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.

Tag: Minnov8.com (Page 2 of 3)

My Day at Blogwell – Minneapolis

August 14, 2009 / / 0 Comments

The sixth regional BlogWell event was held yesterday, August 13, 2009, at General Mills headquarters in suburban Minneapolis, sponsored by GasPedal and the Social Media Business Council. Blogwell-logoIt was a sold-out conference, with more than 300 registered, and the largest such event to date of any of the previous versions held in major cities across America. Ours drew attendees from several states (and even as far away as San Francisco and London). It featured practical, how-to case studies from eight large corporations that have succeeded using social media: General Mills, Mayo Clinic, Walmart, CME Group, McDonald’s, Progressive, Ford, and AccuQuote (a last-minute replacement for H&R Block). Blogwell-graphic

I participated in live-blogging the event as a member of the “Minnov8 Gang,” with my colleagues Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, and Phil Wilson. Minnov8 was a media partner for the event. Please check out the archive of our live blogging at BlogWell at the Minnov8 site. We think it turned out great. It was the first time we’ve used a great new tool for this purpose called ScribbleLIve.  It even allows the archive to be presented in normal, chronological order (unlike typical blogging formats).

My Photos: As I usually do at events I’m covering, I point and shoot when I can, when I’m not heads-down on the keyboard. Or schmoozing. Or interviewing. I randomly grab shots with either my iPhone or my little (semi-worthless) Canon A560. One of these days, I’m going to get a better camera. Or, uh, become a better photographer? Someday. When I have time. Nonetheless, here’s my Flickr set, for what it’s worth.

My Tweets:  Didn’t do too many at the event, since we were live-blogging in longer-than-140-character chunks, which arguably is a better way to cover events. But what tweets I did do (before, during, and after) you can scroll back and see here: @GraemeThickins …and they’re also mixed in with just a TON of tweets the flowed on the hashtag #blogwell all day yesterday — and I see are continuing today.

My Interviews: I took along my trusty studio-grade handheld recorder (the Olympus LS-10) and grabbed seven brief audio interviews before and after the sessions, and during breaks. The last two featured wine, so you’ll have to excuse the background merriment. Here are the MP3s, in the order I recorded them:

• Listen to my interview of my friend and fellow Minneapolis blogger Arik Hanson.

• Listen to my interview of Gia Lyons, evangelist for Jive Software.

• Listen to my interview of Don Smith, a social media guru at General Mills.

• Listen to my interview of Jesse Engle, CEO and cofounder of Cotweet.

• Listen to my interview of Jim Cuene, Director of Interactive Marketing, General Mills.

• Listen to my interview of Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford Motor Company.

• Listen to my interview of Andy Sernovitz, founder of GasPedal and Social Media Business Council.

Minnedemo Was Great … Now, How About Those Business Models?

February 8, 2009 / / 5 Comments

If you're part of the Minnesota Internet and software community and you missed Minnedemo on Friday night, you must be bummed — as several of you told me from afar as I was tweetin' it … :-)  Minnedemo-logo
[Evidenced by this clip from my twitterstream that night, which shows a few of those who were talking back at me in real time.]  You missed a great event.  No worries, though, because myself and my buddies at Minnov8 posted lots of audio and video recorded at the event for your listening and viewing pleasure.

Minnedemo_Tweet-outs

But, for those of you who were there, how many of you noticed what I did?  Namely, the almost complete lack of the presenters talking about their business model?

I have something to propose for future Minnedemo pitches: how about, as part of the 7-minute presentation, a new rule is instituted that states a minimum of one minute of that has to be devoted to explaining the business model? Is that an unreasonable request? Even thirty seconds would be a welcome addition.

Now, I realize the traditional audience of Minnedemo is developers, listening to their fellow developers on stage presenting their cool, new code creations.  Elegance in app design and functionality have been the focus of pretty much every presentation I've seen at these events.  Or features.  Or UI design.  But, is not the end-game in all this something that might actually be commercially viable, too?  That is, a business that could make it in the real world?  From where I sit, more and more business people and investors have started to attend these quasi-quarterly events.

I don't mean to imply that none of the presenters on Friday night has a business plan. Of course, all but the very newest, coolest projects must have one, right?  And it would then follow that these presenting companies would have to have a business model for how they will make money.  They just didn't talk about it Friday night — or, in most cases, even mention it.

I say that's a big thing missing from Minnedemo. What do you think?  Should presenters be required to talk more about such things?

Where I’ll be Tonight: Minnedemo! Look Me Up…

February 6, 2009 / / 0 Comments

For all of you readers, followers, and friends lucky enough to be in Minneapolis right now — yes, February is good for something! — it'll be All The Tech You Can Handle tonight at our quarterly Minnedemo event, mixed in a with a frosty brewski or two. BeerMug
Myself and a couple of my buddies from Minnov8.com (Steve Borsch and Tim Elliott) will even be there doing video and audio interviews for our next podcast — so get ready to have a mic shoved in your face while you're navigating that beer mug… 🙂

For the details of what's happening, here's the post I did on Minnov8 earlier this week:

Emerging Minnesota Software and Internet Technologies to Take the Stage on February 6

Entrepreneurs, software developers, and computer professionals of
all stripes will be rubbing shoulders again this Friday evening with
other hopeful company founders, VCs, angel investors, bloggers, and
media people from throughout the Twin Cities and other parts of the
Upper Midwest.  They'll
be gathering for what's become a not-to-be-missed quarterly geek-fest
called Minnedemo.

minnedemo-logo Billed as "the Twin Cities’ premier technology demo
and networking event," it features free beer, pop, munchies, and lots
of conversation, with product demonstrations mixed in between. The
latter are delivered from the stage of an auditorium with theater-like
seating. More than 200 people are expected to attend.

Minnedemo is being held for a second time at Intermedia Arts in
Uptown’s Lyn-Lake neighborhood, and will kick off about 6:00 p.m. this
Friday, February 6, with demos starting about 7:00. (Intermedia Arts is
located at 2822 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55408.) According to
Minnedemo organizer Luke Francl, "All are welcome, just please remember
to RSVP online." The web site for registering (again, it's free) is http://minnedemo.eventbrite.com/. 
This quarter's event will feature ten demos — five, then a break, then
five more. Most demonstrators will be launching their products or
showing off their creations for the very first time. Here they are
alphabetically:

actionchess-logo65wAction Chess
is a game app for the iPhone, described as a cross between Tetris
Attack, Tetris, and the classic board game Chess. The developer claims
it "makes your brain work in interesting ways." It will be released for
the iPhone in the coming weeks and will be demoed on stage. (Martin
Grider will present.)

amo-logo1Association Manager Online
(AMO) is a new web application from local development shop ArcStone
that let members, staff, and administrators of associations and
non-profits manage tasks (such as sending emails, posting documents,
collecting payments, etc) in a secure manner from any internet browser,
whether at home or work. (David Carnes will present)

bevpost-logoBevPost
is a site that lets consumers select coupons for their favorite adult
beverages and have them delivered directly to their cell phones, so
they can redeem them at their local liquor store and save cash. (John
Ballatine will present)

enstratus-logoenStratus
is a brand-new startup that's addressing the "confidence" questions
businesses naturally have as they move their systems into Amazon EC2
and other "cloud computing" environments. The company, recently
launched by the founders of successful local software firm Valtira,
provides a suite of cloud infrastructure management tools that enable
companies to automate the secure deployment, scaling, monitoring, and
disaster recovery of their cloud computing infrastructure. (George
Reese will present.)

loudclick-logoLoudClick
is a free website builder program that people can use to build web
sites around their interests together, all without the need of a
techie. (Alex Huff will present.)

nabbit-logoNabbit
lets you identify a song you hear on the radio using your mobile phone.
Just text Nabb and include the call letters of the station you're
listening to. The service will fetch the song information for you and
deliver it to your account page on its web site. The company also
recently introduced a native iPhone app. (Norton Lam will present.)

re-searchr-logore-searchr
is a social search app that lets you "find stuff easier" online. It
helps you get search results from people you trust, using data from
your friends to influence the re-searchr score presented on top of your
search results. Another feature pushes your questions out to your
social networks, where your friends can then answer or comment; the app
then lets you push back their answers or comments for others to see. 
(James Ostheimer will present.)

sendoncue-logoSendOnCue
is a browser plugin that lets you schedule email delivery for later. It
integrates directly into your email or webmail client. Send an email
reminder at a later date and time. Slow down a conversation by delaying
when your reply is sent. If you work odd hours, you can adjust the time
your email is sent. (Aaron Kardell will present.)

socialbrowse-logoSocialbrowse
is a YCombinator-funded startup that provides social bookmarking with
discussions in the browser. It lets you share and discuss the web in
real time, and see what's good on every page. It  combines your social
network with your everyday web browsing. You can share and discuss any
page with a single click. Pages you share or comments you make are
automatically sent to other users in your network. You receive
real-time updates of cool links shared by people you like. (Zack Garbow
and Dave Fowler will present.)

ZippyStat (no web site yet) is a simple online service to
record and monitor nearly any type of information such as your gas
mileage, business cards collected, "poops by your newborn," books read,
miles run, etc. (Kelly Heikkila will present.)

This Minnedemo event is sponsored by:
• New Counsel
• Split Rock Partners
• Sierra Bravo
• Tightrope Media Systems
• The Foundation
• VISI

In a first for Minnedemo, this entire event will be video recorded, courtesy of TJ Kudalis from Internet Broadcasting.
And, I'm told, monitors will be located in the networking area for
those that can't squeeze into the limited seating in the auditorium. In
addition, Minnov8 will be recording interviews throughout the
networking portion of the evening, with the help of 612Authentic, also
a first.  For more information, see the Minnedemo web site.

What I’ve Been Blogging and Tweeting Lately

October 5, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Just a post to catch you up to what I’ve been doing elsewhere online recently, on venues other than this.  First of all, my volunteer/pastime blogging thing over at Minnov8.com included a post a couple days ago on a bigtime conference held here in the Twin Cities last week called the MIMA Summit. Mimasummitpost_3  It was sponsored by, you guessed it, MIMA (the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association). Here’s a partial screen clip of that post, and the whole post is here.

Then, just yesterday, I participated again in the weekly Minnov8 Gang Podcast, this one Episode 9 already. (Wow, time flies when you’re having fun.)  You can grab it off the Minnov8 home page via the link at top center there, as you can see on the second screen clip. Minnov8podcastlinks We talked about a number of topics, including recent confabs in the Twin Cities, the economic times, social media (of course), and, hey, even wine.

Finally, I continue to Twitter all the while — that just never stops! 🙂  I’m including here a recent screenshot of my Twitterstream. But please do follow the whole dang shebang here.  Graemetwitter1008
One cool thing that happened recently is this: I received a rating for my Twitter account of 91 out of 100 from twitter.grader.com.  Wow, that means my Twitter presence is rated higher than 91% of all the other accounts they’ve graded! Nice to know I’m doing something right..

UPDATE 10/6/08:  Meant to say that social media is a part of everything I do now for my clients, and also that I’m quite active in our local Social Media Breakfast organization. Be sure to keep the morning on Oct 31 open, because we have an exciting, nationally known speaker coming to town. [Actually, he was already here for a private gig, and I convinced him to stay over a night…  🙂 ] Watch the "SMBMSP" site above for the announcement later today.

UPDATE 10/9/08:  I see our local media site MinnPost picked up my story on the MIMA Summit.

My Day in the Sun – I Mean, the StarTribune

July 23, 2008 / / 5 Comments

Or I really should say, our day in the sun — meaning our whole team at DoApp (my new gig). What a bunch of great guys, and I tip my hat to every one of ’em! Especially our illustrious founder, Joe ("Google guy") Sriver, and our crack team of talented developers.

It isn’t every day you wake up and find yourself at the top of page one of your local daily’s Business section. I was even quoted there, before the jump. Here’s the story: Apple Shines on Minneapolis Firm’s iPhone App (Minneapolis StarTribune).  But wait, there’s more: another great piece on us appeared late Monday: Minnesota Keeps Feeding the iPhone Habit (Minnov8.com).

Doappstartrib

Having our myLite Color Strobe and Flashlight app break into the top ten of *all* free apps on the iTunes App Store, surging past many big-name apps — like Facebook, AOL, MySpace, Google, and the NY Times — has been a humbling and amazing experience. (We topped out at #8, after a wild ride up the charts.) We’re even ranked higher than all the apps featured on "What’s Hot" on the App Store front page! (Apple’s a little behind in updating that list, it seems…)

Go grab any or all of our apps on iTunes — just type "DoApp" in the search box. And reviews are always appreciated once you download ’em!  (Our apps are getting high ratings by consumers, which you can see via the independent ranking service, Medialets. For example, myLite is currently #25 of all apps — paid and free! — with an average rating of 4.5 out of 5.)

Our other apps are myTo-Dos with Email Support and Magic 8 Ball (it’s mystical, man!).  And DoApp has many more iPhone/iPod Touch apps on the way, in a variety of categories.  We’re even updating our first three apps with cool, new features. (One you get an app, you automatically get the updates — so sweet.)

Apple said yesterday the number of iTunes App Store downloads is now up to 25 million! Got an iPhone or iPod Touch yet?  Downloading apps like mad?  Tell us your experiences in the comments…

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