Interesting segment on KARE-11 from yesterday (article here) with solid representation from friend of Minnov8, MN Headhunter Paul DeBettignies.
Just Eat It!
Minnesota innovation aficionados need look no further than the University of Minnesota campus. A small group of students, lead by Parag Shah, are balancing curriculum with the hunger pangs to invent, create, and deploy. The sum of their team is Mxapp LLC, a mobile marketing company that offers targeted, proximity-based advertising to restaurants, gastronomes, and the epicurious.
Their first application, known as LUNCHBOX, is in the process of being rolled off their platform. LUNCHBOX offers the ability to view, rate and share menu items… all with the tap of a finger (among other features and benefits that are still confidential). The application is designed to bridge the gap between restaurants and mobile consumers. LUNCHBOX will inherit mobile ordering capabilities, thus eliminating the need for smartphone users to stand in line at a restaurant.
The Mxapp team visited my offices back several weeks ago and previously I’d worked with Geoff Dutton, one of the Mxapp partners. It comes as no surprise that these guys are poised to take a bite out of consumer migration to smartphones. Rather than just slap some nifty app together, they have thoughtfully designed their launch for concurrent release on iPhone®, BlackBerry®, and Android®. In addition, they have been out pounding the pavement — talking with both consumers and restaurateurs– to more intimately understand the needs of users.
Like so many innovators full of conviction but starving for resources, the Mxapp team is seeking to overcome constraints with a daily diet of courage. Their marketing budget is relegated to word-of-mouth. So, if you want to know what’s good to eat in the neighborhood, open up your LUNCHBOX and find out. Mxapp is hoping you’ll join their beta program today.
Twouble in Twitterville?
Do you use Twitter? If you’re one of the current base of Twitter users, now 8 million strong and growing, there’s no question you’re probably on the service and using it for chatting with your friends, connecting to others and widening your social circle, or someone who is viewing it as some sort of channel of messaging distribution for your business and sending out ‘tweets’ that are all about you and what you offer.
If you’re not yet on board and using it, you’d have to be in some remote cabin in the wilderness to not have heard of it and been aware of its use during the presidential campaign, on CNN, spoofed on the Daily Show or used by members of Congress on their Blackberries during President Obama’s recent speech to they and the nation.
At the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) conference going on this week — the place where Twitter first hit the scene in March of 2007 — Twitter has, once again, been one of the primary conduits of communication for festival-goers as well as those in the greater Twitterville user community. Even companies like PepsiCo, in an apparent desire to capitalize upon the in-crowd’s use of this fun service, paid for a “PepsiCo Zeitgeist” application that tracks tweets that people insert with the #sxsw “hashtag” (an identifier so the message can easily be found by others searching with that tag) and displays them in fun and unique ways.
But there’s twouble in Twitterville at SXSW and from that comes a note of caution and advice if you’re planning on leveraging Twitter personally, professionally or as an organization. … [Read More…]
Minnov8’s Phil Wilson Heads to SXSW
The Minnov8 Gang has been moving in a lot of different directions of late and we’re adding more video to the mix. Phil Wilson, going to the South by Southwest (SXSW) gathering in Austin, TX on behalf of his startup LocaltoneRadio, gives our update about this week’s Minnov8 Gang Podcast. Stay tuned…
Unsummit: But First, Real People on Social Media
As part of Minnov8’s coverage of the Unsummit on Saturday, March 7th, we thought it would be interesting (and more than a bit fun) to ask people on the streets around the Hennepin County Library (site of the Unsummit) how they use social media. Join videographer Brian Stemmler and myself for a little “people on the street” fun. (Please note that no Canadians in bunny ears were harmed in the making of this video.)
Check back here soon for more video interviews and information from the Unsummit.
UnSummit: You Gotta Go…
The UnSummit is tomorrow (Saturday, March 7th) and the Minnov8 Gang will be there (all but Graeme Thickins who was at DEMO and still in California). It’s not too late! You can sign up and go and besides, it’s sunny and 45 degrees today but will be cloudy and overcast (and only 35 degrees) tomorrow. All you’ll do on a Saturday is stay inside and fix stuff or go shopping…what fun is that?
Technologists Fear Not, for Everything is GR8!
Look no further than the headlines to discover reasons to just give up. The Today Show on NBC this morning hyped the question of whether or not we’re on the edge of another great depression. Yesterday, the market tanked and brushed against its lowest levels since 1997. By now, almost all of us know someone that has been laid off or otherwise negatively impacted in this economy. But another Great Depression, really!?!
There’s nothing “great” about a depression and in fact there is no definition of a depression. Economists are only able to assess whether a depression (might have) occurred after the fact, and it’s typically identified by negative 10% GDP over several quarters. Instead of carrying needless worry about falling into a depression, let’s just assume we’re in one right now. Let’s call it the GR8 Depression – my nod to us thumb-pecking mobile text’ers and web 2.0 aficionados.
O.K. So now that we’re in the GR8 Depression, what does that mean? The answer is resoundingly nothing! We still have to get up early every morning, work hard, be productive, use our ingenuity, make miracles happen, go to bed, and repeat. Let me be clear that cutting costs and scaling back is never a strategy…it’s a means to extend the way. This is the GR8est time to be working on new technology because resource constraints drive resourcefulness and inventiveness. Now is the time to take risks, because what is there really left to lose? … [Read More…]
Bigger ideas. Faster.
Large and small companies around the world are using open Connected Innovation strategies to re-invigorate and accelerate their innovation capacity. This movement goes one step beyond the “submit your idea” generation and allows participants to engage in the product development experience. Here are three examples of Connected Innovation commercially at work:
- Starbucks built an on-line consumer community called MyStarbucks.com that facilitates open discussion of how to improve the Starbucks experience. Howard Schultz, CEO, claims that MyStarbucks.com has re-invigorated his innovation program by focusing business priorities on customer needs, like free Wi-Fi in all stores
- Threadless.com won Inc. Magazine’s most innovative company award for 2008 for their “customer as company” business model. Threadless has never had a product intro bomb; they only produce what their customers want to buy
- Dell Idea Storm is an example of a social media execution. Idea Storm was launched by Michael Dell with the goal of repairing its customer service credentials, but it changed the way Dell does business. On Idea Storm, customers, programmers, and the like post their ideas for improvement or enhancement. Due to the successful use of Connected Innovation strategy, Dell has been able to reduce their product development cycle time by 6 months.
Connected Innovation is the business process of using on-line tools like user communities, blogs, innovation portals and social media to mine, connect, and route ideas, employees, consumers, customers, vendors, brands, and technologies. More specifically, on-line communities, innovation portals, and social media strategies not only create new connections, but also allow the extraction of value from these connections.
My employer, General Mills, has given me the opportunity to explore the Connected Innovation concept. Over the course of the next six months, I will benchmark and research the best practices of leading organizations engaged in building connections to evolve their innovation capacity. My research will also provide a framework for building successful Connected Innovation web sites, both inside the corporate firewall and external to customers in a B-C relationship. I will also be a contributor for Minnov8, sharing insights collected along my journey. I look forward to the opportunity to interview and collaborate with Fortune 500 companies, social media and innovation thought leaders, and the broader digital community.
During the coming months, you can connect with me here at Minnov8, at my personal blog “Perspectives on Connected Innovation and Collaboration”, and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/djsmith4. I am very interested in engaging in dialogue with you on this subject and look forward to connecting with the broader Minnov8 community.
ArcStone: Vision, Values, Products & Services
Over a year ago I became aware of a local Minneapolis firm, ArcStone, when they introduced Wonderfile, a very interesting offering that is sort of a nouveau document management system for today’s always-on and always-connected internet crowd, and I was reacquainted with them when they demonstrated their brand new Association Management Portal (AMP) at MinneDemo a few weeks ago (their demo here).
Completely out of the blue a few days after MinneDemo, I stumbled across something ArcStone had created for a client called the Interactive Roof Designer, a Flash piece for Trimline Building Products (more here) that allows color changes for roofing tiles. Since half my business focuses on trends for the home furnishings industry (The Trend Curve™), I was immediately interested in what they’d created since this is the sort of thing our customers would be interested in. Though there have been many similiar types of Flash-based “changing colors on the fly” web offerings like this, I must admit being pleasantly surprised by how good an implementation they’d done and that it was visually stunning and worked flawlessly.
I immediately thought, “Who are these guys and why haven’t I heard much more about them?” As a consequence, I called CEO David Carnes and went over to chat with him last week to find out more about what this Minnesota firm is creating and what’s at the heart of their innovation. … [Read More…]
Meet and Tweet at Twestival!
Twestival moved into Uptown on Thursday night attracting local tweeps looking to help bring clean water to the world. Organized by charity: water, the gathering at Moto-i was part of 200+ city effort world-wide. From Hamburg to Hong Kong, Dubai to Dublin, and Madrid to Minneapolis the organization’s goal was to raise $1 million dollars to aid in its mission to bring clean drinking water to the 1.1 billion people (one in six) who don’t have access to it.
As I entered last Thursday’s event I was pleasantly surprised to see many people I hadn’t seen before at the many social media industry gatherings in the Twin Cities. Wow, real people using Twitter! As I wound my way through the crowd to hang with the tweeps I knew, I noted many laptops open with their users either tweeting or live blogging the event. A video display showed Twitter activity regarding the Minneapolis gathering scrolling up the wall via spy and, in the corner. the hosts of SpaceVidcast hosted their weekly vidcast.
As the sake flowed and the sounds of Air Supply (really…Air Supply…no, really) wafted from the speakers, for the Twitter faithful who weren’t glued to their screens or phones, they mingled and got to meet the people that they had probably only tweeted to on line. There was no shortage of conversation as the 140 character limit used on Twitter had been lifted from the relationships.
As of this writing, the final numbers of money raised at the event were not available. According to Minneapolis Twestival organizer, Andrew Korf (@andrewkorf) nearly $700 in cash was raised at the event with more to come from online donations. On a more global level, charity: water, faced with the need to collect money from around the world and a Monday bank holiday, hopes to have final numbers by Tuesday or Wednesday. (Look for an update here.) According to charity: water Communication and Media representative Nicky Yates, “A million dollar donation would mean clean drinking water for 50,000 people for 20 years.”
Update 2/20/09: According to the Twestival website, $250,000 has been collected so far.
Beyond aiding fundraising efforts, Twestival is another example of what social media can do to raise the awareness of a cause or organization. The planning of Twestival, put together over a 3 month to 3 week period of time, depending on the city, brought new awareness to charity: water on a gobal scale. Yates says, “We’re very excited by this entirely volunteer organized event. There are now more than 50,000 people around the world who are aware of charity: water that weren’t before this event.”