Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: IT/Software (Page 32 of 58)

ETech 08: Strangest Session Title Goes to…”How to Kick Ass”

March 5, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Kathy Sierra was one of the speakers in the morning session of this second day of ETech. She’s a perennial at this event, though missed last year. One of the few women in this largely man’s world of developers (esp on stage), but she’s very popular. Kathysierraetech
Her thing is "creating passionate users," and who can’t like that?  Her talk today was titled to arouse curiosity, I suppose. What it was about, as I Twittered during her talk, is that it’s healthy to get involved in something that isn’t the main thing you excel at. She cited a guy taking pix of her in the aisle with a big camera on a tripod, and how he was a leading open-source guy, but has become a kick-ass photographer. Kickingassthreshold
She said it’s not about natural talent, but just the ability to put in time….and not about making money at something [oh, like maybe blogging, perhaps? 🙂 ].

Fast forward to the punchline: we finally got to what she was trying to tell all the hard-working, no-outside-life developers, hackers, and assorted geeks in the audience. It was to "get unplugged," get away from all the distractions ("partial attentions") we all have in our lives, and "focus on the things you care about." 

Ah, surfing…it won’t be long now. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

GSP West 08: Hot and Cold

March 4, 2008 / / 0 Comments

It’s a hot conference, and what do I get?  A damn cold!  And I just had a doozer back in January, too.  Is this the worst, hellish year for colds and flu that you can remember, or what?  It sure is for a lot of people I know….

Anyway, I’m sucking it up (oh, god, that’s bad), tryin’ to keep up…. I did my live-Twittering thing yesterday, after getting well practiced at DEMO. Gspopeningscene
See my 40 or 50 something tweets (I lost count) here.  Then chatted over wine with Aaron Fulkerson (MindTouch), Dan Carroll (Somr.org, former Twin Citian, now Mountain View), Chris Messina (DISO guy), Maria Sipka (Linquia, a fellow Aussie and surfer), Chris Gammill (a buddy from LA), and others — all while uploading my pix on Flickr. Gspplatformwars

Afterwards, attended part of AppNite (couple of cool ones!), then managed to hear most of Tim O’Reilly’s keynote at 8:00 — it was good, very inspired. Tim is amazing. Took a lot of notes, but was all out of Twitter juice by that time. So, dragged myself back to my hotel (a very cool little boutique place called the Sophia). Now it’s Tuesday morning, and I’m seriously looking for a Walgreens so I can load up on cold medicine…  🙁

Headed to “Graphing Social Patterns” and ETech ’08

March 2, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Tomorrow morning early, I’m jumping on the 5 here in San Clemente and driving south an hour to downtown San Diego for O’Reilly’s Graphing Social Patterns conference. I’m looking forward to a great two-day program. Gspwestlogo
Here’s the main page for the Facebook Group, which 200 people for far have joined saying they’re attending, and 81 more are "maybes." The event is being held in conjunction with O’Reilly’s ETech conference, which draws an even larger crowd. It also starts tomorrow (Monday, March 3), but it goes through Thursday. This will be about the third or fourth ETech I’ve atended, including the 2007 edition, for which I wrote this Conferenza review.  It’s a geekfest of the highest order, and I’ll be attending through end of day Wednesday. So, two days GSP and one day ETech, and the evening events are common for both conferences. If you’re attending either one, I look forward to meeting.

A New Blog About Innovation

February 23, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Several months ago, some of my Minnesota buddies and I started talking about a need for a site that could focus on the cool things happening in technology and the Internet right here in our state. Minnov8logo_2
We ended up deciding that a multi-author blog seemed to be the way to go, since we as a group (six of us) seemed to collectively be plugged in to most of what was happening here  — the founders, the technologists, the  developers, the investors, the new ideas.
We started sharing thoughts of what we could blog about and kinda blew each others’ minds — so many good Minnesota tech stories out there, just waiting to be told. My esteemed blogging buddy Steve Borsch, of Connecting The Dots, really led the charge. Hats off to him, because this idea simply wouldn’t have happened without his energy and passion.

Well, today, Saturday, you can now check out Minnov8.com — "Minnesota Technology Innovation News & Insights." After talking about it for months, it’s finally a reality. Well, kind of a soft-launch, anyway. Trouble is, starting in January, we all got really busy, but we decided we had enough content in the can, as it were, that we should go, at least with a few posts to get started. (More is coming as we speak.) My first post was about innovation in angel investing, a topic I’m very close to and have also written about here on Tech~Surf~Blog, as well as on GetGoMN.org.

None of us needs another blog to be committed to. But I hope to be able to contribute ongoing, at least in my spare time, weekends, etc. And I personally intend to recruit guest bloggers from time to time. The community needs a forum like this, we’re convinced, and it was time to let ‘er rip. We all really believe strongly in our community. But there’s lots more to come from our current team of contributors, so keep your eye on Minnov8. And do let us know what you think. Go, Minnesota tech!

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