MinneBar 12 Session Schedule

After taking up programming in BASIC when the first unsupervised Teletype 33 terminal arrived at Minnetonka West Junior High in the early 1970s, I've spent the next 45 years on a search for truth and beauty as world of computing evolved — with mixed results.

How do you get things done, and more importantly, get the right things done? I’ll tell you about some lessons that I learned the hard way.

We're doing it again this year!

Hello Computer Friends, what if I told you there was a vibrant community of independent game developers in your very own state of Minnesota (and surrounding principalities) making seriously excellent video games?

You would demand PROOF, as is your right.

Mega Minne Multi Indie Mini Arcade is here to provide you so much proof that you are like "Okay, okay, I get it. Enough already."

We got:

💪 4 big screen TVs running a selection of locally made games

💪 1 multiplayer VR game (starts at 10AM)

💪 This thing's going all day long

💪 In the main hallway area of Minnebar

Here are some of the games we'll be featuring:

anti|priacy
Tribe Games (@TribeGames) | Charles McGregor
website

anti|piracy is an intense action dodge ‘em up with a minimalist design. Evade countless amounts of enemies as you try and outlast your friends for the highscore. Change up the how the game plays with various modifiers ranging from the speed and size of your player to manipulating the arena itself.

Chimera Genesis
North Games
website

Chimera Genesis is a four player cooperative adventure game. You plays Chimera--animals who journey through the world finding--or stealing limbs from other Chimera, which you can attach to your own body to change your abilities. Play with friends and family of all skill levels to help your characters resolve their pasts.

Claw Breaker
Team Claw

Claw Breaker is a crustacean fighting game! Cut your opponents claws off to win! Or if you are a peaceful crab you can win by collecting three stars. How many crab battles can you win in a row against your crustacean pals?

Earthbeat (VR Game)
Team Earthbeat?
website

Demoing VR at a party? Now you can play locally with up to 5 people at the same time. Mother Earth has had enough of stupid humans messing with her climate and has decided to take matters into her own hands. She has sent a Polyp, a massive, gooey creature, to protect what is left of her domain. She will do battle against up to four human spacecraft, in a fight that's sure to get your heart racing. One person will play the Polyp using a Vive, against four aircraft piloted by players with game controllers who are determined to land in the landing zone at any cost. The Polyp will defend itself by flicking its arms and slapping the aircraft out of the sky. Prepare for a ton of laughs and also a sweaty HMD.

Fingeance
Escape Industries
website

Fingeance is a four-player shoot-em-up that places emphasis on teamwork and strategy, discarding traditional twitch-based gameplay.

Glowbots
Alex Carlson
website

Couch Multiplayer Arena Fighter Robot Deathmatch

Joggernauts
Space Mace
website

Joggernauts is a cooperative auto-runner party game for 2-4 players where you try not to kill your friends. Take turns (probably failing) to lead your team through deceptively difficult color-coded platforming levels.

The Legend of Equip Pants
Zachstronaut
website

The Legend of Equip > Pants is an episodic, puntastic pantsventure comedy RPG where instead of equipping and upgrading a sword, you have to equip and upgrade your pants.

Newt One
DevNAri LLC
website

A fun, colorful, & musical 3D Platformer, Newt One is coming to XBox One, PC, and Mac this year (2017)! You play as Newt, a new tone in a musical land that has fallen to the Gray Slumber. Awakening this sleeping, silent world is Newt's rite of passage.

Trigger Discipline
Victor Thompson - @i2
website

Trigger Discipline is an arcade action game rendered in ASCII text. The player character can move or fire their weapon in the four cardinal directions. Each level ends when all non-player characters have been killed. Trigger Discipline runs in a terminal, and can be played remotely via telnet or ssh.

Verdant Skies
Howling Moon Software
website

Verdant Skies is a life simulation game filled with friendship, exploration, farming, and crafting. Lose yourself in the lovingly hand-painted world and ensure the success of the colony as you make friends and pursue romance with a diverse cast of characters.

--

Also, would you like to get plugged into the local game dev scene?

Ice Cold Games
website

A one stop shop for upcoming game dev related events, game creators, organizations, and more.

Glitch Con
website

Digital Games Festival happening May 5-7th, you should go!

IGDATC
website

The local chapter of the International Game Developers Association has monthly general meeting plus a VR meeting.

Nice Games Club Podcast
website

The podcast where nice gamedevs talk gaming. Nice! And, local!

You’ve been programming for a while now. You know your way around the code, and you’re becoming a go-to for technical advice. And it looks like someone else noticed, because you’re the technical lead on your next project. Congratulations! But now what?

Being a lead is a lot more than just coding: The technical lead can be responsible for designing software architecture, writing requirements, interfacing with clients or management, or dividing work amongst the team– and those are just the parts of the job they tell you about ahead of time.

This talk is for anyone who is in charge of wrangling programmers. We’ll discuss how to motivate your team members without overstepping your bounds, how to oversee the technological vision of a project without losing sight of what’s happening on the ground, and some tactics to deal with challenges you might not anticipate, but will almost certainly encounter.

If at least 20 people show interest by EOD Monday, March 20, I'll host this session and show the process I've used to get meetings with billionaires, venture capitalists, and the Fortune 500 C-suite.

TL;DR: This session is for junior developers, by junior developers. We'll talk about the challenges we've faced throughout the learning/job search process, as well as strategies for how to overcome them.

Whether you're self taught, went through a boot camp, studied CS in school, or are just interested in the topic, join us to talk about what it's really like to be a junior developer in MN.

This will be very casual and informal. Come prepared to be part of the discussion.

What to expect

If the group is small enough, we'll go around the room and introduce ourselves, share a little about our backgrounds and where we're at career-wise. Otherwise, we'll skip introductions.

Then, members of the audience will be encouraged to share their experiences/opinions about a list of discussion topics and we'll go from there.

What we are going to talk about (not a final list)

• Motivations to get into software engineering
• Transitioning your career into software engineering & how to do it
• Learning approaches: Bootcamp? Go back to school? Teach yourself?
  • Bootcamps: What's a bootcamp like? Is it worth the time/money investment? Differences between Prime, Iron Yard, and others?
  • Going back to school: Is it necessary/worth going back to school for a BS/MS?
  • Teach yourself: How hard is it to teach yourself? Where do you even start? Strategies to stay motivated & make continual progress?
• Language: What language should you start with? (everyone has a different opinion)
• Learning topics: What are the most important topics & areas to learn about first?
  • i.e. OOP, algorithms, data structures, etc...
• Getting experience: How to get experience starting out, whether outside of, or at work?
• Getting your first job: What to expect? What's the process like? Advice, tips or tricks?
• You got a job! Now what? What to expect on the job? What happens next & what to do going forward? (i.e. never stop learning)
• Challenges: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced & how did you overcome them?
• Culture: What's the culture like, and how can we make it more equitable & welcoming for everyone?
• Minnesota: What's it like to be a junior dev in other places and how is Minnesota different?

Who this session is for

• Aspiring software engineers: people who want to transition their careers or get into software engineering
• Students: bootcamp, self-taught, or traditional school, it doesn't matter!
• Junior software engineers: based on experience, not age
• Experienced software engineers who want to help
• Anybody else who's interested in the topic

Any and all experience levels, ages, races, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations and personal pronouns are welcome. (No, you don't have to be a programmer to attend)

Future events

This session will hopefully be the first in a series of events going forward. After Minnebar, we hope to start a monthly meet-up where we'll continue to get together and share experiences with each other.

If you would like to help lead the session and/or organize future events, please let Matt know!

Bots are software that automate a task. Chatbots automate a conversation, and they work inside the world’s most popular apps. That makes them (and the A.I. the drives them) the NEXT BIG THING.

MN Bot Makers (link) is a brand new Twin Cities-based Meetup group that gathers botists who like botting out so we can all get down and bot out together. It's sponsored by Minnedemo 24 alum Raisable.co and their chatbot Max, who makes smart crowdfunding super simple.

Join us for a look at how we designed Max as the ultimate "Lean Startup" M.V.P., share your own cool bot projects, and help chart a course for future meetups around this fast-growing space.

Sometimes we fight with one another.

Sometimes it's because of institutional factors - we are different roles, after all - and sometimes it's because of distrust. But if the three sides of UX, Dev, and QA can work as a team, then projects move forward, and work becomes - you know, fun!

Three folks will give this talk. Stu is a developer, Briana is a designer, and Alex is a quality assurance engineer. Sometimes we fight. We're going to share how we've turned naturally adversarial relationships into a partnership where we each genuinely love working with each other.

The core of the talk will be about perspectives of our roles, and what we can do in our roles to really help each other make something to be proud of.

Here's a question we'll help answer: What are the three things that the other two departments need to understand about your role that would benefit them every day? For instance, Designers would both benefit from anticipating what happens when things go wrong - things that developers and Quality Assurance engineers think about every day.

Another question that we'll address: What are the really great things that only your role can bring to the other two to make their work better?

This talk will have time for an open discussion, so there will be open mics for folks to add their input. We're all in this together; nobody can do this by themselves.

We all know hosting options are more diverse now than ever before. Get a download of the latest providers and solutions for your project of any size. Consider:

IaaS (by the virtual machine) or PaaS (by the application) models

Implications for entry cost, scaling, maintenance, caveats.

Building or Buying on a Per-Feature Basis

Considerations when determining whether to use public cloud higher-order services vs. building and maintaining your own. Consider databases, queues, load balancers, storage, and more.

Hosting Provider Review

From the big cloud providers to some small niche players that may be new to you, evaluate their performance, pricing, and capabilities.

We'll do the following:

• A quick primer on multi-class classification machine learning
• How multi-class classification applies to handwriting recognition
• A quick dive into a working Android app that implements a a handwritten number recognizer

Although math is involved, don't let it scare you, we'll keep it fairly high level. The goal is to demonstrate how surprisingly easy it is to implement machine learning concepts!

This session will provide a quick overview of David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology and then promptly dive into a demonstration of how the speaker uses various tools and tricks to achieve a peaceful state of GTD bliss.

If there is time, we'll have an open discussion of audience favorite tools and tricks, too.

So...As I approach 40 years of life on Earth, I find myself wondering, "What's the point of it all?"

And I go down and down the spiral until I'm on the verge of trading in my Kia minivan for a Porsche.

And then I remember that Shel Silverstein gave us all the answers to life's greatest questions.

In this session, we'll read verses from the great Silverstein, we'll share some laughs, and wonder aloud what the point of it all is. Bring your favorite Silverstein verse if you are so inclined, and prepare to hug it out.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

I have been using Macintosh computers for 32 years and have accumulated over 50 Macs from the 1985 Mac 512k to a 2-year-old Mac Mini. If I had purchased all of these, I would have spent over $140,000 and probably be single. Friends have given me most of them. Recently, I decided to clear out some and refine my collection. I’m finding out that many don’t work anymore, most due to failed hard drives, power supplies or other electrical components. I have also accumulated over 800 floppy disks of software and data, again many of which are failing.

In this discussion, I will present my methods of dealing with this old technology. I will review my techniques of archiving old floppies, creating image files to restore from and managing the collection to find what I have. I will also discuss some new replacement hardware such as a floppy disk emulator and a SCSI controller that can store thousands of floppy images on a micro-SD card and replace the failed drives. In addition, I will provide information on methods to repair the old failed hardware and Mac OS emulation.

In addition, if there is time and interest, I can discuss my similar efforts with the TI 99/4 home computers.

In this session you will see the value of having a mentor through a case study of RSVTea, a new drink born as part of Macalester Collages Entrepreneurial program. Sarah Nichols a student in the program and her mentor Jeffry Brown will discuss how the concept turned from idea to product in the market in 6 months. Including investment, packaging and market acceptance.

PLUS! you'll get to sample RSVTea

Mentors. They've been there, done that and have seen it all. Yet, a woeful number of entrepreneurs start their careers without one. In an age where instant gratification is glorified, it's unsurprising that many entrepreneurs and young founders do not seek out a mentor as hard as they try to find investors. In some cases they could be one in the same. While arguments abound on why entrepreneurs do not need mentors but should only follow their own instincts and gut feelings, most successful entrepreneurs are founders who had mentors.

A conversation about the mission/vision of the minne✱ organization. We'll cover where we've been and where we are going over the next few years. Some current board members will be in attendance to answer your questions.

myON.com is a SaaS personalized reading platform. Think Netflix for kids with digital books with recorded audio and highlighted text that tracks reading performance over time for teachers, schools, and school districts around the world.

In 2016, we had more than 60 million sessions with an average session duration of almost 20 minutes. Compared to 2015, this was a 61% year-over-year traffic increase and a 70% increase in users (16.9M vs 9.9M)

Learn how we use Google Analytics and AWS services to help us maintain a 99.999% uptime.

As a CPA (Cutthroat Pirate Accountant) for 20 years and worked with many startups, mid-sized and over 150 publicly traded companies throughout the world. I have bought them, sold them and even scuttled them by banks order.

My passion is business, all types and learning new things especially their secrets.

I have compiled them all into a treasure map - and eventually a sit-com - but it will be an entertaining tale of setting sail with many of the greatest pirate legends you never heard of yet.

We will learn the four things all successful business have in common, you will walk away with that mighty treasure trove of knowledge especially if you are a start-up.

Are you worried about the government catching you for not complying with the Stamp Tax? I can give you the keys to keep you out of the stocks by doing these two things.

Are you afraid of the sharks? Don't worry the lamprey are who you should fear. Sharks kill and eat you.

Are you afraid of the Crew Mutining? I can tell you the secret to that as well.

This is like a TED Talk given by one of the most extroverted CPA in the State who has spent years on an adventure he would like to share with you, except I can talk longer than 15 minutes. You will walk away with energy and the map to a world of secrets to be a successful startup.

Take Aways -
1. I can source out some Free Resources for your journey as I know all the good ports of call.
2. The inside scoop on financials the only thing you need to know - the things the auditors can tell you things about your company 3. Complimentary Spreadsheets -
4. Maybe Rum.

Learn ways of using Android's Canvas APIs to create unique views. Introduce how to translate user input into something meaningful to display on the screen.

Do the sounds of throat-clearing, coughing, eating fill you with intense rage?

Misophonia is a neurological condition where certain sounds trigger intense fight-or-flight feelings in the person affected.

It has finally been gaining acknowledgment in recent years in the media as sufferers are finding each other online and the community grows. See below for links to recent articles.

It can be particularly difficult for sufferers working in open-concept style offices that are popular in the tech community.

If you think you suffer from misophonia, join me for a safe, support group style session.

This session is obviously niche but if this description resonates, it will resonate strongly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/health/06annoy.html http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/05/17/do-you-have-misophonia/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/misophonia-certain-noises-really-drive-people-nuts/ https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/23/please-stop-making-that-noise/ http://time.com/4659308/misophonia-noisy-eating-science/ http://onlineathens.com/features/health/2017-03-05/drs-oz-roizen-overreaction-everyday-sounds-may-be-misophonia http://www.today.com/id/44438402/ns/today-today_health/t/when-annoying-sounds-spark-major-rage https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/health/sounds-people-hate.html

CSS Grid Layout is gaining more browser support everyday!

• But what is it?
• How does it work?
• Why should you use it?
• And what are some practical ways you can incorporate it into your project?

I'll show you how CSS Grid is a better solution for some problems, and how CSS Grid is not the end all, be all solution too.

This session is aimed at those interested in starting side projects that make real money to supplement and replace your day job.

It's easier than ever to start one, or even multiple projects that make money. The benefits are obvious: independence, no outside investment, no boss other than your customers, and the freedom to really set your own schedule.

I'll lead a hopefully interactive session with my thoughts on how to get a project off the ground and humming along. Some things we'll cover are: - how to pick ideas to work on - how to organize your time - how to launch an MVP - how to find an audience - how to handle customer issues - lots of probably unconventional personal opinions on this topic

During the session I'll talk about the latest tools and platforms available to launch an app and automate as much as possible. It may get slightly technical at times but I'll try to keep it as high-level as possible.

Not every startup needs VC money - only VCs think you need VC money. It helps them get a piece of your action, and it helps scare you away from competing with their investments.

If you've got an idea you want to get off the ground - come join!

The Tiny Whoop by Jesse Perkins changed everything as the first inexpensive FPV (First Person View) drone that could race. Yes, that means anyone can race drones and it's under $200 on Amazon to get started. We'll show some of the gear and demonstrate how easy it is to take up the sport of drone racing at home.

Watch this video of Tiny Whoops racing - it's really cool and worth a look. YouTube Video

We'll also share a few ideas we're working on to address some growing pains in the drone racing industry.

• drone tracking gates
• ease of use for setting up a race
• analog to digital
• apps that can manage the complicated bits

I'd like the twin cities to have a healthy tech ecosystem. Can we learn anything from silicon valley? Help me figure that out. I'll prepare some remarks from my own experiences, and leave time for discussion and Q&A.

In this session, we will go beyond the “how” of agile and take a real-life story telling journey into why agile works.

Unless you’ve got HR training, hiring is probably kind of a black box for you. It's the most important part of growing a team, and a hell of a financial investment, but a lot of companies end up hiring people who are good at interviewing, not good at their jobs. Chances are, you don't need someone who's only good at talking about their resume.

This talk details a system for establishing what you’re hiring for, evaluating candidates, confirming with stakeholders, and ultimately making an offer. You can never be absolutely certain a hire will work out, but reality-based hiring makes sure you can be clear about what you need and how a candidate fits your requirements while wasting as little time as possible.

As a note: This talk does NOT address recruitment, which is important but beyond the scope of this system. Go see one of Paul Debettignies' sessions for that!

Among the variety of differences between urban and rural america is the types of jobs available to our communities. There is significant talent gap in that there are rural communities without jobs and urban communities without enough talented workers. Let's figure out a way to reconnect and bridge the divide by connecting rural america with tech jobs.

Entrepreneurs in Minnesota struggle with finding angel capital at an early stage of their idea. Angel networks in Minnesota mostly focus on the later stage companies that are generating revenue. Over the past years, I have many startups move to Silicon Valley or to East Coast.

If we like to see a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem in Minnesota, we need to think about the serious shortage of capital and come up with ideas on how to address it.

I would like to invite all interested parties, entrepreneurs, investors, and support organizations to work with me on an action plan.

Many of us donate our time, energy, and resources to nonprofit organizations that make our community stronger. Let’s share what we are doing!

You should come to this session if: • You are looking for opportunities to volunteer • You have a favorite nonprofit that you work with and you want to tell others about it. (See additional information below.) • You are curious about how nonprofits in the twin cities can support the entrepreneurial and tech communities

Organizations will be called to present on a first-come, first-served basis. Organizations will get five minutes to talk. It’s recommended that those presenting focus on the following: • What nonprofit organization do you represent and what is your position? • What does your organization do? • What can the Twin Cities technology and entrepreneur community do to help your organization? • How can your organization help the Twin Cities technology and entrepreneur community?

If you are interested in presenting, email aaronhurd@gmail.com. Please include the following, which will be included on a slide: • Organization name • A sentence describing what your organization does • Organization website and how people can contact you/your organization for more information

If you’re reading this the day of Minnebar and want to present about your organization, come anyway and see Aaron during the session. If we have open slots, you are welcome to present.

A list of contact information for organizations presenting will be sent out to anyone attending the session who is interested.

You're not going to learn anything earth-shattering here, but you still might see some things you've never happened upon before. This will be, essentially, a "book report" on the process I've gone through so far to build https://stockfaces.com as well as a gentle introduction to some of the technology I used to build it, including:

• Rust
• Elm
• Machine Learning (in Python)
• Docker Containers
• Git Lab CI & Container Registry

I don't plan to make a presentation for, I'll just be going through some of the source, describing my high level decisions, and hoping to foster some discussion, so please bring questions.

Achieving Scale and Exit are the least well understood and most important parts of being an entrepreneur.

For founders and leaders of emerging companies interested in skills and knowledge needed to maximize the probabilities that their company are among that successfully scale and achieve exit.

Developing scale is one of the most challenging aspects of starting a business or even of an existing one. And, most of the time, even after entrepreneurs scale to a saleable company, we fail to successfully exit. When we miss the ideal time to exit, the most likely end result is that the company will fail - completely.

This session will focus on why this happens so frequently and give you the skills and knowledge to maximize the probabilities that your company is among those that are ultimately successful.

Pentominoes are shapes made by connecting five squares edge to edge. They are like Tetris shapes, but with an extra square attached. There are 12 different pentominoes (or 18 if you don't allow them to be flipped over).

These shapes can be arranged to create many fun and interesting shapes. In my presentation, I will show how Python can be used to solve pentomino puzzles, using only a few lines of code. I will also show that the same code can be used to solve other puzzles, such as Sudoku and the Soma cube.

I will bring several sets of pentominoes for participants to play with, and I will leave plenty of time for creative exploration. Children are welcome to attend!

Tracery is a language for generating random text based on a grammar you specify, with implementations in JS, Python, Ruby, and Twine. It has been used to create a wide variety of content, from Twitter bots to dialogue in games to SVG graphics. Tracery itself is just JSON, so you can write Tracery code that outputs Tracery!

Bring your laptop, and this quick introduction will have you writing your own procedurally-generated content in no time!

The path from "the edge" of a sensor network, where data are gathered, to the cloud, where data can be aggregated and actionable intelligence can be derived, is beginning to open up. Standards are emerging but the current state of the art is a bit like the wild west, with many proprietary formats and one-off implementations.

Those that can navigate this pathway and provide solutions that present data in a meaningful way can solve outstanding problems in control infrastructure management.

This session explores some challenges in gathering data and traversing the path of those data from sensors to the cloud. We'll look at how to debug when the hardware doesn't work and what tools are available to streamline the data pipeline.

We'll look at specific cases with examples of real hardware challenges and explore solutions along with the application of those solutions to interesting commercial problems.

"A mere 30% of all employees are engaged at work according to Gallup. It's no surprise then that the US sees $550 billion in lost productivity each year. That's not to say however that something can't be done.

In a recent study by the Harvard Business Review they found companies that invest in meaningful employee experience experienced 4x profitability than those that did not. Furthermore, in a study done by Forbes, diverse teams outperformed non-diverse teams by 35%. In fact almost 60% of all current employees wish their employers were more diverse.

The modern workforce looks much different than it did in previous years and the expectations of how a modern workforce should function are vastly different than the were even a generation ago.

This session will focus on the current landscape of the modern workforce (including Gen-Z whose first members are getting ready to join the workforce after this summer) and why you need to be focusing on inclusion and engagement if you're to remain relevant.

We'll address the $550 billion dollar problem, talk about some solution and provide a few simple activities that you can begin to incorporate on Monday to begin fostering a healthier work culture."

Let's face it, sometimes it just easier to have an unbiased 3rd party to help you identify strategic partners, referral partners and your niche.

We will first cover the basics in identifying your market and then we will open it up for you to ask questions about marketing your product/service.

There are a lot of approaches, philosophies, titles, roles, organizational structures out there for this thing we call PRODUCT.

Is the Product Manager CEO of the product?

Is Product the intersection of Business + UX + Technology?

How does it work at Apple/ Google/ Facebook/ Amazon/ my favorite local startups?

Let's discuss.

Start-ups don't generally have the resources to employ full-time physical and cyber security staff, but still need to address the threats. This session will teach you some inexpensive, low-effort security strategies to help you reduce risk to your organizations.

If there is time, we will discuss the significance of security events that have hit the news recently.

Many people still associate virtual reality with first-person shooters, 360 videos of being on a roller coaster, phones you put on your face, people accidentally walking into walls, or just another version of 3D TV. While all of these are possible uses, we (and the VR industry) see them as only a small part of a much bigger picture.

This session will be taking a deeper look at how VR (and MR/AR) is actually a much more robust way to access our brains through software. We're pretty convinced that this will have profound effects on how people work in the future - but will also be sharing some examples of where it has already had impact today.

Rather than talk at you, we're structuring this session as a series of live demos (with a HTC Vive) & discussions.

Things we'll be touching on:

• Quick overview of VR and the industry
• If a picture is worth a thousand words, then VR must be worth a gadjillion
• Hacking human perception
• Digital therapy
• Time permitting: VR vs AR vs MR

Acknowledging that there is a lack of recent year's biggest buzzwords, diversity and inclusion, is the first step. Yes, a lot of racism and exclusion is systemic, but because tech is a smaller community, we should be more comfortable holding each other accountable. When we do this we strongly believe what we learn will trickle back into the communities, workplaces, families.

This goal of this session is to discuss:

• Why should you care about D&I?
  • In general? In tech?
• We have to start talking about this (really talking)
• Share experiences
• What are your priorities?
  • Whatever company leadership focuses on or wants done, gets done. So once you make it one, it will happen.
  • This is a don’t talk about it, be about it type of issue.
• Stop hiding behind “being introverted”
• We(Marginalized groups) have to start showing up
• Q&A:
  • What would you like to see at events? Strategies?
  • What actions will you take? What actions do you think we ALL need to take?
  • How do we scale inclusion to larger events?
  • We know there are some smaller groups that do this well, but how do we kick it up to the next level?

In this session international blockchain expert David Duccini and local boy lawyer does good Zach Robins will lay out the value proposition for the coming era when distributed ledgers aka blockchains will be used for everything from patch management, identity and reputation and making wall street obsolete.

This isn't your brothers Bitcoin (well it IS AND so much more!)

David recently launched Silicon Prairie Online, a registered MNvest crowdfunding portal with Zach's help and together they will be bringing a new level of corporate governance and liquidity to small companies using blockchain technology.

You love tech. After you're done getting paid to invent, design, develop, test, or maintain the software that is your day job, you go home and play with tech some more. Just for fun.

What if you donated a bit of your time and skill to a cause that needs your help? Local nonprofit organizations are desperately seeking tech pros, but they rarely have funds available. Still, there's probably (at least) one that works to address something you're passionate about -- whether that's animal rescue, health issues, economic development, or the arts. There's opportunity for you to have fun while doing good.

In this session, we'll:

• share the benefits of offering your services pro bono
• discuss how to start, manage, and conclude a pro bono project successfully
• suggest ways to find a nonprofit opportunity near you

Have you ever considered running a crowdfunding campaign? Or have you done so already? Have you backed any crowdfunding campaigns? Will you do so again?

The rise of Kickstarter and Indiegogo ushered in an exciting new way for projects to scale awareness and raise essential funds online, but a string of high profile failures has many beginning to question the validity of crowdfunding campaign promises.

With the growing cost of running a campaign (due to content creation and promotion expenses), the emergence of competing platforms, and now the dawn of equity crowdfunding, the question is: where are we on the Crowdfunding Hype Cycle?

Representatives from Fallon StarterKit ("We tell stories that fund ideas") and Minnedemo 24 alum Raisable.co ("Smart crowdfunding made simple") will lead a support-group style discussion to explore what we want from online fundraising and where it's all headed, keeping in mind that “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” (Amara’s Law)

Executives and investors both focus much of their time on ensuring their organizations have the best product/service they can offer and making sure they are profitable. Both of these are critically important to achieving any company’s desired endgame, whether that’s a sale, an IPO, etc. Yet Jason Sprenger has seen first-hand that there’s a third critical element to a company’s success: PR. How does a company build and maintain the relationships it needs to succeed? How does its brand, message, strategy, etc. support or hinder that success? How does it hold a company back, or propel it forward? How it can raise red flags and signal you’re not ready for prime time? It’s amazing how much influence this has on a company’s endgame, yet they are rarely explored or invested in at the same levels as other aspects of a business. This session will explore how PR and strategic communications can make just as much of a difference in a company’s success as anything else, and how to use it to maximize your potential.

Overview

You have created a beautiful, shiny new web site or a stellar partner has created one for you. It is ready to launch and usually someone just hands it over to a server administrator or the DevOps team. Instead, this time you are the launch team. Don’t panic. This session will give you the knowledge to understand what you need to make it a smooth launch.

To launch, you need various pieces of information about domains, DNS, SSL and more. You then have to set these up correctly. If you do so, you should have a smooth launch of your new site.

This session is for any developer or website stakeholder who wants to better understand how the Internet works and how visitors come to and interact with the website. There is not any code, but there will be talk of how the Internet works and resources on how to configure a site to be secure and serve visitors well. To explain domains and DNS, the session will get a bit nerdy about networking, but it should be accessible to folks who do not work in IT.

Topics Covered

• Gathering domain ownership information.
• Setting up DNS records or getting DNS changed smoothly.
• Requirements and recommendations for SSL encryption and implementation.
• Evaluation of hosting requirements and hosting options.
• Considerations from moving from an old site to a new site.

My Experience

This session is based on the presenter’s 12+ years of building, launching and maintaining dozens of websites both freelance and at a design/development agency. From launching a brand new site to moving an existing live site from one server to another, I have launched hundreds of sites on various hosting environments.

Are you looking for a fun and interesting way for you or kids you know to learn about programming? Scratch may be the program for you (or them). This kid-led session will lead you through how to set up an account, cool things you can do with scratch and how to share it with your friends and the world.

Join us for our third co-presented session on iOS development at Minnebar!

This year, we'd like to share a few things we've learned over the years about VoiceOver. We'll take stock of the accessibility features available on iOS, introduce VoiceOver, and demonstrate some techniques you can use to add VoiceOver support to your own apps.

With any luck, we'll cover the following:

• An overview of the many accessibility features of iOS
• VoiceOver
• VoiceOver notifications and how to use them
• VoiceOver audio queues and user context
• Basic VoiceOver support via UIAccessibility and related protocols
• Advanced VoiceOver support for custom controls
• Tools to help you develop and debug accessibility in your apps

Your clients just approved the design for their new custom WordPress theme, and you're ready to dive in and start hooking together the components that will power their templates. But wait, you've seen some of these pieces before: that big banner image with the enticing headline and link to learn more; the set of social media links in the footer; those repeating blocks of feature descriptions and imagery. Time to start setting up meta fields and custom logic that will output your markup, right?

Instead of retracing our past steps, what if you could simply install and modify some of the common elements that tend to show up from theme to theme? And, even better, what if those elements also came with the meta fields that power them?

In this talk, I will discuss Atomic Design, the value of developing a reusable patterns library, and demonstrate an approach to writing custom components using object-oriented programming principles, Composer, and the meta fields plugin of your choice.

The problem: To build a tool to help a teacher divide up a ball of yarn to make small samples for students. In this talk, I tell you the four phases I used to create a robot to wind mini-skeins: research, hardware, electronics, and software. I'll show how I broke the problem into small tasks, and highlight the technologies that I used. After solving the physics problem of angular momentum and the "yarn octopus", I built a laser-cut enclosure and aparatus. Next, I developed the software using the Arduino IDE, and "hijacked" a microcontroller built-in to a LED display to be the "brain". Finally, I'll show you my secret trick for controlling both a 7-segment LED and a stepper-motor at the same time through cooperative multi-tasking. I'll wrap up with how I'd improve the design for "Yarn-Bot 2.0".

Find out how Lou Abramowski (a.k.a. Hot Lou) used a fascinating social experiment involving his Facebook birthday to repeatedly acquire millions of followers for online communities, for unknown artists, and for large brands.

And then learn how those tactics have evolved into a critical piece of killer Social Media Strategy for businesses that lack the time, resources, or expertise to manage their social media effectively -- including a way to set up your social media to run on auto-pilot for months at a time.

So often startups have a "sky is the limit" mentality and expend more energy than necessary making their product appeal to anyone and everyone who needs it. (Which is anyone and everyone, right?!) This session will be about refining that outlook and while everyone might need what you're selling, we will help determine who needs your product MOST and FIRST. We will help determine who your biggest fans are/will be, discuss different strategies on designing for and marketing to your A-Team, and have a collaborative discussion around these topics.

If you ever need to tell your boss or some other stakeholder when to expect your software, this session is for you. Expect to hear about:

• What is an estimate, really?
• Using a little math to estimate your task lists
• Handling the politics around estimation
• What to do when things don't go as planned

...and more! Bring your questions.

This is your chance to watch a random volunteer from the audience learn how to program a robot from scratch. I'll bring a robot kit to play with, the audience will nominate someone, and we'll go through an introduction to coding, electronics, robotics, and IoT LIVE in the room, unscripted.

Will we succeed in driving a little robot around? Is this the largest pair programming session ever? Come find out!

If you're the volunteer and make it through, you'll leave this talk with a robot of your very own. :)

Functional reactive programming (FRP) and reactive libraries (e.g. RxJava, Rx.NET, RxJS, Reactive Cocoa, RxSwift) are all the rage these days... but you don't know why! I'm here to help. In this talk I'll walk through the core concepts of reactive streams, functional programming, and why you may want to use these patterns in your software.

While the code samples will be in Java, the concepts discussed are applicable to FRP as it exists in any language.

I taught at General Assembly, a coding "boot camp", for a year and a half. Some of my students went on to do well. Some didn't.

I'm self-taught, which means I sold something that I got for free.

What's the difference between someone who learns code through a class, someone who learns code on their own, and someone who can't learn code at all?

Is it a question of book smarts, teacher quality, student discipline, or destiny where some people are just "meant" to be programmers?

I'll draw on my experience to make bold assertions about why coding education is the way it is.

All of the answers we want are not in the data. They never are. Sometimes we need to go outside and talk to people. — Hilary Mason

There are a million ways to deceive ourselves into believing our projects will succeed. Data is key to keeping us grounded in reality. It helps us learn quickly what’s working and (even more importantly) what’s not working.

But data is not enough. Data won’t tell us WHY our customers are not taking the action we expected them to take, and it won’t reveal the insights we can gain from actually talking to our customers and observing their behaviors.

We’d like to have a conversation about how this looks at scale. How can we take the insights generated by talking to relatively few people, identify patterns that are meaningful and promising, and feed these into quantitative experiments to validate our ideas at scale. What does this iterative loop look like? What are some of the good ways to go about it, and what are the common traps to avoid?

Good ideas are not accidents!

Aspiring entrepreneurs frequently cite lack of a good idea as the primary reason for not starting their own tech company.

Join us to learn a framework for consistently producing better ideas.

What information do I need to know?

Where do good ideas come from?

How to come up with something original?

The goal with this session is to provide information about what legal housekeeping should be done ahead of investment from friends and family, angels, and venture capital firms.

Some topics that may be covered:

Term Sheets and How to Negotiate Them Purchase Agreements and How Key Provisions Could Affect Your Deal The Due Diligence Process and How to be Ready for It What to Expect at Closing and Afterward

Our work with founders (via Beta.MN) has exposed us to a number of needs and desires currently being expressed by the local startup community. In this session, we will share a few of those topics, paying close attention the need for a startup hub.

Here, we'll answer...

• Do we have a central address for startup activity? (We don't)

• Should we? (We think so)

• What would it look like? (Think bigger)

• Is it possible? (We think so)

I'll also plan to throw in a few brief activities, so please come ready to participate.

Innovation requires teams to step into the tension of not knowing on a daily basis and yet, remain highly effective. They need to listen with positive intent, be able to have frank discussions while maintaining their relationships and have intimate conversations without the fear of disclosure.

Signpost language is a four step process of identifying the change that is needed, developing a short phrase that signals how we are going to act, teaching others the meaning of the phrase, and then as with all behavior change acting in accordance with the way we said we were going to act.

Typically, when we approach topics like active listening, constructive conflict or trust, we focus on our behaviors and how we act. Signpost language is the concept that we should focus on what we say and we will intuitively act differently and more importantly, people will naturally react to us differently,

As evidence that signpost language works, teams using Signpost Language and other tools have scored in the top 1% on team dynamics surveys

In this session you will see the value of having a mentor through a case study of RSVTea, a new drink born as part of Macalester Collages Entrepreneurial program. Sarah Nichols a student in the program and her mentor Jeffry Brown will discuss how the concept turned from idea to product in the market in 6 months. Including investment, packaging and market acceptance. Think of RSVTea as a new good for you technology drink, the principals discussed in this session can be applied to any new product launch.

PLUS! you'll get to sample RSVTea

Mentors. They've been there, done that and have seen it all. Yet, a woeful number of entrepreneurs start their careers without one. In an age where instant gratification is glorified, it's unsurprising that many entrepreneurs and young founders do not seek out a mentor as hard as they try to find investors. In some cases they could be one in the same. While arguments abound on why entrepreneurs do not need mentors but should only follow their own instincts and gut feelings, most successful entrepreneurs are founders who had mentors.

Have you been hearing more and more about Yocto Linux? Have you ever thought, jeez, I wish I could build the Linux Kernel from source code and make it run on a mini computer? Or perhaps you regularly loose sleep thinking about what an awesome dude Linus Torvalds is? Do you LOVE open source software?

Then this is the technical presentation for you!

This talk will be an information rich, crash course on how to build Yocto Linux and deploy it on a Raspberry Pi (or any other CPU architecture for that matter).

We will discuss topics such as:

1. The Bitbake build system
2. Software recipes and meta-layers
3. Git and where the source code comes form
4. How software packages are managed
5. Configuring the kernel
6. Using the SDK to develop software against you new OS
7. The Qt Framework
8. How all the major pieces fit together

Hope to see you there!

With the advent of Material Design it is becoming increasingly more important to provide transitions with meaningful motion that surprise and delight. We’ll be reviewing some recent tools---including Scenes and the now-backported Transition framework---and offering an in-depth case study on how to approach building a very challenging transition.

This session will bring both conceptual and specific strategies to achieve a diverse and inclusive workplace. We'll present about what it means to set and meet your goals, and about the different phases for the entire employment cycle from recruitment to off-boarding.

This session will be helpful for both hiring authorities who want to improve their organization's diversity, and employees without hiring responsibilities who want to help make their own environments more inclusive.

Jupyter notebooks are open-source interactive web applications that make it fun and easy to author documents combining live code, visualizations, equations, and text -- just what you would want to learn or experiment with a data analysis tool.

This session will demonstrate how Jupyter is used at Duke University for interactive course applications ranging from a Managing Big Data with MySQL Coursera MOOC featuring live MySQL queries for thousands of students to a graduate-level computational biology class where students develop and run genome analysis tools on an Apache Spark cluster.

We will also look at the infrastructure used to run Jupyter at scale, how to containerize Jupyter notebook servers with Docker, automate deployment of new versions of the notebooks with GitLab continuous integration, and the pitfalls of providing students with live SQL query capability against million row databases - and countermeasure for those pitfalls.

Do you speak SAP? For many, it seems like learning Klingon would be easier. Attend this session to hear from two SAP industry veterans that have spent the majority of their careers working on SAP technology. How did we get into the industry, what do we actually do, and could you do it too? Where are we and our industry headed? Join us for an interactive conversation about all things SAP.

You’ve heard about how direct mail is a great tool to promote your business. You’ve probably gotten hundreds of direct mail postcards delivered to your own mailbox, at home and at your workplace. But how do you make direct mail postcards work for your business?

With this session we are going to walk you through our software product, Inkit, and the 6 things you need to create direct mail postcards that get customers in the door.

1. An Offer You need to know what you’re selling. Are you giving a 2 for 1 special on a specific item? Are you promoting a coupon for 25% off the first service a new customer buys? What are you giving people to get them in the door?

Your offer has to solve a problem that your customers are having. Do you run an auto repair center? Every driver needs an oil change. Or how about a special on winterizing services? Do you own a bakery near an industrial area? Offer a special deal on cookies or cupcakes for office parties around the holidays.

The possibilities are endless. But you want your offer to be the perfect solution to your customers’ problems.

This may take a bit of research on your part, but it shouldn’t be too hard. There are a few ways to figure out what your customers want.

Ask Them I know this sounds obvious, but it can be more subtle than that. For instance, ask your customers what occasion they’re buying your most popular products for.

I’ll use the bakery example again. If someone buys 3 dozen cookies every other week, ask who they’re for. If one person’s office or organization has a bi-weekly meeting where cookies are served, there are probably others out there with the same need.

Review Your Records See what products or services sell best, and at what times of year. If you see patterns, use those to create offers on those best-sellers. Or you could offer an upgraded service or companion product to those best-sellers.

Pay Attention to Your Competition And to businesses that compliment yours. What are other businesses in your area offering their customers? What is the competition doing to attract customers? You can get some idea of what your customers want this way, and you can improve on these offers to get more people buying from you.

1. A Compelling Message It’s not enough to say “2 for 1 Deal on Product XYZ.” You need to tell your customers why they need product XYZ. Your message doesn’t need to be long and involved, it can be a headline and a couple of sentences. But it does need to persuade people to buy.

Your message needs to tell customers:

What you’re selling What problem this solves for them How this product or service will make their lives easier

1. A Deadline You’ll notice the second sentence of the second to last paragraph of my offer above includes a deadline. You want to add urgency to your offer so people take action right away.

You need to give your customers a deadline or a specific date of some sort. This could be a limited time offer, like the one above. You could also have a reoccurring date, like every first Tuesday of the month is Free Cookie Tuesday, get a free cookie with every purchase.

1. Your Contact Information When you’re sending a direct mail postcard campaign, you need to make sure people can take you up on your offer. Tell them exactly how to get a hold of you.

Make sure you include:

Your phone number Your website URL Your physical address (if you are a brick and mortar business) Your hours of operation (this is for brick and mortar businesses and online businesses that have customer service representatives.)

I know this seems obvious, but I am always shocked at how many direct mail postcards I see in my mailbox that don’t include this information, or that don’t make this information easy to find.

Your customers are looking for the easiest way to get a hold of you. So, make it as easy for them as possible. You’re more likely to get a positive response and increase your ROI.

1. A Tracking Method You want to know how your direct mail campaign performs, right? You’ll need some way to track your results.

An obvious way would be how many people walk through the door or sign up for your service. But it’s always best to have a specific way to measure how many people responded to your direct mail postcards.

Here are several methods you can use:

Coupons or coupon codes QR codes Campaign specific URLs Personal URLs (these can be specific to demographic groups, areas you mail to or per customer) Unique offer IDs

1. A Simple Way to Build and Send Your Direct Mail Postcards Inkit lets you create your direct mail postcard in our Custom Campaign Builder. You can design your own postcard using your company logo and preferred graphics.

Once you’ve got everything laid out the way you want it, we recommend sending yourself a test copy. That way you can make sure everything looks exactly the way you want it to when it’s printed. Your postcard “proof” should arrive in a couple of days.

Once you’re happy with the way the postcard looks, just upload your mailing list and hit “Send.” Your direct mail postcard campaign will go straight to the front of the printing queue at one of our printers. It will be printed and sent to USPS for delivery to your customers within a few days.

Go Forth and Build Your Direct Mail Campaign! Now you know everything you need to create your first direct mail postcard campaign. We look forward to seeing what you create!

What are this year's most important developments in technology law? Notable lawsuits and legislation span areas that include autonomous vehicles, blockchain, API use, trade secrets, data privacy, social media, copyright, patents, trademarks, security, cloud computing, IoT, and net neutrality. In this fast-paced session, an attorney and coder will discuss the evolving tech law landscape, as well as trends that will likely continue to affect technologists in the coming year. Damien Riehl is a lawyer and educator who frequently speaks and writes on legal topics that affect businesses, including the legal implications of the Internet and technology.

Atomic Design is a methodology composed of five distinct stages working together to create interface design systems in a more deliberate and hierarchical manner. We'll be getting to know the methodology and how you can integrate it into your design/development workflows to create better interactive experiences for the web.

Jennifer has been in sales for over 20 years, networking with people has been a key factor in her success. Early on in her career she realized that helping others came naturally and in return people are willing to help her. All of her job opportunities have come from some kind of networking, she continually builds new business through her connections and is constantly helping others connect with the right people to reach their goals. Whether it’s through direct personal relationships or simply making connections on Linked In.

As she has integrated into the IT Industry, she become aware that networking does not come naturally to a lot people. This presentation will help those who want to learn some basic tips and tricks on how to meet new people.

thanks Matt D =)

Junior Developers are the next generation of developers, just like children are the next generation of adults. So why is it that companies and more experienced developers seem to be anti-juniors?

This goal of this session is to discuss:

Why junior developers are important, necessary and amazing.

Learn about how we junior devs can market ourselves as assets.

How we can foster a company culture that embraces junior devs.

Learn why the hell people say they don't hire junior devs.

I'm hoping to facilitate a positive discussion about different experiences and thoughts on junior devs.

If you've been a junior dev, are no longer a junior dev, are a hiring manager, or just have opinions -come through!

A no BS, open, and transparent conversation about seed/Series A startup valuations.

In this session, I'll share: 1.) Aggregated seed/Series A valuation data of actual deals done within the Arthur Ventures portfolio. 2.) Guidance on how to set your own valuation expectations for your startup 3.) Advice on how to handle the valuation conversation with investors

Last year had a great turnout - lets do it again this year!

https://arthurventures.com https://arthurventures.com/team/patrick-meenan

Launching a new startup or building any innovative tech product is seriously hard work. There is a ton of information out there on how to achieve product-market fit, find investors, and market your product.

If you're a non-techie and you're still left wondering how you actually go about building something, this session is for you.

• Do I need a technical co-founder? Should I hunt for a freelance rockstar? How about a local agency? What about offshore?
• How do I know we've made good implementation decisions, like programming language, platform, etc?
• How do I reduce the risk of being taken hostage by a co-founder/contractor/outsourcer?
• What kinds of missteps will require me to throw it all away and start over, and how do I avoid them?

Having the wrong kind of technical talent on your team will result in wasted time, money, effort, and customer/investor goodwill. It can also result in complete disaster.

Spoiler alert: There are more ways to cook an omelet than than there are eggs to break while trying them all. I'll share some of the guidelines I use when I've been asked for advice, and I hope you'll share some of your war stories and hard-learned lessons, too.

We will discuss Test Automation using Java, Selenium and Cucumber. A general overview of Test Automation will be given to cover: Code-Driven Test Automation, GUI-Driven Test Automation, Test Automation Approaches, Test Automation Tools and Framework Design.

Looking closer at test automation framework design using Java, Selenium and Cucumber the following topics will be addressed

• Test Automation in the Agile environment
• Regression tests
• UI tests
• REST and other web services
• Page Object Model

Use of a well designed framework

• A complex test automation framework can provide easy test implementation
• Promotes reuse of critical components
• Reduce maintenance efforts
• Support any test automation
• Adopt and use a standard automation framework across the organization

And ...

• Continuous Integration
• Jenkins and Maven
• Reporting

Background: Minnesota is credited as the birthplace of the computer, medical technology, healthcare, educational technology as well as 3-D printing. In addition there are many other "Technologies", such as Healthcare and Retail that are prevalent here. All of these have changed the world. Many local entrepreneurial firms led to the creation of entirely new industries; and also spawned numerous other companies in our area. This has been a source of pride and vitality for the region.

All organizations ultimately age and decline and are not capable of sustaining the economic vitality without fresh seeds being planted. Today our large companies are aging and showing stress and decline. The last Fortune 500 Company, which was born in Minnesota, was in 1977. At this rate we will not be able to sustain the present healthy economic climate in the future decades.

Problem: MN ranks very poorly in the nation in terms of New Venture startups. We are #47 in the nation and 3 steps below last year. Yes! we are below Mississippi. This is in the background of a 50% decline in New startups in the US. It is a crisis silently developing for the future.

Potential Solution: We have an infinite source of ideas, in the region, simply from the permutation/combination of world class technologies and the experienced personnel to support them. The increased focus on entrepreneurship requires starting many new ideas but an additional focus on those seeds that have sprouted. The ventures that survive the birthing process, and can grow are the best source of future economic prosperity and deserve the support and attention.

Mission "100 Launches": All ideas are welcome. We are scalable! It is a practical support system for new ideas that, as the name implies, aims to build 100 strong companies by helping entrepreneurs to navigate successfully the birthing process and work through the myriad of issues in building a successful company.

Did you know that lightning travels at 220,000 MPH, can carry up to 1 billion volts, and strikes the earth more than 100 times per second? Now you know!

Lightning talks -- a bit like real lightning -- are fast-paced, powerful, and spontaneous. If you've got a project you want to brag about or an idea you need feedback on, this is your chance to stand up in front of our audience of crack tech geniuses and get a few minutes in the limelight.

Slides are not necessary, but welcome. The shortest talks will get to go first, and then we'll do longer talks as time allows (so be brief!).

Now let's look at some lightning striking an active volcano eruption.

Understanding buy-sell agreements and exit planning is a crucial part of the startup founder's journey. This introductory session by Certified Financial Planner Tyler Furger and business attorney Draeke Weseman will lay out the concepts and issues startup founders should know about as they go through the business life cycle.

Some of the talking points for the presentation will be:

(1) The value of building a business to sell (regardless of when or how you want to sell it.) (2) The relationship between business value and your personal financial plan. (3) How to leverage your financial and legal advisers effectively to build business value.

Bash the most used shell ( and shell scripting language) in the World! Bash is holding the universe together... everything from systems startup to system shutdown and everything in between! I will step you into creating Bash scripts. Talk a little about how I build bash scripts and give you some pointer on how to make good bash scripts! So stop by and do a little March Bashness! Learn bash, do better bash, and keep the universe in order!

You can view the slides here:

http://www.goecke-dolan.com/Brian/Projects/Presentations/March_Bashness/reveal.js

I suspect that for many of us at minnebar, the keyboard is one of the primary tools of trade. Personally as a software engineer, I think that the keyboard may be one of the most important parts of my setup. At least that's what I tell myself to justify the amount of time I spend thinking and talking about keyboards.

At any rate, I'm pretty in to keyboards and I suspect there are other people interested in them as well. This session will be a simple gathering of people who want to talk about keyboards. You don't need to know much of anything about keyboards in order to talk about them, given you probably use them day to day.

Feel free to bring in an interesting/cool/different/old keyboard if you've got one, otherwise bring yourself! I'll probably bring a couple of the stranger ones I've got around my house.

Do you have to manage a server every now and then? Maybe you are a developer working on a side project, you would like to put what you have made on the Internet, but managing the server infrastructure sounds like a huge pain. Maybe you are interested in a career change and are looking to add ‘automated server management and configuration’ (plus any number of other buzzwords) to your skill set. Maybe you’d like to be a bit more of a “full stack” developer. SaltStack is a very helpful tool to achieve these ends. However learning it requires a paradigm shift from other kinds of development and the wherewithal to navigate a few pitfalls. In this talk, I will make the case for why SaltStack (and other tools like it) are valuable and worth learning. I will give a brief overview of how it works, focusing on the parts that confused me the most. Then I will talk about some of the things I’ve done with it.

If you are interested in: impact investing, place-based investing, books such as "Locavesting, "Local Dollars, Local Sense", let's get together and have a conversation.

Potential Points of Discussion: - what is impact investing and specific examples - where to look for local investors - ways to raise capital in a local or regional market - what is Mission-Related Investing and Program-Related Investing and who is doing it - what local organizations are actively promoting investments in local businesses - where and how is local investing happening in our region - what questions do you have? - what insights can you come and share?

This is a group discussion will be led by a panel active in local investing. We will ask for points of discussion at the beginning and throughout the session. Please come prepared to ask questions AND participate in the conversation.

In his 15 years of agency, corporate, nonprofit and solo experience, presenter Jason Sprenger has developed a world view of public relations that he's dubbed “The Umbrella Model of PR." In the model, PR is thought of as a holistic discipline in which any number of communications elements can come together to move an organization toward whatever high-level goal it’s trying to achieve. It integrates both the art and the science of communications, and explores how various PR strategies/tactics are inter-related and how they can work together to move organizations forward. What is this model, how does it work and how can it help us drive value and help our organizations achieve their biggest goals? Be a part of a discussion that has taken place and added value all over the nation the last couple of years: from Miami to Minneapolis, Orlando to Omaha, Laguna Beach to Las Vegas and more.

In this session I will discuss how EnduraData builds cross platform solutions without using Java.

• Why this decision even if it is expensive?
• What are the costs?
• What are the benefits?
• How to reduce dev costs?

Let's have a real conversation about the startup culture in Minnesota!

We will introduce the facts and data that surround the startup community and explore questions such as:

What are our strengths?

What are our weaknesses?

Who is making it happen?

How can we be better?

The quality of your life is dictated by the quality of your communication skills. The better communicator you are the more opportunities can be opened to you. Learn to better connect with people; whether they've always been in your life or you're just meeting someone for the first time. In this course you will learn personality types, learning styles, communication styles and how to put it altogether to better connect with anyone.

What kind of education do programmers need?

Are code camps worth it? Is college worth it? Is self-teaching sufficient?

I’ll share insights from my life alternating between software freelancer and professor on how all of us — students, teachers, and professionals — should approach software education. There is no one right answer, of course. (The title of this talk is a trick question.) There are, however, ways of approaching education that make the effort worth it — no matter what kind of education you choose.

There will be some philosophy, some solid practical advice, and some discussion. I can't promise any magical easy answers. But I can at least help you get rid of that nagging feeling that you’re doing it wrong and everyone else knows something you don’t.

You’ve heard that Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons are coming to a retail location near you. But, what are BLE beacons and how do they work? This session will answer these questions and more. Beacons are small, wireless, electronic devices that repeatedly broadcast short Bluetooth messages. BLE-capable mobile devices, when in proximity to a beacon, may display contextual information relevant to the current location. Of course, retailers want to use BLE beacons to enhance your shopping experience, but countless other applications are possible.

This session will include a brief review of the capabilities of Bluetooth Low Energy. The wireless communications protocols used by Google (Eddystone) and Apple (iBeacon) will be described. A use case, delivering local tide times to nearby mobile devices, will be used to illustrate the components of the beacon ecosystem that discretely delivers contextual information to proximate smartphones. Google’s beacon-related products, including the Eddystone protocol and related APIs (including the Proximity Beacon API and the Nearby API) will be examined. The session will conclude with observations about the current state of beacon products and technologies. The presentation will contain an extensive bibliography for those who may wish to delve more deeply into, or even experiment with, beacon technologies.

Audience participation may be required (you may configure your phone to receive Bluetooth beacons present in the classroom).

“Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” – Edward Snowden

Privacy is your right to decide what to share and with whom you share it. This session is for anyone who wants to learn how to take charge of that right. We'll have a 20 minute presentation at the beginning, and the rest of the session will be open for questions, so please bring some! I will be showing examples, so feel free to also bring your smartphone or other devices and follow along.

The topics we will cover include:

• Keeping data on your devices encrypted and safe
• Secure messaging and calling with Signal
• Secure internet browsing with Tor
• Avoiding trackers online
• Keeping your account safe with password managers and two-factor authentication
• Maximizing your privacy on social media
• Avoiding phishing attacks

A session on the whys and hows of using Unity (http://unity3d.com/) for general application development. (Note that this is not a talk about game development, and in particular delves into uses for Unity that are not specific to game development.)

Martin Grider will talk about the various pros and cons of developing with Unity, projects in Unity that he's built, as well as a few practical development tips for building 360 video apps, VR projects, and mobile projects in Unity.

There is something inherently political about participation in an open source community. Those of us who contribute to open source through code, testing, writing documentation, or planning community events are making a conscious decision to contribute towards the creation of a public good that is used by individuals, non-profits, educational institutions, and multi-national corporations alike.

I’m an active member of the Drupal community and find that most active members of the Drupal community got their start in Drupal by building a website for a school, arts organization, political campaign, or a non-profit organization. We were drawn to Drupal, not only because the code was free, but because of the welcoming community that answered our questions online or took time to work with us one on one at a Meet-Up.

• Let’s talk about the political implications of using and developing open source software?
• How do open source communities like Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla fit into the larger landscape of open source software, the free software movement, and growing concerns over privacy and government data?
• How do we continue to ensure that open source software is not only affordable but accessible to the small non-profits and organizations of change
• How can non-coders participate in open source communities?

In this session we’ll provide some background and context, but we want to hear your thoughts and experiences on this topic.

Cadre Scheduling is a SaaS company founded by non-developers. Join us to hear the story, lessons learned, and how it became possible.

TL,DR: Learn about the hottest new language taking Android and server developers away from Java.

Kotlin. It's not just a small tourist town in Poland. It's also a new Java Virtual Machine (JVM) language.

The Kotlin language was initially conceived over five years ago by the JetBrains team in Russia that built highly regarded integrated development environments (IDEs). Some of their products include IntelliJ, Android Studio, PhpStorm, PyCharm, RubyStorm, and WebStorm.

JetBrains liked the JVM, but were underwhelmed by the state of programming languages for the JVM. Java is a solid language, but the standards committee moves slowly and backwards compatibility hamstrings it. Many feel that some modern language features might never reach Java.

Kotlin came about because JetBrains wanted a modern language with the utility of Scala, but with shorter compile times and backwards compatibility with mature Java libraries.

Kotlin was designed to have:

• Full Java Interoperability

• Compilation as fast as Java

• Safer defaults than Java

• More concise code than Java

• Simpler code than Scala

My talk will investigate the reasons why Kotlin is among the fastest growing JVM languages today.

Once a company has more than 1 department developing code, a problem inevitable arises: How do you share source code that's mutually used? There are many different thoughts on the matter, but one that's starting to gain a significant amount of attention is "InnerSource". PayPal defines InnerSource as:

"InnerSource takes the lessons learned from developing open source software and applies them to the way companies develop software internally. As developers have become accustomed to working on world class open source software, there is a strong desire to bring those practices back inside the firewall and apply them to software that companies may be reluctant to release. For companies building mostly closed source software, InnerSource can be a great tool to help break down silos, encourage internal collaboration, accelerate new engineer on-boarding, and identify opportunities to contribute software back to the open source world."

In this talk we'll cover how to get from where you are ("Hey, we've got some source code that multiple people find useful!"), where you're going ("Look, we're more popular than ReactJS"), and some hurdles along the way ("Oh shoot, it looks like there is already a library to convert FLAC to MP3s..."). We'll give real-world examples of doing it right, and leave with some takeaways that people can immediately implement at their own companies.

Learn how using nested symbols in Sketch can help you manage complexity, scale patterns elegantly, avoid design debt, simplify developer handoff, and generally keep yourself sane while building digital products and design systems.

Improv has been described as “The art of not knowing what you are going to say or do and being OK with that.” Life and business don’t offer a script to follow and improvisation develops skills such as solving problems with no clear solution in sight. Truly innovative or disruptive ideas don’t come easy. Improv can help you generate ideas and work “without a net.” It is frightening for two people to walk on stage without any idea of what is going to happen and create something on the spot. But starting a business or launching a new product is exactly the same.

Improvisation can help you to generate more ideas, more creative ideas, silence your inner critic, think on your feet, trust your instincts and learn how to build trust with your team members.  This workshop will introduce you to how improvisers develop their skills and spark creativity.

This is not a lecture; you won’t be sitting there taking notes. We’ll push the furniture out of the way and get you on your feet. Come prepared to join in improv exercises all the while not knowing what will happen next.

Speakers: Jim Barrett & Brandon Wetzstein

I will be doing a deep dive talk into how using Public/Private/Protected when programming will make your code bloated in the number of cycles and how functional programming will actually reduce the amount of cycles it will take to execute what you wish to have your code perform.

I will be organizing my talk similar to Hey Underscore, You're Doing It Wrong! but focusing completely on Class, and Functional OOP

Convening the best of Minnesota’s food landscape to capture the global digital stage being created by the Big Game being hosted in Minnesota on February 4, 2018 at US Bank Stadium.

If you live in Minnesota, you are fully aware that we are hosting the largest media platform in America in 2018. More than 50,000 media set their eyes on us here to tell the story of Minnesota from every angle, including our rich food and cuisine landscape. From chefs to cuisine to personalities and one-of-a-kind experiences, Minnesota’s impressive food landscape has it all. And, we’ve convened Minnesota food industry thought leaders to establish the Minnesota Food Influencer Campaign to set the promotional stage for 2018 and beyond.

Wendy Meadley, Interactive Agency Lead of SWG, will provide an introductory overview of the digital platforms being used for this innovative influencer campaign being created by a community of volunteers, that will provide a unique digital promotion platform to benefit Minnesota’s food and beverage industry. And how you can join in if you are interested in supporting Minnesota's promotion on this global digital stage.

Your team successfully rolled out a new product feature. Great! A project was completed on time, within budget. Awesome! You've built something really cool and it works! Your boss is impressed.

But what happens when things go wrong? How and when do you inform your stakeholders? Who should you include in that communication? How should you word it? How technical in nature should it be? What do you do when a successful professional relationship begins to deteriorate? What happens when things go really, really wrong? Like an application becomes unavailable or worse, there is a full on outage?

In the midst of these stressful moments we have stress hormones running through our bodies, making communicating all the more challenging.

Drawing from my experience in Emergency Management and working in Web Operations, I will share best practices (and failures) I have learned along the way. Topics including: 1. A brief overview of the science behind what's going on in our brains during stressful moments 2. Steps to take before communicating 3. Communicating when you're in the middle of things going wrong 4. Following up with a communication after the thing that has gone wrong is resolved.

Come to share what you've learned from success and failures while communicating under stress!

Companies often want to hire senior developers, but sometimes finding enough of them can be a challenge! One often overlooked alternative is to hire junior developers and grow them into senior developers within your organization. There are a lot of advantages to mentoring junior developers, for everyone involved, but sometimes companies are still reluctant because they may feel unsure as to how best to mentor them. In this talk, I will make the case for why hiring junior developers is awesome and why you should do it. I will also talk about ways to mentor them successfully and how to turn then into the senior developers you’ve been looking for.

You know about evolution in the natural world. Did you know the same principles can be applied to software?

Genetic algorithms have been used to solve tough problems - often finding novel optimizations that no human would have considered. NASA launched a tiny antenna evolved by a genetic algorithm that was orders of magnitude smaller than conventional antennas. Genetic algorithms have been used to teach robots to learn to walk.

This session will be a very gentle introduction to the fascinating fields of genetic algorithms and genetic programming.

• examples of evolutionary algorithms in practice
• the steps to create a genetic algorithm
• popular libraries for evolving code
• challenges in using a genetic algorithm
• how this relates to AI and deep learning
• where to find resources

The age of the connected data-driven consumer relationship is here. Internet of Things is fundamentally redefining customer intimacy and brand affinity, changing how we compete for customer attention, and even how we operate our businesses. Learn how IoT, mobile, social, commerce, physical, and smart product customer interactions are converging to deliver compelling new customer experiences and laying the groundwork for a whole new business reality. See the technologies and platforms that make this happen and understand how businesses are utilizing connected customer journeys for their own digital transformation.

Join me in looking at what Bitcoin and decentralized apps are and how they work. We will talk about smart contracts and how they can be used to create applications powered by blockchain technology. I will show you how to build your own digital currency (let's call it MinneCoin) and how you and other people can start using it. In the process, you will learn the basics of how to build your own decentralized apps.

This is the 8th year of doing this kind of presentation... a few slides and a lot of Q&A and discussion.

Frequent conversations I have had lately include (and bring what is on your mind):

• What is the local job market like right now?
• Is this a good time to look for a new job?
• What's a reasonable salary increase year over year?
• Should I stay a developer or move into management?
• I'm thinking about moving to "fill in the blank", should I go?
• Why is there so much recruiter spam?
• How much personal info should I share with corporate/search firm recruiter?

And every year someone asks, "Why do recruiters suck so bad?". I'll pull the curtain back on what it is like to be one.

For the past two years, we've been developing Newt One - a completely nonviolent videogame that will be coming out in 2017 for XBox One, PC, and Mac. We'll discuss the design, development, and process of developing such a project. This includes the following:

• Art Direction
• Platform/Controller support
• Level Design
• Sound System
• Art Pipeline
• Project Management

Let's have a talk about games and non-violence in general, as well!

Newt One will also be playable at the Mega Minne Multi Indie Mini Arcade 2

Starting a business is hard. Starting a business while raising a family is totally ridiculous. But we do it anyway!

This session is a panel and open group discussion about what it takes to go all in on starting a company while remaining fully present in family life without losing your freaking mind. We'll hear stories from people who are going down this path, and we'll take a look at some examples of successful entrepreneurs who have managed to find a balance between entrepreneurship and family.

Ansible is the Swiss Army knife of DevOps, capable of handling many powerful automation tasks with the flexibility to adapt to many environments and workflows. Not all approaches are created equal though. Don't let yours undermine the simplicity and power of Ansible. Based on actual experiences helping Ansible users, we'll show you what to do, and what not to do, to create the most reliable, resilient, and easy-to-manage solutions.

Learn how to enjoy transforming a traditional company into the digital era, step by step, and how to avoid the terrible 10.

Speaker is a veteran of transforming marketing and communications teams into digital powerhouses. Bring your toughest questions!

When venture capital becomes part of the equation, the structure of a start-up and its requirements going forward change drastically. This session is to serve as a primer for this process to help burgeoning start-ups, and their entrepreneurs, understand key aspects of VC financing and how it affects their enterprise.

There is a tremendous amount of material in this domain, but a 30,000’ overview will be given for: Business structure (re)formation, IP assignments & protection, Employee expectations & contracts, Term Sheets & other documentation, Financing Requirements, Cap Tables & Dilution, and the fabled Liquidation Event.

Need Pitch Practice?

Want feedback on your concept or startup?

Come ready with a 90 second speed pitch (you will be on a clock). No slides or AV allowed!

Receive 90 seconds of feedback from one of the Techstars crew, active investors and the crowd!

Anyone is welcome to pitch! There are no qualification/stage requirements. However, to guarantee a spot to pitch email brett.brohl@techstars.com and I will add you to our list. If we have time we will take pitches from the crowd.

Make sure you have fun with it - it will go fast!

Calling all creatives (developers, writers, artists)!

CoWorking sites like CoCo fill a much needed workspace gap between coffee shops and a full time office. But the ills of Open Offices are well known, especially for workers who do brainwork.

Open Office CoWorking cost me hundreds of dollars a day in lost productivity. I ended up working nights and weekends to accomplish what I could crank out in a normal work week in my old home office. But finding office space is hard for indies and small companies.

We need quiet to do our jobs, but collaboration and community are important too. You're not alone. There is a major gap in the office space market that needs to be filled.

Let’s come up with a plan to fix this.

Learn to translate the stream of touch events into delightful interactions, in a reusable way. We’ll introduce combinations of effects, including tension, anchoring, and boundary, and provide real world examples. We’ll also see how these effects can be plugged into any view, without needing to re-write touch processing.

Deductibles are rising, provider networks are shrinking, and insurers have been switching from fixed-dollar co-payments to coinsurance. Your out-of-pocket costs is rising significantly every year. You need to learn some key strategies to become a better health care shopper. How to know the cost, how to do comparison shopping, how to leverage Technology, when and how to leverage Telehealth and how to maximize HSA dollars are some of the key elements in cutting down on our cost. Let us also explore some apps that helps us on prescription drug shopping. This session will give you ideas on how to be a savvy Healthcare shopper.