MinneDemo

Last night I attended MinneDemo, a free gathering of techies who demonstrate their software creations. The innovative software demos presented were only surpassed by the fascinating people I met.

Much has been written in blogs about the MinneDemo software that was demonstrated, so I’ll focus on the people.

MinneDemo People

I spoke with Justin Heideman who is doing some fascinating things at the Walker Art Center.

I met John Roberts, an attorney from New Counsel, which graciously provided hundreds of free drinks for everyone. John also has a fascinating legal practice with tech startups.

I didn’t meet him, but Roger Peters took a number of notes on his Tablet PC. I’m not sure if he will be publishing any of them online.

There was a long list of others who attended or RSVPed to attend:

1. Dan Grigsby (Co-organizer)
2. Luke Francl — (Co-organizer) Slantwise, Rail Spikes, personal blog
3. Graeme Thickins | Tech~Surf~Blog — Boosting startups throughout the seven-county metro (eight, nine, ten)…
4. Michael Amundson
5. Ray Ghanbari
6. Nate Carlson
7. Stephen Van Dahm
8. Tony Collen
9. Ben Edwards
10. Paul DeBettignies|MN Headhunter
11. Adam Sellke
12. Aaron Mentele
13. Sam Schroeder
14. Ed Kohler — Ah crap, Graeme beat me on the RSVP list.
15. Chris Barber
16. Dan Mallin — Making breakthrough ideas a reality
17. Phil Crissman
18. Gary Elfert — VISI
19. Stephen Heuer
20. Bjorn Stansvik — www.mentormate.com custom software develoment
21. Joe Sriver
22. Matt Zumwalt — Putting the gay in holiday.
23. Mike Sowada
24. Jacob Hookom — Corporate Pawn @ McKesson
25. dack ragus — cans of food for beer? Deal.
26. Derrick Fountain
27. Garrick Van Buren
28. Bill Heyman
29. Marshall Onsrud
30. Curt Prins
31. Todd McGrath
32. Kumaran Sundar — Software Architect
33. Matthew Dornquast — Protecting your bits and completing that next project
34. Lars Klevan
35. Bob Hastings
36. Barry Hess — Write now. bestow_karma(self) if canned_pabst.is_a? CannedFood
37. Scott Vlaminck — Refactr
38. Steve Halligan
39. Ralph Jenson
40. Jonathan Lord
41. stefan hartwig — Lordy, lordy, look who’s 40!
42. Jesse O’Neill-Oine
43. Erik Swenson
44. Kyle Drake — Making breakthrough ideas a catastrophe
45. Kyle Wilson — Lordy, lordy, look who’s drinking a 40
46. John Daenzer
47. Andy Morgan
48. Nick Sieger
49. Gabriel Heller — Still working on that melody search engine
50. Josh Neiman
51. Steve Fanning — Business software as a service
52. Ben Moore
53. John Grozik — Currently Program Director of Customized Online Learning for the N. Hennepin Community College. Lots of other stuff going on as well. Looking forward to the MinneDemo.
54. Joe Hoover
55. Don Mink
56. Rob Juncker
57. Scott Burns
58. Eric Scheel
59. Mitchell Weers
60. Matt Geiser
61. Norman Orstad — [http://datsro.com]
62. Mike Palmquist — I’m going to the National Association of Gifted Children Conference tomorrow. Will they let me in?
63. Brad Wilzbacher
64. Ben Wallace — Seeking to reduce redundancy and enhance unique relevance.
65. Anders Davidson
66. John Hoffman
67. Dave Abbott
68. Marty Wetherall — FanChatter.com, the mobile sports fan chat utility, was proud to present at the last MinneDemo in October.
69. Mario Fantauzzi
70. Jamie Thingelstad
71. Annie Picken — Prost!
72. John Sundberg — Kinetic Data
73. Peter Edstrom — “Confusion and clutter are failures of design, not attributes of information” - Tufte
74. Justin Heideman — Hoping to type so much text here that it wraps around and that I’ll get free beer.
75. Paul Armstrong — don’t touch my stuff
76. Cuong Tran
77. Adam Dewitz
78. Tyler Norenberg
79. Michael Woods
80. Charlie Flinn
81. Phil Wilson — RemainComm
82. Matt Pennig
83. Matt Thompson — Oh, you know, various MSM apologia
84. Scott Peterson
85. Craig Antolick
86. Jon Dahl — Spinoza -> Zencoder
87. Greg Buchner — Thanks Dale!
88. Dennis Becker
89. Matthew Nitchals
90. Thomas Knoll — embrace the geek
91. David Vinge
92. Marc Johnson — Excess ain’t rebellion if you’re drinking what they’re selling
93. Bob Waldron — Hope to see lots of Wisconsin people at MinneDemo as well as all the Minnesota participants…
94. Dan Stone
95. Aaron Hall
96. Ethan Galstad — Nagios
97. Randall Rodakowski
98. Eric Schaefer
99. Mark Zoia
100. Dan L. Shirk — Big Picture, Bold Leadership, Real Results
101. Larry J. Lorence
102. Jason DeBoer-Moran — *insert witty clever blurb here*
103. Peter Beacom — FindLaw
104. Nicholas Barthelemy
105. Amanda Barthelemy
106. Tim Bursch
107. Ryan Schmitt
108. Eric Peterson — Blurb because I can
109. Morgan Catlin
110. Jeff Pester
111. Tony Webster
112. Benjamin Ortega — still breathing
113. Tim Elliott
114. Tony Klein — Hardware is soft. Software is hard.
115. Jeremy Lizakowski — GreenSpringDesign, TCLUG, Startup Camp Evening Events (startupcamp@googlegroups.com)
116. andy kvamme — if i’m shivering, i know i’m alive.
117. Dave Walstad
118. David Quimby — Adaptive Avenue
119. Tom Harty — Convention-reg.com | Owner/Developer
120. Adam Vernier — A day without sunshine is like night.
121. John Nesbitt
122. Farhan Muhammad — I can say things but I won’t because I shouldn’t.
123. Eric Chapweske
124. Ryan Fisher
125. Riley Gerszewski
126. Jonathan Dahl
127. David Hedrick Skarjune — Is this like uh some World Brain thing?
128. Jim Geppert — 42
129. Eric Kinsella
130. Darren Siaw — sysadmin / guitarist
131. Noel Grover
132. Cory Preus
133. Matt Bauer — I’ll break it.
134. John Nelson — This all sounds super-cool. Hooray for Pete for telling me about it
135. Matt Prokes
136. Leon Giles
137. Colleen Velo
138. Matt Prokes
139. Tim Foreman
140. Tom ONeill
141. Praveen Mittal
142. Nate Roise
143. Nate Weiner — First timer.
144. Harlan Iverson
145. Lance Lavandowska
146. Darryl Wheaton
147. Jeff Hahn
148. Eric Caron
149. Jeff Gold
150. Matt Bartel
151. John Stavig
152. Arun
153. Sara Cowles
154. Erik Eliason — uTead
155. Naiomi
156. Wil Traeger — This space intentionally left blank.
157. Steve Wicks
158. Daniel Marsh
159. Dale Wyttenbach — There’s a demo?
160. Dan Rue
161. James Kahl — Holmes Center for Entrepreneurship
162. Bill Brown
163. Tinghao Wang
164. Andrea Casselton
165. Mayor Chris Coleman
166. Sara Grewing
167. Mike Calvo
168. Steve Borsch — “The best ideas are common property” Seneca (5 BC - 65 AD)
169. Jonathan Trent
170. Sarah Jenkins
171. Roger Peters
172. Clint Jurgens
173. Joe Hoover
174. Bill McGuire
175. james swanson
176. Ira Mitchell
177. Craig Letourneau
178. Cathy Paper — World’s Best Coach and Motivational Catalyst
179. Michael Manders
180. Bill Worple — 3LUXE
181. James Trachy
182. Steve Perry — Former editor of City Pages; currently publisher/editor of local web startup The Daily Mole.
183. Cecily Marcus
184. Bob Kusnetz — Need people trained on your bumpf?
185. Derrick Shields
186. Jordan Howe
187. Ken Earley
188. Michael John
189. Chris Josephes
190. Tim Bates
191. Shannon Duanmu
192. Rami Siriani
193. Corey Thompson
194. Jon Coudron
195. Erik Haugo
196. Randy Geise — Graphic Design for Business…Online or Off
197. Matthew Johnson — Matthew Johnson Custom Software Consultant, Webmaster Minneapolis, MN
198. Nicole Kinn
199. Cory Tranby
200. Paul Wenzel — Drinking Scotch at Carmichael Lynch
201. Richard Isaacson
202. Kris Richardson
203. David Bagley
204. Mike Hugo
205. Chris Massoll
206. Peter Fleck — former Cancer Center webmaster now with U of MN Extension
207. Lief Larson — Looking for anyone who knows Symfony. RoR sucks. How closed.
208. Robert Lebowitz — We’ll do what we do every night, Pinky; try to take over the world!
209. David Bearman
210. Jeffrey Geisener
211. Jon Mierow — Network Admin for CSP
212. Doug Olson — I want to come but all the sessions are filled
213. John Holtan
214. Patrick Rhone
215. Patrick Rhone
216. Curtis Thompson
217. Kyle Henderson — I am bringing with one other person from my company.
218. James Becker
219. Bill Amberg
220. Tom McArdell — Never heard of such a thing

Demos

The demo schedule included the following:

1. Spinoza Video Transcoding System (Jon Dahl)
2. Valtira (George Reese) — The Valtira Online Marketing Platform (CMS/Campaign Management/Personalization/more)
3. JRuby (Charles Nutter) — current state of the compiler, perf/java demos, maybe NetBeans
4. Grapheety (Gavin Quinn) — A map-based social exploration site. All stories and pictures are tagged onto the map by users.
5. ILM Services (Doug Nelson) — A quick lap around Silverlight.Net
6. NTractive (Dale Jensen) — Hybrid web application, focused on Small Business Management software
7. [wait list] Turf War (Jeff Pester and Matt Bauer) — A high performance Fantasy Football platform built on Rails featuring live scoring & reporting, multiple video deployment & advanced Edge Networking
8. [wait list] lua (Dustin Bruzenak) — lua.org
9. [wait list] Mobile Data Collection Platform (Nick Kleinjan) — Windows Mobile and ASP.NET handheld platforn for many types of field applications (i.e. http://www.airnab.com)
10. [wait list] Localtone Radio (Justin Grammens) — Internet Radio for local Twin Cities artists and listeners.
11. [wait list] SuddenDeals.com (Julian Reytel) — Deals from local restaurants are sent to shopper’s cell phones the moment they become available. Shoppers create FREE accounts and set a limit on messages received– there’s NO SPAM!
12. [wait list] Patented Distribution Relationship Management Software (Kevin Kruse) — Live demo of existing customers using our software to manage their distribution channels
13. [wait list] Performance-driven PHP Framework (Kyle Drake) — I will make really obnoxious cat noises. If there’s extra time, I’ll demo a really fast PHP framework I am working on. I’ll also show the benchmarking code I am using to do this.
14. [wait list] ThingsILearned.com (Dave Fowler) — A hierarchical wiki and social network based around putting knowledge on the web.
15. [wait list] TeamTreks Toolkit (Mike Palmquist) — A teacher toolkit sold as a subscription for organizing groups, customizing game content, and tracking student performance of a game, Glacier Bay, also hosted on teamtreks.com, that focuses on leadership and literacy skills for 4th through 7th graders.
16. [wait list] Nabbit (Tom Healy) — Use your cell phone to tag songs/ads heard on the radio allowing you to download them at a later time from the nabbit.com website. You can also share your playlist (not your music) with your friends on facebook. Did I mention it is free? Give it a try.
17. [wait list] Our VoicePrint Portal Technology (Noel Grover) — I will demo our patent pending technology for protecting personal identity and corporate data with one’s voice. To find out more about our technology please visit: http://www.voiceprintportal.com/index.php/pages/basics
18. [wait list] Soashable (Harlan Iverson) — A web based, multi-protocol instant messenger built on XMPP (Jabber) and COMET.