Minnebar 2008: Geeks 1 Minnesota Fishing Opener 0

Today is a national holiday in Minnesota, Fishing Opener. When one survives another bitter Winter here in the Land of 10,000 Lakes (actually 15,000+, but we're modest), the need for some outdoor fun is HUGE. Yet, this geek / fisherman is attending, along with 400 other nerds on a Saturday, Minnebar 2008.

If you've never attended an "unconference" (Wikipedia link), you need to get with it! Earlier today I personally presented on Social Search in the Corporate Environment. Later I attended a session on using mashups in the enterprise ... and this afternoon I am looking forward to the "lightning rod demos".  Anyone may demo, but with an extreme time limit (3 minutes??). If you want to learn about tens of new ideas quickly, this is a great deal.

Finally I just attended the State of the State: Technology in Minnesota. We may not be Silicon Valley (who cares?), but we have our own start-up success stories. This panel responded to questions about what is takes to create a vibrant development community here in Minnesota.

While most of you will not care about the answer to this question (Minnesota development community), the key takeaway from a barcamp is the phenomenal interaction among attendees. Attend a barcamp in your local area.

In fact ... information can just flow in to a person. While creating this post Adam Des Autels stopped by to chat. He had attended my session this morning, and knew of my love of intelligent RSS. His recommendation was to check out a new RSS aggregator that uses fuzzy logic to improve you results ... sounds very neat.  I've taken an initial look at PARTicls, and it deserves a thorough review. Time to attend another session!

Comments

[Graeme Thickins]

great post, Rich! love the headline :-) and you sure capture the essence of what Minnebar is all about...

thanks again for your great session -- you are an important link for our developer community into one of our state's oldest, proudest corporate names...sure, Honeywell may be officially headquartered elsewhere now

but the Minnesota ties never die!

cheers,
Graeme