Derrick Shields Blog

This past weekend, we had the opportunity to sponsor Minnebar, Minnesota’s premier (un)conference. Minnebar is Minnesota’s version of Barcamp, which is basically a giant gathering of hundreds of geeks, programmers, designers and entrepreneurs.  To be sure, this diverse combination of attendees ensures a great time.

A huge congratulations to Ben and Luke for putting everything together.  It was also great to see Best Buy step up and sponsor the show, as well as provide a terrific venue for the attendees; kudos to them and especially Robert Stephens for making it happen.

Did I mention that it’s free for attendees?  That’s right - free breakfast & coffee, lunch, and beer at the end of the day and its no wonder why Minnebar is the most popular barcamp conference in the country (I think).

minnebar: the (un)conference

For those unfamiliar with the un-conference theme, it can take some getting used-to.  “There are no attendees, only participants” and this is really apparent in almost every session you may choose to attend.

Leading a session is as simple as contributing to the community wiki before the event.  Session pre-qualification measures are little-to-none, which can be both good and bad; discussions can tend to be frustratingly unstructured and off-target.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for attendee participation, but I would like to see the folks leading sessions to keep tighter control to keep the discussions on target.

Minnesota, Geeks & Entrepreneurship

The most interesting session I attended was “Midwestern Startups” led by Luke Francl, one of Minnebars organizers.  The premise of the session essentially compared the traditional silicon valley start-up culture to that which we find here in the Twin Cities, and how we can change - not to be the silicon valley of the Midwest, but to find our own technology start up groove.

There exists a huge difference in working culture. The start-up culture in Silicon Valley is not afraid of failure; Twin Cities company culture is much more conservative, dare I say more structured and corporate. Minnesota is very proud to be called home to Fortune 500 giants such as Target, Best Buy, General Mills and Medtronic, and this corporate mentality really follows through people through their livelihood.

The question is this: How do we foster a start-up environment and find our place on the map as a center of innovation and technology?

Do we have the desire? Check. My observations at Minnebar proved that there are a ton of people interested in getting things moving.

Do we have the talent? Double Check.  Wow! It’s obvious that we’ve got a big pool of highly talented technical professionals located in the Twin Cities.

Do we have the money? Kind of. While it’s true that tech startups, especially web-based startups, can operate on relatively little capital in start-up mode, the money just doesn’t flow freely here like it does in Silicon Valley.  Minnesota investment firms pour a lot of venture capital into bio-tech and medical device companies, but it would be really nice to see some technology (web) based startups get funded and do something really spectacular.

Twin Cities Start Ups - Let’s Get Going

So how do we really get the engine going?  Personally, I would really like to see some of our friends at our local Fortune 500’s open up some distribution channels for smaller ventures.  Best Buy has a venture capital arm Best Buy Capital - Why didn’t they have a presence at Minnebar?  That doesn’t make any sense to me.

Taking that a step further, local companies such as Target or Supervalu could set aside money each year and partner with bigger local venture capital firms such as Splitrock Partners or Crescendo Ventures, which would allow these firms to take perhaps a less conservative approach to investment opportunities, so long as the money is used for local startups.

This is a topic that everybody is interested in, and we’ll definitely be keeping this discussion open.

Looking Forward: Minnebar 2010

WebproLeads will be looking forward to sponsoring the next Minnebar, tentatively planned for May 2010.  I’ll be working with Ben, Luke and others to try and get more representation from local investment firms the next time around.  Personally I’d like to see a Venture Capital panel discussion.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed.