Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

Minnov8 Gang 163 – Is Retail Dead?

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The announcement by Best Buy on cutting $800M by FY 2015, closing 50 stores and corporate layoffs of 400 people sparked a lot of conversation on this show about retail and its disruption. Online commerce, mobile devices, easy price-checking, big-box competitors cherry-picking hot product categories to sell and more is causing Best Buy no end of headaches.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off this week)
Music: “Universal Domain” by Dreamline from the podsafe Music Alley

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 52:20 — 30.7MB)

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Minnov8 Gang 162 – N-N-N-Nerds!

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The Gang heads down to The Nerdery’s Overnight Website Challenge. Our own Tim Elliott, organizer of team “Full Court WordPress”, introduces us to Sherilyn Howes, Associate Director of Youth Performance Company (current website). (Note: The photo above is of teamBIOS, a group that had a suspiciously interesting “tent” setup in the center of their table).

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 37:21 — 21.6MB)

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Minnov8 Gang 161 – Mobilecise!

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Mobile March is in full swing today and the Gang has on Guy Thier, Chief Information Officer at Bally Total Fitness. Bally is among the largest full-service commercial operators of fitness centers in North America in terms of members, revenues and square footage of its facilities. As CIO, Guy is responsible for creating and executing Bally’s technology vision to support Bally’s market strategy. Like jazzercise in the 1980s, you’ll hear he’s done more to accelerate use of mobile technologies than any other CIO we’ve found and “mobilecise” Bally Fitness in unique and innovative ways.

Justin Grammens

Also joining us on the ‘cast is Justin Grammens with Code 42 Software, one of the cofounders of Mobile March along with Phil Wilson and Linda Cummings in 2010. Mobile March offered two tracks of learning this year: Mobile Development and Mobile Business. By offering content that appealed to mobile developers, business people, these co-founders hoped to facilitate a greater understanding between all constituencies that make mobile happen. We think it worked well and was a great event!

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off)

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 36:36 — 21.2MB)

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Minnov8 Gang 160 – The de facto ‘Genius Bar’ for Android

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We are so pleased to have two guests this week: first up is the self-proclaimed “communications passionista“, Mall of America social media expert Lisa Grimm down at the SXSWshow and we get some insight in to her adventure to Texas and that event.

Lisa Grimm

Our second guest is none other than Chief Technology Officer of Best Buy, Robert Stephens, and his just-announced departure and the likelihood his adventure will be heading west to San Francisco. As always, Robert demonstrates how he is an incredibly accessible leader and so willing to connect with those of us in the technology trenches. He has been such a supporter and asset to the Minnesota tech community and will be sorely missed (though we suspect he’ll stay close to Minnesota tech regardless of where he lives)!

We wish them both happy trails and listen for why Robert believes that, “…the Geek Squad is the de facto genius bar for Android.”

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson
Music: Speed Limit 35 & the song “Throb” from the podsafe Music Alley.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:13:29 — 43.1MB)

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Minnov8 Gang 159 – Social Chatter

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Marty Wetherall

Social media ‘chatter’ seems to be growing exponentially and the services capitalizing upon it are being launched, or accelerated, by the week. Marty Wetherall, Director of Innovation at Fallon and co-founder of Fanchatter, joins us to talk about what’s happening with his startup and about the growth of social chatter overall.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson
Music: Mario Tomic & the song “Blue Note” from the podsafe Music Alley.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:02:50 — 36.9MB)

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Minnov8 Gang 158 – Aloha Smartphones & Tablets

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“Aloha” is an Hawaiian word used both for greeting, or leaving, someone. Aloha is thus a metaphor for both the opportunity and the angst about how to capitalize upon it. That angst many people feel comes when we examine how to publish or develop apps for smartphones and tablets. The Gang discusses the market, tools, and how we all can participate in this mobile digital revolution. (Note: Hawaii as a show theme is brought to you by Steve Borsch, a guy with pent-up desire to be lying on a beach there now).

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off today)
Music: Kaimoku & the song “Honolulu Shuffle” from the podsafe Music Alley.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 48:19 — 28.5MB)

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Minnov8 Gang 157 – More Donuts!

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Once again there is SO much going on in technology that we had to do two key things: have on Julio Ojeda-Zapata as our guest host and fortify ourselves with the (possible, but unlikely) Mobile March TC special gimmee for Minnov8 Gang Podcast listeners, donuts!

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Phil Wilson and Julio Ojeda-Zapata
Music: Charlie Crowe & the song “007” from the podsafe Music Alley.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:11:34 — 41.8MB)

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Minnov8 Gang 156 – Pathgate, Privacy & Phones

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Imagine what sort of mischief Richard Nixon would have been able to get in to as president, if he’d had the sort of technologies available to him today. The Watergate scandal would have been child’s play compared to the sort of overt and covert tracking that could’ve been done on Nixon’s political opponents with today’s mobile technologies.

Last week a Ruby/iOS developer in Singapore, Arun Thampi, broke the story on his blog that the mobile app Path had been automatically (and without encryption) uploading ones address book en masse to their servers. The Gang discusses what happened and what it means as this one blog post exploded in to what Tim Elliott describes as “Pathgate.”

Who better to talk with us about this entire brouhaha than local mobile developer Justin Grammens of Recursive Awesome, now part of Code42 Software. We talk to him about this “gate” scandal, what else is going on in mobile development, and what you should fear about releasing (or not) with your mobile app.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson
Music: AjT & the song “Apple Chunk Guitar” from the podsafe Music Alley.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:14:03 — 43.0MB)

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Minnov8 Gang 155 – It’s the Data

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Publisher and tech visionary, Tim O’Reilly, has repeatedly said that “Data is the Intel Inside“. O’Reilly was referring, of course, to Intel’s famous “Intel Inside” ad campaign touting the importance of their chips, mainly since chips are invisible inside a computer or device and it’s easy for competitors to market their chips as being equal and interchangeable with Intel’s. O’Reilly’s recognition that data is the hidden value inside applications, the “Intel Inside” value, meant leveraging data was an imperative in application development.

The Gang talks with a data scientist (and accomplished applications developer) living here in the Twin Cities, Jamie Ostheimer. He is working with a string of startups and is deeply embedded within the world of data. Osterheimer has a PhD in Astronomy, a discipline all about the data (and no, not Commander Data from Star Trek Next Generation). Rather his focus is about the core data sets that power all of our analysis, driving insights and enabling us to gain new meanings from it.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson
Music: bluessmyth & the song “Down on My Luck” from the podsafe Music Alley.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:05:10 — 37.9MB)

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Minnov8 Gang 154 – iPad, iLearn

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Tablets, and specifically the iPad, are being adopted quickly in education.  A leading K-12 education publication, T.H.E. Journal, wrote this article about the top trends in education in 2012: “…education technology will see an increased focus on individualization–from personalized learning environments to digital textbooks designed to connect students to the resources that work best for them. And with a growing number of students using handheld devices to access these learning tools, trend watchers can expect to see big pushes for faster innovation to tie everything together.”

Dr. Lisa Snyder

So does this mean we give tablets to kids and education is magically transformed? Hardly. Fortunately we have one of the thought leaders in this space in our backyard. Her name is Dr. Lisa Snyder, she is the new Lakeville MN School Superintendent, and we were pleased to have her on the show to talk about their new iLearn initiative, whether or not it’s magic, how tablets and tech fit in to it, and her perspectives on the challenges adopting new ways of teaching and learning.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson
Music: Dave Hole & the song “Keep Your Motor Running” from the podsafe Music Alley.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:12:49 — 42.3MB)

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