Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation
Anyone born in 1978, and now in their early thirties, never knew a time when there weren’t mainstream personal computers. For the most part, those who entered this world in the late 1980’s (and are in their twenties like my daughter), haven’t lived in a time when PC’s weren’t in their school or at home, and this thing called the ‘internet’ was in place before they were out of grade school.
Best Buy clearly recognizes that these digital natives are voracious users and purchasers of the technology they sell, but they also seem to truly understand that there is an entire ecosystem of these digital natives who have become web developers. These folks are adept and using new faster and more efficient tools (e.g., Ruby on Rails), a “web stack” (i.e., Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP or LAMP) — along with leveraging the accelerating number of exposed application programming interfaces (API’s) available digital data that’s exposed — and are building and delivering a dizzying array of new web applications, mashups and remixes.
Curiously, the latter term “remix” is usually used in the context of someone taking an original song and mixing in other elements to create a new one, but in my opinion Best Buy has extended that term to include what they’re offering, an open API called “Best Buy Remix.” This API opens up Best Buy’s product catalog, featuring full product information including pricing, availability, specifications, descriptions and images for nearly a million current and historical products and thinking of using all of this to create a ‘remix’ vs. a ‘mashup’ seems to me to be positioning it as being used for an elegant and lyrical web application vs. what many people think of when the term mashup is used: connecting a database to a Google Map and delivering something of interesting but inherently low value. … [Read More…]
[Note: This post first appeared earlier today on the CloudAve blog.]
What a gorgeous spring week it was in Minnesota last week: clear, sunny, even sneaking into the ’70s. 
The only “clouds” in sight were the proponents and would-be adopters of the latest, new hotness in enterprise computing. Two events, on Wednesday and Saturday, attracted a wide array of these IT professionals, some 350 all told, who were hungry to learn more about… well, “the orange that’s the new pink,” as Larry Ellison would say. It was beyond impressive that so many people would give up being outdoors last week after the winter we’ve had in these parts! Goes to show how deep our IT roots run in this state. Geeks are everywhere here and, doggone it, we’re proud of it! We still have many old-school enterprise IT folks who remember the days of time-sharing on mainframes, and way more than our per-capita share of Fortune 500 headquarters in this state, all with huge (well, getting leaner) IT departments. But, along with all that, Minnesota has a seemingly endless supply of boot-strapped Internet and software startup developers — folks that are finding they love what cloud computing is doing for them.
So, it was an eclectic bunch that gathered at these two Minnesota cloud events, and I was there to take it all in…. … [Read More…]
Minnov8’s Phil Wilson grabbed a couple of interviews this evening at South by Southwest (SXSW) with Phizzpop winners Tom O’Neill of SierraBravo and Dave Annis of Zeus Jones…and later with Kevin Matheny, Senior E-business Architect on the Best Buy’s Remix initiative:
We strive to deliver a high value podcast at an affordable price (um…that would be free?) and this week’s show is no exception as it’s packed with topics.
Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson. (Photo credit: Lee Odden (TopRankBlog; Flickr).
Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:02:44 — 36.4MB)
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Joining us on the podcast is a brand new Minnov8 contributor and participant, Gary Koelling, who is Senior Manager, Social Technology at Best Buy Inc. After interactions with Graeme Thickins — who isn’t bashful about promoting Minnov8 — Gary decided he’d like to create for Minnov8 and completed the form (hint: you could too!).
Gary is the founder of BlueShirtNation.com, Giftag.com and leads several social technology projects within Best Buy. He describes himself as a tinkerer, gadfly (and an aspiring iconoclast), reader, tryer (someone who tries), teacher and listener (with a fairly tuned bullshit meter). Due to the success of the efforts he’s involved in, and the high profile of our hometown consumer electronics retailing giant, Gary has been able to talk to lots of people and companies around the country about social media and social technology.
Our favorite quote about his speaking around the country from his LinkedIn profile? “I don’t know if it’s helping, but I enjoy it.” We sure think so since he’s in-the-game, taking risks, experimenting and driving towards high value outcomes for his employer.
LINKS
Here are links to sites, products or other resources discussed during the podcast:
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whzN-7uCiZw
(found via @graemethickins and @garykoelling)
On this show, we discuss the MAKE TV debut (MakeTV is a new national series from MAKE magazine, Twin Cities Public Television, and American Public Television), Best Buy buyouts, rumors of StarTribune filing bankruptcy, President-elect Obama’s Broadband Plan, and the antics of our guest, Ed Kohler.
Ed is a web strategist working within the real estate industry to help companies and agents make better use of the web to build their businesses. Outside of that, Ed’s an avid blogger on subjects ranging from Technology, to Jucy Lucy Burgers, to local community issues. He also takes on some entrepreneurial projects from time to time like his new 3rdPartyFeedback and LunchTalks.
One local news story Ed is passionate about is the plan for legislation to make yellow pages distributors provide easier opt-out systems.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 55:28 — 32.2MB)
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Other items discussed include:
Our kickoff podcast for 2009 is a discussion with guest Kevin Matheny, self-described “E-business Architect & Open API guy for Best Buy” and founder of the innovative Best Buy Remix Developer Network effort.
Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 57:46 — 33.3MB)
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Our discussion surrounded a variety of topics:
– How did the idea to open up the Best Buy catalog come about? What is the vision for Remix?
– How does it fit with broader plans or strategies of the corporation?
– Can you talk about how you came to select Mashery as your API delivery partner?
– What about higher level tools to increase access to the Remix API?
As you may have heard, a guy by the name of Keith Burtis (based in Buffalo, NY) was just hired to be community manager of the Remix program and is running the Twitter presence. During this podcast, we discussed the role of the community manager, what Keith is doing, and why it matters.
Links:
+ Blog: http://remix.bestbuy.com/blog
+ Twitter: http://twitter.com/bestbuyremix
+ Kevin’s article, Agile Software Development: Bridges to the Future in BusinessWeek.
+ Follow @kevinmatheny on Twitter here.
Two 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.
Community strategy, management of the ecosystem and paying attention to social media conversations online is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s an imperative for doing business today, for brand management or for building your own personal brand.
Hosts: Steve Borsch,Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Phil Wilson, Garrick Van Buren
Connie Bensen is a woman who is completely engaged in the social media world and has turned it into a thought leadership position as well as career. She’s not only connected with other social media leaders who are geographically disbursed around the globe, but she’s also involved representing social media analytics company Techrigy…and all from her home 4.5 hours north of the Twin Cities! Who said outstate Minnesota people aren’t connected and fully engaged in the 21st century communications revolution!
Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:05:42 — 38.2MB)
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Show notes:
+ Book Connie mentioned, “Personality Not Included”
+ Other links mentioned: Brian Brown’s Twitter account (from Ideapark); Graeme’s Twitter account; Fast Company article about “8 Experts Predict How Web 2.0 Will Evolve In 2009“; ComicTwit (and its Twitter account)
+ Connie has several key resources linked to from her home page here…definitely worth reading ’em!