Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

2008 Investor Fraud Traps

By

Whether you’re an angel investor listening to startup pitches or an innovator considering funding sources, now is a time to be extra careful with anything related to money, credit, lending or capital of any kind — especially if you’re a participant in a social or affinity network or if you’re transparent with your blog and other online participation (which give scammers lots of ammo to use to pitch you).

The Minnesota Department of Commerce just released this 2008 Investor Fraud Traps listing (in alphabetical order) and offer it as a warning:

Deficient Disclosure: The recent investigations by state securities regulators related to auction-rate securities (ARS) have reinforced that investors should remain cautious when pitched complex investment products accompanied by deficient disclosures or when advised to concentrate their investments too heavily in one investment product. It is best to avoid investment pitches that would lead you to put all of your eggs in one basket, especially if it’s a basket you don’t fully understand.

Energy Scams: The substantial increase in energy costs has made scams related to energy more prevalent. State and provincial securities regulators are seeing not only shady oil and gas investments, but also scams that promise the development of new technologies to increase the efficiency of energy consumption or to extract energy from sources previously thought too expensive to develop.

Online Affinity Fraud: In a new twist on affinity and online investment fraud, Tyler said NASAA members are concerned that unscrupulous individuals are trying to use social networking websites to lure people to meetings that may promote fraudulent or unsuitable investment products. “Social networking websites create an environment ripe for affinity fraud,” Tyler said. “Fraudsters can take advantage of the fact people freely share information with both their real and ‘virtual’ friends by posting it to their profile,” Tyler said. “Communication tools provided by some social networking websites make it easy to advertise and promote investment scams to a wide audience for free.” Investors need to do their own research before making an investment and should not simply rely on ‘expert’ advice given at a seminar or meeting.

…  [Read More…]

MIMA Summit Packs The Depot

By

As practically every man, woman, and child in the Twin Cities must know by now, the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) held its annual conference Wednesday, themed “Feed“. These folks are marketers — they know how to hype, as they’ve been telling us for what seems weeks now that the event was sold out.  Prior to that, they promoted that it would sell out and the positioning was…so click and pay, friends, or you will never be able to live with yourself.

As you can see from Phil Wilson’s Unsummit post, there were those who ignored the hype and chose to do their own (free) concurrent event at a nearby pub, thank you very much. (Okay, many of them were too cheap to pay the big MIMA fee.) And the MIMA folks actually cheered them on (even from the stage the day of the two events), since they felt bad they couldn’t have accommodated more people. But the venue — the very nice Depot downtown — could literally take no more. (MIMA has vowed to find a bigger site next year though that won’t be easy — maybe the Convention Center?) This year’s attendance, I believe, was something north of 700. MIMA’s membership is now about 950, but the Summit’s attendees also included some non-members and invited speakers, of course.

So, how did the event go?  This was my first year attending (they have not given press passes to us lowly bloggers in the past), so I went courtesy of my employer, to do some serious working of the crowd.  My assessment: the hype didn’t quite meet the reality as far as the overall content, as quality conferences go. But this is an association, after all, not a professional conference producer. And don’t we all kinda forgive a certain percentage of marketing build-up most of the time?  Nonetheless, the logistics were handled quite well, and my hat’s off to the MIMA officers and their band of volunteers who pulled this thing off. (I’m sure they’ve worked out a lot of bugs over the several years they’ve sponsored this event.)…  [Read More…]

UnSummit ’08…More Than a Summit Alternative

By

As noted on it’s website, “UnSummit 2008 is an technology+marketing conference created to serve those unable to get tickets to the the MIMA Summit on Oct. 1, 2008.” Though maybe not the intent of organizer Don Ball, it was also for those who didn’t want to pop for the rather spendy registration fee for said MIMA Summit, simply didn’t want to go, or were drawn to a more intimate setting. Whatever the motivation, the daylong event held at the Local Pub in Minneapolis was quite the success.

The day was set in the increasingly popular “unconference” format where the agenda naturally evolves around a given topic or question. Some fifty interactive and social media enthusiasts spent the day addressing a wide range of topics. Three separate “spaces” played host to discussion and presentations on How Traditional Agencies Can Move to Digital, Social Media Reality Check, New Possibilities in Video, Marketing Heresies, Community Management 101,The Future of PR, and a  session addressing the lofty goal of Measuring ROI of Social Media…nope, we didn’t quite figure that one out. Dang!

…  [Read More…]

Social Media Breakfast at Best Buy

By

The Twin Cities Social Media Breakfast group met today at Best Buy Headquarters to connect about social media and to hear from our hosts who’ve created Blueshirtnation, Giftag and something we hadn’t heard about before, Spy (video of Best Buy’s Spy in the lobby of Best Buy HQ is after the jump).

Social Media Breakfast’s Rick Mahn was the emcee and did a great job keeping it moving. While you can read many of the tweets from today here and draw some conclusions, suffice to say that Best Buy is doing one thing in social media and doing it well: they’re on the field and playing the game.

…  [Read More…]