their own mini TED events. (Quite the franchise, this TED thing.)  Sponsors for our local event were Worrell (official design partner), Boston Scientific, and the Science Museum of Minnesota. The host and MC was Chadburn Blomquist of the Science Museum. (By the way, Chad, smart idea to cosponsor — great way to show off your employer’s wonderful facility.)
The presentations, in order, were:
– Dan Buettner, speaking about his study of longevity related to his Blue Zones venture.  http://www.bluezones.com/  This was the high point of the evening for me (followed closely by the next speaker).  Fascinating research, and well presented.  Great stories about the healthy old-timers he met all around the world in the longevity zones his organization  identified.
– Benjamin Zander, a classical musician and conductor, speaking about music and passion. (Presentation via video, as recorded at a TED event in February 2008 – here’s the link. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion.html) The man exudes a passion and love for music, and all “possibilities,” which is extremely catching!)
– Ed Driscoll, an entrepreneur (he cofounded local firm WAMnet in the ’90s), talking about our energy future and his new company, Rational Energies. http://rationalbioenergy.com/
– Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist, who spoke about her experience suffering a debilitating stroke and her slow recovery. (Presentation via video, as recorded at a TED event in Feb 2008 – here’s the link.http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
– Matthew Stanford, a parapalegic, who spoke on mind-body integration. (Here’s a video about him on YouTube, produced several months ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpmbzAwL5ws)
No word at this point if the three live presentations are available yet as videos to view online, but they’re sure to show up on the TEDxTC Facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Minneapolis-St-Paul-MN/TEDxTC/63321962217?ref=ts
(currently at 389 fans)
The TEDxTC people say that, in addition to their Twitter feed http://twitter.com/TEDxTC
(what, only 167 following? tells us something about the TED demographic maybe…), that Facebook page linked above is the best source to get information post-event (videos, photos, etc) — and it’s also where you can learn about future TEDxTC programs.
And, of course, to read the play-by-play, just search twitter using the hashtag “TECxTC” and you’ll see a huge amount of tweets posted by audience members — and those who were wishing they were.  I tweeted extensively myself last night www.twitter.com/graemethickins , till I finally had to bail about 8:45, starving. (Note to organizers: next time, either hold the event in the afternoon, before din-din, or at least throw us some crackers, cheese, wine — somethin’! — beforehand, so we can get through the 2+ hours. I later heard a reception was held afterwards, which no one mentioned beforehand, but I was long home with my head in the refrigerator by then.)
Photos by me, from my Flickr set http://www.flickr.com/photos/graemethickins/sets/72157622101518813/ — a somewhat abbreviated set for me, because I was so busy tweeting, and there wasn’t a whole lot to shoot since we were all in a darkened room most of the evening.

TEDxTC-signIt was a mob scene, but a lot more Minnesotans were wishing they could have gotten this hot ticket, it turned out.  Screw the Fair, this was the place to be in St. Paul last night.  There was nothing on a stick — in fact, no eats or drinks at all that I ever saw (more on that later). But it was the first time any TED event had graced our town — and it was freeee! — so it was a no-brainer that demand for seats would exceed supply.

TEDxTC, organized by local sponsors, was held last evening at the Science Museum of Minnesota in downtown St. Paul, from 7:00 till something approaching 10:00, I suspect. (I bailed early.)  The very nice theater-style auditorium could only hold about 280, and it was indeed maxed out. Those of us who saw the somewhat obscure promotion for this event back in mid-August, and signed up, even got a special followup email on August 26, begging us to please let them know if we could not attend, because the waiting list was already up to 221!  That was a sure-fire way, of course, to get everyone registered to be certain to show up, knowing they had something so many others wanted. And they got that ticket for absolutely nothing, just by responding to an email. Such a deal. TEDxTC-audienceview

TED originally stood for “Tech, Entertainment, and Design” when the conference series was launched in the 1980s. But, several years ago, the organization began positioning its events (including the pricey national conferences) with the tagline, “Ideas Worth Spreading.”  How’s that for a broad-reaching mission, huh?  And now they’ve essentially gone worldwide by letting local volunteers and sponsors roll their own mini TED events. (Quite the franchise, this TED thing.)  Sponsors for our local event were Worrell (official design partner), Boston Scientific, and the Science Museum of Minnesota. The host and MC was Chadburn Blomquist, who identified himself only as “Curator” of TEDxTC.…  [Read More…]

Gov. Pawlenty’s office: “We don’t respond to blogs”

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govOur post about Mike O’Connor being ‘cranky’ (which was also republished yesterday here at our partner MinnPost) was really about the fact that Governor Tim Pawlenty did an end-run-around the Minnesota Ultra High Speed Broadband Task Force and I sent an email to the Governor and staff to give them a heads-up on the post and, like I always do, ask for a comment.

At 4:09pm today I received a call from a young woman named “Jennifer” letting me know that “we received your email but the Governor doesn’t respond to blogs.” I asked to quote her by name but she wouldn’t do so “as it’s our policy not to give out last names for security reasons.”

Besides expecting there would be no comment or engagement and finding the “security” comment sort of cute, I realized that once he’s a former governor running for the presidency, it’s likely he’ll suddenly get religion about social media and his campaign staff will fall all over themselves engaging “bloggers”.

Why is Mike O’Connor cranky?

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mikeEven though he looks like a pleasant enough fellow in the photo, Mike O’Connor can get pretty cranky. As the representative for urban dwellers on the Minnesota Ultra High Speed Task Force, he’s upset that the Task Force he’s on was seemingly blindsided by a gubernatorial signoff of Connected Nation as the firm who is mapping the penetration and speed of Broadband in MN. Due to that sign off, Connected Nation is now the provider who will gather all the broadband data and craft the proposal to obtain Federal stimulus money for broadband buildouts in our State.

As I’ve stayed abreast of Mike’s “Urban Users” blog (which he’s using to keep those of us in the metro area informed of what’s transpiring with the Task Force), I’ve come to realize he’s one of the only people in a position of influence over Minnesota’s broadband future who actually “gets it” when it comes to how vitally important the upcoming Task Force decisions are to the future of our State, our country, and for you and me.

In his post, Mike started off with this:

Click HERE to read the letter from the commissioners of DEED and Commerce to the Governor that recommends Connected Nations as the outfit to develop Minnesota’s application for the Federal “State Broadband Data and Development Grant Program” funds that are out there under the stimulus program.  The Governor signed off and CN is off to the races.

Wait a minute. Connected Nation Inc., is backed by big telecommunications companies like Comcast Corp., Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. Either the fox is guarding the chicken coop or it just reeks because the coop is locked up tight.

Why would the Governor signoff on this when it’s the Task Force’ mandate — a Task Force he appointed people to after the Legislature demands — to drive the broadband recommendation to the Legislature? Could it be a way to gather and massage the data so Minnesota can turn down any Federal broadband stimulus money?

…  [Read More…]