The announcement by Best Buy on cutting $800M by FY 2015, closing 50 stores and corporate layoffs of 400 people sparked a lot of conversation on this show about retail and its disruption. Online commerce, mobile devices, easy price-checking, big-box competitors cherry-picking hot product categories to sell and more is causing Best Buy no end of headaches.
Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off this week)
Music: “Universal Domain” by Dreamline from the podsafe Music Alley
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The Podcast
Podcast: Download (Duration: 52:20 — 30.7MB)
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Discussed during the show:
- Overnight Website Challenge: huge lineup of news here
- The Nerdery releases JSON Accelerator
- Best Buy reorg stories: Forbes here and here; Marketwatch; CNET; CNBC; and Inside Best Buy, an anonymous store manager’s take on the Best Buy announcement
- Is Google stoking up the tablet wars? and Why Google’s Tablet Store Isn’t the Nexus One All Over Again
- JAMF Software’s “Everything Apple…managed“
Upcoming Events:
- April 7th: MinneBar, Best Buy headquarters
- April 10th: enStratus Cloud Meetup – 5:00-8:00 PM, The Local, Minneapolis
- April 16-17: MinneWebCon at the U of MN
- April 21st: SaaS Class: Software-as-a-Service Smarts (SaaS Camp 2012) at CoCo Mpls
- April 25: MHTA Spring Conference, Minneapolis Convention Center
- May 21st: Predictive Analytics Forum, Medtronic’s Mounds View Campus
- June 5-8: eyeo Festival, Walker Art Center
- Weekly: TechMasters is a new Toastmasters chapter in Twin Cities for tech professionals


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