Derrick Shields Blog

Another minnebar came and went yesterday.  We were happy to sponsor again this year.  It looks like Ben and Luke aren’t having too much trouble getting companies to step up and support the show, which is great.  This time around left me a bit frustrated and I’ll do my best to explain why.

minnebar = Not exactly an “un” conference anymore

Minnebar is simply growing too large to continue to operate as a self-proclaimed (un)conference.  The sheer size and number of attendees made it feel a lot less “un” and a lot more “conference this year - About the only thing that was missing was an exhibit hall.  

My reasoning here is that minnebar being free for attendees with optional community-supporter tickets (or whatever) is cool, but I feel that minnebar will become a victim of its own success and quickly lose credibility if the a.) sessions, b.) topics, and c.) presenters aren’t at least partially vetted going forward.  (I get that this totally goes against the whole community-self-organized concept but sooner or later this simply isn’t an effective method for organizing such a large conference).

Maybe I’m being too critical or perhaps I’m just getting bored with the concept, but it seemed that the conference was sub-par this year.  It was fun, don’t get me wrong, but the sessions and session topics are start tarting to get repetitive. I mean really repetitive.  I mean seriously, how many time can we talk about iPhone dev, Drupal and Social Media?  (Wow, am I sick of the word Social Media…)  Sure, the argument can be made that is what minnebar is all about, but it sure would be nice to see some variety in topics.

MN Tech Startup State of the Union

That brings us to another session that gets repeated in one form or another each year.  This year it was called How Can Minnesota Be Better.  To his credit, Jeff Pesek and Mike Bollinger (of tech.mn) put together a credible panel, and it was a great discussion.

Of course the session inevitably - as it always does - quickly turned to capital, fundraising and west coast vs mid-western startups and access to financing, etc.  But as Paul DeBettignies (aka Minnesota Headhunter) made asked the same question I was thinking: how many times are we going to have this discussion

What’s it going to take to get VC’s actively investing in our community?  Dan Grigsby’s answer was basically that until we’ve got at least one home run, 1-2 triples or at least a handful of doubles of our community, access to capital is going to remain extremely tight.  I agree with him.

Web Developer != Entrepreneur

One eye opening “show of hands” during this session was revealed when Jeff (I think it was Jeff anyway) asked the question, “How many of you are entrepreneurs?” and pretty much 95% of the audience raised their hand.  When the follow-up question “How many of you are on the money side of the equation?” was asked, I think there were about 5 hands in the air in a room of 200-250.

Well, herein lies our problem.  If you don’t want to build a real business; if you haven’t put together a business plan, if you’re not doing real market research, if you haven’t gotten a product to market (or at least a prototype), if you’re not focused on developing financial models and revenue, you’re not an entrepreneur.  

I see a big need here for a new breed of business-oriented sessions at minnebar.  The argument, of course, is that’s not what minnebar is about - It’s about geekdom and coding and all that.  But it’s obvious that isn’t true based on the popularity of the “How can Minnesota Be Better” session, and those that came before it.

Conclusion

Minnebar was fun.  Every company there seemed to be hiring, which is both promising and very exciting.  I’ll continue to support (sponsor) minnebar, but I see room for competition in this space because I definitely think it could be better.  I’ll have to let that marinate for a while.