MinneBar 13 Session Schedule

Designing distributed systems means considering failure scenarios—both likely and less so. Will the network let you down? (Almost assuredly.) Will some portion of your IaaS misbehave? (Have you met computers?) We build in graceful degradation for much of our automation but often neglect the (just-as-essential) human interactions.

The classic “hard problems” of cache invalidation and naming things revolve around our understanding of what's correct and true and our agreements with one another on scope and relevance. Communication is essential for making context-dependent decisions. Whether we're attempting to determine the current state of reality or distinguish logical boundaries, democratized observability is key to answering our questions.

As the fractal complexity of our distributed systems grows, we need to mindfully choose practices that work with our tooling. You can't buy a silver bullet, but you can forge one from the collaborative efforts of your team.

We're doing it again (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

💪 A VR station running local VR games

💪 This thing's going all day long

💪 In the main hallway area of Minnebar

--

FEATURED GAMES

Automaza — Nate Yourchuck

Automaza lets you puzzle a robot through a series of increasingly difficult mazes in VR.

NOTE: Located at VR Station

http://automaza.com/

AVARIAvs — Juncture Media

In AVARIAvs, players choose a party of 3 heroes to battle against an opponent’s party. During battle, opposing players choose their actions simultaneously and then witness the mayhem of their decisions. Combat rages on until one winner reigns victorious by decimating their opponent’s HP to zero.

https://avariavs.com

Color Jumper — @ben_burnes, Tallbeard Studios

Color Jumper is an abstract, color-based puzzle platformer which focuses on fast, precise movement to navigate your surroundings. Inspired by hardcore platformers like Super Meat Boy, Downwell, VVVVVV, and many others.

http://tallbeardstudios.com

Fingeance — Escape Industries @escindustries

Fingeance is a four-player shoot-em-up that places emphasis on teamwork and strategy, discarding traditional twitch-based gameplay. You’ll need to make the most of every randomly-generated weapon and enemy that comes your way.

http://www.escapeindustries.net

HyperDot — Tribe Games

HyperDot 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.

http://www.tribe-games.com

Joggernauts — Space Mace

A cooperative switching game about trying NOT to kill your friends.

https://spacemacegames.com

The Moon Fields — Juncture Media

The Moon Fields is an upcoming high speed sword & sorcery brawler for two to eight players. Choose from dozens of characters, melee weapons, magic spells, weird gadgets, and more to compete in fast paced matches where you smash or get smashed.

https://lunarsignals.itch.io/the-moon-fields

Newt One — DevNAri LLC

Newt One rewards you for how much life you bring to the game world, not how much life you take from it. Embodying your progress through color and music, Newt One's purpose is to generate happiness. You play as Newt, a new tone in a musical land that has fallen to the Great Slumber. Awakening this sleeping, silent world is your rite of passage.

http://devnari.com

Ollie-Oop — @alexcarlson__

It's a dog on a skateboard!

https://vividredemption.itch.io

Pinbrawl — Northern Heart

Pinbrawl is a local multiplayer pinball deathmatch game featuring juicy, cartoon-like action and hilarious physics-based characters used to smack the ball around colorful, 4-way pinball tables and score on your friends.

http://www.northernheartgames.com

Psycho Squirrels — Intangible Games [Scott Bullard]

Psycho Squirrels is a 2D platforming, puzzle game where players must navigate squirrels through a variety of stages to collect acorns before winter arrives. Use the local flora and fauna to guide your squirrels to their goals in over 50 puzzling stages.

NOTE: Located at Keyboard & Mouse Station

https://intangiblegames.itch.io

Small Hours — Behind You

Small Hours is a stealth horror game about a little girl named Ausha searching for her lost cat in an otherworldy town. The player will explore the corrupted streets, looking for signs of their cat and hiding from a monster roaming around on the hunt for small children. It's a dangerous game of hide and seek.

https://smallhoursgame.wordpress.com

Treasure Stack — PIXELakes

Inspired by the likes of Puyo Puyo Tetris, Puzzle Fighter, Wario Woods and Towerfall — Treasure Stack is a fast-paced falling block puzzle game where organization, platforming, and sharp reflexes combine to create intense solo and competitive 2-4 player versus matches! Organize. Stack. Score. Experience single and multiplayer mayhem!

http://pixelakes.com

Umbrella Mondays — Turnip Town

Umbrella Mondays begins on a rainy morning when a little girl named Fella awakes, finds a journal, and journeys to explore a beautiful ruin of mystical wonder. Players help Fella protect adorable fire spirits with her umbrella, solve puzzles and unlock clues along the way about the significance of the green rain and Fella’s missing memories.

https://umbrellamondays.com

Verdant Skies — Howling Moon Software

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.

NOTE: Located at all stations, but plays easiest at Keyboard & Mouse Station

http://verdantskies.com

--

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

A three-day jam packed digital games festival run by Glitch, happening this Fall.

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!

Get feedback on your app, website, product or idea from professional designers

You've got an idea that you hacked together on a budget, but you're not a designer. Perhaps your MVP response is that "it's confusing" or "kinda hard to use". There's no better time to get help.

We're offering 20-30 minute reviews of your product/interface/concept,* available throughout the day to get design feedback on any project. Office hours will be staffed by a handful of local area designers with expertise across many areas and industries.

In addition to the Minnebar code of conduct, all critiquers agree to: - Hold your discussions in confidence (No need for an NDA) - Provided candid and truthful feedback - Do our best to be objective to help you improve

To get the most out of this time, please be prepared to show us something (verbal descriptions are very hard to critique). Additionally, you may want to read about how to win a design critique

A parade of all star local Game Developers will each take the reigns for 6 minutes to present their experiences and learnings as Independent Game Developers in the Twin Cities.

Presenters:

• Dev Jana, DevNAri: Emcee
• Sami Sati, Sati Bros: Difficulty in Games
• Kris Szafranski, Thought Shelter: Prototyping Your Game’s Economy
• Stephen McGregor, Escape industries: Coroutines and You
• Nicolaas VanMeerten, GLITCH: Research, Analytics, and User Testing
• Martin Grider, Abstract Puzzle: Superbowl VR
• Evva Kraikul, GLITCH: Game UX: Decoding Data for Game Designers
• Zachary Johnson, Space Mace: TBD

What are some of the most important technology law developments over the past year? Notable lawsuits, regulation, and legislation span areas that include autonomous vehicles, biometrics, revenge porn, privacy, copyright, internet of things, patents, trademarks, licensing, cloud computing, cybersecurity, and many others.

A technology litigator and cybersecurity lawyer will discuss the evolving tech law landscape, as well as trends that will likely continue to affect technologists in the coming year.

Attorney Damien Riehl frequently speaks and writes on legal topics that affect businesses, including the legal implications of the Internet and technology.

Looking to upgrade your evenings from Netflix and craft beer, and do something fun and productive with your time? Bored at your current job? Tired of corporate tech that's not making a real world impact? Looking to meet other like minded tech professionals in Twin Cities? Skill based volunteering is the answer to all of the above! Giving back helps improve your mood, increases your sense of purpose and reduces your stress levels. First part of the session will be a review of volunteer options that currently exist in Twin Cities tech community. Second part will be an ideation session on breaking barriers to introduce pro bono volunteer programs in the corporate work setting.

Don't spend $1000's and weeks having a white board animation video built now you can DIY in minutes for little or no cost.

Science + Art = Scribology Convert text to video in-minutes, Scribology is a proven method of creating content for learning and marketing. We’re not scientists, but we know how to create content that your viewer’s brain is more likely to understand and remember. And now you can too.

When an idea is presented both audibly and visually, it’s six times more likely to be remembered than audio alone, and two times more likely than images alone. But most video software are sparse in images. Squigl supports every sentence of your message with new imagery to keep information retention high.

Our lizard brains are super keyed into movement. In fact, your brain can force your head to see what the moving object is. Animated squiglets provide the right amount of motion without feeling out of place or contrived. The movement of squiglets is fantastic for grabbing viewers attention and creating retention.

When your brain is surprised, your brain gets curious. It wants more information, it wants to stick around longer. It turns into a learning brain. Each squiglet that pops onto the screen is an opportunity to surprise your viewer, and keep their brain engaged in your message. The anticipation of squiglets keeps your audiences attention longer.

Come surprise your brain and someone from the audience will be leaving with their own white board animated video just for being there.

Check out the Scriology video build with this new SAAS model 'Squigl' White Board Animation software; https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=hugTYqphiTc

Squigl A startup that's changing the world of presentations and learning.

You have the best new invention, the greatest solver of the world's most pressing issue, but if you don't tell anyone about it - it really won't matter. This workshop is for those who want 5 steps that can help them quickly build momentum and support.

Component libraries: another trendy term and (alleged) best practice that you probably can’t stop hearing about. We’re told creating one will speed up the development process and encourage consistency in designs, all while making the entire code base easier to maintain and the app more delightful to use. Sounds like a win, right? The spirit of the idea is great, but like most hip best practices, an actual implementation is time consuming and challenging.

In this talk we’ll dive into a practical approach for creating a component library from scratch - whether you’re a team of one or one hundred. We’ll cover a top ten list of things to think through so you can be confident in creating a successful library. Learn how to jump into this project prepared enough to build a reusable component library with components your team will actually reuse.

The gender gap in software engineering is well known. Recent studies show that although more women are graduating with engineering degrees, there remains a persistent problem: too many women leave the field mid-career, often citing a non-supportive work environment and lack of advancement opportunities. Target's 12-month Engineering Manager Immersion Program (eMIP) is designed to bring more women into engineering leadership positions. Hear about the program's origins, progress, and components, which include classroom training, cohort development, individual sponsorship, and on-the-job leadership experience. This will be a panel conversation with members of the eMIP advisory board and cohort member.

One year ago, my coconspirator and I earned a grant from a Minnesota State (aka MNSCU) to build a chatbot designed to help college students. Currently, we have a basic working chatbot - we will walk you through some of the issues and solutions we found to get to where we are now.

We will discuss some of the analysis and planning it takes to get started, then get into the weeds by talking about some of the software and programs we used, and why we chose what we did.

Not only will you hear from the idea folks who got it started, from beginning to where we are right now. The instructor and the students cannot be here but we will channel their work.

I've been on both sides of the table as an entrepreneur/product manager and investor. I've participated in regional and national early stage venture capital conferences, startup festivals, mentored and attended in various accelerators, invested in dozens of startups, and pitched investors my own startups many times at various stages. Now, I'd like to share some of the key lessons I learned from using lean startups and how the stages line-up with funding sources and their expectations.

1. Lean Startups Review

2. What Investors Care About

3. Investment Rounds - How Does Each Stage Of Funding Generally Line Up The 3 Phases Of Customer Development?

We will learn how to run Tensorflow, and use it to train a deep neural network model to classify images of flowers. Then we will build an Android app that uses your camera to identify flowers.

No experience with TensorFlow or Android development is required, but it would be helpful if you could install TensorFlow and Android Studio in advance. We will be following these Google Codelabs, which have installation instructions.

• TensorFlow for Poets
• TensorFlow for Poets 2: Optimize for Mobile

Discussion of key legal issues and documents every startup should have to protect itself and be ready for financing.

Full description to follow.

Have you ever been asked to write a SMART goal? Did your gut tell you that the exercise was silly or non-productive? We'll discuss the dysfunctions of managing by goals. Then we'll discuss other strategies for reaching your aim.

You can’t go anywhere in the world today without being bombarded by marketing and the buzzword: “brand.” But truthfully, how often are you consciously thinking about your company’s brand and leveraging it to guide your business? Join us to bust some myths about brand and branding, review some case studies for inspiration, work on identifying your own brand purpose, and leave with a clearer sense of how you can leverage brand as a strategic asset for growing your business.

Overview

Zapier has 1000+ available integrations, that can be connected to create workflows which power your startup and eliminate busy-work (like copy-pasting information from one site into another).

Sometimes, you'll need to connect up data from a site or app which doesn't have an integration (or a public API).

Details

This session will cover some of the Zapier basics (setting up a Zap with the existing set of integrations), and then will cover the three most popular ways to connect up data when an integration isn't available:

• Taking emails, and automatically parsing specific data/fields. This is an effective way to auto-import info, and doesn't require any coding.

• Using Webhooks, to send or receive data with an external site/service/app. This also doesn't require any coding, but may require a bit of knowledge about composing specific API calls (which we'll cover).

• Write up a small bit of serverless code using Javascript or Python, if the options above aren't usable.

Join the Conversation!

There is plenty of time allocated for questions and discussion, so that we can chat about your important workflows (and ways to automate them), along with other related topics, based on the audience's interests.

Always wondered how a Term Sheet impacts ownership of your start-up? If so, this is a session for you!

The main focus of this session will be an interactive explanation of cap tables, dilution, and the equity and debt changes associated with a Series level investment. The session will begin with an example Term Sheet, and after an explanation of terminology will shift into how a Series investment affects ownership capitalization. Access to excel, or another spreadsheet program, will be useful, but unnecessary.

Note: Limit 25 participants. RSVP is clicking the *interest button.

Learn from each other how to get to a working level of knowledge in any topic quickly and make better decisions by asking better questions.

We will start with a 5 minute presentation on the process we go through for finding information online. The rest of our time will be spent with structured small group discussions that will feed into whiteboarding conclusions.

Bring a laptop!

Join the discussion now! https://hangouts.google.com/group/3GdkTWU8lxXC78M83

Feel free to add any articles or youtube videos if you have any favorites on topics like how to research or write better Google search querys.

My 13 year old daughter inspired me to talk about LGBTQ+ issues and how tech companies can innovate in the area of integration, education, and inspiration. We plan to present education, current highlights, and perspective from a daughter and father who both are into tech.

She’s also a great student, musician, gamer, artist, and working towards her Black Belt in martial arts.

I gave a Minnedemo back in October 2017. Cardiology Prevention/Heartsavers www.heartsavers.me

Awwwww yeah... this is my 10th year doing this session at Minnebar.

NOTE: before then I will be posting my Spring 2018 Minnesota IT Jobs Report and will put a link here.

For this session a few slides and a lot of Q&A and discussion.

Frequent conversations I have had lately and will talk about (I'll likely add a few):

• What the local job market is like right now
• Why salaries have been stagnant the past 2 years
• Are Midwest employers slow to hire junior developers
• How to find potential employers that are not well known
• How does the Minneapolis tech scene rank with other cities

What is on your mind? Send me a note paul@mnheadhunter.com

It's easy to look at technology in isolation. In fact, technology begins with philosophy and science — and results in an oversized impact on economics and culture. In this session we will explore technological intersections through the lens of systems thinking. We will use questions from the book "Homo Deus," by Yuval Noah Harari to start a conversation. Discussion about Cambridge Analytica and Facebook is likely. Come ready to stand up, speak up and cause some effects.

By having a deeper understanding of technological intersections we can become better designers of technology,

Blogging might seem a little bit like ancient web history but I think they are still as relevant and useful today as they have ever been. However, anyone thinking about creating a technical blog should think about what they want to get out of the blog. Becoming the next google adsense millionaire is likely going to be a challenge. If blog profits are not going to fund an early retirement, why do it?

In this talk, I will discuss my experience with running Practical Business Python for the past several years. I plan to cover some of the details that might help you decide if you want to run a technically-focused blog. I am not selling anything and don't claim to have "5 Must-Do Tips To Publicize You Blog." Topics I will cover include:

• Affiliate revenue streams
• Other tangible/intangible benefits of running a technical blog
• Hosting costs
• Static blog technology
• Figuring out which articles will be home runs
• What it takes to be mildly (wildly?) successful
• Dealing with impostor syndrome
• What you can do to show appreciation to your favorite bloggers
• Any other topics the crowd is interested in

What is it - where does it come from - what can it do? These are questions one might pose to the heroes from Themyscira or Krypton. One might be right, but in this case, we are talking about blockchain, the eponymous technology which is being adored, hated, banned, embraced, developed, and everything in between.

What it could do is become the most human version of the world wide web yet, desperately in a time when even the web's founder, Tim Berners Lee, just a few days ago, said it is in dire shape.

Blockchain will do for trust what the web has done to communication. What blockchain is doing now is emancipating data. The ability to free data from the need to trust is saving lives around the world, building solutions which could have never been, providing opportunities to people like never before, and enabling dreamers to invent like we have never yet witnessed. All of these superpowers have one common theme - the freedom to transact on the terms of you and your peers.

The ability to emancipate data for people, in many ways, requires as much a philosophical shift as it does a developmental shift. Empathy can empower blockchain just as much, if not more, then the very C++, Java, Go, and Solidity which used to create it from a command line.

We will discuss use cases - real, theoretical, and hypothetical. And what the world could look like by the end of the roaring 20's. Let's go on an adventure. See you there.

This meeting will address some of the most common fears about making the transition such as:

• How to find your next gig
• Your hourly rate
• Health Ins. & Taxes
• Working with recruiters
• How to work the contract

Late last year we launched a Kickstarter campaign for Luna Display, a hardware solution that turns any iPad into a true, wireless second display. Within the first 72 hours we had surpassed $250,000 on Kickstarter, and by the end of our campaign, we reached $650,000. Come join this session and learn about how we built our Kickstarter.

We'll talk about:

• What worked for us
• How we got the press to cover us
• What didn't work
• And.. How to end your Kickstarter with a bang

DevOps has gained lots of attention in the last 5 years, but most sessions are aimed at ‘change agents’ and ‘decision makers’ working in larger enterprise settings. Well, that’s all great stuff and I love it but…

• You don’t have departmental barriers to break down!
• There are no stakeholders to persuade, they're on board!
• Forget 'transforming your agility', you are still learning to scrum!

I’ll talk about decisions, tools and tactics that let you dev smarter at any size.

A few examples of the choices you might face as you grow your org....

• Let’s talk about development environments…. are they ‘destructible’?
• When do you go cloud? Which cloud? Why one cloud over another?
• When to use managed services vs. creating your own?
• What are the best ways to get developers started with automation?
• What are the cultural practices you want to start building right away?
• What are some fun tools you can pick up and start using today?

Expect a free and open discussion; I'll encourage folks to share their opinions and resources!

As nearly every business has a digital component, a seamless, frictionless user experience (UX) has become a basic product requirement. However, companies often bypass users or users are included but are given limited attention or poorly understood. In this talk, I will show why engaging users in product development is important and what are some concepts every UX practitioner needs to know. Fun activities will be included to demonstrate how these concepts work for which attendees are asked to bring with them a pencil and paper.

A survey on ways to animate on the web: lots of info on frameworks, software, APIs and tools, such as CSS, JS, and some earth-friendly sorcery, both open-source and for sale.

This is THE session to attend if you ever wanted to make full-screen digital madness, online crazy character animation, or sweet corporate-friendly transitions. There's no single one-size-fits-all "best way" to animate online, so instead we'll look at some of the better ways (IMHO), standards (or lack thereof), and efficiency. If there's time at the end, let's brainstorm about possible projects you want to do and how to approach them.

It's an up-to-date version of my 2016 talk with all-new info, samples, jokes, and sour beer recommendations.

BONUS: The session will include discounts for software and on-line animation courses! WOOP!

Founders often view VCs as mysterious entities... some combination of mother nature, investing as the wind blows, and Scrooge McDuck, laughing in his piles of money.

The purpose of this presentation is to demystify the job of "Venture Capitalist," by explaining the inner workings of a fund, how VCs make money, and investment considerations by walking through a detailed example.

Brought to you by gener8tor!

3D printing has become mainstream but the hurdle to success can be creating or finding the 3D models to print. This session will be part presentation, part discussion on free or low cost tools and resources for designing parts for 3D printing. We will also cover some design guidelines. The session will be very interactive and partly shaped by the experience level of the participants.

Don’t let trolls define your experiences in work, in your communities and in your projects. If you've ever had to deal with an intellectual bully in an online community, on a project, or social media, you know that it's one of the most unpleasant aspects of the internet. An intellectual bully may be adding value, but is mostly condescending, rude and aggressive. Don't let your toxic users define your community. Do you want a "death star" or "rock star" community member? I will also touch on how to create inclusive experiences.

My story of going from startup employee (at Twilio) to founder (at Runscope) and the crazy path we took from raising a seed round to getting acquired.

Twice a month a button gets pushed. It's a rather standard looking button with no blinking text or vivid color treatment and you'd be forgiven to not think much of it. Once pushed though, tens of megabytes of finely crafted compiled kernel extensions are launched onto millions and millions of customer machines. Considering the industry average is one bug per one thousand lines of code, there's likely bugs in there. If you're lucky th bug you made will just kernel panic their machine. If you're unlucky, the machine won't boot or enter an endless reboot cycle. If the gods of silicon hate you, you start destroying their data.

Yet twice a month this happens rather unceremoniously at my company. This talk covers how and why that happens from feature development through testing and deployment to customer support. Real world stories of mistakes and near misses will be used to support the counterintuitive solution to this problem. It'll be a fast paced talk so make sure to get some coffee.

High availability and disaster recovery are common requirements for most applications no matter systems are built in cloud or on premise. We will discuss technologies to achieve high availability and disaster recovery, and we will also review and analyze cloud and on-premise outrages that cause significant impacts and how can we avoid these.

Are you already a female founder? Or interested in possibly becoming one someday?

Making the leap from employee to employer presents its own unique opportunities and challenges. Each of us is at a different stage on this journey. In this session, we'll talk about our journeys. We'll also discuss challenges and brainstorm practical solutions for how to encourage more female founders in tech.

This session is open for anyone regardless of gender. We want to further the discussion to get more female founders in tech for everyone's sake. ;o)

This talk will address the state and the future of the medical records technology on the African continent. We will present current initiatives and products from different countries on the continent, and highlight the main challenges that the healthcare industry faces.

• Overview of the main challenges of the healthcare industry in Africa

• Discussion of the different solutions/products created to solve some of those challenges

• The impact of open source projects like OpenMRS on the healthcare technology in the continent

• It is not a matter of sending Epic to Africa…. It’s a matter of creating a solution that is tailored to the unique qualities of the market.

We are international students who attend Macalester College in St. Paul. Last semester, during Macalester’s entrepreneurship competition, we presented for our pitch competition a solution named Portable Medical Records (PMR), to solve the issue of missing medical and identification information in low-income communities in Africa. We are excited to share our market research with you, and provide you with an in-depth overview of the potential and challenges that lie ahead of the healthcare technology industry on the African continent.

Too many of the conventional procedures used for basic tasks in Ruby on Rails are slow and bureaucratic. Fortunately, the red tape is obsolete. Under my Ruby on Racetracks system, you can complete basic tasks in minutes instead of hours or longer. At the same time, you are doubling down on quality control instead of cutting corners.

My Ruby on Racetracks system works in Linux but is available for Mac and Windows users as well thanks to VirtualBox. Instead of manually installing Ruby on Rails, you instead use a Docker image with Ruby on Rails pre-installed. You never have to wonder if you broke your development environment, because you can instantly reset it rather than delete and manually reinstall Ruby on Rails.

I have two fast ways of creating a new and high quality Rails app quickly with user/admin authentication, static pages, tests, and Bootstrap styling already included. Under the Generic App way, you can have a prebuilt and modern Rails app ready for you in seconds. Under the Rails Neutrino system, you can have a fully up-to-date Rails app ready for you in minutes. Rails Neutrino is an autopilot system that starts a new Rails app from scratch (with the "rails new" command) and provides the features required in all or most Rails apps. In fact, I use the output of the Rails Neutrino system as the basis for the prebuilt app used by Generic App.

I will demo the new Ruby.MN Rails app that I recently built with my Generic App tool as a replacement for the original one. Additionally, I will demo legacy Rails apps that I enhanced with Ruby on Racetracks features.

There's Ruby on Racetracks, and there's Not Exactly. Make sure you choose the correct one.

CANCELLED

This is a follow up to last year's popular session with new advice and updated slides. Here they are!

This took will be super fast-paced but fun and informative...

I'll go over things like:

• why do a side project?

• what if I don't have the coding skills?

• how can I learn what I need to code?

• how should an experienced coder approach side projects?

• what if I don't have the money?

• how do I get users?

• how do I validate it?

• how much time will this take?

• what about XYZ myth that says I can't do this?

• what about XYZ reason to keep procrastinating?

I'll also go over my own progress on projects since last Minnebar.

We all want to design beautiful websites and applications, but the most beautiful website is the one that works for everyone. When you add accessibility to your design process, you are designing for everyone.

In this session, we debunk the myth that making an accessible site equates to making an ugly site. We will discuss common issues we see at Level Access, with a focus on maintaining aesthetics while making sites accessible. We’ll break out into small groups to work on solving some common issues, like making text easier to read and images available to everyone. Then we’ll come back together and review the solutions. Everyone is welcome to provide feedback in a respectful, loving way.

In this session, we will tackle common design patterns that cause accessibility issues, and how to remediate them without degrading the visual appearance of the site, app, program or service.

Although this session is tailored for designers, it is open to everyone. We will be covering practical skills in these areas: * color contrast * text zooming * hover and focus states of interactive elements * ensuring color is not the only way of conveying information * alternative text for images * images that contain text

Another year, more better data surrounding Minnesota's tech startups!

Join us if you're into the facts...we'll bring 'em.

Required reading: link

Jennifer Simon has been in consultative sales for over 25 years, mentoring other sales people has been a side passion of hers for many years. Communication is key to success for every position at every level of a company. If you are a developer who has an idea how will you communicate it to your team? What if you are a project manager with an idea for a better process or procedure? If you are an executive with a great roadmap, how will you gain interest from the board and other C-Level executives?

Come to Jennifer’s talk on Level Up Your Hustle,

Learn how to be your own consultative sales person How to better prepare for meetings How to ‘Pitch’ your idea or project Most importantly, how to make an impact for your organization.

When tasked with the responsibility of putting a website together for a client, millions of designers and developers have chosen Wordpress as their platform. They've trusted the popularity of the software and ventured out on the same website journey as so many before them: They chose a theme, bought some plugins, launched the site with part of it broken, and then got hacked so the home page became a Turkish flag, a pistol and the Jason Derulo song "Wiggle". True Story.

With an eye for choosing the right fit for every client, Lemon will be taking you on a tour of different content management systems (CMS) and how each one could be used to suit the needs of a potential client. He'll be demonstrating some options. A bunch of options. SO MANY OPTIONS. Such as...

• Jooma & Drupal
• Concrete5
• Grav
• Kirby
• Craft
• ProcessWire
• Pagekit
• some headless CMS
• static site generators

If you're currently a Wordpress builder, this might be an interesting look at other options. If not, there's still a lot of cool CMS you could expose yourself too.

Calling all junior developers currently looking for a job!

Join us for a series of one-on-one conversations with representatives from companies looking to hire developers just like you. This session will be run "speed-dating" style: Every five minutes, you'll get the chance to talk to someone from a local company about what you're both looking for and whether you might be a fit. If both sides like each other, great! Continue the conversation after the session. If not, that's alright-- we'll ring the bell within five minutes!

Developers, come ready to talk about your experience and career goals. Resumes are helpful but not necessary -- we'll provide notecards for exchanging information.

Hiring managers, if you want to be part of this session, please fill out this form to let us know. For logistical reasons, all hiring partners must commit before the session.

NOTE: this session will have a maximum attendance enforced at the door so that everyone who gets into the room will be guaranteed conversations. If you don't make it into the session, not to worry! We'll have Raincheck boxes for you to let these recruiters know you're interested in their company.

Neuroscience shows that our brain’s hard wiring does not allow us to retain logic for very long. Our left brain holds our linear, reasoning functions, the analytical and logic. This is the part that processes language and decodes facts. Our right brain is the creative and emotional center. This side thinks in pictures and images.

Stories that are well-crafted and told, activate both left and right brains in the same way our brain is activated when we experience events, so the information sticks. Every day we make decisions based on emotion, intuition, feelings, then we use logic to justify our decisions.

Laern how to tell stories that engage both sides of the brain. Work with the interplay of logic and emotion.

As the SEC continues to shut down illegal Initial Coin Offerings, we’ll discuss the reasons for raising crypto capital using securities regulations and why such offerings can and should be backed by real assets. Join us for a dive into the world of “tokenized assets”.

We’ve all been there. It’s the end of your release cycle and a doozy of a defect is discovered. A production issue has suddenly flooded your inbox with alerts. A critical customer has relayed their deep dissatisfaction and they want their problem addressed now… or else.

Afterwards, we often focus our energy on preventing emergencies like these in the future. However, what if you and your organization were to put a fraction of those efforts towards preparing for the next time the alarm goes off? Simple changes in how you and your organization react will pay big dividends. Your company can get back to business as usual sooner. Your customers can get quick satisfaction. Most importantly, you and your colleagues can retain your sanity.

This talk will examine high pressure situations commonly faced in software delivery to identify simple improvements that can be made. Whether you are an engineer or CIO, you have the power to make enhancements to behaviors and processes that will result in happier customers and less stressed employees.

Hey everybody! Kyle Coghlan here with a community chat about how to attain quality leads through the use of social media. Now, this isn't just about attaining leads for your business but how to build life long relationships with people online that eventually can lead to, well, leads for your business. I have several years of content production experience where I've worked with national and local brands from various industries. I have great success with attracting people to my business through simply creating valuable content daily on multiple social media platforms.

In addition, the discussion will revolve around how to provide value to your audience online, what form value can take as and defining what value means in relation to your business. After all, with out providing value to anyone, your leads will have no reason to reach out.

Essentially this will be a content marketing discussion about how your business can benefit from giving out value to your prospective customers.

Join me and let's learn together.

Every Wednesday morning nearly 200 communities across the United States host 1 Million Cups to provide a free and comfortable venue for entrepreneurs to pitch their business (or idea) and the community asks "What can our community do to help you?!"

We are hosting 5 "mini" 1 Million Cup presentations for MinneBar!

Come prepared to participate in dialogue on: What can we do to help the entrepreneur pitching!

Presenters:

Moses Tut - Running Tap Aneela Idnani - Habit Aware Paul Rieder - Shadow Culture Lou Abramowski - Evergreen Jeremy Gilbert - Pandora Cybernetics

More about 1MC: Our regional community has several 1 Million Cup locations: St. Paul, Eden Prairie, Willmar, Rochester, Winona, Mankato, Eau Claire and there are probably more in the works! Look up the location that works for best for you: https://www.1millioncups.com/

What Can Our Startup Community Do for You? 1 MILLION CUPS is a free, nationwide program designed to educate, engage and accelerate early-stage startups. We believe in the notion that entrepreneurs can discover solutions and thrive when they collaborate over a million cups of coffee. Drop in on our community of innovators and entrepreneurship enthusiasts to connect and support our local startups.

Creating in VR will change how you think about collaboration, experience design and empathy for users. I'll be sharing some insights learned along the journey of creating VR tools and experiences for some well-known brands.

In virtual reality, the digital world evolves from being viewed through a two-dimensional screen, to overriding your vision, hearing, motion and touch sensory systems. It's software that "feels real". This has some obvious (and not-so-obvious) implications, not only for gaming and entertainment industries but also retail, health care, hospitality, education and others.

Designing and developing for world-space ends up being dramatically different than the UX/UI workflows that many are accustomed to using to design for a screen, and draws from a broad range of disciplines such as neuroscience, design and the humanities.

.

Demonstrate why software projects need a project manager. Talk about why customers are unaware of what they do. Talk about how project managers actually help developers to be more efficient. Real world examples of where one could have been used Workshop on real-world examples of what worked and what didn't

Do you like typing? Chances are that if you're reading this, your job involves typing a great deal. If that's the case, you may have pretty strong feelings about your keyboard. Whether it's an old IBM model m, your Mac laptop keyboard, or a bespoke split you made yourself, this session is a place for you to come chat about why you like it with other people who have similarly strong feelings!

Last year it was pretty free form, just a bunch of people sitting around talking about keyboards. I thought that worked pretty well. A few of us brought in some of the more interesting things in our collections. I'd encourage people to do that again! Personally I'll probably bring in half a dozen different keyboards I've got lying around.

You should attend this session if:

• You really like keyboards and you just want to talk about them to everybody!
• You don't know anything about keyboards but want to want to know what the fuss is about
• You have a cool new keyboard and you want to show it off so people think you're cool
• You want a cool new keyboard and are trying to figure out what to get.

Elements of building tech products for consumer and business use must be in planning and development as short term or long term values with sustainability measures in place. Interactive discussion of how these factors influence your profits or losses and work efforts.

All technical professionals need to know three things about the Chinese censorship effort: 1. It is not about censorship; the techniques are much more sophisticated than that. 2. It works spectacularly well in China. 3. Those same techniques work even better in the United States. In fact, projects you could be working on right now is likely being used to color the truth and manipulate opinion. Are you okay with that?

Takeaways: 1. Understand the foundational strategies of Chinese government information management: Information Friction and Information Flooding. 2. Review case studies of those strategies at work in the United States. 3. Explore the ethical implications for you as an technical professional.

Check out more before you arrive at: [link]*https://jasontvoiovich.com/

App Camp for Girls is a one-week summer day program where girls, transgender & gender non-conforming youth can put their creative powers to work designing and building native iOS apps using Xcode and Swift. They learn about the business of software while being inspired by role models currently working in the tech industry. At the end of the week, they pitch their apps to a panel of local investors to get positive and encouraging feedback on all their hard work.

The inaugural season of App Camp for Girls took place in Summer 2013 in Portland, Oregon. In 2018, we will hold sessions in Portland, Seattle, Chicago, and for the first time ever, Minneapolis! App Camp has worked with over 200 aspiring developers and over 60 mentor volunteers in over the last five summers!

At this session, you'll hear more about App Camp and the volunteer opportunities we have available at our first Minneapolis camp this summer, taking place August 6-10. And if you have children entering the 8th and 9th grades next fall, find out more about enrolling them in App Camp!

After a short introduction to physical theatre methodology we will dive in to making moments together.

In particular we will explore how we can leverage a version of the "Moment Work" method as it allows us to breakdown present elements: sound, light, gesture, object, body and observe how they might play within our design.

This session is participatory as we will be exploring/researching how these fields might intersect in process.

Almost a year ago I started working for a company that operates as a white label retailer on major cruise lines.

But this isn't your regular retail environment...

Imagine if your stores moved globally, your demographics shifted constantly, your international teams lived at work, and your technology was from 1994.

Cruise lines are catching up fast in technology, adding connectivity on board at the demand of guests and opening up technology doors once locked.

What would you do if connectivity suddenly became available to you and the candy store of technologies once out of reach were now available?

In this session I'll share the challenges and opportunities of retail at sea, and lead an open discussion on retail technology.

What would you do?

Piranha Pool (R) 2018 is Minnesota’s own live take on the TV series “Shark Tank.” A panel of experienced, local tech investors will grill local entrepreneurs on the spot. Confirmed returning Piranhas are well-known local investors Ed Cannon, Cathy Connett and David Russick. Apply to participate by reaching out to Jeffrey C. Robbins, event emcee and AngelPolleNation Managing Director, at jrobbins@messerlikramer.com.

The Prizes

The winner of the Piranha Pool pitch competition will receive:

-- an invitation to present to investors at the May 17 Gopher Angels investor meeting

-- followup fundraising and business advice from Cathy Connett of CorConnections

-- a Jamstik and tour of Zivix's offices conducted by Ed Cannon

About Our Piranhas:

Ed Cannon is CEO of Zivix, creators of the award winning Jamstik line of products. Designed around multi-patented fingertip-sensing technology the new Jamstik 7 and Jamstik 12 instruments are designed to better meet the requests of both the learner and the accomplished musician. Ed spent the first years of his career with the Westinghouse Power Systems group and co-founded Cannon Technologies in 1987. As CEO, he led the team from a humble start in the basement to sales in excess of $100 million with 150 employees. Cannon Technologies was one of the first truly smart-grid companies, helping electric utilities better manage demand response, substation automation and smart meters. Cannon Technologies was acquired by Cooper Industries, now Eaton Corp (NYSE: ETN) and is an integral part of their Energy Automation Solutions group today. Ed holds a BSEE from South Dakota State University and was awarded the honor of Distinguished Engineer in 2007. Ed serves on various boards and advisory capacities including Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, the Discovery Capital committee at UMN, Enterprise Institute, and Donor Advisory committee of the Minneapolis Foundation and other boards primarily in MN and SD. He and his wife Judy live in Plymouth and are the proud parents of 4 tax paying Minnesotans.

Cathy Connett is CEO and managing partner of the Sofia Fund, which invests in high-growth women-led businesses. She is also president and founder of CorConnections, which specializes in guiding businesses through new business initiatives, equity infusions, ownership transitions, and the building of alliances and partnerships. Cathy has served as the director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of St. Thomas and, for the last 19 years, helped initiate multiple programs to support the entrepreneurial community, including the Minnesota Seed Capital Network, Women to Women (W2W) investment group and the Sofia Angel Fund. She has also served twice as a judge for the regional Ernst &Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards. Cathy’s formal education includes an engineering degree from Vanderbilt University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She has a diverse operational background in all functional areas, in union and non-union environments and in a wide range of B2B industries and marketplaces. Her experience includes roles at large companies such as Procter & Gamble, Boise Cascade and 3M as well as within start-up and small private companies.

David Russick is co-founder, Managing Director, and a board member of Gopher Angels, an investment organization dedicated to supporting entrepreneurship and early stage businesses in the state of Minnesota. David co-founded Bagster, LLC., a nationwide waste services company, where he served as President and a board member prior to Bagster’s acquisition by a Fortune 500 company. In addition, Russick serves on the Board of Advisors for the Dakota Venture Group. He also serves on the Business Advisory Group for the University of Minnesota’s Office for Technology Commercialization. David is a graduate of the University of South Dakota. He earned a Master of International Management degree from the Thunderbird School of Global Management with studies at Oxford University, Oxford England.

About Our Emcee:

Jeffrey C. Robbins is a shareholder with the Minneapolis law firm of Messerli | Kramer. For 35 years, Jeff has represented entrepreneurs who start and grow technology-based enterprises and angel and venture investors who target those companies. Having started two companies in the entertainment ticketing industry, Jeff understands the challenges and demands faced by business owners and uses his experience when providing counsel to his clients. Jeff is an advisory board member to Gopher Angels, a local investor network and he is a judge in the high tech division of the annual Minnesota Cup business plan competition.

About AngelPolleNation:

AngelPolleNation is a Twin Cities networking organization that furthers awareness, communication and education among solo investors, informal investment clubs and formal angel investment groups. APN has hosted over 25 quarterly events and profiled over 70 early-stage companies since inception in 2011.

Did you know lightning bugs use their flashes as a means to warn each other about threats, the P-38 Lightning was the most successful US fighter plane during WWII, and we used to have a women's soccer team called the Minnesota Lightning? Probably not!

Lightning talks are 5 minute, unscripted presentations, open to anyone who wants to present. No planning necessary! In the past we've had lightning talks on stock trading, vegan cooking, artistic Twitter bots, and -- just once -- JavaScript development.

Come with a slide deck, a link to a demo, or just an idea you feel like chatting about! But keep it short -- most lightning talks are under the 5 minute limit.

Lightning talks are often one of the most popular sessions at Minnebar, so show up early to get your seat!

Here's a picture of lightning striking a lightning research tower:

EMPLOYERS: Why can’t I find good junior developers?

Meanwhile…

GOOD JUNIOR DEVELOPERS: Why can’t I find a decent job?

This panel brings together tech leaders, college students, and a professor to share success stories. We will discuss how to find, hire, and nurture less experienced developers so that they get great experience and their employers get great software.

Yes, it is possible. Yes, it is already happening!

• Hear the stories of great interns who did amazing work.
• Learn how employers discovered, selected, and courted those interns.
• Hear about shockingly common mistakes that turn away the very people you want to hire.

P.S. Where are all those junior devs hanging out, anyway? Probably at the companion session on the state of the Junior Dev community in MN!

P.P.S. Looking to interview or be interviewed right at MinneBar? Come to the https://sessions.minnestar.org/sessions/659!

Join me as I introduce the concept of web accessibility while you pick up some technology related sign language. This session is for developers, designers, or anyone involved in building or planning technology experiences for others. Topics include defining web accessibility, the impact inaccessibility can have on your user's experience, and reviewing some tools available to evaluate your projects. I will also showcase concrete examples of accessible experiences that anyone can implement right now.

As a former sign language interpreter, I have had the unique opportunity to build an awareness through observing how disabilities affect one's experience with the world around them. I have been fortunate to incorporate that perspective into my current role as a developer, and I am excited to share my experience with you.

Slides and info: https://cjo.li/waminnebar

For introverts and extraverts alike who want to shine when performing in public

Every day there are moments when you must persuade, inform, and motivate others effectively. Each of these moments requires you in some way, to play a role to heighten the impact of your words, and manage your emotions and nerves. Every interaction is a performance whether you’re speaking up in a meeting, pitching a client, or walking into a job interview. You'll learn how to express yourself authentically, be more creative and increase your confidence in all aspects of life.

You know the power of public speaking and performance, but very few can do it well. This session will get you on the way to changing that. You may have never planned on presenting your message and stories to the world but damn, it feels so great to be on when presenting and make a difference in getting your audience engaged and taking something away with them.

Entrepreneurs are using new technology to disrupt every industry segment. Learn how to think like an entrepreneur through research and case studies, with an emphasis on leveraging local industry expertise to create the next big thing. Part I- Understanding What Drives an Entrepreneur Part II- How Entrepreneurs are Impacting Cities Part III- How to Best Ride the Entrepreneurial Wave Going Forward

The What
The first thing many people say to me immediately after I tell them that I work in Product Design and Development is "I have an idea..." that is followed up with some random idea they once had for a physical product. Many of these conversations then lead to a lengthy discussion about how just having an idea doesn't do much unless you know how to build, source, develop that into a product, but before all that you should really find out if you have a good idea. This presentation aims to help others with that first step.

The Why
1. idea people (see above)
2. digital/physical line is blurring
3. my younger self (naive inventor)

We've all heard about functional programming - probably even heard that it can improve our code by eliminating nulls and many other benefits. This talk assumes you already want to learn functional programming but don't know where to start or how to tell when you've arrived.

We'll go over the landscape of functional programming with lots of (javascript/es6+) code examples.

In order to successfully scale your venture, you must first learn to ‘scale within.’ By that I mean that you must expand your internal capacity to lead yourself and others well. It’s one thing to have a great idea. It’s another thing entirely to deal with growing a business, building a team, managing client drama, and troubleshooting any other number of unexpected non-stop challenges that arise along the way. As your business grows, you must make updates to your own ‘inner operating system’ in order to grow with it. In this session, I will teach a simple but cutting-edge framework from the field of neurobiology that will immediately expand your capacity to:

-Act from intention rather than reaction with increased self-awareness

-Make clear and rational decisions without feeling overwhelmed or withdrawn

-Maintain meaningful relationships with improved communication

-Eliminate self-doubt and silence your ‘inner critic’

Whether you are currently scaling your business, are just in the brainstorming stages of a great idea, part of a team, or anywhere in between, this is a life-challenging tool that will positively impact every area of your life even beyond succeeding in business.

Teaching non-developers about software development can be confusing and frustrating for everyone involved. Through trial and error and lots of stickers, I taught several not "technical" coworkers about basic web development. With these skills, they are empowered and confident in their ability to update and maintain several websites by themselves.

This discussion will go over how over three years I have been teaching communication/marketing team members about GitHub, HTML, CSS, and web accessibility.

Slides: https://pypancsv.github.io/pypancsv

If you've ever moved table-style data from Point A to Point B, you may have tried exporting it to CSV, cleaning the CSV file in Excel, and re-importing the results.

When Excel seems "just not quite enough" for that middle step, consider Python, a programming language that has exploded in popularity among non-programmers dealing with complex data problems.

See how short pieces of Python code can perform advanced filter-and-replace operations, summarize data, combine multiple CSV files (VLOOKUP across multiple columns? no problem!), and speed up processing of extra-large CSV files.

We'll cover:

• When it's faster to code Python, and when to click buttons in Excel

• Some "programming 101" to help you read the session's demo code

• Demos

• Training and practice resources

This session is aimed at:

• "Non-programmers" who are are pretty darned handy with Excel formulas, if you do say so yourselves

• Non-Python programmers who want to see what CSV processing looks like in Python

Despite all the amazing people, companies and community groups fueling Minnesota's tech scene, the workforce gap for technical skills continues to increase. We talk a lot about the exponential pace of technologies transforming our world, but we fail to apply this same thinking to our skills gap. It's time we make more noise in Minnesota, TOGETHER.

The three primary challenges we will address: 1) Preparing ALL Minnesota students for 'digital transformation'. 2) Re-enforcing Minnesota's identity as an innovative tech hub. 3) Resolving our growing workforce gap from within!

We hope you will join us to hear more about Minnesota's growing coalition around a MEGA-event 'The Great MN Tech 2Gether'. You saw what we accomplished for the NFL!, now come learn about the stage were going to build for MINNESOTA!

LinkedIn is quite possibly one of the strongest online business tools available today, yet very few are actually using it to grow their business. Here’s the truth: We live in an online world and if you’re in business you need to be on LinkedIn. Bottom line: People are looking for YOU, so let's help them find you.

Consider this:

There are more than 497 MILLION LinkedIn users - The average LinkedIn user makes $110,931/yr - 52% of B2B buyers make purchasing decisions with LinkedIn - Over 80% of leads generated through social media come through LinkedIn

Bottom line:

Don’t Look Like an Amateur Online

Would you go to a business meeting without a shower and wearing clothes you grabbed straight from the laundry basket? Of course not. You want people to see you as a professional and a person they’d want to do business with and as such, you put forth effort in having a professional presence when you show up live. Well the same principals hold true for your LinkedIn presence.

If your profile is unkempt, you’ll look like someone people should avoid. Having a professional profile is especially important if you’re responsible for building new business or retaining customers, so don't neglect it.

Key Takeaways:

My #1 secret for getting someone to respond to your request. Tricks to improve your search rankings. Profile enhancements to get you noticed. The power of attachments.

In honor of Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, let’s have a Chautauqua on quality and value how we’re measuring it. Piggy-backing on last year’s theme from the Twin Cities Agile Day, we’re part of an AntiFrAgile organization if we’re measuring the right stuff. Are we measuring the right stuff? How do you know? I’ll share some philosophy, thoughts, and experience to start our discussion. We’ll use a polling tool to make the discussion interactive, participatory, and allow you to share your stories and experience.

Building decentralized serverless apps doesn’t have to be complicated. With blockstack.js you can be up and running with authentication and encrypted storage in minutes. Learn how Blockstack works from a Blockstack core team member and see how you can start building decentralized apps today.

About Blockstack: Blockstack is a new internet for decentralized apps where users own their data. Blockstack's platform helps entrepreneurs and engineers build these apps and deliver better end-user experiences.

The people have spoken! This will be a great opportunity to find other like minded aspiring entrepreneurs to potentially launch your next venture with. The format will be "organic".

If you have an idea and are looking for co-founders you will be organized by industries in the main dining area.

If you are interested in joining a venture you will have the opportunity to meet founders in a friendly "job fair" type setting.

Come ready with your elevator pitch and be ready to network and trade contact information to follow up with people!

Lets see how many of these connections end up at Minnedemo's in 2018!!!

If you're interested to know about Devops in operations team and don't know where to start. I am going to share my experience how I started my journey in Devops, what do you expect, and how I changed my view on infrastructure and my job responsibilities .

It's never too late to get started. I am going to present broader picture how to get trained and get started. How will I setup and test my home lab environment for testing different open source technologies like Docker K8S Ansible etc.,

Regulations and obligations are a part of business - and they are growing.

I'll share some lessons learned and some thoughts on the 2018 terrain.

• Compliance and Governance
• Privacy: General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR)
• Credit Cards and PCI Requirements
• IT Audits

Let's also chat about the challenges you are facing around compliance in your value chains and product offerings.

In addition to being the worst candy bar filling, Nougat is also the Android version that surfaced TransactionTooLargeException in some unexpected places. Seemingly tried and true patterns for handling state restoration can now fail spectacularly. I’m going to talk about how we got here and what to do about it. That’s right folks, a talk entirely about one Exception; strap on your seat belts!

Have you heard about Docker and wonder what all the buzz is? Not sure if containers are VMs? Want to understand how the heck this "microservice" thing they say is the future runs on? This 101-level tutorial on Docker is for you! Please bring a laptop with Docker Community Edition (https://www.docker.com/community-edition) running. You will learn the basics of docker containers, images, and, if we have time, networks.

Not all Blockchain is Bitcoin! Did you know HALF of all large corporations are researching how Blockchain's Distributed Ledger technology can streamline their industries? This session will begin with a primer on Blockchain and then expand into practical NON Cryptocurrency examples. Come hear from Subject Matter Experts in Blockchain and Cryptocurrency that offer the deepest Blockchain expertise available, combined with impeccable ethics. Don't wait till next year and then kick yourself for not understanding this "stuff" sooner!

tl;dr

• Vue.js is a popular simple/minimal framework for making web applications
• It requires no fancy complicated stuff, but can scale for "enterprise" apps
• It's designed for incremental adoption -- you can gradually migrate to it
• I'll show you the basics with running code -- not slides
• https://github.com/ddanger/vue-basics

Vue.js has received a lot of developer love. Just looking at Github stars, it is way ahead of Angular and very close behind React.

One reason it's so popular is because it demands so little of those who use it, while allowing them to do what they want.

• Don't like how Angular forces you into TypeScript? Vue doesn't force you to use it (but you can if you want).
• Don't like how React forces you to use render functions? Vue doesn't force you to use them (but you can if you want).

In this session I'll demonstrate Vue.js basics by live-coding examples. I'll talk you through each one so you understand what Vue is doing under the covers. Bring your laptop if you want to follow along.

If you're new to Vue.js or modern JavaScript frameworks in general, this is the perfect slow intro where you'll be able to really understand what's happening and what the framework does. (Also, if you're using jQuery, and you're interested in gradually modernizing ... Vue would be my choice)

If you've already used Vue.js, you will find the examples extremely basic. Depending on your knowledge, you may benefit from the in-depth discussion about how these basics work.

If you're an experienced Angular or React developer. You'll appreciate the simplicity of Vue and you'll leave with many questions about more advanced Vue concepts (I'm happy to talk more afterwards).

In this presentation you'll see: Github, Codepen.io, Visual Studio Code editor, Chrome browser + developer tools, Git, npm, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and, of course, Vue.js!

Session time will allow for questions and answers.

Social Media is long out of its infancy and while some marketers were born runners, there's no shortage of professionals trying to figure out why they're still crawling or walking.

Together, we'll explore the 3 biggest myths in social media marketing that continue to plague even the smartest and most successful marketers -- even after nearly a decade of evidence has repeatedly shown them to be nothing more than misconceptions that are killing the effectiveness of your work.

Plus, we'll take a deep dive into the anatomy of a social media strategy that's so good you'll want to marry it. Or, if you've already got a spouse, we'll talk about how you might manage a mutually beneficial relationship with it.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound? What about if you have the most brilliant design or idea but nobody wants to hear it, does it make your customers happy? Creating beautiful, brilliant and elegant designs that never get launched doesn’t help our company or our customers.

One of the biggest challenges we face is convincing other people that our design, feature and product ideas are great. We can create the most elegant user experience yet totally fail because it never saw the light of day with our customers. This talk covers how we can set our ideas up for success from the very beginning. We’ll discuss how to truly understand and present our ideas to stakeholders so that we can sell our ideas and deliver a brilliant user experience in our products and services!

How do we partner with business users to develop better products? Product Management is plays a critical role in a successful product, helping create high impact and product usability.

Poor product management can lead to bad consequences, impacting revenue, morale and reputation to the product.

Let's talk about: - Good product managers - Streamline vs. Process change when developing a product - Balance to impact all factors - Sales sales sales - Clear goals and advantages

Startup is hard so it's not for everyone. There are many questions one need to think before deciding to build their own startup or join one. Is startup for me? What does it take to start and run a startup? To answer these questions and more, several MN tech startup executives (founders, CEOs, VPs) will share what they do every day to build and grow their company. The audience is encouraged to ask questions. The discussion will be moderated by Anna Prisacari from Praxik.

Panelists
Clarence Bethea, Founder & CEO at Upsie
Angie Eilers, Founder & CEO at UR TURN
James Jones Jr., Founder & CEO at Spark DJ
Matt Ronge, Cofounder & CEO Astro HQ
Sameer Kumar, Cofounder & CEO at HabitAware

Background

Rosemount High School (RHS) boasts one of the largest and most advanced Computer Science programs in the state of MN. It is not uncommon to have graduates of RHS leave with two semesters of college CS credit, entering college programs as Sophomores. Hear the story of how Tom and Andrew started this program 5 years ago and discuss the state of CS in public education as a whole.

Dr. Thomas Reinartz

Formerly an English teacher, Tom now teaches exclusively Comp Sci at RHS.

Andrew Haisting

RHS alum, Currently an Android Engineer at Livefront.

This description is a work in progress.

When I "learned" design, it wasn't user-centric. This presentation follows my personal journey toward empathy with users, customers, and neighbors. I discuss using shared emotions to humanize audience pain points, creating actionable "fear personas" of users and why this process works. Plus I tells some stories about the hard lessons I've learned throughout my career.

Anyone who makes things to be used by people will come away with a better understanding of empathy and a framework to apply it daily.

“The people who make the biggest difference are the ones who do the little things consistently”

As our lives become increasingly driven by technology, the ability to use emotion to relate across differences and foster a human workplace has become more of a critical advantage than ever. The concept of ‘Inclusion’ has its roots in Special Education and Disability Rights, largely focusing on systemic changes. In this session, we will explore the topic at the individual level, using perspectives from Organizational Psychology.

We will discuss what the experience of inclusion means to each of us, its link to psychological safety, and how we can through micro-acts of positivity bring out the best in each other, professionally and personally.

Perhaps you've considered making useful twitterbots for profit, but then you looked at your piles of cash and realized that material wealth cannot buy happiness.

I will discuss a variety of impractical twitterbots, both my own and others, and talk about their capabilities and limits. Topics will include generative grammars, IFTTT, keyword triggers, Mad Libs, Markov chains, and (very little) natural language processing. Small amounts of Bash scripting and Python may appear.

Bots discussed may include:

• @pentametron
• @osric8ball
• @HouseBudgets, @goth_lyrics, and others from Cheap Bots Done Quick)
• @scifri_ebooks (and other heroku_ebooks)
• @wumpus_bot
• @iwant2Barobot (and other Sycophant Bots)
• @HeatherFantoche (and other Last Word Bots)
• @godtributes

May entertainment and chaos ensue.

Ridiculously short deadlines, maintaining features that nobody is using, chasing after the shiniest new tech instead of the battle-tested languages, libraries and frameworks that your team specializes in, etc. Anyone that has been in tech long enough may have witnessed these or similar irrational behaviors.

This behavior can hold us back from solving important problems that are facing us today. It may be causing talented, experienced people to leave the community and preventing new people from joining. According to behavioral sciences it may also be predictable.

Wouldn't it be great if we could recognize predictable irrationality in our own environment? Moreover, what if we could come up with some hacks that could prevent (or at least mitigate) it?

The startup community is obsessed with the idea of failing fast, learning, and adapting. That's a good thing! But when we look to get hired, or we look to hire someone to improve our team, we only ever focus on what our successes were.

Being able to discuss failures -- real failures, not excuses to talk about how you pulled a win out of thin air -- creates a much richer, more genuine picture.

This talk is split between job-seekers and job-givers: my goal is to help put a stake in the heart of sterile, cookie-cutter interviews. That means that both sides need to be willing to embrace their previous failures.

For job-seekers, I'll talk about constructing your failure resume:

• How to acknowledge failures and lessons learned without dismissing that you did indeed fail

• How to use your failure resume to direct your job search

• How to polish your failure resume for public consumption

For job-givers (be you hiring managers or just interviewers), I'll talk about failure as a qualification for a candidate:

• How to talk to a candidate about your failures as an organization

• How to coach a candidate into being willing to be candid about failure

• How to create failure requirements for a job posting

Every large enterprise product goes through its own mid-life crisis where it needs to transform itself to stay relevant in the ever-changing marketplace.

Join me in a session where I will talk through "Why? How? and When" of Enterprise Product Transformations.

I will be focusing on the various transformation techniques such as Re-architecture, Re-Design, Re-skin or Re-write. It is an interactive talk where we will go through real use-cases covering both success and failure examples.

Good for folks working in large enterprises as well as those building startups.

When you start a company, intuition tells you all stats should be up and to the right.

New users? Check More revenue? Check Increasing rate for both of the above? Check

While these stats are certainly important, they miss a big piece of the puzzle. User retention allows startups to grow more quickly, burn less cash, and ultimately have more control of the fate of the company.

But retention isn't as intuitive as aggregated graphs. There are a lot of terms thrown around... cohort analysis, attrition rates, active users, lifetime value, each with a vacuous definition that seems to vary from one conversation to another. It's a lot to keep track of... just like taking care of 101 Dalmatians.

This talk will focus on cohort analysis as a great tool to track retention, while highlighting some of the other general KPI's startups use to track their financial/user health. All illustrated through a Disney classic.

Brought to you by gener8tor!

Typical questions our clients and we, as marketing consultants, ask:

Q: Which customers do I invest in and at what points of their journey? Which should I avoid? Q: What is the best way to engage these customers how much value can I create if successful? Q: How do I accurately measure the value that was created and know what worked?

Engagement Economics provides the framework for working through these questions in a disciplined, consistent and reliable way.

Engagement Economics Summary principles: 1. Focused on Mutual Value creation. Establishes a model that provides clear value to a customer while yielding a measurable business benefit 2. Forces rigor in prioritization. Drives rigor in the selection of highest value opportunities (priority segment-based journeys & moments that matter). Prioritization is placed on mutual value creation. 3. Enables customer-centric forecasting.Includes processes to create customer-driven forecasts that over time help optimize business strategies and ROI. 4. Delivers a robust measurement & learning engine. Incorporates interaction, attitudinal, and behavioral metrics to identify and measure the impact on KPIs. Measures the economic contribution increases as consumers become more engaged /grow relationships with the brand.

This session (open to all) will discuss how we (Publicis.Sapient) are working our clients to evaluate the marketing/experience impact within key moments that matter for their customers across the E2E journey.

Think "return on marketing/customer experience" across the journey.

We'll cover both the framework and some of the tools we are using to execute for our clients.

Data breaches, social media harvesting, cats and dogs living together... mass data mishandling! While impressive technical tools exist to help grow the security maturity of organizations, we are finding that policy and procedure are the biggest weaknesses. This will be an energetic, non-technical discussion of the learning opportunities that are so abundant in the news these days.

We'll talk about:

Basic best practices for information security

What organizations can learn from the recent MASSIVE fails in the news (e.g. Equifax, Facebook...)

Q/A

The contact center technology market in the recent past has had two primary models: Premise based and cloud. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. • Premise has more flexibility to be customized but can be extremely expensive with very long lead times to deploy. • Cloud is much faster to deploy but is more limited in terms of flexibility

A new category is now emerging and the name “contact center platform” seems to be emerging. The two early leaders in this space are Twilio and Amazon. They are cloud based to be sure, but not turnkey systems. Rather they are building blocks with API’s offering essentially unlimited flexibility in how a contact center may be designed. In this talk I will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this approach and lay out the basics of what it takes to build a system using the Twilio platform.

We will close the presentation building a simple chatbot using Python and Twilio API's.

Product management and systems engineering — never (or, mostly never) the twain shall meet. The disconnect between product vision and technical vision impedes vast untapped productivity and creativity. We will explore and propose new models of collaboration and social innovation for integrating the product vision and the technical vision into a shared vision.

Systems engineering is not electrical engineering or mechanical engineering or chemical engineering. Systems engineering is not software engineering. As we will explain, systems engineering is “the queen of the disciplines”. In that nature lies its unique potential to dialogue with product management and accelerate product development. We will augment our rather unconventional application of systems engineering with design thinking and behavioral science to create a sandbox that frames the problem and possible solutions.

We have recently observed and experienced this dilemma from both the product management perspective and the systems engineering perspective; we have detected the various lamentations of the corresponding professional communities. We will use this MVP (“Minimum Viable Presentation”) in an interactive format to explore possible routes for bridging this inter-disciplinary gap. We will model lean innovation / experimental design by engaging our audience as co-creators in advancing the concept.

There are possibly 20 technologies that have the potential to disrupt as much as the internet and mobile did over the next 20 years. The future is up to us to define but these are a few bold predictions being made by futurists/innovators: a. a colony on the moon b. 80%+ of world energy consumed using clean energy c. 95%+ autonomous, electric vehicles d. the majority of the known 30,000 diseases will be cured e. 41% of jobs in Minnesota today will no longer exist

Humans evolved based on a linear way of thinking and so it's difficult for most to imagine the impact that will come along with each of these technologies. I graduated from Singularity's Executive Program, in Mountain View CA, in January and plan to share a brief summary of key takeaways in this session:

1. Intro To Exponentials
2. Inventory Of Exponential Technology
3. Tools For Being An Exponential Leader

React is built with performance in mind. But when is React slow? In this talk we’ll discuss common bottlenecks in React and when you might be making your program work harder than it should. You will learn practical ways to speed up your real world React applications today.

This session is for developers curious to learn how to write fast React applications. You may or may not have already used React, but to get most out of this session, you should be familiar with JavaScript.

A good architecture can make a huge difference in the development of your application. Whether you're developing new features or maintaining old ones, your app's architecture can make your job easy and simple… or tiresome and difficult.

There are plenty of architectural patterns out there you can follow… but how can you possibly do that, when you're working with a legacy codebase? How can you adapt to the latest and greatest patterns without rewriting your whole app?

At Trello, we're constantly experimenting with new code design patterns, sampling them to see what works and what doesn't. In this talk, I'll discuss how we evolve our app's architecture without having to start from scratch each time. I'll also discuss which patterns have been a boon and which ones we regret.

Join us for a panel discussion where leaders from Minnesota's emerging AI companies will discuss topics such as...

• How is AI being used in each company
• Major lessons from implementing AI in real word applications
• Best practices for how to set up a working AI practice/product
• Audience Q&A, and more!

Panelists from Equals 3 (Lucy), Structural, Aftercode (Rambl), Loup Ventures, USBank, and others.

Let's talk about the mental health-iness of our tech/entrepreneurial community. How can our already supportive community support each other on the mental health front? What cultural changes can we encourage our corporations to take? What skills can we give our freelancing cohort, working primarily on their own? How can we enable startups to build an open culture from the start? What can our co-working spaces do to help their members stay mentally healthy?

Patrick, Laurie & I can’t wait to have this conversation with you all. Our hope is then start rolling out events through the year to help end the stigma and give all of us tools to manage stress/anxiety & other mental health issues, regardless of severity.

This will be a fireside chat moderated by Clarence Bethea with Marc Belton, former president of General Mills. He will speak about his time running at fortune 500 company and how those skills prepared him (or didn't) for investing in startups. Marc is an active investor in startups and passionate about serving underrepresented founders.

This session will explore some of the newer and more interesting solutions to developing apps across a wide array of devices.

You've all heard about Facebook's React Native, but what about the alternatives? Why are we still coding in Javascript?!

We'll take an introductory dive into Flutter, Google's newest multi-platform app framework for Android and iOS.

Flutter is essentially a C++ native game engine which renders UI elements which look exactly like native app widgets. It's based upon the language Dart, but should be immediately familiar to most developers using modern languages. The only difference between an Android Flutter app and an iOS Flutter app is a single constant.

I will also explain my experience building a game across Android, iOS, web, server, and desktop using only Kotlin code and Kotlin build scripts.

Kotlin is a newer programming language created by JetBrains, the company that made the most popular Integrated Development Environments among software developers.

Often compared to Swift and of about the same age, Kotlin has become Google's recommended language for Android development. It's also becoming the recommended language by Pivotal for Spring web service development.

The core Kotlin team has recently unveiled massively cross-platform features which I'll show off. This allows you to run Kotlin code on virtually any device, even Raspberry Pis, and to share similar code between devices.

We hear anecdotes about technology leaders like Steve Jobs minimizing technology in their homes, and read stories about technology-addicted kids that can't make it through a class in school without their smartphone.

We have massive deployments of Google Chromebooks in schools, and feel like we're missing something when our phone is charging vs. in our pocket.

We want our kids to be technologically savvy, but not slaves to technology.

As technical people, what balance do we strike between inviting our children into the world that has given many of us an identity, a career, and in some cases an addiction we're not fond of acknowledging (except in jest)?

What kind of example are we setting for the next generation in regards to a healthy relationship to technology?

I'll do a short presentation on some of the issues I'm weighing in my own family, why we've made some of the choices we have, and then open things up for a discussion.

What works for your family? Why did you choose that path?

What are your hopes and dreams for your kids in regards to technical literacy/coding, etc?

(Bring your questions and ideas!)

How can you tell if something is a fad or a trend? How do trends overlap and extend beyond categories? Why do some things catch on and others don't? What makes something go viral? In this session, we'll use food as a case study for trend analysis and design thinking to figure out how the Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccino came to be and why Lady Doritos may not.

We will discuss new generation of personal Virtual Assistants, which facilitates conversation based discovery, adds domain specific meaning to sentences, fine-tunes choices, then handles the resulting information in accordance with personal needs, like: "tell my doctor that I have a headache", or - "ask my local retailers to send me their offers". Active Data is the solution for the problem of "if-then" logic and the core model of context-dependent interactions.

As an example, I will use Best Buy development API and NNOD SDK to present the demo of chatbot which was built in 7 days.

ChatBot in 7 days

Think back to your childhood. Remember the joys in building sandcastles on a beach? Armed with a faded colored plastic shovel and bucket whilst slathered in thick SPF 50, you would gleefully build, destroy, and rebuild for hours. Fast forward a bit to remember your first "Hello World!", your first custom built PC, or your first interactive design. Remember that joy? In this talk we will explore similarities between building sandcastles and building software solutions, and the importance of capturing the joy in all that we do.

Every now and then, my conversations with y'all will accidentally veer from (boring) business stuff and into (more interesting) artistic pursuits.

I'm always surprised to learn what y'all are working on by firelight - Like who knew Jaim was one of the raddest jazz musicians in town?!

Soooo... Let's get together and share what we are doing that doesn't fit into a business box.

We might talk about what it means to do art, why we create art, what's the point of it all, life, the universe, everything, etc. etc.

Maybe we'll collectively explode each other's minds and make some friends.

Maybe we'll even see a performance or two...It's been known to happen.

The sky's the limit!

No pressure - we'll see where the conversation takes us.

If all else fails, we'll listen to the musical stylings of Weird Al.

Podcasts are a phenomenal tool for communication. How will yours stand out from the rest?

Whether you're new to podcasting or looking to improve your current show, this session will provide some key principles of presenting a professional podcast. Discussion will include interview tips, how to keep your audience engaged, and how to best leverage guests to gain more exposure. Topics are not limited. Bring any questions you have on podcasting in general.

Have a hardware product idea? Don't want to be the next Coolest Cooler? With hard work - and a bit of luck - you can ship it! Sameer & John from the HabitAware team will share our development journey, from idea to market, on a limited budget. We'll highlight our highs and lows, encourage you to share your own -- all in hopes of helping each other build hardware products, generate demand and ship!

(About HabitAware: HabitAware was born from Twin Cities hackathons and community support to help people live better lives. We make Keen, a wearable device that helps people manage compulsive behaviors like hair pulling, nail biting, and skin picking.)

Does the sound of people eating chips, clearing their throat, chewing gum, coughing put you in an rage? You might have misophonia.

Misophonia may cause a reaction to sounds such as dripping water, chewing, snapping gum, or repetitive noises, such as pencil tapping. People with misophonia can become irritated, enraged, or even panicked when they hear their trigger sounds. Treatment might involve therapy or lifestyle recommendations, such as using sound protection or creating "noise-free" zones within living spaces.

News 1 News 2

This is a follow up to my talk last year - get the slides now which I'll update for this year!

This is relevant for the tech community because of the need for deep concentration, and the proliferation of "open workspaces".

If you think you have misophonia - this session will change your life.

DataTables is a free (MIT licensed) plug-in for the jQuery Javascript library. It is a highly flexible tool, based upon the foundations of progressive enhancement, and will add advanced interaction controls to any HTML table.

With only a single line of code you can turn your boring old HTML table(s) into a magical widget with pagination, instant search and multi-column ordering.

Maybe you've been looking at AngularJS, Backbone, Ember, or some other JavaScript framework but they seem like overkill for what you want to do. Perhaps you've looked at the existing grid components and found them lacking. Or maybe you're just looking to take your existing tables up a notch without a lot of extra effort.

The best code is the code you don't have to write and DataTables is highly configurable (with it's own API and a wide variety of extensions including Editor, TableTools, FixedColumns and more) and adding the feature you want is often as simple as just enabling the correct config option.

• Reorder columns
• Show/Hide Columns
• Save state (including search, ordering, filtering, etc) across browser sessions/pages
• Excel in your browser
• "Freeze" left most columns in place
• Fix in place the header/footer/left/right columns
• Keyboard cell navigation
• Autofill allowing click and drag over cells, filling in information and incrementing numbers as needed
• A virtual renderer to speed up display of large datasets
• Copy/Export CSV, XLS, PDF to the system clipboard
• Make your data responsive and available across multiple devices and screen sizes

If you're looking for rapid application development, DataTables supports almost any data source (including DOM, Javascript, Ajax and server-side processing). The plug-in itself is language agnostic however so you can use it with any server side language you want. Getting your data into DataTables can be as simple as:

SerializeJSON(qMyAwesomeQueryObject) We will cover Web SQL (old busted) for legacy browser and device support, IndexedDB (new hotness) for newer and evergreen browsers, as well as all the shims that will make working with them all easier. We will also cover syncing to traditional relational databases such as MySQL, as well as NoSQL with an emphasis on CouchDB.

DataTables is easy on the eyes too. The out of the box CSS is gorgeous but it's easily theme-able with your favorite CSS framework, including jQuery UI, Bootstrap, and Foundation.

DataTables comes batteries included, is fully internationalisable, and it's backed by a suite of over 2900+ unit tests with commercial support available.

Attendees Will Learn

• Quickly get DataTables up and running
• Properly configure DataTables to get the features you want with the least amount of coding required
• Fix and prevent the most common gotchas
• Sync to backend databases
• Relational (MySQL)
• NoSQL (CouchDB)
• Customize the look and feel to match your existing CSS or CSS framework (Bootstrap, Foundation, etc)
• Allow inline and batch editing of your data, including on touch screen devices
• Perform multi-column advanced server side search with rich search input controls (datepickers, spinners, and other widgets)
• Get your data into DataTables without rewriting your SQL code
• Advanced search and filter options
• RedQueryBuilder, a UI JavaScript component that will build your SQL for you
• Materialized views, when your users just have to join all the tables
• Walk out with a git repository full of examples and a slidedeck full of (hidden) notes as well as pretty pictures
• If you know jQuery and want to make your tables sing then this session is for you.

I've even got some tips for making all the magic work back on ancient browsers like creaky old Internet Explorer 6/7 (don't worry, jQuery does most of the heavy lifting here too).

You've heard about startup accelerators but you probably have questions about what they are, why your company might be a good fit, how they work, etc.

This session will answer the above (and more) so come to learn and bring your questions!

ARE YOU A PURPLE COW?

Seth Godin says you’re either a purple cow or you’re not. You’re either remarkable or you’re not and that you have to make the choice or your audience will.

WHO THE HECK ARE YOU?

The hard truth is, no matter what you do, there’s someone else who does the exact same thing. And, if you’re marketing your business on the internet, there are likely LOTS of people who do the exact same thing, selling to the exact same people. So how do you stand out from the crowd?

The question is, what makes you DIFFERENT? WHY should someone CHOOSE YOU?

Did you know that less than 15% of people have truly defined their personal brand and less than 5% are living it consistently? Your personal brand communicates who you are and what you have to offer. It’s your reputation and your promise and why people should believe you. It’s how you are perceived outwardly and whether or not you will be taken seriously. What are you known for? What do you WANT to be known for? Do they match? If not, you’ve got a brand problem. During The Brand of YOU, you will identify: who you are, WHY you, who needs to know, and how they'll find out.

Key Takeaways

The Power of 3: Image + Voice + Promise What to ask yourself before you enter a room Resources to find out where you show up online Why personal brand is such a big deal How you can influence others' perception of you

Bots aren’t just for marketers. Text and chat are more natural than traditional web and app navigation and provide users a great 24/7/365 experience. Still in their infancy but with more devices that use text or voice with things like Alexa, Siri, Slack, and Google Assistant it is an area of focus. We moved beyond the age of websites to mobile apps and now are moving to the age of voice and text bots as the go-to interface.

Good thing is that even if you are not a coder but see a problem for your users, you can use tools like DialogFlow, ChatFuel, and others to deliver workable solutions for both voice and text. Then you can deploy your bot to places like Facebook, Twitter, Slack, and more. Of course with a little coding you will be able to do even more.

During this session we will build a bot using DialogFlow (aka Google’s bot builder platform) and by end of session we will deploy it. Come with your bot ideas, passion and experience insights and let’s build a bot together.

Mpls Jr Devs is a community of aspiring and less experienced software engineers that was born at Minnebar in 2017.

To celebrate our first birthday, we'll facilitate a guided discussion.

What we'll talk about

• Junior developers
  • What can the MN tech community do to support junior developers?
  • What does that support look like, and where does it come from?
  • What can non-junior-developers in your (workplace, community) do to better support you?
• People who aren't junior developers
  • How have your expectations of junior developers changed?
  • As you're hearing this, what can you do to support the juniors in your (workplace, community?)
• Mpls Jr Devs
  • What can Mpls Jr Devs to do support these things?

We’ve learned a lot over the last year and have some thoughts, but we’d love to hear yours!

What will the future of the junior dev community in Minnesota look like going forward? Come to this session and help shape it!

Who this session is for

• Aspiring and less-experienced software engineers
• Experienced software engineers
• People who are interested in learning more about and/or helping support our community of junior developers

What to expect

This will be a guided discussion.

Come with ideas, and be ready to contribute!

The relational database is the cornerstone of our IT infrastructure. It was first introduced in 1970 and since then it has successfully responded to the ever-changing world of technology.

This session will be on programming roms and cartridges for the Sega Genesis game console from the 80s.

The session will take on this form: General overview of the Sega-Genesis. Setting up a C environment. Details concerning the VDP. Sample graphics program overview. Details concerning the Z80 and FM/PSG chips. Sample sound program overview. Sprite-editor overview, FM-tracker overview. Putting things together. Cartridge construction and overview. Tricks and tips. Questions.

→ Don't you LOVE pointless meetings?

→ Aren't email threads and REPLY ALL noobs the BEST?

→ Isn't constantly being interrupted all day by chat apps your favorite?

Yeah, I hate all of those things too.

Join me for a fun conversation: low on theory and jargon, but high on practical tactics you can use:

I will share with you the key software tools I have used over the last 6 years to run, and grow my software startup to 7,000 customers around the world, and a team of 10 remote employees and contractors around the US.

Most importantly I will share with you how we first used these tools wrong, what we learned, and now, how we use them right.

I promise to make it worth your time, whether you are on a team, or run one, and whether you work in an office, or with a remote team.

As a special bonus - I will share my favorite new tactic on how I spend half as much time writing emails but still get 9/10 people to reply to my emails everytime.

It's hard to push user experience when you encounter resistance, especially since good UX takes time and patience... Two things for which many environments fail to make time. Most of us don't get to pick our coworkers (or bosses, or bosses' boss) any more than we get to pick our family. Here's how to deal with the ones you wouldn't pick--the sad panda, the wunderkind, the grinch, the pied piper, and the shadowy figure--and how to stop them from interfering with your good work and good intentions.

What is it like to take a company public? What happens in an initial public offering, and what does it take to get there?

In June 2017, the company I co-founded went public, after nine years as a startup. I'll talk about why we did an IPO, the mechanics of becoming a public company, and the personal experience of seeing my company reach this milestone. Bring your own questions for this informal presentation, moderated by Neal Tovsen.

Make It. MSP is dedicated to making Minneapolis-St. Paul the best place for people to come, stay and thrive. Our technology Steering Committee, made up of local tech leaders, is seeking new ideas and solutions to support which will help attract, retain and develop new technologists in our region.

What:
This is an open call for ideas. In this participatory session, we will discuss solutions on how we can better tell the story of our thriving tech industry, retain new graduates and advanced career tech professionals alike, and address the challenges that technologists face in their careers.

To accomplish this, we’ll start with a quick opening statement and then break into small groups to generate new solutions that answer some of the most pressing questions, which could include:

• How might we better tell the story about the great things happening in our tech community?
• How might local employers improve the way they attract, hire and train technologists?
  
• How might we make it easier to get established in a tech career in Minneapolis-St. Paul?
• How might we create a more open and inclusive community?
• How might we … (your question/challenge/issue here)

Who:
This sessions is for: Tech professionals with ideas on how to improve the industry Industry group leaders, board members or event organizer who actively works to support the community Anyone with an idea on how to attract, retain or develop new technologists in our region.

Why:
The spirit of the tech community is alive and well. For those aiming for a career with purpose, where you can make an impact through technology, Minneapolis-Saint Paul is a good place to be.

Just like a digital product, however, endless opportunities for improvement remain. As the MSP tech community grows, let’s be intentional in building an open, vibrant and supportive community that continues to thrive well into the future.

Let’s experiment with new ideas and work together to scale the power of the tech community.

About Make It. MSP:
The Make It. MSP Tech Team is a cross-sector group of individuals from Fortune 500 companies to community foundations, local governments, nonprofits, and professional associations who are dedicated to making Minneapolis-St. Paul the best place for people to come, stay and thrive. The purpose of this work is to improve the net migration of skilled technology talent to the MSP region. In pursuit of this purpose, we support and invest in solutions with the potential to attract, retain or develop technologists in our community.

The Lean Startup, Human Centered Design, Design Thinking, Rapid Prototyping, and Dynamic Equity are all great buzzwords but what do they actually mean in practice?

A year ago we set out on a quest to test these ideas and demonstrate how they can lead to truly unexpected places.

Join us on our journey in creating a wizard staff that actually does wizard things (like shoot fog and fire). See them in action at www.magicwizardstaff.com

Act 1: How to fail at killing your darling.

Act 2: People power and unlocking potential with dynamic equity.

Act 3: A whole new world: lean digital marketing and micro manufacturing.

Come learn how to use OpenStreetMap, the free, wiki-style map of the world!

You've seen OpenStreetMap data in popular places like Foursquare, craigslist, Apple Maps, and Flickr, now come learn how the data behind these maps gets made. Audience participation is strongly encouraged: bring your laptop and we'll get you mapping in no time.

Don't worry, if you can't make this talk, check out an upcoming Meetup on May 8th and consider going to the annual conference in Detroit in October.

We did this session last year and it was very popular - with a very diverse crowd. We had people just stepping into test automation and other with many years of experience.

We'll keep the discussion open and flexible.

The main focus will be test automation frameworks using java, selenium and cucumber. We could follow tangents into using Spring, reporting, Testing APIs, AWS, testing micro-services and more ...

Selenium WebDriver:

Selenium is a portable software-testing framework for web applications. Selenium WebDriver accepts commands and sends them to a browser. This is implemented through a browser-specific browser driver, which sends commands to a browser, and retrieves results.

Also worth noting - Selenium is months away from becoming a W3C specification for browser automation, based on the Open Source WebDriver.

Cucumber:

Cucumber is a tool based on Behavior Driven Development (BDD) framework which is used to write acceptance tests. It allows automation of functional validation in easily readable and understandable format (like plain English) to Business Analysts, Developers, Testers, etc.

Cucumber feature files can serve as a good document for all. There are many other tools like JBehave which also support BDD framework. Initially, Cucumber was implemented in Ruby and then extended to Java framework. Both the tools support native JUnit.

Peace &Love Chris

Minneapolis is home to a remarkable collection of agencies specializing in marketing, advertising, design, and technology. One thing all these agencies have in common is that they make connections. Connections between businesses and consumers, people and products, old and new, ideas and hungry minds.

Minneapolis was also recently ranked as the #3 city for startups link, beating out cities such as San Jose, Seattle, and Boston.

How can this vibrant agency community and the thriving start-up community help each other — join forces to make things neither could make alone? How can we partner to bring exciting new ideas and opportunities to the business community or directly to market? How can the Twin Cities create its own brand of start-up culture and find unique success?

Over the course of this session, the panel will conduct an open forum on these and other ideas about how technology and creativity are conspiring to change the world through partnership. Together Sapient and Fallon represent the leading edge in idea-focused agencies leveraging technology and creativity to benefit our clients in healthcare, financial services, commodities, consumer packaged goods, automotive and more.

But what opportunities lie undiscovered and how can we conquer them together? Maybe only you know.

Signal your interest on this page and then join us Saturday, April 14th at the Best Buy Headquarters in Richfield, MN.

Tax Talk Totally inTended To unTangle Tax reform for Tech Titans

Post-Tax Reform opportunities and pitfalls for tech companies, their owners and individuals. Starting with a poll of the room for areas of interest and we can focus attention thereon.

-individuals -entities -international -entity structuring -R&D -strategic planning

Teams and organizations are trying every day to build the next best thing, or just keep their current products afloat.

How do we know that we are building the right thing?
Many times we don't, but if teams are delivering value consistently, the right thing seems closer to us.

What is value?
I will share some things we have to measure this, but this is something I would like to get input from others on, as it is a very hard thing to define for many organizations.

Let's get together to talk about consistently delivering value and how sometimes the process can get in the way.

We will leave time at the end to hear from others and get some conversations going

Alternative, non-click baitey title: Adventures in App Pricing :)

Over the seven years I've been developing Android Apps I've done numerous experiments with app pricing models and I want to share my thoughts. We'll talk about the evolution of pricing options and I'll bring out a bunch of data I've collected over the years. This will be an extended version of my GDG talk last August (with more data!)

Also, I wasn't kidding about the one neat trick to make more money with little effort, we'll talk about how two of my apps made 60%+ increased revenue with no functional changes.

Topics * Freemium * Pricing levels * Subscriptions

As an entrepreneur, you build three things -- the product, the sales machine, and the company. The Building for scale session will focus on developing the sales machine which takes you from ideation to scale.

A sales machine built in the right way makes your company ready for growth, and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, done wrong you never get to product market fit, you burn through cash and die.

Additionally, in this session, we will discuss the sales learning curve process and sequence, sales-ready products, product superpowers and why it is vital to identify them, as well as understand how you work your way through the Gap Startup Stage, which is the time between customer development and scale. Moreover, we’ll discuss how to manage investor expectations and resources, and most importantly, build a system that will give you the right levers to pull to grow your company.

Key topic points

• The gap stage and why it matters in the startup’s life cycle • Getting to product market fit and signposts that show that you are reaching it • The importance of the Sales Learning Curve and how adhering to it will save you cash, help you better communicate with your investors, partners, and team • Your product’s Superpowers and why understanding what they are and how to use them to establish a sales-ready product • Developing a sales-ready product and why it matters • Consistency and repeatability - the lifeblood of a successful sales machine

Your organization has a responsibility to prepare to respond to physical attacks, acts of nature, and other dangers. This isn't just about hiring a guard to stand at the door. Every organization should learn how to recognize and respond to threats to its employees and visitors, even if you aren't open to the public.

We'll talk about:

Emergency Notification (way to go, Hawaii...)

Active Shooters

Risk Assessments (yes Houston, you CAN foresee six feet of water)

Q/A

LinkedIn is by far the #1 B2B social media platform and it’s been that way for a very long time. In 2014, LinkedIn introduced Sales Navigator, a premium add-on for sales reps, entrepreneurs, marketers and revenue producers. It took LinkedIn to a whole new level.

IF you care a great deal about sales and marketing, you should attend this session and see what LinkedIn Sales Navigator can do for you. This is your golden opportunity to learn more about LinkedIn Sales Navigator - for free.

Attendees will learn how to:

♦ Upgrade to LinkedIn Sales Navigator

♦ Attract inbound business with simple profile tweaks and settings

♦ Find your top targets using the 29 Sales Navigator filters

♦ Create Lead and Account lists using Sales Navigator

♦ Engage top targets in a systematic way called “campaigns”

♦ Manage it all using simple, free tools

NOTE - This session is NOT for LinkedIn beginners. It is an intermediate to advanced class for experienced LinkedIn users and Sales Navigator users (ALL levels).

Attendees will also receive links to 3 helpful LinkedIn InfoGuides for Profiles, Sales Navigator and Campaigns (4-page PDF’s).