Internet Broadcasting Systems sold for $20 million ← Congrats to Elmer Baldwin, Todd Carter, and Internet Broadcasting team on todays news!
Monday morning Blue Screen of Death.
Hanging at Golden Leaf Smokeshop with Jim Bernard having a cigar and scotch. Will not be my last time. Great vibe here.
Looking forward to a great evening with #teamsps tonight!
Congrats to Justin Kaufenberg and team!
@TECHdotMN: Minneapolis startup @SportNgin closes $15m series D funding.
Giving my OmniFocus GTD projects a serious review and refactor. Needed. Tracking lots of open projects.
The new PHP ← The “People’s Language” is improving! Good to see PHP turning the corner.
I’ve always known that OmniFocus tasks could repeat, but had never realized projects could repeat! Very nice!
You should go see Bridget Kromhout present at DevOps Minneapolis meetup next week! She’s awesome! 👍
Remembering Farhan Muhammad
On Tuesday morning I was shocked to get an email from Jennifer at ILM
Professional Services informing us that Farhan Muhammad, the CEO of ILM,
had passed away in his sleep on Sunday night. I see Farhan regularly and
I've worked with him and his firm on projects for several years. To my
knowledge he had no health issues and he was a mere *41 years old*!
Farhan and I had been emailing back and forth just days prior on a
project that I was framing up to get him and his firm involved in. This
news was so unimaginable it took a while to even process it.
In the past decade I’ve done several projects with Farhan over the course of three different companies. He was a true partner in every aspect of the word. I knew that if Farhan told me that the consultants he had to work on a project were great, I didn’t need to verify. I knew as a fellow technologist I could just go with what he said. He was an “ace in the hole” so to speak. When I knew I needed to extend beyond my team, and get some outside folks in, he and his firm would rise to the challenge. And, if he knew he couldn’t, he would be plain and direct and help redirect to a path that would work.
I remember on multiple occasions calling him that I needed help getting a project started, and needed to start yesterday with a solid team that could execute in weeks not months. He was always able to make magic happen.
On top of being a great business partner, he was also just an awesome guy. You couldn’t work with him long without seeing the pride and joy he had in his family. His wife and their two kids came up in conversations a lot. My heart goes out to them with this sudden and unexpected loss. Farhan was born in Pakistan and moved here straight after high school. His extended family was a big part of his life as well, and one of the drivers to extra bedrooms in their home so they could stay for weeks and months at a time.
Perhaps the most amazing thing is after a near decade of doing projects, technology projects with high risk, I don’t even remember a single time having a meeting or discussion with Farhan that was frustrating, challenging or dredging through a project gone wrong or technology poorly designed. That’s amazing!
I was right in the middle of framing up the next project I wanted to work with Farhan and his team on. I was really eager to get Farhan’s take on the approach, and we were excited to totally reinvent how this service worked and how people would engage with it. I’m saddened to not have the opportunity to do that again.
To all of Farhan’s family, friends and coworkers I want to send my deepest sympathies and regrets. I was able to attend the funeral service today to pay my respects and it was so nice to hear from so many that had great memories of working and living with him. His impact will be felt for a very long time, and he will not be forgotten. The Twin Cities technology community lost a great technologist, entrepreneur and supporter this week.
Disaster, send help! 😀
I have no coffee in my house? How could I let this happen. [_]D
— Karl ☕️ (@bigboxcar) March 5, 2014
Very saddened by the sudden and surprising passing of Farhan Muhammad. Worked with him over a number of years. Such a great spirit.
Having lunch 2 blocks from Canada and -18 °F below. Welcome to North Dakota.
Dropbox Arbitration Opt-Out
If you missed the news that Dropbox is now automatically putting all users into an arbitration agreement you should take a moment to opt-out of this change. You can go to And easily opt out.
Over recent years I’ve been growing increasingly concerned about the lack of women in technology careers. Perhaps it’s being a dad, or just getting older. Either way, I think this is bad for our industry. I believe we would have healthier cultures, better teams and make better software and products if we had more diversity.
I recently got an email invite to an event in town for tech entrepreneurs. The headline of the email exclaimed in large type…
Walk into a room of people just like you.
In the email were three photos to highlight the people just like you. All set in the gorgeous CoCo Minneapolis space.
Notably a room of people just like you, if you are a young, white man.
I’m not highlighting it because I think there was anything intentional with these images. But instead just to highlight something that I don’t think many in tech even see. We rarely notice the absence of any women in these scenes. We need to work harder to create an inclusive environment that draws the great women technologists into our events too.
On a related note, many know I’m on the board of minnestar which hosts minnedemo and minnebar. We are continuing to work hard to make sure we get all technologists to our events. We have a lot of work to do, but making sure that our imagery displays an open and accepting event is an important start.
Heading to North Dakota for my grandmas 80th birthday. Forecast is -38 °F tomorrow morning. Seriously wondering if car will start. No block heater.
Forecast has been modified to -40 °F (ambient, not wind chill) tomorrow at 8am in Lignite.
Seated for Mike Birbiglia at Pantages!
Always makes me smile when I get spam that starts with “Hi %%first_name%%,”