Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

Minnov8 Gang Podcast 55: The Connected & Social Library

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meg

Libraries used to be places to go solely to find information and knowledge in containers called “books” that were comprised of “atoms” and organized by Melvil Dewey’s cool Decimal System, but increasingly library systems are morphing in to places to get connected online where patrons can find their information and knowledge in “bits” while interacting with the library in an increasingly virtual and — most intriguingly in today’s participation culture — in an online and interactively social way.

The Gang had a chance to invite Meg Canada on the podcast to talk about the 21st century library, what our biggest Minnesota library system is doing (and what she’s driving within it) to embrace new realities that are internet-centric and deliver a surprising array of services you may not know even exist. Meg has long impressed us with how much she “gets it” with respect to new media and social technologies, but have been quite delighted to see how much of her energy is invested in the social and internet community in Minnesota and the role she plays in nurturing it along with good humor and an eagerness to serve others.

Meg is a senior librarian for Web Services and Training at Hennepin County Library and currently coordinates public training and social media efforts for the library. She volunteers helping with the Unsummit, recently presented at MinneWebCon, and is a regular contributor to Social Media Breakfast. Had we known beforehand that she also sings regularly with the Twin Cities chapter of TechKaraoke, we would’ve had her croak out an Etta James tune or something. We’ll get her on another podcast soon and have her sing.

This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Opening & closing music is “38 Special” by Charlie Musselwhite (iTunes link) from Music Alley, purveyor of podsafe tunes.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:03:58 — 36.9MB)

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Discussed during the show:

+ Wired article, “YouTube’s Bandwidth Bill Is Zero. Welcome to the New Net”

+ Libraries & Broadband by Ann Treacy on the Blandin on Broadband blog

+ Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) on Twitter

+ Hennepin County Library (HCL) and their services; Bookspace, a social site for HCL book lovers; eBooks and downloadable audio books and videos; and a remarkably easy to use, searchable database of all events and classes in the HCL system; HCL on Twitter.

mIQ: Best Buy’s Cloud-based Sync & Backup

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miq

Vendors like Apple and Google recognize that the cloud is central to the mobile experience. Without the ability to access ones data, sync to the desktop, laptop netbook (and soon, a tablet?) with our mobile smartphones whether we’re stationary or mobile, our digital life is fraught with nothing but frustration.

The center of the action in communication and being social surrounds mobile devices as does an increasing amount of our consumption of music, video, news and information (and if you head in to a typical retail outlet selling CD’s or DVD’s, you’ll notice a continual downtrending of floor space devoted to merchandising them because, quite frankly, sales in these categories continue to drop in bricks and mortar stores). With smartphones sporting GPS and applications that allow providers (and the marketers who work for them) to have a HUGE amount of data about usage, consumption, social, demographic and location patterns, if you were Best Buy with only stores and a website with typically limited connection to customers, what would you do? …  [Read More…]

Blogwell Minneapolis Videos & Presos Now Available

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blogwellThis just in from our pals at Gaspedal in Chicago (the group who also runs the Social Media Business Council): The August 13, 2009 Blogwell event held at General Mills (and covered here buy Minnov8 in our liveblog) videos, presentations and Gaspedal liveblog/per event are up on this page.

For those of you who attended yesterday’s MIMA Summit ’09, you might agree that one highlight was the presentation by Ford’s Scott Monty. To whet your appetite for the other videos at Gaspedal, here is the presentation given by Mr. Monty in August at the event covered by the Minnov8 team.

A Recap of MIMA Summit 2009

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MIMA_crowdYesterday was the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) Summit 2009 called “Migrate” and it was not only incredibly well done, but there were over 1,000 attendees, the largest turnout for an event of this type I’ve yet seen in Minneapolis/St. Paul.

The Minnov8 team was there with a booth and a plan to liveblog the event, archived here in case you missed either the event or the liveblogging.

Before I continue, accolades are due to the vision of the MIMA board and the flawless execution of the event by Jen Kane and team at KaneConsulting. The only downside — outside of their control — was the unfortunate technical issues with Wifi which made our ability to liveblog the event one of the biggest challenges we’ve faced as a team covering a live event like this one (we had to use our iPhones and the intermittent connections to upload what turned out to be minimal content for your viewing).

We were incredibly pleased to have been the media partner for MIMA at this event and want to thank the board, staff and Jen Kane for

Reactions to the sessions were mixed based on the people I talked with: those who are experienced in interactive marketing and social media found many of the sessions to be quite basic and somewhat redundant (same stories heard over-n-over again like Dominos, Motrin Moms, Dell Hell, et al), while others with less experience absolutely found the sessions enlightening and filled with new information. One attendee from a Fortune 100 company said to me during a break, “I know most of what was said in (session name), but three things were presented that turned out to be completely new information, and my criteria for a successful event is learning ONE new thing in each session I attend. On that count alone, MIMA was a resounding success for me.” I felt the same way and, frankly, am eager to view the videos of sessions I missed and access the slide decks of the presenters since there is so much value that was delivered at MIMA Summit.

The Minnov8 team has yet to process the event in full, but a few thoughts come forth: it would be useful to understand specifically who attends, what their level of experience is, what organizations they work for and so on. In addition, it would be fantastic to see significantly more vendor attendance with booths and, possibly, a two-day event in order to ensure that people had time to migrate through the a vendor exposition. I know I’d hoped to hear A LOT more about analytics software and would’ve loved to have had a chance to talk in depth with makers of analytics software and services.

As always at these events, the people are what matter. It sure was fun to see many of the same folks as at other events and to meet new ones. After the jump are two things from Minnov8 team member Graeme Thickins you will find interesting and useful. …  [Read More…]

Podcast: Download (12.7MB)

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MIMA Summit Goes Gadget Happy

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geek2No doubt, the Minnov8 Gang is stoked about the upcoming MIMA Summit this Monday. We plan on our usual “no holds barred” live coverage complete with live blogging, video, and photos. A practice that’s…well…pretty geeky. However, we are not alone.

The MIMA folks and Jennifer Kane Consulting, the people that brought you “little Seth”, are giving the geek meter a workout by providing plenty of tech fun gadgets and mobile access. For those of you who thought that free wifi at a conference was the shizznit, prepared to be amazed…

Behold, courtesy of the M Group, the Wayfinding Station. Not to be confused with the Wayback Machine (Sorry Mr. Peabody), this little gem, built on Microsoft’s Surface technology, is, and I quote, “a multi-touch experience to deliver conference information and services to attendees”. Check this, “Users can navigate a map of the conference facility and related breakout sessions by grabbing digital information with their hands and interacting with content on-screen by touch and gesture – without using a mouse or keyboard.” Sweet!

MicrosoftSurfaceMGroupWait there’s more. MIMA created “conference personas,” each with a pre-configured schedule based on an area of interest. You can chose a “persona chip” and be Social Media Maggie, Suzy Search, Email Ian, Mobile Mack, Victor Video, or Brady Branding. (Sorry, no Pete Propeller-Head.) You’ll then get an itinerary of sessions related to that area of interest. “Because Surface sees and interacts with objects, guests will be able to place their conference persona chip onto the Surface screen to trigger different types of personalized digital responses, and then the transfer of digital content to their mobile devices,” explains the M Group’s Janessa Meyer.

ScottMonty200992517433No, wait! There’s even more. MIMA is even using  individual tags that are embedded with the URL to each of the conference speakers’ social networking site of choice. These tags are printed on the conference signage corresponding with that speaker’s session. Using the Microsoft Tag Reader application you just use your mobile device to connect with the speaker’s sites and social media outlets just by snapping a photo of the tag with their device. Shnikies!

If they only had an iPhone app…wait…they have one of those too! Geek metered…pegged!!!!

(Crap! I don’t have an iPhone. My coal burning Treo 650 probably will only buzz and click pittifully. But still…it’s pretty cool.)

SMCpros: Building a Business Around Social Media

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smcprosWhile we recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of the largest network in the world, where does the dawn of “social media” place the web on a maturation curve?

As a thought experiment, let’s suppose the web submitted to the infamous real age test and it was discovered to be considerably younger than its calendar age suggests.  If human beings are susceptible to the chronological age vs.biological age disparity, then could this amalgamated derivative of human scientific endeavor known as the “world wide web” also be subject to the same intrinsic characteristics as it’s creators?

40 years later, the question remains: where are we?

From the imaginative minds of its visionary founders, through research labs, defense departments, corporate intranets, onto our desks and into our pockets, the web continues it’s unofficial mission to connect the world in one unified (albeit virtual) realm.  It is through this networked (re)evolution, the 21st century web has reached a distinct developmental stage: adolescence.

Nebulous in definition and unable to identify its real purpose, it suffers from innumerable identity crisis and it can barely recognize the face in the mirror.  Despite being bruised & beaten the commercial web still exhibits naive, irrational, and overconfident behavior of its youth.  Although the modern web is as curious as ever – eager to grow up, to be more, and to interact with the world around it – it remains socially shy and awkward.

In the face of its immaturity, adolescence exists for a reason; left to its own devices and void manipulation, it’s a formative juncture inherently designed to transition a complex system from a primitive stage to a more adaptable and sustainable one.  Behavioral psychologists can identify adolescence as a temporary, healthy, and essential aspect of growth & development.

Enter “social media”: part and parcel to surviving this adolescent phase of the web and diligently reaching the next level of networked interconnectedness. …  [Read More…]

Minnov8 Gang Podcast 47: Blogwell & Social Media

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doughboyWe really enjoyed ourselves at General Mills HQ (who were terrific hosts, by the way) for the BlogWell event Thursday and it comprised the lion’s share of our podcast today, along with social media in general.

We discuss the event, the interviews we held (and we were stunned by the strong corporate representation), the tool we used called ScribbleLive (so amazing we did a separate post on it here) and the liveblogging of the event itself…as well as the new friend we made you see at the left).

Graeme also held several interviews and those are posted below the Minnov8 Gang podcast at the bottom of this post.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: LA Big Daddy from Music Alley, purveyor of podsafe tunes.

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The Podcast

Podcast (m8-audio): Download (Duration: 30:28 — 20.9MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Podcast: Download (Duration: 30:28 — 17.6MB)

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Head on over to Graeme’s blog to read this post on the event and listen to the interviews there or below:

• Listen to the interview with Minneapolis blogger Arik Hanson.

• Listen to the interview of Gia Lyons, evangelist for Jive Software.

• Listen to the interview of Don Smith, a social media guru at General Mills.

• Listen to the interview of Jesse Engle, CEO and cofounder of Cotweet.

• Listen to the interview of Jim Cuene, Director of Interactive Marketing, General Mills.

• Listen to the interview of Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford Motor Company.

• Listen to the interview of Andy Sernovitz, founder of GasPedal and Social Media Business Council.

ScribbleLive: An Amazing Liveblogging Engine

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scribbleliveLast Thursday at BlogWell held at General Mills headquarters, the Minnov8 Gang used a tool that I had stumbled across a couple of days earlier: ScribbleLive. While not a Minnesota startup, they’ve so nailed the sweet spot of what’s needed in today’s liveblogging–Twitter integration, turning http’s in to links, embed codes in to instant presenting of the video or whatever else is embedded, audio and video uploading–that the entire Gang was basically blown away with the tool.

So many of us either watch live events or, increasingly, participate in them, that the ability for the creator (i.e., admin) of the ScribbleLive liveblog to turn comments on or off; find tweets and choose ones to insert (in to a middle pane that, like a baseball manager queueing up those next at bat, the batter is now “on deck”) and then inserting them at the correct time. Check out all of their features here.

The best part?  …  [Read More…]

A Joint Podcast with Social Media Breakfast

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SMBMSP podcastFollowing the recent Social Media Breakfast on Friday Brad Bellaver gathered a group on the patio at Vic’s for a rather unique conversation and podcast. We had a chance to chat about the meeting and social media in general. Joining Brad and those of us from Minnov8 were founder of the Social Media Breakfast concept Bryan Person, SMBMSP founder Rick Mahn, and Marketing Edge podcast host and Provident Partners principal Albert Maruggi.

Brad graciously billed at as a joint podcast wiht the SMBMSP. But like most things, 80% of success if just showing up. Thanks for inviting us to join Brad. Catch a bit of video from the impromptu gathering at http://www.qik.com/video/2364510.