[ { "id": 1326, "participant_id": 2428, "presenter_name": "Maria Ploessl", "presenter_bio": "Maria Ploessl serves as the first Executive Director of Minnestar, a nonprofit organization committed to building, nurturing and engaging those interested in technology through meaningful connection. In her role, she works to promote the strategic vision and growth of the organization, while developing events and experiences that bring the MN tech community together.\n\n**Links:**\n\n- Twitter: @MariaPloessl ", "session_title": "Big Orange Dance Machine", "summary": null, "description": "Built by a team at the Minnesota Children's Museum, the Big Orange Dance Machine is a traffic message trailer that’s been converted into an interactive dance experience. People use foot pedals to pick a series of dance moves and then join an animated character in performing a dance.\r\n\r\nWhy Did It Get Built?\r\n\r\nWhy not? Dancing is fun. Play is fun. And play helps. Play sparks joy. Play builds brains and bodies. Play reduces the negative effects of stress.\r\n\r\nThe Big Orange Dance Machine will greet people as they arrive in the parking ramp on their way to the north building entrance. Learn more about the Big Orange Dance Machine at https://mcm.org/big-orange-dance-machine/.", "room_name": null, "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 09:20:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Development", "Other", "Design", "Hardware" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 5, "created_at": "2022-06-03 21:06:56 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:25:14 UTC" }, { "id": 1325, "participant_id": 2428, "presenter_name": "Maria Ploessl", "presenter_bio": "Maria Ploessl serves as the first Executive Director of Minnestar, a nonprofit organization committed to building, nurturing and engaging those interested in technology through meaningful connection. In her role, she works to promote the strategic vision and growth of the organization, while developing events and experiences that bring the MN tech community together.\n\n**Links:**\n\n- Twitter: @MariaPloessl ", "session_title": "\"Conversation, Connection, and Community – from the Hashtag to BarCamps\" - A Conversation With Chris Messina & Ben Edwards", "summary": null, "description": "If you have never been to Minnebar before, one of the things we do to kick off our day is called Sesssion 0. All other sessions throughout the day are a break-out or ‘choose your own adventure’ style. Session 0 is a little different. We start our day together with a dynamic technology community leader, and this year we are honored to be joined by our co-founder Ben Edwards and Chris Messina – best known as the inventor of the hashtag, and co-founder of the very first BarCamp.\r\n\r\nHere is a little about Chris (in his own words):\r\n\r\nI am a Product Lead focused on issuer experience at Republic, an inclusive fundraising platform that is disrupting conventional venture capital.\r\n\r\nI often play product therapist (you can book me via Superpeer!) and help founders and makers nail their launches on Product Hunt.\r\n\r\n🤪 Generally, I try not to take myself too seriously.\r\n\r\n#️⃣ I’m best known for inventing the hashtag, but I’ve also designed products and experiences for Google and Uber, founded startups, and changed the world with the creation of other social innovations, like coworking and BarCamp.\r\n\r\n👔 I am a product designer and have spoken around the world about social technology, product design, synthetic media, founder culture and mental fitness.\r\n\r\n🗣 I have twice spoken at TEDx, and SXSW, Google I/O, Microsoft’s Future Decoded and many other leading conferences. I have been quoted in media outlets like The New York Times, Business Week, LA Times, Washington Post, and Wired. I have also appeared (briefly!) in The Social Dilemma on Netflix, and in books like No Filter by Sarah Frier, and Billion Dollar Loser by Reeves Wiedeman.\r\n\r\nThroughout my career, I have created movements online and off, and acted as catalyst for change in large and small organizations.\r\n\r\nIn 2004, I helped to organize the grassroots movement that propelled Mozilla Firefox to its first 100 million downloads.\r\n\r\nIn 2005, I co-organized the first BarCamp and then popularized the unconference event model to over 350 cities around the world.\r\n\r\nIn 2006, I, along with several friends, opened the first coworking spaces in the world, giving rise to a global movement.\r\n\r\nThen in 2007, I invented the hashtag, changing the social media landscape forever by providing a means to galvanize popular social movements.\r\n", "room_name": null, "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 08:45:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Development", "Other", "Design", "Hardware", "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 36, "created_at": "2022-06-02 03:24:33 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-02 14:07:28 UTC" }, { "id": 1324, "participant_id": 2428, "presenter_name": "Maria Ploessl", "presenter_bio": "Maria Ploessl serves as the first Executive Director of Minnestar, a nonprofit organization committed to building, nurturing and engaging those interested in technology through meaningful connection. In her role, she works to promote the strategic vision and growth of the organization, while developing events and experiences that bring the MN tech community together.\n\n**Links:**\n\n- Twitter: @MariaPloessl ", "session_title": "Carbon Origins - Skippy the Robot", "summary": null, "description": "Meet Skippy at Minnebar!\r\n\r\nSkippy is your helpful neighborhood delivery robot. Skippy will be traversing Minnebar delivering treats, snacks and swag - watch them in action in our gaming arcade all day long!\r\n\r\nAbout Skippy\r\n\r\nSkippy is great at ordering groceries or a restaurant meal from your favorite local spot, and picking it up to deliver right to your doorstep. You can track Skippy and the status of your order every step of the way. Skippy is currently serving customers in select neighborhoods in the Twin Cities.", "room_name": null, "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 09:20:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Development", "Other", "Design", "Hardware" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 7, "created_at": "2022-06-02 02:34:14 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-02 14:09:15 UTC" }, { "id": 1323, "participant_id": 2428, "presenter_name": "Maria Ploessl", "presenter_bio": "Maria Ploessl serves as the first Executive Director of Minnestar, a nonprofit organization committed to building, nurturing and engaging those interested in technology through meaningful connection. In her role, she works to promote the strategic vision and growth of the organization, while developing events and experiences that bring the MN tech community together.\n\n**Links:**\n\n- Twitter: @MariaPloessl ", "session_title": "The SIMULACRA Metaverse and AR Experience | By REM5 STUDIOS", "summary": null, "description": "Interested in Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality? We've got just the immersive experience for you.\r\n\r\nNew challenges often lead to new opportunities so the local team at REM5 rapidly accelerated their development in \"WebXR\" - immersive, social, virtual spaces that you can experience right from an internet browser on either a computer or VR headset - to make the space as accessible as possible.\r\n\r\nJoin the fun - see you there!\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAbout REM5\r\n\r\nREM5 is a full service, vertically integrated VR company. Founded in 2017, REM5 operates a flagship entertainment and event space in St. Louis Park, Minnesota that serves over 10,000 guests a year. REM5's impact driven arm, REM5 For Good, is a global leader in using VR to enhance K-12 education and social equity initiatives. REM5 Studios is a digital immersive experience design studio.", "room_name": null, "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 09:20:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Development", "Other", "Design", "Hardware" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 10, "created_at": "2022-06-02 02:31:08 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-02 14:09:04 UTC" }, { "id": 1322, "participant_id": 2428, "presenter_name": "Maria Ploessl", "presenter_bio": "Maria Ploessl serves as the first Executive Director of Minnestar, a nonprofit organization committed to building, nurturing and engaging those interested in technology through meaningful connection. In her role, she works to promote the strategic vision and growth of the organization, while developing events and experiences that bring the MN tech community together.\n\n**Links:**\n\n- Twitter: @MariaPloessl ", "session_title": "Mega Minne Multi Indie Mini Arcade", "summary": null, "description": "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?\r\n\r\nYou would demand PROOF, as is your right.\r\n\r\nMega Minne Multi Indie Mini Arcade is here to provide you so much proof that you are like \"Okay, okay, I get it. Enough already.\"\r\n\r\nWe got:\r\n\r\n💪 2 big screen TVs running a selection of locally made games\r\n\r\n💪 This thing's going all day long\r\n\r\n💪 In the main hallway area of Minnebar\r\n\r\n\r\nSee you at the arcade!", "room_name": null, "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 09:20:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Development", "Other", "Design" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 10, "created_at": "2022-06-02 02:26:53 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-02 14:08:59 UTC" }, { "id": 1321, "participant_id": 51, "presenter_name": "Bill Bushey", "presenter_bio": "\n\n**Links:**\n\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/wbushey)", "session_title": "When We All Went Remote", "summary": null, "description": "Remote work has been a part of software development jobs for decades, even while most of us worked primarily in offices. Then COVID came, and forced most of us into full-time remote overnight. What has it been like to suddenly go from a mostly in person work culture to a fully remote one? What do we like about remote work? What do we miss about being in person? What have we learned about collaboration in the last 2 years?\r\n\r\nJoin us as we talk about the remote work transformation that touched every company in the software industry. We'll share our experience of this transformation at [Granicus](https://granicus.com), and invite you to do the same!", "room_name": "Nokomis", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 09:25:00 -0500", "level_name": "Beginner", "categories": [ "Development" ], "other_presenter_names": [ "Kristi Roby", "Nawid Ayobi" ], "other_presenter_ids": [ 4456, 4494 ], "attendance_count": 20, "created_at": "2022-05-31 22:04:17 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1320, "participant_id": 4452, "presenter_name": "Amogha Srirangarajan", "presenter_bio": "Amogha is a serial entrepreneur with a deep passion for virtual reality, robotics and space exploration. He has developed hundreds of robots ranging from flame-throwing battle bots to Lunar excavation rovers, he has launched 28 suborbital rockets, and developed state of the art virtual reality technologies. Amogha also played a key role in developing VR hardware for The VOID and Disney. At Carbon Origins Inc., Amogha leads a team of extraordinary engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs on a mission to “Make Robots Commonplace.”\n\n**Links:**\n\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/CarbonDude)\n- Twitter: @Amogha_IO", "session_title": "The Future of Work in VR", "summary": null, "description": "Working from home during the pandemic has changed the way companies think about team collaboration, building community, and the digital tools we use to connect. One tool approaching a tipping point is Virtual Reality (VR). Join this session to learn how local startup Carbon Origins is using VR and robotics to build a virtual gig economy, supercharge safety and training, and change the future of \"labor.\"", "room_name": "Proverb-Edison", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 13:00:00 -0500", "level_name": "Intermediate", "categories": [ "Other", "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 19, "created_at": "2022-05-31 15:49:38 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1318, "participant_id": 208, "presenter_name": "Paul DeBettignies", "presenter_bio": "Paul DeBettignies is the Founder of Launch Hiring and is better known as “Minnesota Headhunter.” Recognized as a Talent Leader, for 25+ years Paul has sat at the intersection of talent advisory and talent strategy building software, tech, product and digital teams with startups and tech companies throughout the country with a focus on Minnesota and the Midwest while creating recruiting strategies for Fortune 500 clients.\r\n\r\nHe is a regional and national writer speaker, trainer, subject matter expert and trusted media source on recruiter, HR, career, job search, networking and social media topics.\r\n\r\nBorn and raised in Minneapolis, Paul despises bios and does not take himself as serious as this all sounds. He loves sunsets, fishing, gardening and still believes that one day the Gophers will go to the Rose Bowl.\r\n\r\nStay in contact with him by clicking: [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mnheadhunter) | [@MNHeadhunter](https://twitter.com/mnheadhunter) | [Minnesota Headhunter Blog](http://www.mnheadhunter.com)\r\n", "session_title": "Recruiting 2022: Boom and Bust", "summary": null, "description": "Building, growing and sustaining teams has been and continues to be an “interesting” ride… flashback to recent summers:\r\n\r\n•\t2019 “War for Talent”\r\n\r\n•\t2020 “Summer of COVID”\r\n\r\n•\t2021 “Great Resignation”\r\n\r\n•\t2022 “Great Resignation” + “Great Hiring Freeze” = “Great Attraction and/or Bust”\r\n\r\nWhether recruiting in Minnesota, Midwest and/or remote A LOT has changed the past years. The question is, have you? \r\n\r\nMy view is most companies have not changed with the times and then wonder why they can’t find who they are looking for. And worse, for a time and for some still, can’t retain their current teammates.\r\n\r\nSo, you’re wondering… now what? What can, should we be doing?\r\n\r\nHere the topics you need to be aware of and I'll have a list of \"to do's\":\r\n\r\n•\tEmployer branding (telling your story)\r\n\r\n•\tCareer page\r\n\r\n•\tJob descriptions\r\n\r\n•\tHiring remote teams\r\n\r\n•\tCandidate experience\r\n\r\n•\tSalaries including remote\r\n\r\nYour questions and participation are requested\r\n", "room_name": "Minnetonka", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 14:50:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 33, "created_at": "2022-05-29 20:29:33 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1317, "participant_id": 323, "presenter_name": "Jenna Pederson", "presenter_bio": "https://www.jennapederson.com\n\n**Links:**\n\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/jennapederson)\n- Twitter: @jennapederson", "session_title": "State of Minnestar", "summary": null, "description": "Join members of the Minnestar Board of Directors and the Executive Director for a conversation about Minnestar and our future. This is an opportunity for you, members of the community, to share your feedback and ideas to influence Minnestar.", "room_name": "Harriet", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 11:15:00 -0500", "level_name": "Beginner", "categories": [ "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 24, "created_at": "2022-05-29 15:37:27 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1316, "participant_id": 208, "presenter_name": "Paul DeBettignies", "presenter_bio": "Paul DeBettignies is the Founder of Launch Hiring and is better known as “Minnesota Headhunter.” Recognized as a Talent Leader, for 25+ years Paul has sat at the intersection of talent advisory and talent strategy building software, tech, product and digital teams with startups and tech companies throughout the country with a focus on Minnesota and the Midwest while creating recruiting strategies for Fortune 500 clients.\r\n\r\nHe is a regional and national writer speaker, trainer, subject matter expert and trusted media source on recruiter, HR, career, job search, networking and social media topics.\r\n\r\nBorn and raised in Minneapolis, Paul despises bios and does not take himself as serious as this all sounds. He loves sunsets, fishing, gardening and still believes that one day the Gophers will go to the Rose Bowl.\r\n\r\nStay in contact with him by clicking: [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mnheadhunter) | [@MNHeadhunter](https://twitter.com/mnheadhunter) | [Minnesota Headhunter Blog](http://www.mnheadhunter.com)\r\n", "session_title": "Managing Your IT Career v13 – (Why do recruiters suck so bad?)", "summary": null, "description": "A decade plus doing this presentation and this may be the most important one I have done. We are going to cover a lot of ground. I’ll start with the most frequent conversations I have had the past couple of months including:\r\n\r\n•\tIf, how will West Coast tech company hiring freezes and layoffs impact Midwest tech pros?\r\n\r\n•\tAnd the follow up topic, if an economic slowdown or recession is realized… how does that change things?\r\n\r\n•\tHave we hit salary peaks?\r\n\r\n•\tHow are remote salaries impacting MN roles, salaries?\r\n\r\n•\tWhat are the hiring trends in Minnesota, Midwest and remote roles?\r\n\r\nThat’s where we’ll start.\r\n\r\nPlease bring your questions, thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\nSend them ahead if you like to be sure we get to them => paul@mnheadhunter.com \r\n\r\nThis will be a laid back, casual, engaging conversation.\r\n\r\nThe current over/under on the number of times I say “sucks” is 6.5 😊\r\n", "room_name": "Theater", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 10:20:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 41, "created_at": "2022-05-29 14:28:44 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1315, "participant_id": 4444, "presenter_name": "Ryan Dolan", "presenter_bio": "Ryan is a senior UMN student studying computer science and linguistics. He is currently working on a thesis about using what linguists have learned about mereology and noun classifications to create more robust NLP applications.", "session_title": "Applications of Formal Semantics in NLP", "summary": null, "description": "Natural Language Processing (NLP) has proven itself to be an essential component of intelligent systems design over the past couple of decades. Whether it's autofill in your favorite word processor or search engine, language translation with Google Translate or DeepL, or virtual assistants such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Home, NLP is nearly everywhere, and is allowing us to get computers to speak our language instead of the other way around.\r\n\r\nThe majority of NLP tasks, especially simple ones, can be accomplished using statistical methods and traditional machine learning techniques without the need of doing any deep linguistic analysis. However, as tasks become increasingly complex, e.g. chatbots and conversational AI, we may no longer have the privilege of ignoring more thorough considerations of how language actually works. \r\n\r\nIn this session, I will be talking about some common problems which we face when working with NLP, and then consider some applications of formal semantics as studied by linguists in developing more capable NLP applications.", "room_name": "Zeke Landres", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 13:55:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Other", "Design" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 10, "created_at": "2022-05-28 04:59:00 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1313, "participant_id": 2052, "presenter_name": "Vijendra Agarwal", "presenter_bio": "Vijendra, a physicist, and his spouse Indu, a physician, born and educated in India, call Twin Cities their home for nearly 17 years. Starting a non-profit was their calling to give back to society and connecting homeland with the adopted land. Their respective professions guided the choice of education and health as Vidya Gyan’s focus. They will share the passion, experiences, challenges, and opportunities of their journey.", "session_title": "MAKING OUR \"ONE WORLD\" BETTER", "summary": null, "description": "\r\nAncient Indian philosophy, “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (the World is One Family)” is becoming a reality with technology bridging the geographical distance. As citizens of “One World,” we were inspired to create better learning opportunities for underprivileged children, particularly girls, in India and engage the local youth in creative ways. Therefore, we founded a nonprofit, Vidya Gyan (Vidya is education and Gyan means knowledge) aimed at improving education and health because ‘Every Child Matters.\r\n\r\nWe will discuss a couple of examples geared to rekindle the spirit of giving, sharing, and learning about different cultures. A project launched in 2019, “Bridging the Cultural Gap” was aimed at exchanging ‘handwritten’ letters between school children here and in rural India. It was also meant to promote and preserve the art and skills of writing by hand which otherwise is becoming extinct due to the pervasive use of technology.\r\n\r\nAnother initiative, ‘Scholars to Schoolers’ came about because of the pandemic when the schools suddenly closed leaving the learning void for many. The Scholars (local high schoolers) used Zoom and offered virtual classes to elementary to middle-grade children (the Schoolers). The Scholars volunteered, shared their knowledge, and raised funds to support children’s education in India. What an awesome opportunity for the youth-to-youth connection and giving back to society.\r\n\r\nJoin us to explore volunteer and technology-assisted opportunities to bridge the learning gap for the “have-nots” in rural India and make our One World better. \r\n\r\n\r\n", "room_name": "Zeke Landres", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 15:45:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 11, "created_at": "2022-05-27 04:04:35 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1312, "participant_id": 4439, "presenter_name": "Meena Jambulingam", "presenter_bio": "Meena Jambulingam is a technology leader with more than two decades of experience in retail, eCommerce, and healthcare. She’s had the opportunity to shape enterprise strategies, drive technology transformation, and deliver highly scalable data platforms for large organizations along the way. Meena is passionate about building diverse teams and giving back to the tech community wherever she can. At Chewy, she is an active member of the Women’s Advancement and Advocacy Group, a Team Member Resource Group for Women and Allies. Meena shares her home with her husband, two rescue dogs, and two rescue cats.\n\n**Links:**\n\n- Twitter: @IamMeenaJ", "session_title": "Women in Tech: How to Ally", "summary": null, "description": "Almost every organization has initiatives that promote Women in Technology, and DEI broadly. Over the course of her career, Meena has had the pleasure of both participating in and leading these initiatives. She also has decades of lived experience as a woman trying to succeed in technology, who has benefited from the advocacy and counsel of allies along the way. In this interactive talk, she reflects on her personal observations about allyship and some effective tips for those seeking to advance women in technology. This talk is applicable to everyone who works with women (and other minorities), regardless of whether they are individual contributors or people leaders.", "room_name": "Theater", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 13:00:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 36, "created_at": "2022-05-26 20:34:56 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1311, "participant_id": 4437, "presenter_name": "Alex Bangs", "presenter_bio": "Alex Bangs is a recent transplant to the Twin Cities after spending over two decades in Silicon Valley. He is Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer for a new digital health startup, and advisor to multiple startups in healthcare and life sciences including software, devices, diagnostics, and therapeutics. Previously, he has been a company founder, and the CTO/CIO for three startups involved in life sciences and healthcare. He has developed systems including a simulation platform for pharmaceutical R&D, an analytics platform for healthcare providers, an app for people living with rheumatoid arthritis, and a data science and modeling organization focused on fighting infectious disease. Before getting into healthcare, he developed software for analytical decision-making and robotics, including the world’s first robot bartender.\r\n\r\n**Links:**\r\n\r\n- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexbangs/)", "session_title": "A Series of Irrational Acts - Lessons Learned from Three Silicon Valley Startups", "summary": null, "description": "Joining a startup is in many ways an irrational act - and yet it can be a very rewarding experience. Alex Bangs has been a founder and CTO/CIO across three Silicon Valley startups. In this session, he’ll discuss lessons learned from the rollercoaster ride of creating and growing startups, and tips for people who are thinking of joining or founding a startup. Topics will include venture funding and burn rates, timing and luck, nurturing a mission-driven culture, learning and the pit of success, scaling yourself, having a life, and engaging with the community.", "room_name": "Minnetonka", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 15:45:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 32, "created_at": "2022-05-26 19:32:23 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1310, "participant_id": 2538, "presenter_name": "Andy Krueger", "presenter_bio": "Principal Product Designer at Datasite. President of UXPA-MN. Big nerd.", "session_title": "Keep UX Design Boring", "summary": null, "description": "Splashy visual designs and sexy product launches get attention, but a lot of the best UX contributions fly under the radar. Let's celebrate the unglamorous work that nevertheless improves people's lives, contributes to the bottom line, and is actually within reach for teams of all sizes. I'll share stories about projects where:\r\n\r\n* We gave users what they wanted instead of what they asked for (and saved months of development time)\r\n* A small change made a big difference (and $300,000,000 of revenue in the first year)\r\n* We made something new by keeping it the same (and everyone loved it)", "room_name": "Nokomis", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 13:55:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Design" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 33, "created_at": "2022-05-25 22:47:29 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1309, "participant_id": 4431, "presenter_name": "Ralph Asher", "presenter_bio": "Ralph Asher is the founder of Data Driven Supply Chain LLC, a Twin Cities-based consulting firm that uses data science and AI to evaluate, design, and optimize supply chains. (www.datadrivensupplychain.com) \r\n\r\nPrior to founding Data Driven Supply Chain, Ralph worked as an Operations Research Scientist in corporate supply chain functions for 8 years at Target, designing e-commerce supply chain networks, and at General Mills, designing warehousing networks. \r\n\r\nRalph has used R for supply chain analytics for a decade and can be reached at ralph@datadrivensupplychain.com or via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphasher/\n\n**Links:**\n\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/datadrivensupplychain)", "session_title": "Supply Chain Network Modeling - What Is It?", "summary": null, "description": "COVID-19 has moved supply chain management from the back office to front-page news. And along with it, the discipline of supply chain design – the strategic evaluation of deciding where to locate manufacturing sites, warehouses, and other supply chain facilities – has gone from a little-known niche to a C-suite priority.\r\n\r\nIn this talk, I will introduce the ways that analytics is transforming supply chain management, and how open-source languages like R and Python are changing the paradigm of supply chain analytics. I will give a short example of how a manufacturer can design its supply chain network and understand tradeoffs. This example will be drawn directly from my experience in the corporate world and my consulting business.\r\n\r\nI will also briefly discuss the mathematics behind supply chain network design - *mathematical optimization* and *operations research*.", "room_name": "Challenge", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 09:25:00 -0500", "level_name": "Beginner", "categories": [ "Development", "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 13, "created_at": "2022-05-24 14:12:50 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1308, "participant_id": 4414, "presenter_name": "Kyle Drake", "presenter_bio": null, "session_title": "Neocities: 9 years of Geocities 2.0", "summary": null, "description": "9 years ago I started Neocities, a web hosting platform designed to give people back their personal homepage and the creativity possible with using the entire browser window, rather than just a tiny text box on an AI driven social network. Since then, we've grown to almost 500,000 sites, 40TB of traffic, 150 million uniques per month and a lot of interesting content!\r\n\r\nIt hasn't been a cakewalk though, and scaling to handle a large amount of users quickly has led to some... interesting tech decisions. I'll go into the details on our unusual tech stack (We run our own anycast CDN with BGP and our own IP addresses, for one weird example), how to deal with spam/abuse, and how to build to build a small, self sustaining business that was bootstrapped by fans and donations from Hacker News readers. We've never taken a penny of VC funding, avoiding the closures and panic acquisitions of our (far better funded) lookalikes. It's changed my beliefs on how to build a successful startup to something far from the mainstream consensus, and I'd love to poison the well a bit on what makes a successful startup strategy (especially with the upcoming credit crunch).\r\n\r\nIf you're thinking about starting a solo startup from scratch, or if you ever plan to host a lot of third party content for other people, or you want to meet one of the few thousand (hundred?) people that know how to run an anycast CDN, don't miss this one.", "room_name": "Zeke Landres", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 14:50:00 -0500", "level_name": "Intermediate", "categories": [ "Startups", "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 15, "created_at": "2022-05-24 12:55:52 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1305, "participant_id": 606, "presenter_name": "Eduardo Drake", "presenter_bio": "Eduardo Drake lives in the Twin Cities as father, artist, tango dancer yogi, patent wizard, and entrepreneur. He’s also founder of Fantastic IP Consulting and The Oneness Company. In both endeavors, he's wholly committed to delivering wisdom, imagination, and enthusiasm. \r\n\r\nAt Fantastic IP (changing to Invenity Law), Eduardo focuses 25+ years of legal wisdom and know-how on multiplying the value of ideas and businesses with patents, trademarks, copyrights, and related licensing and risk mitigation strategies and execution, Prior to founding Fantastic IP in 2011, Eduardo served as a shareholder at national patent powerhouse Schwegman Lundberg, winner of 15 top-ten national rankings for patent quality. He's on a mission to help fired up entrepreneurs change the world--- any way he can. He's also been recognized as an IP SuperLawyer for 8 years. Eduardo believes that the world is better off when more people can share and profit from their creative insights and wants to make it easier for more people to get their ideas into the world.\r\n\r\nThe Oneness Company is a venture founded to proliferate technologies (know-how, mindsets, frameworks, distinctions, etc) that promote human thriving, particularly technologies that multiply human connection, creativity, and celebration-- three evidence-based pathways to greater resilience and energy. Its flagship offering Connectorcise is a 60-minute workout which explores and expands our capacity to silently and verbally navigate the sensory experience of human connection through deeper seeing, listening, and speaking\r\n\r\nEduardo earned an electrical engineering degree from Mississippi State University, a law degree from University of Virginia, and a 200-hour Transformational Coaching and Leadership Training (TCLT) certification from The Circling Institute in San Francisco (led by Guy Sengstock, world renowned founder of Circling, which is sometimes called relational yoga or intersubjective meditation). ", "session_title": "Thru The Looking Glass: How To Create Breakthrough Connections On Zoom And Beyond", "summary": null, "description": "Let's face the facts: Zoom and other forms of video conferencing are here to stay. Forever. Higher bandwidths, sharper images, better audio and video, even 3D is around the corner, as the technology gets better and better. But, what about you? Are you getting better and better at connecting through the medium of zoom? Or are you merely tolerating or complaining about it? Join in this session to learn techniques and distinctions to put you squarely in charge of the quality of the connections you create not only on zoom, but in any human encounter.\r\n\r\n\r\n", "room_name": "Alaska", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 10:20:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 19, "created_at": "2022-05-23 05:10:40 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1304, "participant_id": 182, "presenter_name": "Jeff Lin", "presenter_bio": "I'm the founder of Pennant and Bust Out. I love ice cream.", "session_title": "🚀💰 Airbnb as a Side Hustle", "summary": null, "description": "I've been an Airbnb Superhost for 6+ years. In this talk I will share the lessons I've learned to help you become successful at creating a (mostly) passive revenue stream by hosting guests from around the world.\r\n\r\nBonus lesson: What do you do (and what don't you do) when your guest forgets their cocaine and heroin?\r\n\r\nThis talk is based on the mini-Minnebar talk I gave in the fall of 2021.\r\n\r\n", "room_name": "Alaska", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 13:00:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 24, "created_at": "2022-05-23 04:40:18 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1303, "participant_id": 606, "presenter_name": "Eduardo Drake", "presenter_bio": "Eduardo Drake lives in the Twin Cities as father, artist, tango dancer yogi, patent wizard, and entrepreneur. He’s also founder of Fantastic IP Consulting and The Oneness Company. In both endeavors, he's wholly committed to delivering wisdom, imagination, and enthusiasm. \r\n\r\nAt Fantastic IP (changing to Invenity Law), Eduardo focuses 25+ years of legal wisdom and know-how on multiplying the value of ideas and businesses with patents, trademarks, copyrights, and related licensing and risk mitigation strategies and execution, Prior to founding Fantastic IP in 2011, Eduardo served as a shareholder at national patent powerhouse Schwegman Lundberg, winner of 15 top-ten national rankings for patent quality. He's on a mission to help fired up entrepreneurs change the world--- any way he can. He's also been recognized as an IP SuperLawyer for 8 years. Eduardo believes that the world is better off when more people can share and profit from their creative insights and wants to make it easier for more people to get their ideas into the world.\r\n\r\nThe Oneness Company is a venture founded to proliferate technologies (know-how, mindsets, frameworks, distinctions, etc) that promote human thriving, particularly technologies that multiply human connection, creativity, and celebration-- three evidence-based pathways to greater resilience and energy. Its flagship offering Connectorcise is a 60-minute workout which explores and expands our capacity to silently and verbally navigate the sensory experience of human connection through deeper seeing, listening, and speaking\r\n\r\nEduardo earned an electrical engineering degree from Mississippi State University, a law degree from University of Virginia, and a 200-hour Transformational Coaching and Leadership Training (TCLT) certification from The Circling Institute in San Francisco (led by Guy Sengstock, world renowned founder of Circling, which is sometimes called relational yoga or intersubjective meditation). ", "session_title": "How To Build a BulletProof Provisional Patent Application for Your Startup", "summary": null, "description": "Dear Entrepreneur,\r\nEduardo Drake here. If you're reading this, I love you already, because you've got an idea to make the world a better place. And in this session, I plan to share with you enough knowledge to make it to patent pending by building and filing your own provisional patent application. If you don't know what a provisional is, don't worry I'll explain . For now it's good enough for you to know that by filing one, you'll achieve patent pending and minimize the amount of ammunition that the patent office can use to shoot your idea down. \r\n\r\nIn this fast-paced session, you'll learn the exact key principles of building not just one bulletproof provisional patent application, but as many as you imagination can conjure. You'll receive clear and concrete guidance on:\r\n\r\nPurpose of the Provisional Patent Application;\r\nWhat to include in the application; \r\nWhat to leave out of the application.\r\nHow to write a simple set to patent claims;\r\nHow to incorporate technical content by reference;\r\nHow to strategically use multiple provisional patent applications to optimize your protection.\r\n\r\nIn this session, Eduardo's ultimately committed to distilling 25+ years of legal wisdom into the most relevant and actionable knowledge for building a solid provisional patent application. He'll even take you on a guided tour of one of his own provisional patent applications for the craziest, certified-OMG idea you've ever heard of.\r\n\r\n\r\n", "room_name": "Learn", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 13:00:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 10, "created_at": "2022-05-23 03:50:07 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1302, "participant_id": 3792, "presenter_name": "Tyler Johnson", "presenter_bio": "Tyler is a software developer with Livefront", "session_title": "👋 The Composable Architecture Meet-and-Greet", "summary": null, "description": "State management is one of the most challenging problems when developing a mobile application. The source-of-truth for state can be stored both locally and in the cloud. Plus we need to handle network errors, offline states, and incorrect user input. Your grandpa's architecture patterns (like MVC, MVVM, etc.) are ill-equipped to guide developers to properly manage state in their application.\r\n\r\n[The Composable Architecture (TCA)](https://www.pointfree.co/collections/composable-architecture), was built to solve all of these problems. Let's do a high-level overview of what TCA is and how it works.", "room_name": "Challenge", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 13:00:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Development" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 15, "created_at": "2022-05-22 15:48:01 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1301, "participant_id": 12, "presenter_name": "Mark Gritter", "presenter_bio": "Mark Gritter is a Founding Engineer at ThirdLaw, his fifth startup experience, building monitoring and control for AI systems.\r\n\r\nMark formerly worked at Akita Software and Postman on API observailbity; at HashiCorp on the Vault team; co-founded Tintri, an enterprise storage company that IPOed in 2017; and was a day-one employee at Kealia, a video streaming startup acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2004.\r\n\r\nMark's previous Minnebar presentations have covered topics such as correctness of algorithms, combinatorial auctions, scaling a startup, building a file system, and procedural content generation.\r\n\r\n**Links:**\r\n\r\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/mgritter)\r\n- [Mastodon: @markgritter@mathstodon.xyz](https://mathstodon.xyz/@markgritter)\r\n- [Bluesky: @markgritter.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/markgritter.bsky.social)", "session_title": "Functions are Proofs: an Introduction to the F* Language", "summary": null, "description": "When you're writing a computer program, you're telling the computer what to do. But what if you could also tell it what your code *should* do?\r\n\r\nMany programming languages have types. A compiler (or type-checker) can verify that those types are correct. But what if you could create new types the compiler could check for you? Things like \"a list that contains elements in ascending order\" or \"this graph contains no cycles\" or even \"this integer is the minimum element of a particular list\"!\r\n\r\nF* is a \"proof-oriented programming language\" similar to OCaml, created by Microsoft Research. It has \"dependent types\", which give the flexibility to describe constraints like those above, and uses a SMT solver back-end to help you verify properties about your programs. F* programs will be proofs of correctness--- but they will still be working code! The F* language has been used in practice for verified cryptographic primitives and robust parsers. I'll explain how the language works, show some examples, and demonstrate how to put the Curry-Howard Isomorphism to work for you!\r\n\r\n* [Learn more about F*](https://www.fstar-lang.org/)\r\n* [Advent of Code Solutions in F*](https://github.com/mgritter/aoc-fstar/), as well as [livecoding videos](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVoZsDupSnwHtYDM4VCMG-HD4CGHOoHOP)\r\n", "room_name": "Proverb-Edison", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 15:45:00 -0500", "level_name": "Intermediate", "categories": [ "Development" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 10, "created_at": "2022-05-21 23:50:05 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1299, "participant_id": 122, "presenter_name": "Colin Lee", "presenter_bio": "Colin is an experienced software engineer specializing in Android development. He worked for Mozilla on the Firefox for Android rewrite. He has worked for many successful companies in the past fifteen years, including Amazon, Flipgrid (acquired by Microsoft), Cray, Pearson VUE, and When I Work. He runs the Twin Cities Kotlin User Group in his spare time. He now works full-time for Meetup and enjoys traveling the world during their generous paid time off.\r\n\r\nHe has been programming since he learned BASIC on the TRS-80 computer in his parents' basement at age six. He has been writing Android apps since soon after the first Android phone launched and has done so professionally since the last space shuttle landed. In that time, he's probably been pitched every silly app idea and been offered a percent stake in the zero dollars most actually earned.\n\n**Links:**\n\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/colintheshots)\n- Twitter: @colinmlee", "session_title": "Kotlin Multiplatform @ Meetup: One Year In", "summary": null, "description": "One of my past talks at Minnebar was about using a single codebase with shared Kotlin code for many devices. At the time, I had sample code that worked on Android, web frontend, and iOS, but it was mostly just a demo.\r\n\r\nToday, I have just finished spending the last year of my time working at Meetup on a project that was written using Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile (KMM) for Android and iOS to share logic. All of my cool theory got tested and our code is now running in production. Our Meetup for Organizers app seems fast, stable, and fairly successful.\r\n\r\nWe were able to share a lot of code: including REST, GraphQL, database, keychain and settings management, translated resources, and repository layers.\r\n\r\nNot only was this my first production, work project using KMM, but this was also the first written entirely with the newest declarative UI frameworks for mobile. We used Jetpack Compose and SwiftUI. I even developed a custom Markdown editor in Jetpack Compose code.\r\n\r\nI'd like to walk everyone through our experiences taking the least boring technologies available and dumping them all into one project. What might sound like a recipe for disaster actually worked out okay. But there are some interesting war stories to share!", "room_name": "Proverb-Edison", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 11:15:00 -0500", "level_name": "Beginner", "categories": [ "Development", "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 10, "created_at": "2022-05-20 19:55:41 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1298, "participant_id": 410, "presenter_name": "Dan Frankowski", "presenter_bio": "I have worked at twin cities startups (Net Perceptions, Orasi Medical, code42, Blue Shift Labs), at larger companies (Google, Amazon, Pinterest), and as a fellow in the GroupLens research lab at the University of Minnesota. I was a data scientist at Pinterest for six years (from startup to big). See more at [linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danfrankowski/).", "session_title": "Dabbling in Kaggle: learning machine learning", "summary": null, "description": "I tried a Kaggle machine learning contest (\"Hotel-ID to Combat Human Trafficking 2022\"), and learned some things about Kaggle and modern image recognition technology, including: dominance of CNNs, image augmentation, picking a model (timm, efficientnet, arcface nearest-neighbor classification), and more.\r\n\r\nI'll walk through what Kaggle is, why participate in a Kaggle contest, and a bit about what it's like (including an example notebook). You don't need much AI background, but we will look at some code. If I have time, I'll also present some learnings about image recognition and Kaggle.\r\n\r\nI got as high as #7 on the leaderboard, and finished at #9 (of 83) with an accuracy of 0.554 (of 1.0).\r\n\r\nThere may be people in the room who know more about Kaggle or image classification than me. Time permitting, we can chat and share knowledge.\r\n", "room_name": "Proverb-Edison", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 14:50:00 -0500", "level_name": "Intermediate", "categories": [ "Development" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 16, "created_at": "2022-05-20 16:27:17 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-04 00:23:09 UTC" }, { "id": 1296, "participant_id": 2382, "presenter_name": "Katie Kodes", "presenter_bio": "Once told, \"I've always imagined your brain is shaped like an old-fashioned library card catalog,\" Katie is thrilled by any chance to help others find -- and maintain -- order in their data and tech processes.\r\n\r\n**Links:**\r\n\r\n- [KatieKodes.com blog](https://www.katiekodes.com/)", "session_title": "Words just CAN express how qualified you are! (Cover letter improv)", "summary": null, "description": "You're already awesome -- and sometimes that's easier to realize when you tell someone else. Add some bedazzling with words and you'll positively glitter.\r\n\r\nCover letters provide a special opportunity to feed two birds with one scone -- in convincing someone else how qualified you are, you also convince yourself.\r\n\r\nBring a **job posting** that feels like a stretch and a **willingness to share** your transferable skills aloud.\r\n\r\nWe'll do as many \"cover letter makeovers\" as we can, helping participants see their beautiful selves in the mirror of everyone else's eyes.\r\n\r\nWe'll rewrite insecurities like...\r\n\r\n> \"I don't know what I've done that stands out for this job description -- I'm so new to the field; most of my career has been in retail, folding shirts and standing at a cash register.\"\r\n\r\n...into power paragraphs like...\r\n\r\n> \"Eight years of satisfying clients with tight turnaround times has taught me that process is important, but people are everything. I'm always organizing systems and documenting technology to make sure my ducks are in a row for busy seasons. But the secret sauce to staying on top of everything has been my communication skills -- I take pride in my ability to ensure that anyone seeking help from me feels valuable and trusts that I see their needs.\"\r\n\r\nYou've got this! I can't wait for you to see just how much.\r\n\r\n---\r\n\r\n**[UPDATE: session recap here](https://katiekodes.com/cover-letter-workshop-witconf22/)**", "room_name": "Alaska", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 11:15:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 24, "created_at": "2022-05-20 02:16:15 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-05 02:17:53 UTC" }, { "id": 1294, "participant_id": 911, "presenter_name": "Aaron Hurd", "presenter_bio": "Aaron Hurd is a nationally recognized expert about credit cards, loyalty programs and travel rewards. He has been published by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Rolling Stone and dozens of other outlets. \r\n\r\nIn 2020, he left a corporate job to pursue freelance content creation and now spends most of his time helping people access new travel adventures, discover new places and make better use of personal finance products.\r\n\r\nIn addition to freelance writing, Aaron runs a strategic consultancy where he helps clients reexamine their business processes and learn how to run their businesses better.\r\n\r\nHe is on Twitter at [@aaronmhurd](https://twitter.com/aaronmhurd) and has a [personal website](https://aaronhurd.com/).\n\n**Links:**\n\n- Twitter: @aaronmhurd", "session_title": "Getting Started: Travel ✈️ on the Cheap With Miles and Points", "summary": null, "description": "You probably have seen people traveling the world sipping champagne in airline lounges or enjoying luxury hotels in places like the Maldives. Have you ever wondered how they do it?\r\n\r\nCome find out.\r\n\r\n[Aaron Hurd](https://aaronhurd.com) is an expert in miles, points and loyalty programs who has written hundreds of articles for Forbes, The Points Guy, Rolling Stone, Robb Report and many other publications. He has spent thousands of hours teaching people how to use credit cards and travel rewards to elevate their travel experiences.\r\n\r\nIf you are curious about how travel rewards work, are already playing the game or just want to get more rewards out of your everyday spending, this session is for you. We will cover:\r\n\r\n- What are miles and points?\r\n- Which miles, points and rewards programs are relevant to YOU\r\n- The quickest ways to accumulate miles and points\r\n- How to use use travel perks of credit cards\r\n- Under-appreciated perks of credit cards\r\n- How to identify the credit cards that will be most valuable to you\r\n- YOUR questions\r\n\r\nFeel free to reach out to me prior to the session at aaron[take this out]hurd[at]gmail.com.\r\n", "room_name": "Theater", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 09:25:00 -0500", "level_name": "Beginner", "categories": [ "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 29, "created_at": "2022-05-19 19:40:49 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:33:13 UTC" }, { "id": 1293, "participant_id": 3161, "presenter_name": "Christina Adams", "presenter_bio": "[Christina Adams](https://www.linkedin.com/in/christina-adams-developer/) is a Certified Professional in Web Accessibility from the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP). She is a Digital Accessibility Software Engineer for Siteimprove working on global accessibility initiatives and providing accessible solutions for our customer's digital assets. Her goal is to champion inclusive design and development practices for equitable digital spaces.\n\n**Links:**\n\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/offsetchris)\n- Twitter: @offsetchris", "session_title": "Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA)", "summary": null, "description": "Let's look at what ARIA techniques have to offer developers in creating accessible digital experiences. More importantly we will review what ARIA **does not** do and how semantic HTML is often a better choice. \r\n\r\nFrom very basic roles and properties to complex widget patterns we will look at the fundamentals of ARIA and how you can incorporate these techniques efficiently, effectively, and best of all provide equitable access to your web applications. \r\n", "room_name": "Proverb-Edison", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 09:25:00 -0500", "level_name": "Intermediate", "categories": [ "Development" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 13, "created_at": "2022-05-19 19:16:21 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1291, "participant_id": 423, "presenter_name": "Martin Grider", "presenter_bio": "Martin Grider is a game designer and contract software developer (mostly native iOS). He releases games periodically at [Abstract Puzzle](http://abstractpuzzle.com), and writes about games and game development on his blog at [chesstris.com](http://chesstris.com/).\r\n\r\n**Links:**\r\n\r\n- Mastodon: [@grid@mastodon.gamedev.place](https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@grid)\r\n- GitHub: [github.com/mgrider](https://github.com/mgrider)\r\n- Resume/bibliography: [martingrider.name](http://martingrider.name/)", "session_title": "A play date for Playdate owners, future-owners, playdate-curious, & anyone else who wants to join!", "summary": null, "description": "Let's meetup and talk about all things Playdate!\r\n\r\nThis little handheld gaming device (https://play.date/ for more info) is as capable as it is captivating!\r\n\r\nMartin will give a brief talk about how to develop for the Playdate, and then lead a group discussion where we talk about whatever playdate-related topics the group decides!\r\n\r\nBring your playdate (if you're lucky enough to have one already), and your curiosity!", "room_name": "Alaska", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 09:25:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Development", "Other", "Hardware" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 15, "created_at": "2022-05-18 17:55:00 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1290, "participant_id": 4050, "presenter_name": "Lee Prinkkila", "presenter_bio": "A CPA and strategic finance leader, who files income tax returns, improves systems and processes that facilitate growth and increase wealth. Understands the big tax picture and the brush strokes within it: - the science of finance, and art of deal-making, which enable thought leadership and tactical execution for financial growth. Experienced in diverse enterprises both private and public companies in manufacturing, utilities, technology and service industries.\r\n\r\nLeverages technology to guarantee pertinent data and clear metrics that enhance business decisions and ability to course correct. Adept at managing cash flow, contract negotiations and tax strategies. Past systems implementations include: Microsoft Dynamics (Great Plains), SAP, Oracle, NetSuite and Quickbooks. As an active CPA, remain current on accounting rules and regulations, to include IFRS and China GAAP. \r\n\r\nA collaborative, inquisitive and results-focused leader who builds strong relationships internally and externally that aid communication and teamwork. Seeks inclusive input on critical issues and gains buy-in from action plans to successfully accomplish goals. Coaches team members to build skills and prepare for professional advancement. ", "session_title": "How to do a Startup right from a CPA - TAXES -Company Filing - 1099 and R&D Credits", "summary": null, "description": "This is everything you need to do a startup and I have created an LLC in 24 minutes, opened a bank account in 20 minutes and set up an accounting system in less than an hour.\r\n\r\n If I can do it you can do it. \r\n\r\n1. Tricks to raising funds and investors\r\n2. How to build a multi-win system which investors can give you money and have no risk\r\n3. How to take advantage of corporate structures for little knows tax codes during setup\r\n4. The R&D Tax Credit Fun\r\n5. How to build your organization structure so VC or PE realize you know what you need to do.\r\n6. The six policies your startup needs to have down now\r\n\r\nLASTLY - the biggest fails I have seen in 27 years and see them every year! ", "room_name": "Harriet", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 13:55:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Other", "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 19, "created_at": "2022-05-18 14:56:15 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1289, "participant_id": 2632, "presenter_name": "Joe Morris", "presenter_bio": "\n\n**Links:**\n\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/jmorris644)", "session_title": "Friends and Family vs Angel Investor vs Venture Capital - How do I fund my startup?", "summary": null, "description": "*\tWhen you are a startup looking for funding, which source should you pursue? \r\n\r\n*\tWhen is the right time to seek funding (and which source fits each stage)?\r\n\r\n Idea only, MVP, Beta customers, Paying Customers\r\n\r\n*\tWhat does each source focus on? What are they looking for?\r\n*\tHow much should you be looking to give up at each stage?\r\n\r\n\r\nThese are questions that every entrepreneur asks when looking to fund their company. We can provide insight into each of the funding sources mentioned.\r\n\r\nAlthough we will have a few slides to prompt discussion, this session is meant to be a Q&A session for startups wondering how to fund their company. \r\n \r\nThis session is being hosted by Joe Morris and Peyton Green. Joe is a serial entrepreneur, VP of Investments and Acquisitions at Traction Capital, a member of Gopher Angels, and a private Angel Investor. Peyton is a senior associate at Traction Capital and interfaces with over 30 startups that are looking for funding on a monthly basis. An aspiring founder himself, Peyton has spent the past 3 years entrenched in the Venture and Startup scene learning what works (and doesn’t work) for founders on the capital raise journey.\r\n", "room_name": "Harriet", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 09:25:00 -0500", "level_name": "Beginner", "categories": [ "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 19, "created_at": "2022-05-17 17:46:31 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1288, "participant_id": 4406, "presenter_name": "John Eckhardt", "presenter_bio": "[John Eckhardt](https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-eckhardt-b0271389/) has occupied roles in all levels of the SDLC. He founded [Code Pros](https://codepros.biz) in 2014 to maintain legacy software. He loves business + process + efficiency, and also playing games. Which is unsurprisingly similar.", "session_title": "Radical Financial Transparency in Your Business", "summary": null, "description": "What would happen if you shared the financial data of your company with everybody in it? That thought terrifies many people. But why? Do you really think your teammates would leave if they found out how poorly the company is doing? Are you afraid that your employees would find out that you're making too much money? \r\n\r\nIf you don't share any information, all people can do is *speculate*. And their speculation will always be inaccurate for how your business is truly operating.\r\n\r\nIt's time to stop the speculation and realize the benefits of being an open organization.\r\n\r\nWe'll discuss how sharing financial information can help:\r\n\r\n* Improve inter-company communication\r\n* Lower your stress level\r\n* Make your company more profitable\r\n* Help you grow your business or freelancing \r\n* Build trust\r\n\r\nJohn Eckhardt ([Code Pros](https://codepros.biz)) will you walk through his experiences of opening up the books to his employees. \r\n\r\nWe'll walk through how you can set up an easy-peasy financial report to start your sharing journey. Bring a P&L or list of money you've made and expenses you've had in the last month. (don't worry! You won't have to share with anybody who's at this talk!)", "room_name": "Challenge", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 14:50:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Other", "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 11, "created_at": "2022-05-17 16:31:45 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1287, "participant_id": 2908, "presenter_name": "Ahnaf Prio", "presenter_bio": "Ahnaf Prio is a Senior Engineering Manager at Best Buy, where he leads the agentic commerce team. He is the former CTO of Invive.io, a biotech startup that explored innovation in the life insurance space. He previously served as CTO of Tavolo, a restaurant technology company recognized as Emerging Startup of the Year in Minnesota (2021). He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the University of Minnesota Morris Alumni Association and on the Neighborhood Sales Tax Revitalization Board for the City of Saint Paul.", "session_title": "Delivering features: 10 Reasons why you should write that test! ⚙️ 👾 ", "summary": null, "description": "Let's be honest, most of us would not write tests if we did not have to. Does anyone truly enjoy writing them? You know what? I'll just admit it: I HATE IT! However, in my little career working for a fortune 500 company and an emerging startup: I have to admit tests have made my life so much easier! I find myself being able to rewrite the entire codebase (with a different design pattern, framework or program language) and knowing that my tests are there to validate my work I can soundly sleep at night merging and deploying that horrific PR into the master branch knowing nothing is broken. \r\n\r\nIn summary, this is going to be a talk from a developer who hates tests advocating for writing them. Pretty contradictory and hypocritical? Yeah I know.. that's why its not going to be boring .. DUH! 😜\r\n", "room_name": "Theater", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 14:50:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Development", "Other", "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 31, "created_at": "2022-05-17 03:20:12 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1286, "participant_id": 4405, "presenter_name": "Ty Hitzeman", "presenter_bio": "Last year I quit my FT job to build a [calendar app](https://compasscalendar.app) that helps you stop wasting your time. I've talked to 100+ people about their time management challenges since then. My session is based on what I've learned from those conversations.\n\n**Links:**\n\n- Twitter: @TyHitzeman", "session_title": "Diagnose & Cure Your Procrastination", "summary": null, "description": "You have big ambitions for your coding project on Saturday. But when it's time to fire up your IDE and start, you just scroll Instagram instead.\r\n\r\nYou want to hit your work deadline, but you keep getting distracted by small tasks that don't matter. \r\n\r\nYou keep saying how much you'd love to take a trip to Japan. But it's been 5 years since you've had the idea, and you still haven't done anything about it.\r\n\r\nYou procrastinate. \r\n\r\nYou've tried all the things that your favorite productivity guru recommended: pomodoros, GTD, waking up at 5am, time blocking, deep work. They don't stick, because they treat the symptoms of your procrastination, not the root cause. \r\n\r\n----\r\n\r\nWhat's the root cause? It depends. But it has to do with your identity, fears, and ego. Using positive psychology, mindfulness, and one piece of paper, I'll help you find out for yourself why it's been so hard to follow through on your goals. \r\n\r\nHere's how the session is structured:\r\n1. Learn - a new mental model for procrastination\r\n2. Apply - the model & start to understand the root cause of your procrastination\r\n3. Personalize - your productivity system based on what you learned\r\n4. Discuss - share what you think & ask questions\r\n\r\n----\r\n\r\nPS. Bring a pen.\r\n\r\n----\r\n", "room_name": "Minnetonka", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 13:55:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 39, "created_at": "2022-05-16 23:04:27 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1285, "participant_id": 815, "presenter_name": "Steven Clift", "presenter_bio": "[Steven Clift](https://linkedin.com/in/netclift) (LinkedIn) is the CEO of GoodCarts, a startup building a network of hundreds (thus far) of purpose-driven ecommerce brands that cross-promote each other: [GoodCarts.co](https://goodcarts.co)\r\n\r\nHe is the founder of 1 Radio News - a highly rated world radio news app and the TV News app with over 2 million downloads on Google Play.\r\n\r\nHe is also a founder of E-Democracy.org - the world's first election information website back in 1994.\r\n\r\nIn 2013, Clift was recognized by the White House as a Champion of Change for Open Government.\n\n**Links:**\n\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/netclift)\n- Twitter: @democracy", "session_title": "Minnesota and the Shopify Ecommerce Ecosystem", "summary": null, "description": "A meetup style networking session among those building Shopify apps and those hosting their ecommerce stores on Shopify.\r\n\r\nEveryone is invited to introduce their ecommerce services, apps, and stores as well as give shout out on needs and offers in this space.\r\n\r\nTime willing, a short demo on the Shopify Partners featured https://GoodCarts.co app will be shared toward the end.", "room_name": "Zeke Landres", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 11:15:00 -0500", "level_name": "Intermediate", "categories": [ "Development", "Other", "Design", "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 10, "created_at": "2022-05-16 22:02:45 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1284, "participant_id": 214, "presenter_name": "Anna Bliss", "presenter_bio": "Anna Bliss is a Product Manager, podcaster, and community leader. Anna has worked in the tech arena for over 15 years taking a circuitous route to product management with roles ranging from business analyst to technical writer to project coordinator. These varied roles, along with some entirely unrelated to software development (such as theatrical scenic design) have built up a unique skill set that she wasn’t entirely sure how to integrate until she stumbled on product management. A liberal arts major at heart, Anna loves the interdisciplinary nature of the technology world. She is co-founder of the Twin Cities Product Community and co-host of the Women in Tech Twin Cities podcast.\n\n**Links:**\n\n- Twitter: @akbliss", "session_title": "Estate Planning for Your Product", "summary": null, "description": "We all know that eventually our products will be put to rest, but we don't like to talk about it much. It's far more exciting to think about the early days of our product's life when it's learning to walk, learning new words, maybe reading its first book. But what about the end of life? What happens then? Have you planned (or even thought) about that? No one wants your product to go to probate - so how can you start planning now for that eventual end? Do you want to donate vital organs so other products may use them? Do you need to ensure that a child of your product can continue living in your framework? Who gets the proceeds of your product estate - or do you leave it all to the dog?... And how can you use that thought process now to shape your product's life and vision?", "room_name": "Zeke Landres", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 10:20:00 -0500", "level_name": "Intermediate", "categories": [ "Development", "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 13, "created_at": "2022-05-16 18:22:23 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1283, "participant_id": 2468, "presenter_name": "Rama Prasad", "presenter_bio": null, "session_title": "Audio through jewelry - bluetooth music earrings", "summary": null, "description": "Rama will discuss her journey taking a hardware idea to shelf right here in Minneapolis through boot strapping, sweat equity, and University projects.\r\n\r\n_________________________________________________________________________________________________________\r\n\r\nTeqnizan bluetooth music earrings developed here in Minneapolis and now ready for sale via our website - delivers a safer, stay put device that sounds great for music and is super comfortable to wear. \r\n\r\nThe music earrings are safer because the ear is not blocked by the earbud, where even the transparency mode is not very comfortable. The earbuds are too big for many customers, either falling out or causing pain in the ear cartilage. The speaker being sealed in the ear canal creates the risk of hearing damage when you really want to listen to your music loud and tune out your surroundings. Not to mention being hit by a bike or a train on way to your commute vehicle.\r\n\r\nThe Teqnizan earrings come in a beautiful introductory jewelry design. Fully custom design of the earrings is offered by Teqnizan. Most of our users have been surprised by how lightweight the music earrings are at 4.2gms. For comparison the heaviest earrings out there are 7gms. \r\n\r\nBe the first to buy this Minnesota product, and enjoy your workouts or study time like never before. \r\n\r\nhttps://teqnizan.com\r\n\r\n", "room_name": "Alaska", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 15:45:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Development", "Hardware", "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 12, "created_at": "2022-05-16 15:24:37 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1281, "participant_id": 4398, "presenter_name": "Craig Fisk", "presenter_bio": "[https://about.me/craigfisk](https://about.me/craigfisk)\n\n**Links:**\n\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/craigfisk)\n- Twitter: @craigfisk", "session_title": "Minnesota Tech Stack: Reverse Q&A", "summary": null, "description": "The idea is for the participants to answer (and share) questions on a Google Doc about: a) Which companies are using technology \"X\" and, b) what is the tech stack at company \"Y\". For example, which companies are using AWS vs. GCP vs. Azure; JavaScript vs. Go vs. Python; Github vs. Gitlab vs. Perforce vs. SVC; MS SQL Server vs. PostgreSQL vs. MySQL vs. ?? React vs. Vue vs. Svelte vs. Angular vs Ionic vs. jQuery. Wordpress vs. Gatsby vs. Hugo vs. HTML? Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux (Red Hat vs. Ubuntu vs. ??) \r\nAlso, what is the tech stack at Cargill, General Mills, Best Buy, Target, Ecolab, 3M, Medtronic? For the bigger companies, probably there will be a different *lingua franca* depending on where in the company we are talking about. What about startups? What about SMB?\r\nWe'll put the Google Doc up at the front of the room and share the link to participants and anyone interested.\r\n\r\nThe goal is to have a map of what companies you might want to be involved with if you are using \"X\".\r\n\r\nHere is an example of **reverse Q&A**:\r\n[example of reverse Q&A from PDXPython](http://bit.ly/pdxqa)", "room_name": "Alaska", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 13:55:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Development", "Other", "Design" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 17, "created_at": "2022-05-11 21:07:34 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1280, "participant_id": 4398, "presenter_name": "Craig Fisk", "presenter_bio": "[https://about.me/craigfisk](https://about.me/craigfisk)\n\n**Links:**\n\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/craigfisk)\n- Twitter: @craigfisk", "session_title": "Virtual Networking: What Do You Need?", "summary": null, "description": "Demo followed by talk about networking, esp. for software people under the pandemic and in the post-commute world of Zoom. 75-80% of the time, people find their current work through networking; not through ATS systems. What is working now for networking and what is next? We'll break this up into two parts. Part one: Looking for feedback on a startup **virtual networking** MVP written in Vue and GCP Firebase using ML and NLP. Part two: open discussion about networking, what's out there, and what's next. So what is **\"virtual networking\"** anyway? The simplest description might be: It is connecting with people you haven't had coffee with. ", "room_name": "Alaska", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 14:50:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Other", "Design", "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 26, "created_at": "2022-05-11 20:43:59 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1279, "participant_id": 4400, "presenter_name": "Victoria Perkins", "presenter_bio": "Policy analyst turned welder turned full stack developer with hands-on experience in JavaScript, React, Ruby on Rails, Java, and Spring. My unconventional background encapsulates my pursuit of constant learning as well as my skills in problem solving, project management, and design thinking.", "session_title": "Let's Document a Rails API!", "summary": null, "description": "What separates an okay API from a truly excellent API? Documentation! This session will aim to look beyond simple API endpoint references to more holistic documentation.", "room_name": "Learn", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 09:25:00 -0500", "level_name": "Beginner", "categories": [ "Development" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 9, "created_at": "2022-05-11 20:30:29 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1278, "participant_id": 4395, "presenter_name": "Rogers George", "presenter_bio": "Rogers (yes, first name) is an [iOS developer](https://eclecticode.com) and [software engineering](https://cse.umn.edu/msse) master. He has worked for [Hidrate](https://hidratespark.com), [When I Work](https://wheniwork.com), and [other](https://lab651.com/) [small](https://www.clockwork.com) [companies](https://habitaware.com/) [and](https://gomodus.com/) [startups](https://resonantcavity.com) that needed their iOS apps done right. He flies [sailplanes](https://www.rwsa.org) and likes to go for walks with his [parrot](https://bsky.app/profile/ceramicatheist.com).", "session_title": "How to not be wrong about Dates", "summary": null, "description": "\"Dates Are Hard\", says the conventional wisdom. \"Don't program with Dates\".\r\nBut what then? We have to model dates and times in our software somehow!\r\nAnd, apparently, make the same mistakes again and again.\r\n\r\nSee some of the corner cases and geopolitical oddities that make date handling hard.\r\nGo beyond the superficial lists of falsehoods we programmers supposedly believe about Dates.\r\nLearn the One Weird Trick to (almost) always handle Dates right,\r\nand clean up the damage The Last Team left for you.\r\n", "room_name": "Minnetonka", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 13:00:00 -0500", "level_name": "Advanced", "categories": [ "Development" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 34, "created_at": "2022-05-11 18:29:19 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1277, "participant_id": 4394, "presenter_name": "Cherie Lemer", "presenter_bio": "As a technology leader supporting health and safety initiatives, Cherie builds technology solutions that reduce the risk of injury and death for colleagues and the surrounding community every day. Yet, the minute she enters the classroom to teach my job readiness bootcamp, she is reminded that the work she does during the day is changing the nature of work for her students. Many technology executives will tell you that someone will have to do something to help people adapt to a world in which careers are constantly impacted by AI and automation. Cherie wants to be that someone. \r\n\r\nIn addition to an understanding of how technology is impacting careers of both today and tomorrow, Cherie has more than 20 years of experience in teaching, training, and communications focusing on social impact and behavior change. In this work, she has mentored people through their career transitions and built educational programs to enhance the competitiveness of people entering new career fields. She is proud to have been the co-conspirator for many who have gotten into graduate school, received promotions, negotiated higher salaries, and landed jobs they thought were out of their reach.", "session_title": "Is Every Job a Tech Job? Building Tech Staff From Within", "summary": null, "description": "The pandemic required many parts of the in-person world to move online. That transition increased the demand for workers with tech skills, with many companies struggling to find enough staff to fill open roles. Most efforts have focused on how to recruit new staff or quickly get new recruits into tech bootcamps to meet demand. But what if we included existing staff who don’t currently work in tech in the strategic planning for digital transformation? Can more jobs become tech jobs? Can those roles be filled by upskilling existing staff? What organizational changes are needed to support this evolution?\r\n\r\nThis talk will offer strategies for building your tech workforce from existing staff while developing the vision for digital transformation. We will discuss the resources needed to upskills staff, methods to inspire employee engagement, and the potential benefits and risks for the organization.", "room_name": "Proverb-Edison", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 13:55:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 14, "created_at": "2022-05-11 17:46:55 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1275, "participant_id": 3831, "presenter_name": "Jesse Sutherland", "presenter_bio": "Jesse Sutherland is a Minneapolis based entrepreneur specializing in designing and developing digital products such as SaaS web apps and WordPress products. Having worked in the interactive industry for more than 15 years first at a creative agency, and then as a freelancer, he has helped hundreds of clients design and build their digital properties.\r\n\r\nLearn more at [https://jessesutherland.com/](JesseSutherland.com)\n\n**Links:**\n\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/TheJester12)\n- Twitter: @TheJester12", "session_title": "💭 Finding The Right Idea... for a Profitable Bootstrapped Business ", "summary": null, "description": "Many developers have the dream of coding something themselves, getting a ton of customers, and making enough to triumphantly quit the 9-5. \r\n\r\nThose that have tried know it is not quite that easy. I know personally. After building 20+ side projects, I am now gaining traction and supporting my family with my online products.\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of reasons side projects may or may not go big time. Even a great idea, perfectly coded, may not enable you to leave your employer behind. The key is filtering through lots of ideas and deciding which ones have the best chance of success. In this session we will discuss some of the major factors to weigh when starting a new venture.\r\n\r\nIf you have one idea, hundreds of ideas, or just *want* to have a good idea, this session will get you thinking and hopefully inspire you to start something profitable of your own.", "room_name": "Nokomis", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 11:15:00 -0500", "level_name": "Beginner", "categories": [ "Development", "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 35, "created_at": "2022-05-11 15:14:09 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1274, "participant_id": 1644, "presenter_name": "Kyle Smaagard", "presenter_bio": "Kyle Smaagard is a former Air Force Officer and self-taught programmer. His knowledge is all over the place including:\r\n\r\n* Satellite [Construction] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-221)\r\n* Supply Chain Management\r\n* 3d Printing\r\n* Android Development\r\n* Product Management\r\n* Machine Learning\r\n\r\nHe taught himself to code in the middle of the desert and has leveraged that knowledge to be effective in building Android Applications and a 3d Printing business. \r\n\r\nFor his real job he works at an awesome company called [Calabrio] (http://www.calabrio.com/) and for the last 3 years has been running an AI/ML research team.\n\n**Links:**\n\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/easycheese)", "session_title": "How to 'Really' do AI/ML/Deep Learning at Your Company", "summary": null, "description": "AI...ML...Deep Learning...These are all great buzzwords and any company out there in the tech space is certainly claiming they do some form of it (it's pretty much a requirement to be listed on any website selling a product nowadays). \r\n\r\nBut how do you 'really' do this in an effective way for your company?\r\n\r\nFirst we'll do a brief overview of the concepts so everyone is on the same page with the terms we are using (and for beginners to keep up!)\r\n\r\nThen we'll talk through a framework for thinking about AI/ML implementations in terms of company size/goals. We'll spend most of our time on small/medium size companies with a light touch on the differences for large companies.\r\n\r\n", "room_name": "Nokomis", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 13:00:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Development", "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 30, "created_at": "2022-05-11 12:52:57 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1273, "participant_id": 3791, "presenter_name": "Paul Himes", "presenter_bio": "As a principal software engineer, Paul has over 10,000 hours of three-dimensional experiences at [Livefront](https://livefront.com).\n\n**Links:**\n\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/paulhimes)\n- Twitter: @‪paulhimes@mastodon.social‬", "session_title": "📸📸 Discover 3D Photography", "summary": null, "description": "If you’ve only experienced 3D content at the movie theater or on expensive TVs, you may be surprised to hear that you can make 3D pictures and videos of your own. Not only is 3D photography easy to do, but it’s an art form that’s existed for hundreds of years.\r\n\r\nIn this session you’ll learn everything you need to capture lifelike 3D pictures and videos at home using tools you probably already have. All it takes is a camera (or two), curiosity, and patience. Along the way, we’ll explore the history of 3D pictures (or stereograms) and discover a variety of high-tech and low-tech ways to view your creations.\r\n\r\nMake art and relive memories in a whole new way!", "room_name": "Nokomis", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 10:20:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 27, "created_at": "2022-05-10 21:28:30 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1272, "participant_id": 4384, "presenter_name": "Colton Kratky", "presenter_bio": "Colton joined the military and was placed as a System Administrator, Radio operator, and Satcom operator and that started his career in IT and made him actually enjoy working on computers and systems. In 2019 he started working as a Network and Server Administrator and recently was promoted to Sr Network and Security Administrator. \r\n\r\nHe enjoys learning new things and figuring out how to automate tasks with python and powershell. \r\n\r\nHis education has been through on the job training, crash course training (I.e. 5 days a week 8-4 for 6 months), and learn it to run it (I.e. I'm now supposed to administer this new thing, figure it out yourself how to do so).\n\n**Links:**\n\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/craken-da-ship)\n- Twitter: @IP_Craken", "session_title": "Why you should monitor your systems and why humans shouldn't do it. ", "summary": null, "description": "As time goes on our IT systems become more and more complex and spread out. In the past a person could simply check on each item every morning and see the status, that is no longer a reliable or feasible way to make sure your systems are good in most modern environments. \r\n\r\nI will talk about why it is important to monitor, some ways and applications to do so (specifically free ones that anyone can use), and why this process should be automated with notifications and not left to human eyes only. \r\n\r\nAny remaining time till be for sharing other tools and ways that anyone else has used that helped them with monitoring their systems. ", "room_name": "Harriet", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 13:00:00 -0500", "level_name": "Beginner", "categories": [ "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 28, "created_at": "2022-05-10 20:30:22 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1271, "participant_id": 3348, "presenter_name": "Casie Siekman", "presenter_bio": "Casie is a software developer based in Minneapolis and is passionate about making the Twin Cities and Midwest tech community more diverse and accessible to all. Along with that, she is also interested in communication, the meanings and motivations behind what we say and how all that can bring us together (or, push us apart).\n\n**Links:**\n\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/CassandraDanger)\n- Twitter: @CassandraDanger", "session_title": "How to use Vue Mixins and vanilla JS to remove Moment.js", "summary": null, "description": "Moment.js is big and old, and the creators support the removal of this package in your codebase. The modern web looks much different these days than it did when Moment.js was a huge asset. We can use modern architecture and Javascript's Date object to reduce our dependency on third party libraries.", "room_name": "Zeke Landres", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 13:00:00 -0500", "level_name": "Intermediate", "categories": [ "Development" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 14, "created_at": "2022-05-09 15:38:59 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1270, "participant_id": 4379, "presenter_name": "Darin Mays", "presenter_bio": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/darin-mays-a6569a7/", "session_title": "180 degrees: transitioning from corporate to startup", "summary": null, "description": "18 months ago I left the corporate life of healthcare software development and started an ecommerce company for physical products. This session will briefly cover the journey and lessons learned on a variety of topics:\r\n1) establishing an agile brand\r\n2) tools for in-house low-volume manufacturing\r\n3) testing product-market-fit\r\n4) planting seeds\r\n5) ecommerce platforms\r\n6) owning a large share of niche market(s)\r\n\r\nThis session is for both those who are on a similar journey and those considering taking a leap into the startup world. Dialog highly anticipated and welcomed!", "room_name": "Zeke Landres", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 09:25:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Startups", "Design" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 13, "created_at": "2022-05-09 15:11:20 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1269, "participant_id": 4377, "presenter_name": "Alex Korn", "presenter_bio": "Alex Korn was a mathematics major with a focus in operations research and graph theory. He's been programming since 7th grade and is still filled with delight every time he gets to convert a problem into a graph. He is CEO, co-founder, and long-time engineer at [Symplany](https://www.symplany.com), which uses graph theory algorithms to solve many problems in the world of finance, including trading and building financial plans.\r\n\r\nOutside of work, he loves skiing and biking, where he also tries to optimize his routes.\n\n**Links:**\n\n- Twitter: @alexkorn", "session_title": "Graph theory algorithms: Shortest path, max flow, and standing on the shoulders of giants", "summary": null, "description": "How do mapping apps route you to your destination? How do logistics companies efficiently transport resources across the country? And how can you turn a gnarly programming problem into something that can easily be solved by existing libraries?\r\n\r\nIn this session, we'll start with a review of mathematical graphs--the kinds with nodes and edges, not the kind with axes and lines! We'll then look at a couple specific problems and discuss the algorithms to solve them.\r\n\r\nLastly, we'll look at resources to learn more about these powerful tools so that you can apply these to your next impossible-seeming programming problem.\r\n\r\nAlthough this topic can get super deep, I promise not to bury attendees in Big O notation (asymptotic complexity), data structures, or mathematical proofs.", "room_name": "Harriet", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 10:20:00 -0500", "level_name": "Intermediate", "categories": [ "Development" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 28, "created_at": "2022-05-07 21:33:19 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1268, "participant_id": 3095, "presenter_name": "Matt Schraan", "presenter_bio": "Matt Schraan leads Product Management at [Livefront](https://livefront.com), where he always strives to find the correct route. ", "session_title": "🧪 Why you should (or shouldn’t) do A/B testing. ", "summary": null, "description": "A/B testing is an incredibly valuable tool for data-driven product management. But, it doesn’t come for free and it isn’t the only available method for vetting new user experiences. Taken to its logical extreme, if you were to A/B test every feature in your product, you would be throwing away 50% of your product team’s work!\r\n\r\nSo given that opportunity cost, is A/B testing even worth it? Well… it depends!\r\n\r\nIn this session, we’ll engage in some real talk about A/B testing. Join us if you are interested in chewing on any of these questions.\r\n\r\n- What makes for a good A/B testing opportunity?\r\n- Why is A/B testing so costly, and how can we minimize that?\r\n- How do you design a good A/B test?\r\n- How do you implement a good A/B test?\r\n- How should you go about interpreting your A/B test results? ", "room_name": "Theater", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 15:45:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Development", "Other", "Design" ], "other_presenter_names": [ "Ali Joaquin" ], "other_presenter_ids": [ 4376 ], "attendance_count": 56, "created_at": "2022-05-06 21:42:14 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1267, "participant_id": 1805, "presenter_name": "Collin Flynn", "presenter_bio": "Collin is a Principal Software Engineer with Livefront\r\n\r\n**Links:**\r\n\r\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/cdflynn)\r\n- Twitter: @collin_flynn", "session_title": "🧱 How To Build A Computer in Minecraft (And Other Games)", "summary": null, "description": "To most of us, computers are mysterious and magical. Have you ever wondered how they work at the most fundamental level?\r\n\r\nIn this session we're going to look at how players in Minecraft create functional computers using the same principles underlying the device you're looking at right now. You won't need any prior knowledge of electrical engineering, just some awareness of common PC parts. While there have been decades of galaxy-brain advances in CPU architecture design, none of them are necessary to dispel the mystery of how a chunk of silicon (or a virtual voxel world!) can compute.", "room_name": "Nokomis", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 14:50:00 -0500", "level_name": "Intermediate", "categories": [ "Other", "Hardware" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 24, "created_at": "2022-05-05 16:09:36 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1266, "participant_id": 2158, "presenter_name": "Thaddaeus Dahlberg", "presenter_bio": "[Thaddaeus (Thad) Dahlberg](https://www.linkedin.com/in/thaddaeus/) has spent most of his professional life serving the Education sector from the pre-internet time where he worked in a print shop, to building University Web sites, creating Content Management Systems, coding Web-based educational software, and even a three-year stint as a High School technology teacher in Nairobi, Kenya. He currently is a Senior Software Engineer at the [University of St. Thomas](https://stthomas.edu/) in MN where he works exclusively for the Salesforce CRM team within Innovation & Technology Services (ITS). Having worked in many different programming languages and software frameworks Thad finds Salesforce as a development platform a delightful place to have landed in his career.\n\n**Links:**\n\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/tcdahlberg)\n- Twitter: @tcdahlberg", "session_title": "Open Source Code Adventures in Salesforce", "summary": null, "description": "Open-source coding for Salesforce? Is that a thing?! I thought they were all about clicks not code. Aren't they a platform trying to make money? Why would they allow anyone to give stuff away?! Why should I even care?\r\n\r\nRyan Blake ([Cloud for Good](https://cloud4good.com/)) and Thad Dahlberg ([University of St. Thomas](https://stthomas.edu/)) will answer these burning questions and more in this session where they discuss their adventures in open-sourcing an event registration solution called [the Summit Events App](https://summitevt.org) that has its origin story right here in Minnesota at the University of St. Thomas. \r\n\r\nYou'll learn about:\r\n\r\n* What Salesforce is and the opportunities for developers within the platform\r\n* The [Salesforce.org Open Source Commons](https://github.com/SFDO-Community-Sprints)\r\n* What coding looks like in Salesforce\r\n* What tools are provided to effectively Open Source Code in Salesforce\r\n* How Summit Events App started right here at the University of St. Thomas, MN\r\n* How you can get involved in the Summit Events App and other Salesforce Open Source endeavors\r\n", "room_name": "Harriet", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 15:45:00 -0500", "level_name": "Intermediate", "categories": [ "Development", "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [ "Ryan Blake" ], "other_presenter_ids": [ 4372 ], "attendance_count": 14, "created_at": "2022-04-28 21:53:10 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1265, "participant_id": 4370, "presenter_name": "Thomas Kosgei", "presenter_bio": "I am a clinical pharmacist with more than 10-year experience working in retail pharmacy as a pharmacist and then pharmacy manager and also 2 years working as a clinical review pharmacist in pharmacy benefit management. My passion is to help all Americans afford their prescriptions so that they can get the medications they need on their path to better health.\n\n**Links:**\n\n- Twitter: @intelligentrx", "session_title": "How To Save Money On Prescription Medications", "summary": null, "description": "This event is aimed at teaching the general attendees of ways to save money on their prescriptions. We will outline the best practices that can be used to make prescription meds more affordable and accessible to the general public.", "room_name": "Proverb-Edison", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 10:20:00 -0500", "level_name": "Intermediate", "categories": [ "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 14, "created_at": "2022-04-26 18:54:41 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1264, "participant_id": 156, "presenter_name": "Dan Lew", "presenter_bio": "Dan Lew has code in his DNA and has been speaking since he was two years old. He's focused these skills on software development for the past two decades, working on many large mobile apps (FlightTrack, Expedia, Trello) as well as maintaining some open source libraries and applications. Currently he works on civic tech projects at [Mighty Acorn Digital](https://www.mightyacorn.com/).\r\n\r\nWhen not speaking, he's silent.\r\n\r\nYou can [contact him on Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/danlew42.bsky.social), [read his website](http://danlew.net/), or [stalk his commit history](https://github.com/dlew).", "session_title": "Maintaining Software Correctness", "summary": null, "description": "Suppose you’ve just designed a new architecture, library, or process. At first, everything’s going great, but over time you notice some issues - issues that stem from people that aren’t using your creation properly! If they’d just use everything **correctly**, there wouldn’t be any problems, but to your horror people continue to make mistakes and cause your beautiful product to fail.\r\n\r\nPeople will always make mistakes, but **the core mistake here is designing without keeping human fallibility in mind**. It’s easy to come up with a new architecture, library, or process. But how do you make sure people use it correctly in the long run? Without considering this problem, your software will come up short.\r\n\r\nIn this talk, I’ll go over the task of maintaining software correctness, along with plenty of examples. By the end of this talk, you’ll have a bunch of strategies for writing software that encourages correct implementations in the long run.", "room_name": "Theater", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 13:55:00 -0500", "level_name": "Intermediate", "categories": [ "Development" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 45, "created_at": "2022-04-26 14:27:37 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1263, "participant_id": 3465, "presenter_name": "Rob Sleezer", "presenter_bio": "Rob teaches at Twin Cities Engineering (TCE), a project based engineering program of Minnesota State University, Mankato's extended campus. He uses reflective practice to support the technical, professional, and design learning student engineers of TCE.", "session_title": "The Mirror of Learning: Extracting Value from Experience with Reflection", "summary": null, "description": "The goal of this session is to intentionally isolating and exercising reflective ability. Often repeated Yoda like statements about learning from mistakes (e.g.: \"know for next time, I will\") do little to cement experiential lessons or ensure effective future application knowledge. A key skill for extracting highest ROI from real world (and artificial world) learning is reflection. This section focuses on the development of reflective practice. Session participants look back upon an experience they learned from before pivoting forward to think about the application of the learning. Although we rarely have time to stop and explicitly reflect on experiences, by occasionally bringing purpose to the practice of reflection we can move towards making this powerful tool more instinctual. ", "room_name": "Learn", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 14:50:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 16, "created_at": "2022-04-26 13:35:50 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1262, "participant_id": 4367, "presenter_name": "Milan Shroff", "presenter_bio": "Milan is a professional trainer and leadership coach with 20 years of experience in Tech. He has taught thousands of students on Product and Agile topics. Currently, Milan is helping a top Fortune company mature through their Product and Agile journey. \r\n\r\nMilan remains a Big Ten fan with his master's degree in business from Michigan State and a bachelor degree in engineering from The U (Minnesota). He has spent most his time in Minnesota at companies such as Target, UHG, and IBM. During cold Minnesota winters, Milan often wonders why he left EA Games in San Francisco. He also has automotive engineering experience from his time in Michigan and loves to talk cars. ", "session_title": "Misconceptions of MVP (Minimum Viable Product)", "summary": null, "description": "We hear the term MVP all the time, but many of us have never really understood what it is or how to use it. In this session, we will focus on MVP misconceptions, the real purpose of MVPs, and how feedback loops build better products. We will also take a look at some popular ways to validate your MVP, which are commonly used by Apple, Amazon, Google and startups.", "room_name": "Theater", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 11:15:00 -0500", "level_name": "Beginner", "categories": [ "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 53, "created_at": "2022-04-25 19:11:29 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1260, "participant_id": 917, "presenter_name": "Matt Decuir", "presenter_bio": "Matt (he/him) is a software engineer, entrepreneur, and Minnestar board member. Past projects include [Invisible Network](https://www.invisiblenetwork.com/), [Mpls Jr Devs](https://mplsjrdevs.com/), and [OMG Transit](https://omgtransit.com).\r\n\r\n**Links:**\r\n\r\n- [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/experimatt.com)\r\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/experimatt)\r\n- [Personal website](https://experimatt.com/)\r\n", "session_title": "Let's talk about coding exercises", "summary": null, "description": "Fire up your hot takes, folks. This is going to be a fun one.\r\n\r\nWhether you're early-career or have been coding for decades, nearly everyone has got a coding exercise story (or stories). And *feelings* too.\r\n\r\nWhat makes for a good coding exercise? What makes for a bad one? Why is to so hard for companies to assess developers' technical skills? Is live coding better than take-home? Should they be timed? Should companies pay candidates for their time? What's the most equitable way to do coding exercises? (and the list goes on)\r\n\r\nThere are so many things to talk about here, and we're going to do our best to talk about all of it!\r\n\r\n\r\nMore details to come.", "room_name": "Minnetonka", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 09:25:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Development" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 63, "created_at": "2022-04-23 23:41:52 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:33:13 UTC" }, { "id": 1258, "participant_id": 2385, "presenter_name": "Kristen Kinnear-Ohlmann", "presenter_bio": "I am a full stack software engineer and database developer. I solve complex problems with creativity and energy.\n\n**Links:**\n\n- [GitHub](https://github.com/kristenkinnearohlmann)\n- Twitter: @kinnear_ohlmann", "session_title": "Go For It! Fearless Pursuit of Your Tech Goals", "summary": null, "description": "When you're new to tech, it can feel impossible to get a foothold into how to make progress. This is the session I needed when I was looking to change direction in 2016. We'll explore:\r\n\r\n- Tackling blocks to getting started\r\n- Strategies for mental strength\r\n- Locating resources\r\n- Getting wins big and small\r\n- Networking and connecting with other people\r\n\r\nI look forward to sharing what I've learned and encouraging others to go after their tech goals!", "room_name": "Nokomis", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 15:45:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Other" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 28, "created_at": "2022-04-21 21:16:46 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1256, "participant_id": 13, "presenter_name": "Liz Tupper", "presenter_bio": "Liz Tupper is a strategic technology leader with over 25 years of experience driving transformative change across the civic tech, social good, AI (artificial intelligence), IoT (internet of things), web, mobile application, and video game industries. She is the Senior Director of Product at CivicActions and co-leads the Minnesota Digital Service meetup group, a collaborative community of professionals passionate about GovTech (Government Technology) at local, state, and federal levels.\r\n", "session_title": "MN Startup Ecosystem Whitepaper Project", "summary": null, "description": "Entrepreneurship is hard. And for people without a clear pathway to funding, it’s even harder.\r\n\r\nSometimes well-intended help, support, and feedback isn’t helpful. And in some cases it’s harmful.\r\n\r\nIf you are on the receiving end of this feedback you may or may not be comfortable speaking up. And you don’t want to risk funding, mentorship, or opportunities. And so the cycle repeats itself. Over and over again.\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of things that have changed in the MN startup ecosystem in the last 10 years. Which shows we are open to trying new things, growing and learning.\r\n\r\nSo how do we spotlight the areas for improvement while creating a safe space for feedback? This is where the MN Startup Ecosystem Whitepaper Project comes in.\r\n\r\nCome to this session to learn about the project and how you can help underfunded startups gain traction in the Twin Cities.", "room_name": "Minnetonka", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 10:20:00 -0500", "level_name": "Beginner", "categories": [ "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 37, "created_at": "2022-04-21 19:46:45 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1254, "participant_id": 2899, "presenter_name": "Rick Ellis", "presenter_bio": "Rick Ellis is the founder of AllYourScreens.com and the newsletter TooMuchTV. He's a former stand-up comic, syndicated talk show host & award-winning news journalist. His reporting led to an appearance in the documentary \"The Dark Side Of Kids TV,\" and he has won awards for investigative reporting. He's a member of the National Press Club and was the winner of the 2025 National A&E Journalism Award for \"Best Entertainment News Site by an Individual Not Tied to an Organization.\"\r\n\r\nEmail: rick@allyourscreens.com\r\n\r\n**Links:**\r\n\r\n- Bluesky: @toomuchtv.substack.com", "session_title": "Covering Hollywood From Minnesota: How I Turned My Side Hustle Into A Successful Media Business", "summary": null, "description": "When I launched my own web site about 20 years ago, it was more of a place to post archived freelance pieces and stories that weren't a great fit for my \"real\" job. But after I was laid off 3 times in two years about a decade ago, I began freelancing fulltime. And that web site of mine eventually became a full-time business.\r\n\r\nI'll walk you through how I made it happen, from the revenue side of the business to the logistics of covering the entertainment business from halfway across the country.\r\n\r\nAllYourScreens.com currently gets about 2.4 million monthly unique visitors and I also have a free daily M-F newsletter that goes out to more than 20,000 subscribers. \r\n\r\nGetting to this point required a brutal level of work and some luck. But maybe my story can help inspire you to take the next step towards making your dream come true.", "room_name": "Harriet", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 14:50:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Other", "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 24, "created_at": "2022-04-20 17:08:01 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" }, { "id": 1253, "participant_id": 168, "presenter_name": "Damien Riehl", "presenter_bio": "Damien Riehl is a lawyer and technologist with experience in complex litigation, digital forensics, and software development. A coder since 1985 and for the web since 1995, Damien clerked for the chief judges of state and federal courts, practiced in complex litigation for over a decade, has led teams of cybersecurity and world-spanning digital forensics investigations, and has led teams in legal-software development. \r\n\r\nCo-Chair of the Minnesota Governor’s Council on Connected and Automated Vehicles, he is helping recommend changes to Minnesota statutes, rules, and policies — all related to connected and autonomous vehicles. \r\n\r\nDamien is Chair of the Minnesota State Bar Association's working group on AI and the Unauthorized Practice of Law (UPL). \r\n\r\nAt FOLIO, the legal ontology project from the ALEA Institute, Damien helps corporations, their law firms, and legal technology vendors implement legal data standards. For years, Damien led SALI, the legal data standard, where he developed and greatly expanded the taxonomy of over 18,000 legal tags that matter, helping the legal industry's development of Generative AI, analytics, and interoperability. \r\n\r\nAt vLex Group — which includes Fastcase, NextChapter, and Docket Alarm — Damien helps lead the design, development, and expansion of various products, integrating AI-backed technologies (e.g., GPT) to improve legal workflows and to power legal data analytics. \r\n\r\nIn 2019, Damien gave a TEDx Talk about his All the Music project, which to date has computationally composed over 400,000,000,000 (400B) melodies, has written them to disc (fixed in a tangible medium), and has given the public access through Creative Commons Zero (CC0), which provides rights similar to rights to works in the Public Domain. Arguably improving copyright law through legal decisions that appeared to draw upon his TEDx Talk's arguments.\r\n\r\n“This guy [Damien] rocks!” - Elon Musk\r\n\r\nLinkedIn\r\n\r\n**Links:**\r\n\r\n- Twitter: @damienriehl", "session_title": "Making All The Music: Brute forcing (and copyrighting) 400 billion melodies", "summary": null, "description": "Want to hear about a coding project that was probably used by Led Zeppelin, Katy Perry, and Ed Sheeran — all to beat \"you stole my melody!\" lawsuits? Coder, musician, and lawyer Damien Riehl will discuss his project where he:\r\n\r\n1. Used a brute-force algo — not to break a password, but to break music: copyrighting all the melodies.\r\n\r\n2. He built (and open sourced) an application to write to disk: \r\n2a. Every popular melody that has ever been written\r\n2b. Every popular melody that ever **CAN** be\r\n\r\n3. Copyrighted everything (all 400 billion melodies)\r\n\r\n4. Dedicated everything to the public domain.\r\n\r\n...to help protect songwriters.\r\n\r\nHear him discuss how his startup coded and created the project — and how it has already improved copyright law.", "room_name": "Minnetonka", "panel": false, "projector": false, "starts_at": "2022-06-04 11:15:00 -0500", "level_name": "All levels", "categories": [ "Development", "Other", "Design", "Startups" ], "other_presenter_names": [], "other_presenter_ids": [], "attendance_count": 39, "created_at": "2022-04-19 22:40:57 UTC", "updated_at": "2022-06-03 22:32:22 UTC" } ]