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: Weblogs/Blogging (Page 4 of 22)

Minnebar ’08 Rocked the Mouse, the House, the State, and the Twitterverse

May 11, 2008 / / 3 Comments

The third annual Minnebar unconference, Minnesota’s own Barcamp event, definitely was the place to be for the local Internet developer/entrepreneur community yesterday. (That was an understatement.) The t-shirt we all got, below, says it all. Minnebar08tshirt
More than 430 stormed the Coffman Union at the University of Minnesota, record attendance for the event (and likely for any Barcamp to date in the U.S.). It was pre-Twittered like mad in the days leading up, but the volume of tweets during the day itself — the real-time conversation — was nothing less than awesome. I think we even surprised ourselves. Check it out: just go to Summize and type "Minnebar" in the search window at the top. You’re looking at a lot of energy, folks! You can scroll through pages and pages of conversations — who knows how many! At one point yesterday, Minnebar was in the top four or five largest collective conversations going on in the whole, freaking Twitterverse! Pretty cool. (My own coverage is at www.Twitter.com/GraemeThickins, and four of us were also tweeting all day at www.Twitter.com/Minnov8.)

The event drew techies from not just the Twin Cities, but throughout the state, and even from places like Madison, Des Moines, and South Dakota, to name a few locales I heard in passing. And I know people as far away as Florida and Colorado who were really wishing they could be there. But, you know what?  Thanks to the magic of the Internet and this little thing we call Twitter, there were a whole lot of people on both coasts who were noticing and wishing, too. Thankscoffmanunion

Something very cool was happening on the campus of the U of MN yesterday. And everyone who was there can be damn proud. Minnesota Tech, you rock! Huuge thanks to the organizers, the awesome  sponsors (I’ve never even seen so much pizza in my life!), and to everyone that showed up — who all contributed and benefited. And, doggone if the whole world wasn’t noticing while we were at it…

Tim O’Reilly Asks Jonathan Schwartz the ‘Missed Questions’

April 27, 2008 / / 0 Comments

In case you didn’t catch this, a couple of days ago Tim O’Reilly asked the Twittersphere if they’d like to put any questions to the CEO of Sun, about an hour before he was to interview him on-stage at the Web 2.0 Expo in SF this week. 2441268833_fee85854a1
(Photo by James Duncan Davidson.) Well, Tim was wondering why he wasn’t seeing any questions coming through on Twitter, till he realized (too late) that he had his Twitter app settings wrong on his smart phone! (Unfortunately, he was only getting replies from those he was following.)  Well, I wasn’t on Tim’s follow list, so my question, which I submitted within minutes of when he Twittered about this, was missed … along with a whole bunch of other people’s questions.

A few hours after the session ended, I saw a tweet from Tim where he graciously had decided he would do a blog post to ask those Twittered questions of Schwartz via email, after the fact. That exchange took a day or so, but Tim just posted the resulting Q&A yesterday, here: Missed Twitter Questions from Jonathan Schwartz Interview at Web 2.0 Expo.

So, as you’ll see on Tim’s post, my question (about blogging and Twittering, of course) did get asked, and answered — and, thanks to Twitter, I didn’t even have to go the conference! 🙂  There were several other good questions that Schwartz answered as well. The hint about what’s to come regarding Sun’s "network.com" offering is especially interesting. Thanks, Tim, for the great recovery — you’re forgiven!

This Blog’s For You, Bud

April 26, 2008 / / 1 Comment

I love this blog post so much, from my other blog, that I just have to post it here, too.  Well, a least a link to it.  Put it up a little earlier today.  I’ve never done such a thing before, double up like this, but I just have to make an exception for this one.  I mean, how often does a guy get to talk about beer and blogging in the same sentence? Hmmm, I wonder how many beers the employees get to have every day at Miller Brewing?  Okay, excuse the day-dreaming….

Anyway, read the full post — it’s a great social media and marketing story.

Nmwthisblogsforyou

For Innovation in Minnesota, Check Out ‘Minnov8’

April 22, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Here’s the first part of another post I did over at our new multi-author blog called Minnov8:

The
University of Minnesota is among the top patent producers in the world,
ranking #4 on Scientist Magazine’s list of “Patent Powerhouses,” behind
only three other major American universities. Yet, quantity of patents
hardly paints the entire picture. What about helping to start up
companies to commercialize those patents?

Uofmlogo

According to the U’s own business development people (see link to
Powerpoint presentation at bottom), the 20-year success record of the
U’s technology company spinoffs is only half
the university average nationally — and less than one-fourth the
success record of the nation’s premier schools. What’s more, in one
recent year (2004), for example, the U of MN spun off only one company
compared to 14 at the University of Michigan and 16 at the University
of Illinois. Why I am focusing here on spinoffs? Well, because,
according the U’s own business development people, creating university
spinoffs is “much more profitable than licensing (revenues)” to the
school.

And, besides, the largest source of the U’s licensing revenues will run out soon …. post continued here.

Blogging Less, Twittering More…Plus YHOO & GOOG Are Up to Something

April 17, 2008 / / 0 Comments

In case you haven’t noticed, my blog posts here are fewer and farther between these days, just because I’m so damn busy. (I’ll tell you why soon.) But thank god somebody invented microblogging(!), because it sure is easier and faster. I’m sure many of you have seen the accompanying cartoon strip. Twittertwittertwitter_2

But it’s true — Twitter has definitely allowed me, with my crazy schedule, to keep putting forth some of my observations and perspectives on the world around me. I’m grateful for that.

Latest case in point: I Twittered earlier today about how Yahoo’s already reporting positive results from its test with Google to outsource search to the latter. Well, it’s not really the company directly reporting that — rather, it’s the proverbial "people familiar with the matter," according to the WSJ. (But that would most likely be Yahoo or Google employees who asked the reporter not to identify them.)  A Citigroup Global Markets analyst even said this deal could increase Yahoo’s cash flow a whopping $1 billion per year.

Some would say this latest "leak" is all about Yahoo trying to get a better price per share from Microsoft. I don’t agree. Google has more to do than help Yahoo shareholders get another buck or two. I think Yahoo very seriously wants to avoid the Microsoft deal and is working overtime to find a better alternative.  And Google obviously has the incentive to help them do that. I don’t think the latest Yahoo move is just posturing at all. As the Journal says, the only other tie-up that seems to be possible right now is a deal with Time Warner’s AOL, wherein the latter would become a 20% owner of Yahoo. However, the matter of who will win Yahoo seems far from over to me yet. I like to think that News Corp. hasn’t really played its ultimate hand, for example. And, of course, being that they now own the WSJ, I don’t find it surprising that the writer of today’s article didn’t quote anyone on that possibility.

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