Tech~Surf~Blog

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

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. 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.

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...

Minnebar '08 Schedule Announced - It's Hot!

The program for our annual Minnesota Barcamp -- Minnebar -- was just released late yesterday. The event is being held Saturday, May 10, at the Coffman Union on the U of MN campus. Here's a look at where things are so far, and note that it's subject to change.

Don't miss the panel at 12:00 noon: "State of the State: Technology in Minnesota" in the theater on the first floor. Panelists include:
• Doug Olson, who heads a Microsoft developer team in MN
• Jamie Thinglestad, Mpls-based CTO of Dow Jones Online 
• Michael Gorman, Partner at VC firm Split Rock Partners
• Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad (a unit of Best Buy)
• And Dan Grigsby, our infamous local rabble rouser at Unpossible.com :-) and original lead organizer of Minnebar/Minnedemo.

Note the "Lightning Demos" at 4:00 and 5:00 -- which I think will be especially good!  These are five-minute presentations available to new or existing startups, or anyone who has a new idea or favorite topic to talk about. If you want to add yours to the list (which is not yet published), just send an email to event co-orgnanizer Luke Francl at look (at) recursion (dot) org -- telling him your name, company name, and what you'll be talking about.

See you Saturday! This will be fun -- how could it not be, with a frenzied crowd of some 400 of your fellow MN tech enthusiasts? :-)

I'll be there Twittering and shootin' pix all over. And I'm also part of the Minnov8 team, who'll be Twittering as well. But, trust me, there'll be plenty of hot networking in between!

Geeks, Entrepreneurs, Designers, Angels, VCs, and Marketeers ..... Let's Mix It Up!

Minnebar is Saturday, May 10!  MInnesota's all-day annual Barcamp event is not to be missed.  New venue this year (bigger and better): the gloriously redone Coffman Union at the U of MN (cool place if you haven't checked it out yet). To sign up, just go the event site (a wiki page), hit Edit Page, and add your name and links. (Minnebar is held once a year, while evening "Minnedemo" sessions are held in each of the other three quarters.) Already, almost 300 of your compatriots have signed up for this year's edition of Minnebar, and many more will be as the week progresses. It's free! That's right -- the whole damn thing! (thanks to the sponsors) ... including breakfast, lunch, reception and beers following. You even get a free event t-shirt! And you can come and go as you please, choosing just the sessions that interest you -- though I would highly recommend hanging out all day for the networking, which is really the biggest benefit. You can do your own session if you and/or some colleagues have something to say (and if there's still room). Hit the link that says MinneBarSessions, click Edit Page, and add your title and session description while you still can. In the coming days, the organizers will be cutting off new entries and publishing a full schedule with all the breakout sessions. That should then be available at the event site, or you can pick up a hard copy on your arrival. Come early -- the event kicks off at 8:30 am.

Attention Startups and Angels: Note the "Lightning Talks" Session
On the MInneBarSessions page, scroll down and look for a link to apply to give a five-minute pitch.  Ideal if you're a startup, whether just forming or further along. An entire hour is being devoted to these rapid-fire presentations. This is a great way to see what's going on out there in our state, hear the latest business concepts and startup ideas, or get updates on the progress of local startups you may have already heard about. [This will be like the DEMO conferences I know so well. My advice: hone the message hard, and practice well!]

This event is gonna be killer, I promise you. If you want to know what's really goin' on in tech in Minnesota, you have to be here. Bring lots of business cards, a camera, your laptop (we'll have mondo wi-fi!), wear your favorite tee, and get ready to learn, share, network, gab, blog and Twitter your brains out, and meet tons of fun, like-minded people.

Hey, in my book, it definitely beats sittin' on some cold lake fishing!  :-)

Tim O'Reilly Asks Jonathan Schwartz the 'Missed Questions'

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. (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!

Some of the Great People I Met at GSP and ETech

As a followup to my previous blog posts and innumerable Twitters (starting on March3) about the Graphing Social Patterns and ETech conferences this past week, I just wanted to say-hey to all those I met or ran into -- at least those I got cards from. It was fun chatting with all of you, and I look forward to staying in touch! After all, we're supposed to be "social" at these things, right?  In fact, please Facebook me and/or hook up with me on LinkedIn (see links just to the right in my sidebar), if we aren't already connected (or I will do that from my end).

Hello again to the following folks I already knew and ran into at GSP or ETech (listed alphabetically):
•Sean Ammirati, VP at mSpoke and ReadWriteWeb contributor (PA)
•Dan Carroll, CEO, Intelligent Media Platform and Somr.org (formerly Minneapolis, now Mountain View)
•Rick Enrico, CEO, JuiceMedia (San Diego)
•Aaron Fulkerson, Cofounder, Mindtouch (San Diego)
•Chris Gammill, Web Product Marketing Consultant (LA)
•Dan Grigsby, uber-developer, Unpossible.com (MN)
•Alex Iskold, CEO of AdaptiveBlue and ReadWriteWeb contributor (NJ)
•Jeremiah Owyang, new Forrester Research analyst rockstar (SF)

And it was great meeting all these new people (listed alphabetically); apologies to those I may have missed because I didn't get a card:
•Bill Binning, CMO, Jaduka (TX)
•Ben Benner, CTO, Jaduka (TX)
•Derek Dukes, Founder, Dipity (SF)
•Pete Forde, Partner, Unspace (Toronto)
•Chris Hendricks, VP Bus Dev, Travature (San Diego)
•Kristofer Layon, Web Project Coord, U of MN (Go, Gophers!)
•Ian Kennedy, Product Mgr, MyBlogLog/Yahoo (SF)
•Sanyu Kirulata, Queen's School of Business MBA candidate (Canada)
•Vince Kohli, CEO, BizInnovativ (NJ)
•Chris Messina, Citizen Agency/DISO-project.org (SF)
•David Recordon, Open Platforms Technical Lead, SixApart (SF)
•Jodee Rich, CEO, PeopleBrowsr.com (Sydney)
•Jeff Roberto, Marketing/PR Director, Friendster (SF)
•Jason Rubenstein, Cofounder, Just Three Words (LA)
•Todd Sampson, Cofounder and Dir-Tech Mktg, MyBlogLog/Yahoo (SF)
•Maria Sipka, CEO, Linqia (Spain via Sydney)...and she surfs, too!

I hope those of you who read this will let me know what you thought of the events (just email me at graeme at thickins dot com). Best of luck to all of you in your current endeavors! And I certainly hope our respective social graphs continue to intersect in good ways....

[By the way, if you'd like to get access to any speaker presentation files from either event, they're being posted on the following pages, which the O'Reilly people said are being updated as speakers choose to add their slides:
- GSP speaker presentations (this is the specific page at Slideshare.net where speakers were asked to post their slides)
- ETech speaker presentations (a page on the O'Reilly site that has several postings already, and I assume more will be added ongoing).
Keep checking these links if you don't see what you want.]

UPDATE 3/10/08: To update link for GSP speaker presentations.

UPDATE 3/17/08: To give you yet another link to the GSP presentations, this one the official O'Reilly page, which recently went live: Graphing Social Patterns West 2008 - Presentation Files.

GSP+ETech=A Damn Good Week in San Diego

Despite the fact that I lost my voice halfway through my three days in San Diego (some weird cold thing I picked up), the two O'Reilly events this week were definitely worth attending. I say that even though I wasn't able to participate as much as I would have liked. Certainly, the networking suffered. I haven't figured out how to do that without talking yet... :-)

I did live-Twitter the sessions I sat in on, capturing all the nuggets you can likely handle. If you'd like to see those, just go to my Twitter page. For Graphing Social Patterns, scroll back to March 3 and 4. For ETech, scroll to the March 5 tweets.  I must have written 150 or more total for both events. And there were some darn good speakers and panels, which I captured as best I could (in the requisite sound-bite form).

GSP was Monday and Tuesday, while ETech was Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. But I only covered ETech on Wednesday, which I had previously determined was the most interesting day from my perspective.  I definitely wanted to be at GSP on Tuesday, and I skipped ETech on Thursday for a couple of reasons: to go back home to San Clemente so my voice could recover, and to avoid another expensive hotel night.

I also posted some 118 photos to Flickr in two sets: GSP pix here and ETech pix here. Note that I mostly shot what I thought would be interesting to you: speaker slides, as well as shots of the speakers and panelists themselves, plus other general scenes -- as opposed to posed/cutsie shots of my friends, etc... :-)

Anyway, I found the programming at both events to be very good, and I learned a lot. Plus, I made a bunch of great contacts. (Look for that list in my next post.)  I hope you found my live-Twittering and Flickr pix interesting, at least, and (even better) useful.

ETech 08: Strangest Session Title Goes to..."How to Kick Ass"

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. 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. 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

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. 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.

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...  :-(

GSP West 08: The Room's Crowded

The conference was just kicked off by Dave McClure, and Charlene Li and Amit Kapur gave good talks. I'm Twittering here as things go along. I liked this first slide Dave used. Will also post a lot of others on Flickr.

Headed to "Graphing Social Patterns" and ETech '08

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. 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.