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

Tag: Graeme Thickins (Page 10 of 55)

I’m Stoked! ‘Coldwater Surf Fest’ Is June 6th, Park Point, Duluth

(UPDATE 6/8/09:  Here's my Flickr set from Friday night and Saturday, June 5-6.  Alas, no waves on Saturday — but we had fun, anyway! … and a very successful Surfrider Foundation beach clean-up. Several surfers stayed on for waves forecast at 4-7 ft Sunday and Monday.)

It's that time again, surf fans!  For the annual celebration of Lake Superior surf culture: Coldwater Surf Fest, brought to us by the Superior Surf Club. Time to gather for food, laughs, maybe a brew or two, and your chance to take a dip in the Big Lake They Call GitchigumiCWSF-09-logo350w But, regarding the latter (unless you're just wading), do bring your 6-mil or 5-mil wetsuit, hood, booties & gloves, as one never knows what the water temp may be, even in June (let alone the air temps and wind). The surfers in the group, of course, will be hoping for big winds blowing out of the Northeast to produce rideable waves!  Readers of this blog may recall I wrote about the 2007 Coldwater Surf Fest. And, for those of you who don't think surfing on Lake Superior is for real, here's a shot of our own Bob Tema surfing Stoney Point, north of Duluth: SurfSuperior-Tema-StoneyPt2

Event Details:

FRIDAY NIGHT 6/5/09:  Gather at Fitger's in Duluth for brews and grub, starting about 5:00 pm. (Map and directions.)

SAT MORNING 6/6/09 10:00 am:  Beach clean-up at Park Point "First Turns" Beach, sponsored by the MN-Superior Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation. (Map and directions.  Street parking available.)

SAT 6/6/09 NOON Party!  Pavillion at Park Point. BBQ, drinks, stories, trade/sell equipment, memorabilia. Raffle to benefit the Tom Blake Memorial: tickets $5. (More info on the Tom Blake Memorial.)  Map and directions.  Lots of parking available.

SAT EVENING 6/6/09:  After-party at somebody's place.

SUN MORNING 6/7/09:  Brunch at Pizza Luce's.

Come for part or all of the event — stay as long as you can!  I'm driving up Friday afternoon and staying over through Saturday.  All are welcome: surfers, friends, relatives, spouses and kids, participants or spectators, and anyone who thinks they may someday want to take the plunge into surfing the Big Lake… whether that be regular surfing or stand up paddleboarding (SUP), as shown in these two pics from last year's event — when, unfortunately, surf conditions were totally flat. (All photos of last year's event courteous Bob Tema. The guy in this shot actually teaches surfing at the U of MN-Duluth!) CWSF08-SUP1

Whatever the conditions, though, you will be guaranteed to have fun at CWSF!  Bring a board and wet suit if you have one, or maybe you can borrow someone else's and paddle out! You'll meet great people, including many of the top surfers on Lake Superior, eat some good grilled grub and partake in some cold(!) libations, all the while enjoying the wonderful outdoors in our great State of Minnesota! 

The Park Point peninsula is really a natural treasure, if you haven't experienced it yet: wide, sandy beaches, stretching out from the Canal Park bridge, which is the heart of Duluth's tourist center. CWSF08-SUP2 Park Point is a thin strip of sand with beach houses and lake-front condos, reaching all the way out to a small airport at the end of the peninsula, adjacent to a great park that has a picnic pavilion, barbeque grills, even a beach concession building — with birch and pine forest lining the wide stretches of pristine sand.

Well, it's pristine when people keep it that way!  But we're out to do our part in that regard at this year's Coldwater Surf Fest — because our new MN-Superior Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation is sponsoring a Beach Clean-Up the morning of the main event (Saturday, June 6). SurfriderMN-logo225w We'll take an hour or so to each don plastic gloves and grab a garbage bag to pick up trash and debris to ensure our favorite Duluth Beach is left better than when we got there!  It's all part of giving back to our environment.

For more info on this year's Coldwater Surf Fest, just ask in the comments section of this post.  Or visit the Superior Surf Club site — where you can even order the limited-edition event T-shirt (long or short sleeve). Here are some more pix (again, courteous Bob Tema) from last year's event…

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CWSF08-2CWSF08-5 CWSF08-3 

GlueCon 09: My Interviews with VCs Brad Feld and Seth Levine

While I was reporting from the first-year Glue Conference the past few days in Denver, I had the opportunity to interview two of the guys behind the scenes in launching and planning this great event: Brad Feld and Seth Levine, partners in VC firm Foundry Group, which is based in nearby Boulder, CO. (Actually, of the two, Seth was more involved in Glue, while Brad was the main guy behind launching a sister event called Defrag, which is held in the fall in Denver, the first one being in November 2007.) 

I had noticed in the days leading up to Glue that Foundry Group had announced a new investment (Gist, whose founder was at Glue), then I saw two more investments they announced on their blogs while the event was going on (Medialets and CloudEngines). So, I decided to see if I could interview both Brad and Seth during breaks on Day 2 of Glue to learn about these latest new portfolio companies of theirs.

Brad (left photo) and Seth typify what I’ve called before The New Face of Venture Investing — a post I actually did in December 2007, which specifically called out Brad. BradFeld   I’ve also written previously about Seth, in a post from June 2008 called The Best Advice I’ve Seen Lately on Using Startup Advisors. They are both really nice guys, wicked smart, and doing great work helping many entrepreneurs build successful startups in a place that…well, is not Silicon Valley.  Yes, they’ve proved in spades that it can be done. SethLevine And, unlike your typical VCs, they do believe in investing outside their own backyard — as is the case with all three of their latest investments.  Sure, many of their portfolio companies are in Colorado, where a lot of innovation is going on (which they’re involved in on a day-to-day basis — including the TechStars program, which they helped launch).  But they’re also smart enough to know great ideas and great teams can live anywhere. I love the way they get involved in these events of theirs — they’re right in the middle of it all, very much a part of the “community” that each of these events they’ve launched really has become. It doesn’t take long to realize that both these guys are “people persons” through and through.

I spoke with Brad first, about the Gist investment, which had been announced the week before, and in particular about the investment they had just announced early that morning, on Day 2 of Glue: CloudEngines.

Download the MP3 of my interview with Brad Feld.

Later the same morning, I spoke at greater length with Seth, primarily about Foundry Group leading a $4M Series A investment in Medialets, which had been announced on Day 1 of Glue.  We also spoke a bit about an earlier investment of Seth’s in the advertising space, AdMeld.

Download the MP3 of my interview with Seth Levine.

For more about the Glue Conference, see my Twitterstream for the past three days.  I must have tweeted darn-near a couple hundred times!  And I saw this morning after I was back in Minneapolis that conference organizer Eric Norlin said he’d just read through all the tweets on the event — 62 pages total!  You can find the whole shebang by going to search.twitter.com and entering “gluecon” in the search box. It was a very successful event by all accounts.  I’m really happy I was part of it, and have already said I’ll sign up for next year! 

MN Startups: Sharpen Up Those Business Plans! The ‘Minnesota Cup’ Deadline Is May 22

Attention all Minnesota startups and would-be startups: only a short
time remains to enter the statewide business-plan competition known as The Minnesota Cup — applications are due Friday, May 22, 2009.

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Now in its fifth year, the competition is bigger and better in 2009,
with more prizes and more opportunities to win.  The total amount of
winnings this year was upped to more than $130,000.  And the
competition was expanded to now include six divisions — Clean &
Green, BioSciences, High Tech, Social Entrepreneur, General, and
Student. The first-place winner stands to win as much as $40,000.  But
I submit the money isn’t everything — the publicity and connections the
winners get from this competition are worth far more.

The MN Cup, in more than doubling its prize money, stands in sharp
contrast to a national study that recently reported angel investment
dollars were down 26% in 2008.  Yes, Minnesota entrepreneurs should
take heart — seed funding is actually on the rise in this case!  And
many more founders can now participate in this competition with its
newly added business categories.

Twin Cities Business magazine did a story on the 2008 MN Cup winners

MN Cup 2008 winners. (Photo: Twin Cities Business)

MN Cup 2008 winners. (Photo: Twin Cities Business)

And here’s their story on the 2007 winners.

MN Cup 2007 winners. (Photo: Twin Cities Business)

MN Cup 2007 winners. (Photo: Twin Cities Business)

So, What’s in Store for 2009?
How many entrants can we expect this year, and how might this year’s
crop differ?  I asked Scott Litman, one of the MN Cup cofounders.
“Submissions appear to be running at a similar pace to last year.  With
the six divisions being a new thing, the most popular category at this
point is Clean & Green — we’re seeing nearly 30% of all entries in
that division.” 

ScottLitman-FBDoes he expect a rush of entries as the deadline approaches?  “In
our past experience, nearly a third of all submissions occur in the
final 48 hours,” said Litman.

To apply for the competition, just visit www.minnesotacup.org and click on “Enter MN Cup.” Get this: there’s no cost!  Zip, nada!
So, all you bootstrappers out there — why wouldn’t you? The entry
process, in it entirety, is via an online form, which you can save and
come back to at a later time to complete the process.

“While we realize it’s natural to procrastinate, we strongly
encourage entrants to set up their accounts and work on their entries
sooner rather than later,” said Litman. “At the very least, it helps
avoid any last-second technical issues — and, more importantly,
entrants can edit or revise their submissions as much as they like,
right up until the deadline.  So, entering earlier gives them more time
to refine and improve their entry.”

I asked Litman how many entries there were last year, and if he
expected even more this year. “We had 844 total participants last year,
which was by far our biggest year. Our goal is to get a similar level
of participation this year. We believe, based on the current pace of
entries, that this is about where we’ll end up.”

So, when do the judges/reviewers actually start looking at the
submitted applications? Litman: “The deadline is midnight on 5/22, and
we begin reviewing entries on the 23rd.”

Note to Tech Entrepreneurs Especially: Get Busy!
One other comment of Litman’s really struck me:  “I’m not sure why, but
the least well represented category so far for entries is high tech. At
one level, it means we need more of these entries, but it also means
that, for those that enter and write a really good plan, the odds of
moving on to the second round are pretty good.” So, there you go, all
my tech entrepreneur, inventor, and developer friends out there — have
at it!

Here are a couple of the most common questions company founders ask about the MN Cup, with answers from the site’s FAQ page:

What Happens If My Application Gets Past the First Round?
There will be as many as 30 entries that move on to the semi-final
round. At that point, you will have six weeks to put together a much
more detailed and thorough plan. Notification will occur on June 20
with the second-round submission due by July 28. To assist you in your
efforts, you will be provided with access to the James J. Hill premium
membership program (HillSearch), the most powerful business information
resource available to individuals.

How Will My Entry Be Judged?
Entries will be judged on the following criteria:

Innovation: An idea can be for a product or service and
can be an entirely new idea or the evolution of a previous idea. Ideas
that show the greatest innovation will be viewed more favorably.

Viability: Can this idea be commercialized within two
years? Can this idea create or serve a market need? What is the
entrant’s strategy for making the idea into a high-growth business?
Judges will be evaluating ideas on their potential to generate revenue,
profits and employment.

Quality of Presentation: This is a secondary criteria,
but please make sure that all content is well written and clear. As the
competition progresses, quality of presentation will factor in more
substantially.

Any resident of Minnesota can submit his or her breakthrough business idea simply by visiting www.minnesotacup.org
I’ve had the good fortune to work with a winning startup in a prior
year (actually, before the name was changed to the MN Cup), and am
working with an entrepreneur this year to help him with his entry — and
I can attest: you will not be sorry you participated in this
experience.  Whether you win isn’t the most important thing. This is an extremely well run competition, in every way. The process itself will
make you a better entrepreneur, guaranteed. But don’t just take my word
— read this post from a previous winner, HealthSimple’s Doug Powell: Business Competitions — An Ongoing Discussion. And these testimonials from past entrants are also quite telling.

Good luck to all Minnesota Cup entrants!  I look forward to meeting
at least all the semi-finalists at a special event for them this summer
(to be announced).

Upcoming Event to Focus on the ROI of Digital Marketing

A Twin Cities event for senior executives and marketing professionals has been announced by long-standing Minneapolis web marketing firm Ciceron.  Entitled Radical ROI: Seizing the Potential of the Digital Marketplace, the half-day panel will be held Monday, May 11, 2009, from 8:00 to 11:00 am at the Midland Hills Country Club in St. Paul.

RadicalROIForum-051109


The event offers attendees a chance to hear how a panel of local business leaders have transformed their organizations to thrive in the digital marketplace — and I am privileged to be one of those panelists:

• Paul Douglas: CEO, Weather Nation (and former chief meteorologist, WCCO TV)

• Jan McDaniel: CEO, JTM Vision (and former CEO, American Red Cross Twin Cities)

• Phil Hotchkiss: Founder, BigCharts.com

• Joel Kramer: Founder, MinnPost.com (and former Publisher, Minneapolis Star-Tribune)

• Graeme Thickins: Founder, GT&A Strategic Marketing

• Andrew Eklund: CEO, Ciceron Digital Marketing

A special reduced rate of $195 per person is available till May 3 at this registration page, with a group rate of only $395 for up to five people from the same organization.

Ciceron is a web marketing and consulting agency based in
Minneapolis. It offers full-service solutions from
professional search engine optimization and email marketing programs to
in-depth metrics and performance tracking.  Its clients have included such major brands as Home Depot, Nascar, USBank, Andersen Windows, Best Buy, Target, and Pepsi.  For more about Cicero, check out their about page, their full client list, and here are their management bios.

I hope to see you at "Radical ROI: Seizing the Potential of the Digital Marketplace" on May 11. Again, use this registration page before May 3 to get those preferential rates.

How to Get Buzz for Your Startup Launch: Write a Book!

Okay, not everyone can pull this off.  But one experienced Minneapolis tech entrepreneur, George Reese, is doing it in a big way with a new book on "cloud computing."  What's cloud computing, you ask?  Did you just come out from under a rock?   If you're involved in any way in IT, even on the fringes of it, you've been blasted for months with an almost endless amount of media coverage and discussion about this topic — a recent example being on the front page of The Wall Street Journal the other day.  Even most casual Internet users are now aware that many of their consumer web apps are accessed "in the cloud," as opposed to being software they install on their own computers. Google's Gmail is probably the best known example of that.

George Reese is cofounder of a new Minneapolis startup, enStratus, GeorgeReese-headshotand is right smack in the middle of all the buzz. 
Thanks to his new book, which he worked on for six months, he's in a great position to help clear the air surrounding a lot of the cloud computing hype that's flying around out there now.  He's especially interested in helping enterprises that are looking to take advantage of the economic benefits of this form of corporate IT. 

GeorgeReese-book-200w
On April 10, George's new book will be released by O'Reilly Media:  "Cloud Application Architectures: Building Applications and Infrastructure in the Cloud."  And here's the Amazon link.  It's now available at both these links for pre-ordering. I've known George since 2006, in relation to his previous startup, Valtira (a SaaS marketing platform), from which enStratus is being spun out.  (I also know David Bagley, the CEO of Valtira, who's the other cofounder of enStratus.)  I thought it would be fun to get George's thoughts about this uber-hot topic of cloud computing, and hear the story behind his book.  This is an interview I conducted with him earlier this week, which first appeared on the cloud computing site Cloud Ave. and, later, on our own Minnesota tech news site, Minnov8.

Graeme:  How long have you been involved with cloud computing, and what made you decide to write this book?

George:  I suppose that depends on what you mean when you say "cloud computing." I've been developing SaaS systems for the past five years, but got into Amazon Web Services and Infrastructure as a Service in late 2007 when my company Valtira needed an alternate approach to a high-availability infrastructure. During this time, I've developed a body of experience in putting transactional database applications into the Amazon Cloud.  My editor at O'Reilly, with whom I've written several books in the past, heard I was doing cloud work and asked me to put together a book on the subject.

Graeme:  Why is cloud computing gaining adoption like it is?  What is its attraction?  We know Internet and IT startups love it, but do you think it will catch on in any significant way with larger enterprises?

George:  The primary attractions to cloud computing are cost and flexibility. Cloud computing enables you to build out a world-class IT infrastructure with no up-front capital investment and pay for the growth of your infrastructure as the business it is supporting grows.

I believe enterprise IT has a strong need for the benefits of cloud computing, but they have higher expectations with respect to reliability and scalability than startups. My company enStratus is all about dealing with these two concerns for enterprise IT, and I talk a lot about that in the book.

Graeme:  For what types of readers did you primarily write the book? What will they get from it that they can't get elsewhere?

George:  The book is for people tasked with making the move into the cloud and guiding them through that move. I start by establishing what the cloud means from my perspective and what its value is to an organization. The book covers how you evaluate what makes sense to move into the cloud and, once the decision is made, the security, availability, and disaster recovery planning necessary to operate at an enterprise level in the cloud.

Graeme:  Do you deal in the book with the issue of choosing a cloud computing provider? In not, why not?  Do you attempt to compare providers?

George:  No. Anything I might say in the way of a comparison would be out of date by the time the book hit the shelves. Jeff Barr from Amazon reviewed the book for technical accuracy, and E.J. Johnson from Rackspace and Randy Bias from GoGrid both provided appendices describing their offerings.

Graeme:  What are some of the other key issues you deal with in the book, such as security and reliability of the cloud?  And what does the book deliver that's not available elsewhere?

George:  Given my role at enStratus, cloud security and reliability are obviously key concerns of mine. I spend an entire chapter on security issues and cover how to architect your applications for maximum availability throughout the book. I have not seen much of this kind of talk available on the Internet; mostly warnings about how security and availability are things you should worry about.

Graeme:  Readers of the book will also learn about the management tools you have developed for use in your own company, Valtira, which offers a SaaS marketing platform. Please tell us how those tools led to the formation of a separate, spinoff company.

George:  Valtira was looking to build out a new service offering that required a high-availability infrastructure. We priced out a managed services infrastructure to support our needs, but that proved too costly for a new product offering. We then turned to the Amazon cloud to see if it would meet our needs. We ran into a number of obstacles along the way. Some of these obstacles have since been addressed by Amazon through new service offerings like Elastic Block Storage. For other obstacles, we built out tools to take care of things. It turns out that people who were not Valtira customers really wanted our tools, so we spun them out into enStratus.

Graeme:  You began working on the book many months ago. The release of the book seems now to be right at a time of intense focus on cloud computing, undoubtedly driven in part by current economic conditions.  What's your take on all the hype?

George:  Cloud computing is the most disruptive technology to hit business since the Web. It's not hype. Like any disruptive technology, however, there's a lot of misinformation flying around. To make matters worse, every person has a different internal definition of "the cloud" that frames their discussions on the subject. So, the hype is warranted, but everyone needs to pay particular attention to context and definitions in their discussions.

Graeme:  With the book's release, your speaking schedule is naturally heating up.  Please tell us where people can find you in coming weeks and months.

George:  Well, first, I'll be presenting at CloudCamp in New York City on April 1. Following that, O'Reilly has a webcast on "Getting Started with Amazon Web Services" scheduled for April 8.  In Minneapolis, I'll be speaking at the Minnesota High Tech Association's spring conference on April 15, and then at CloudCamp Minneapolis/St. Paul on April 18 at the U of MN.  Recently, my company enStratus was chosen as a presenting startup at the Under the Radar conference in Mountain View, CA, on April 24.  The following month, I'll be speaking on the topic of information privacy and security in the cloud at the Glue Conference in Denver on May 12. Then it's off to London, where I'll be speak on May 15 at WebTech Exchange 2009 on the topic of hardening an EC2 infrastructure.

Graeme:  That definitely qualifies as a whirlwind, George! Thanks for taking some time to tell us about your book, and I look forward to seeing you at some of these upcoming events.

By the way, follow George on Twitter @GeorgeReese and his company's tweets @enStratus.

(Disclosure: the author has a consulting relationship with enStratus.)

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