Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

Mayo Accelerates Their Online Presence

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sharingmayoMayo Clinic today announced the launch of what they’re calling its “culture blog”, Sharing Mayo Clinic, which provides an online site for patients and employees to share their stories about what makes Mayo Clinic unique. This WordPressMU delivered blog is clearly focusing on uplifting stories of individual patient and employee experiences. While initially interesting, I started to poke around since I wasn’t sure how this fit into their overall mission or why they’d want to have a showcase for patient and employee stories.

According to Mayo’s about page positioning this new blog, Each year over 500,000 unique patients from every U.S. state and nearly 150 countries come to Mayo Clinic for diagnosis and treatment. These patients and their families and friends, and 50,000 employees and students are part of a global Mayo Clinic community.

The goal for the Sharing Mayo Clinic blog is to provide a virtual place for this community to connect and share their experiences. It’s the online companion to the new newsletter for patients, also called Sharing Mayo Clinic, and is a hub that links to Mayo Clinic’s pages on other social networking sites, such as Facebook and YouTube.

Unless you’re a constant observer of Mayo Clinic, you may be as surprised as I was to learn how truly significant and holistic the Mayo online presence has become, and how its online initiatives actually spring forth from the innovation DNA of the Mayo Clinic. This premiere healthcare organization is leveraging social tools to extend their reach and to ensure they’re at the points online where people are increasingly focusing their attention: the internet and web with a primary focus on social media applications….  [Read More…]

‘Phizzpop Tour’ Pops Into Town, Gets Coldest Day of the Year

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A design competition for interactive agencies, sponsored by Microsoft, breezed into town on January 15 and got a rude shock: the most brutal sub-zero temps and windchills in five years.  Nonetheless, about 300 brave souls huddled inside at downtown hotspot(!) Solera and saw five agencies compete for bragging rights and a free trip to the “South By Southwest” (SXSW) festival/conference in March for the final round of the competition. phizzpop-logo2

Microsoft had plastered us with messages like this one for months: “Join us on the PhizzPop Tour to watch the top agency talent as they show us their Expression Studio and Silverlight skills.”  Get the picture?  Uh-huh, yessiree, they’re trying to sell you software.  But at least they’re out to make it entertaining. And no industry in the world likes a competition more than the ad industry. These folks live for this stuff.  …  [Read More…]

A New Chapter for MN Stories

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mnstories1Video, Video, Video. Open your browser and you open a world of video access….or is that excess? From in-depth news coverage to roller-skating parrots, the world offers an unlimited supply of video. That’s a lot of video! How could one possibly discover what’s being produced here in Minnesota, maybe right up the street? Enter MN Stories, a video sharing site founded by Chuck Olsen.

You might know Chuck from any number of video and web related projects in and around the Twin Cities. Most recently, the always in motion Mr. Olsen dedicates heart and soul to the Uptake, a nationally acclaimed citizen journalism outlet that was launched to cover the 2008 election process (One that has stretched into 2009 as we Minnesotans patiently(?), at least as of this writing, await the seating of our 2nd Senator.).

The first iteration of Chuck’s MN Stories, launched in 2005, more closely resembled a video blog showcasing mostly Chuck’s work. “I always had a vision of a video sharing site.” says Chuck. “The Uptake just took over so much time.” Now, as the election hustle and bustle fades, Chuck has time to relaunch his video community vision. A relaunch we happily herald here as part of his first interview on the topic.

The newly rethought and redesigned MN Stories offers easy access to Minnesota video as well as providing a community for the producers and viewers of that video. “I can post video on YouTube but who’s gonna find me?” was Chuck’s driving question. So, think YouTube for Minnesota.
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Why Executives Don’t “Get” Social Media

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boss-newYour boss, executive client or any other leader with whom you’re dealing (or perhaps even you, yourself) may not intuitively understand social media. This is not because of a lack of understanding or the technical acumen to use some internet connected device and hosted software, but more likely because they don’t feel the need to put forth the effort or energy to embrace it (or why anyone else would goof with social media, for that matter).

As social media continues to accelerate as a method of connecting people to one another as well as to news, information and other snippets of value, I keep thinking about people who aren’t all that social, are not inherently “connectors,” or are folks who are simply not all that interested in connecting with other people in some virtual way.

Years ago I always thought not being social was, well, being antisocial. Being one of the weirdos who smell bad and can’t be trusted around small animals or children. The guys you see leaving Blockbuster on a Friday night with 10 videos…for the weekend. The hermits whom I always seem to stumble upon when hiking in the Superior National Forest and who abhor bumping in to anyone.

Then I became enlightened….  [Read More…]

UnSummit Set To Return March 7

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unsummit logoUnSummit, the spontaneous tech marketing unconference spawned as an alternative to the sold-out MIMA Summit last October has set the date for their next event as Saturday, March 7, 2009 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The event will be held at the Minneapolis Central Library.

The agenda is still coming together based upon attendee input but the theme of “Hacking the Recession” sounds timely and a good way to frame social media marketing in these challenging economic times.

If you are unfamiliar with UnSummit, you can check out our coverage here and on our podcast or visit the UnSummit blog. A sign-up list for attendees is on the UnSummit wiki. Without the overlap with the MIMA Summit, it looks to be a much larger event this time. Hope to see you there…

Next MinneDemo Scheduled

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ben-lukeThis just in as an email from Luke Francl, one of the co-organizers (along with Ben Edwards) of MinneDemo:

Happy New Year! We at Minne* hope 2009 finds you well.

Save the date! The next MinneDemo has been scheduled for Friday, February 6 (Registration is not yet open). (This is our first Friday MinneDemo!).

It will be at Intermedia Arts again. You may have heard that Intermedia Arts is having financial difficulties due to the economic meltdown. Renting their space again will help them become sustainable.

We are still looking for presenters. Working on something cool? We want to hear from you.

We also want a volunteer with A/V experience to help us simulcast the demos in the main room and record them for distribution on the Internet. Please contact me if you are interested.

Thanks,

Luke Francl & Ben Edwards

 

Marketing Innovation: Best Buy vs. Target

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bbclogoTwo of the most difficult marketing jobs in Minnesota right now has to be leading local retail giants Target and Best Buy. Although of different scales, Target is about 60% larger than Best Buy, each is facing the same catastrophic pullback in consumer spending that has resulted in each company reporting some of their worst results in years. How each deals with the gloomy outlook in 2009 will be interesting to watch and I expect to see some innovation in their marketing strategies that will help them ride out this tough economy.

As we’ve written here before, Best Buy is one of the leaders in the adoption of social media in the retail industry. Their CMO, Barry Judge, has started blogging and has taken to Twitter. He’s very transparent in his exploration of conversational marketing in interviews like this one. But probably the best overview is a video we posted here last month that features an interview with Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson who clearly is behind their use of social tools and techniques.

Target, in contrast, is opaque on all things social and their CMO, Michael Francis, seems from the corporate model of a brilliant planner, not innovator. Although they have been involved in conversational marketing — I recall meeting blogger Robert Scoble some 3 years ago after a day of meetings at Target — their efforts to date have been mixed. A well planned Facebook campaign was marred by controversy. And there was that episode with bloggers who took issue with a billboard in New York. Not the kind of case studies you would want from a company who clearly is a leading force in retail brand advertising.

So I will be tracking each company and their marketing efforts over the next several months and posting highlights here. If past is prologue, my gut tells me we’ll be seeing a lot of innovation from Best Buy, particularly in their use of social media. But the folks at Target might also surprise us. In these difficult times, the most innovative will likely win.

What Can We Learn from the Minneapolis Top 100 Twitterers List?

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For those of you not yet on Twitter — and aren’t you feeling so smug you’re not wasting as much time as the rest of us? — you’re likely not aware there’s a site called Twitterholic, which ranks the popularity of Twitter users by number of followers.  Actually, despite what non-Twitter users may think, this social-media “microblogging” tool is proving to be quite useful for many in business, media, and even government, if the list of Minneapolis’ Top 100 Twitterers is any indication.

To better understand who’s doing these rankings, here’s how Twitterholic cutely explains itself:

“A few times a day, we calculate individual statistics for each twittering twit in our database. In other words, WE”R IN UR TWTTR PAGES, READN UR STATZ.  This list is updated daily so you can find out who the most popular twitter users are. To participate, do what you normally do — twitter constantly — if you deserve to be on the list, we’ll find you.”
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Sierra Bravo Brings Back Its ‘Website Challenge’ Community Service Project

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It won’t be long before area web developers are losing more sleep helping nonprofits. Rapidly growing Bloomington-based web development firm Sierra Bravo has announced the second coming of its very successful Overnight Website Challenge — 24 hours of pure nerd energy applied to creating or spiffing up the web sites of some deserving Minnesota nonprofits.  The event is the firm’s signature event to give back to the community. For 100 volunteer web developers and 10 lucky Minnesota nonprofits, the 24-hour clock will count down on the weekend of February 28-March 1, 2009.

“Sierra Bravo is committed to this event as long as there are nonprofits whose websites could be better, powered by nerds,” said Luke Bucklin, Sierra Bravo’s president and one of its founders. In the inaugural Overnight Website Challenge in March 2008, volunteer web pros from Sierra Bravo and the broader Twin Cities web development community donated more than 2,000 hours to nonprofits — providing a real-world market value of donated time worth nearly $250,000, according to the firm’s calculations. …  [Read More…]

Rise of the Community Manager

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As the world continues to get connected to the internet and the number of people participating online using social media to connect to one another accelerates, the role of Community Manager is becoming one that more companies and organizations realize is a critical hire and one they need to consider now.

When the majority of online participants are always-on and always-connected — be it with laptops connected via wifi in a coffee shop or with mobile or smartphones — more are connecting with one another in established social networks (e.g., Facebook, MySpace) or with micro-groups like those anyone can set up at providers like Ning; with micro-messaging platforms like Twitter and Identi.ca; using social bookmarking, photo, video and other offerings; and adjusting their attention and focus as they see fit in any number of possible places to do so online.

This Wikipedia article on social media sums up just some of the places this diffusion of attention can be placed: “Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video. Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Examples of social media applications are Google Groups (reference, social networking),  Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Facebook (social networking), Youmeo (social network aggregation), Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing), Avatars United (social networking), Second Life (virtual reality), Flickr (photo sharing), Twitter (social networking and microblogging) and other microblogs such as Jaiku and Pownce. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms like Mybloglog and Plaxo.”  

If you haven’t poked around (or at least tried out) any of those areas or offerings in the social media category, even understanding the nomenclature and what each social media type enables is an incredible challenge. Where do you start? 

…  [Read More…]