Tammy instantly loved these paintings by Lissa Scotland from Duluth. We decided that these two are coming home with us. Beautiful.
Stop for delicious chocolate at Great Lakes Candy Kitchen.
This was a perfect spot to meditate for a few minutes.
Added 9 kWh at Gooseberry Falls while we were hiking around. Thank you Minnesota DNR!
Lunch at New Scenic Cafe is a mandatory activity for us on the North Shore.
Jay Cooke State Park
Finished hiking around Jay Cooke State Park 1.63 miles in 51.6 minutes. Beautiful scenery and delightful day. 🥾
St. Louis River at Jay Cooke State Park.
Busy morning at 190º Coffee & Tea this morning.
Nate Bargatze in Duluth
We had a night full of laughs seeing Nate Bargatze for the first time — and as it happens it was the very first show of his new Big Dumb Eyes tour here in Duluth! The show was completely sold out. Julian McCollough served as host and there were short bits from Steven Rogers, Keith Alberstadt, and Aaron Weber before Nate took the stage for the main event. Hilarious stuff! 🤣
Seated for Nate Bargatze “Big Dumb Eyes” World Tour at AMSOIL Arena in Duluth. Looking forward to seeing him for the first time.
Duluth / Stairs.
End of day #TeamSPS photo at MnTech Tech Connect 2025. Sitting in the chair was by popular demand. 😬😊
Was fun to share the stage with Melissa Flicek and Jenn Zmuda at the final session of MnTech Tech Connect 2025 during the CIO & CTO Panel. Many topics around AI adoption and leading digital transformations.
Learned a lot at “Economic Update - Tariffs & General Economic Trends” with Matt Haggerty of RSM at MnTech Tech Connect 2025.
55% chance of recession — Economist speak for “very high”. Predicted April will be the last month of positive job growth. Many false signals due to tariff “pull-ins”.
Wonderful #TeamSPS group photo at MnTech Tech Connect 2025. Was very sad that I missed the photo — I got talking to people after the morning keynote and completely missed it!
Fun to see Sam Pierson, TeamSPS alumni, at MnTech Tech Connect 2025. Was cool to hear what their team at Qlik is creating.
Great exploration of Spatial Computing at MnTech Tech Connect 2025 with Amir Berenjian of REM5 Studios. Pragmatic view highlighting where these solutions are solving big problems.
Great start to MnTech Tech Connect 2025 this morning with Joel Crandell starting things off and then John Sweeney leading a wonderful keynote on having an innovative mindset and being comfortable being uncomfortable. 👏
What does Minnebar mean?
I was having a conversation last week about Minnebar and there was a question about the name. What does it mean? Why Minnebar? It has nothing to do with being a bar with drinks. And it isn’t mini!
A super abbreviated history to get to the name.
It starts with Tim O’Reilly and O’Reilly Media. At one point O’Reilly hosted these “Friends of O’Reilly” events which as an acronym is FOO. It was Friends of O’Reilly, or Foo Camp. These were special events with an open agenda. Think wiki meets conference — or unconference.
The community decided there should be more of these to encourage sharing ideas in an unstructured way. In 2005 the first BarCamp was hosted to do that. In programming the most common variable reference is foobar, which isn’t the military fubar. So, not FooCamp but BarCamp.
There were BarCamps all over the place. It was a big trend. So when Ben, Luke, and a handful of folks decided we should have one in Minneapolis. But instead of it being BarCamp Minneapolis, let’s brand it a bit. Minnebar!
That is how you get there. So Minnebar is the largest unconference in North America, and I’m nearly positive it is also the longest running.