Every month, Tom will take you inside a Twin Cities startup or tech event via a quick video recap.
This past Saturday, more than 1,400 attendees, 60 volunteers and 157 sessions took over Best Buy HQ for the 14th annual Minnebar.
Organized by Minnestar, this user-generated conference is a landmark event each year in the local tech scene. And for nearly nine hours, I scrambled around capturing bits of each panel, conversation, fireside chat and demo I came across. (You're welcome!)
The day kicked off with a welcome from Maria Boland Ploessl, executive director of Minnestar, and a keynote delivered by Sharon Kennedy Vickers, the City of St. Paul's chief information officer.
At the first session, my robot-loving mind got blown by Misty Robotics live demo-ing how to code their friendly-looking robots with...wait for it...Javascript?!
After that, I went to Ryan Weber’s "intro to exponential technology & leadership" session, which featured great examples of how quickly the local tech ecosystem is evolving
All of that futurism had me hankering for the past, so I stopped into “A Brief Oral History of Javascript”. Surprisingly good!
The two strongest sessions I attended were the “Why Diversity Matters" panel and @TechChelsey’s talk on “100 Days, Racism, and Starting Over: Finding Faith in Programming”. I highly recommend engaging with the folks from both those sessions and supporting their work.
My day wrapped up with an actionable session called “Side Projects for Fun & Profit”. Those slides are like catnip for my side-hustle brain.
But enough with these words and twitter links! Check out the delectable Minnebar supercut here:
About the Series: What did I just read/see? Well, dear reader, once a month I (Tom) will be dropping video knowledge bombs on the Minne Inno network to highlight key events in the MSP tech ecosystem. Why? (1) So my introverted friends stay current, (2) so event organizers/attendees have sexy digital assets to share (aka twitter fodder) & (3) to show all internet travelers what we do in the North.
BIO: By day, technologist. By night, creative content producer. #optimizedForSpeed ?LinkedIn ? @blueRavenDigital ? @blueRavenDigtl ? blueRaven.digital
