Minnestar
- The ability to record on your mobile a brand new video and create a unique exercise just for this one person. This is probably a big deal with physical therapy where you might create a specific activity for someone and to be able just to record and produce it right away seems compelling.
- Capability to export the assigned PT program using a text template into an EMR system makes sense for the therapist. I would imagine that is a significant time saving for them.
- Session 1 was great Sleep Improvement session with Dan Grigsby.
- Session 2 on Polyglot Persistence discussing NoSQL tech.
- Giving my 17th Minnebar session today.
- Session 3 How to Encrypt Your Personal Communication with Colin Bartol.
- Fun conversation at lunch about privacy tech and encryption. Only at Minnebar!
- Spotted Matthew Dornquast at Minnebar! 👋
- Session 4 What Smart Watches mean for Mobile with Mike Bollinger. Session is packed! Very thought provoking talk.
- I’m presenting Minnebar 10 on Minnebar now!
- Wonder if I’ll still have the most presenter sessions after this year. 14! 😊
- Going back to Minnebar 2007 for today’s shirt.
- Minnebar getting started!
- Excited to hear David Hussman starting session 0!
- Love joining LaTeX session by Peter Edstrom! Get your geek on. Who needs WYSIWYG? 😀
- Standing room only at Andrew Korf UX design session!
- About 98 °F in this room at Minnebar. Ugh.
- Minnebar is run by all volunteer team. If you have a moment, say Thanks to the folks coordinating everything.
- Come to Challenge at 1:40p for Minnebar 9 on Minnebar session and hear about how our non-profit is evolving, and share ideas you have!
- Happy to see Nick Sieger at Minnebar! Last seen at Minnebar 1 nine years ago!
- Missing Farhan Muhammad at Minnebar. RIP.
- Great day at Minnebar! So wonderful to connect with everyone and enjoy great sessions!
- Minnebar crowd assembling.
- Getting serious in advanced MongoDB session!
- Attending Hadoop session. Lot of people here. Clearly Hadoop is hot point via “big data”.
- Exploring dimensions of free content with Marc Grabanski.
- At Ian Dees Obama Tech talk!
- I’m presenting at Minnebar 8: Build and Deploy Ridiculously Advanced MediaWiki Websites!
- Also as board member of Minnestar am presenting Minnebar 8 on Minnebar.
- I personally dare you to go with the “Advanced” level for your Minnebar session. Get your geek on people!
- Who’s leading a “Dive into Lua!” session at Minnebar? Please? Someone?
Minnedemo 25 Recap
Minnedemo 25 was last night, and it was fabulous. I’ve gone to all but a few Minnedemo events and realize that sometimes the demos are just a bit better than other times. Last nights was a great serving of everything that Minnedemo can be. We had very polished demos with clear paths to markets alongside passion projects. We had a team that was formed only five weeks prior at a hackathon. We even had the perennial bombed demo due to technical difficulties that still gets shown the warmth of the community.
Update (Feb 22): Tech.MN posted videos of all the demos.
Talkative Chef
A group of 8 women that met at Hack the Gap built this product in just the last few weeks. They started working on this concept and showed a pretty well put together alpha of that work. The product helps you cook and bake hands-free by using voice commands with your computer. It worked well, and it was impressive to me that it was all done in the browser. As soon as they showed it, I thought this should be an Alexa skill package, but they highlighted that they were doing it in the browser to make it accessible to a wider audience. It’s not clear to me that this is a company or if it’s just a hobby project, but the concept of hands-free guides makes a lot of sense and in more than just the kitchen. The same concept could apply to repair projects in the house and having a screen to show diagrams or pictures while you talk could be helpful as well. Cool idea, well executed, great demo and great to see an all-female team building this, and it coming from a hackathon.
VennPT
Interesting take on preparing physical therapy programs. They showed a platform that allowed a PT specialist to design a program and then assign it to their patients. Very similar in concept to what you would have a personal trainer do by building workouts and assigning them. Two unique features that hit me in the demo:
Inkit
This demo reminded me a bit of Twilio. Twilio took something old, plain old telephone service, and make it accessible via API’s and the cloud. Inkit feels similar in taking something old, direct mail, and making it accessible in the way that modern digital marketers think of the world. Makes sense to me but strikes me as a market with a lot of competition. Well done product and demo.
EnduraData
I was looking forward to this demo because it was the most technical of the bunch. EnduraData has software that moves large volumes of sensitive data between multiple locations and does it better, faster. You can buy expensive devices to do this, but their software delivers the same benefit. Unfortunately, to do the demo, they had a virtual machine in another country set up and were going to shuffle data around, and the WiFi in the room failed them. They were going to try showing a video as a backup, but that couldn’t work either. I was excited that this was the only demo of the night that was running Ubuntu, but bummed we didn’t get to see it.
Newt One
Newt One is a non-violent game concept where the characters only have a positive impact on the game environment. The concept was cool, the art and music were very nice, and it looked fun to play. We don’t get a lot of game demos at Minnedemo, so this was fun to see.
Trout Spotr
Trout Spotr stole the show and is one of those passion projects that I love to see at Minnedemo. The presenter started by saying “I built a website for my Dad.” and then went on to show how he used open data, various software packages and created a stunning website that allows you to find trout streams that are on public land. The visuals were well done using D3 and mashing up a lot of other web technology. The presenter also had a ton of energy and excitement. Great demo!
Player’s Health
Players Health has an interesting product that allows youth sports programs to deal with injury information in a much more sophisticated way. This demo opened the door to a problem that seems significant but underserved and showed a service that provides a lot of value to parents, coaches and even creates a data set that can be used to improve the youth sports world. I was impressed by the quality of the demo and that it appears to be serving a real need around injury management.
Minnebar 11
Excited to see another Minnebar kick off!
SPS Commerce is a proud sponsor of Minnebar! Growing our tech community through passion and learning!
This years shirt rocks — as usual!
Love seeing LaTeX and R in Peter Edstrom session at Minnebar. And good old make!
At Minnebar, and look at all the local support for DocuMNtary!
At Minnebar, and Nick Roseth passion around DocuMNtary and the local tech community is contagious. Great stuff.
Nice call out to University of Minnesota Computer Science @grouplens at Minnebar session on recommenders by Mike Navarro.
See also Minnebar collection.
Minnebar 10
Notes from Minnebar 10:
See also Minnebar collection.
Always fun night for Minnedemo!
Peter Zaballos introducing SPS Commerce to Minnedemo crowd! Go #TeamSPS!
Proud to be part of Minnedemo (Minnebar & Minnestar) in three different ways!
Great lunch today with Elwin Loomis and Heather Mickman about the Minnestar mission with fellow board members Justin Porter, Casey Helbling, and Alex Ryan!
Minnebar 9
Notes from Minnebar 9:
See also Minnebar collection.
Fabulous breakfast this morning with Minnestar board member and catalyst Justin Porter.
Minnedemo tonight! Anna Klombies and Jim Bernard are ready for the demos.
Cool to see PCs for People and the great work they do at Minnedemo!
Great to see SportNgin’s Carson Kipfer presenting their mobile app at Minnedemo!
At least 15 people from #TeamSPS at Minnedemo tonight! Say Hi!
Very impressive demo from Kidizen, very fluid UI and great mobile experience.
I think I need to get a Double Robotics for our #TeamSPS Tech Centers!
Nice demo from CartStack.
Minnedemo wouldn’t happen without the volunteers. A personal thank you to all of you! You make our tech community great!
Minnedemo 15
Minnedemo 15 was great!
Proud to have SPS Commerce sponsoring Minnedemo 15!
Nice to see Lou Abramowski demoing Unbenchable!
Very impressive UI on Dash demo. Super polished.
Casey Helbling and Justin Porter Join Minnestar Board ← Excited to officially welcome Justin Porter and Casey Helbling to the Minnestar board!
Slides from my Minnebar Build Advanced MediaWiki Websites are on the wiki.
Sessions for Minnebar 8 are now on the wiki. Presenters please add any materials to your sessions.
Minnebar 8
See also Minnebar collection.
Excited to “drop some science” at my MediaWiki session at Minnebar.
One of my Minnebar 8 sessions: Build and Deploy Ridiculously Advanced MediaWiki Websites.
My Running a VPS with Confidence session from Minnebar just got online.