Ben Edwards
Bio
Ben is a catalyst to the various tech, design, and entrepreneur communities of which he is a part. A Co-Founder of SmartThings, Minnestar, and Refactr, Ben has spent his career building products, platforms, and the communities that surround them—most notably taking SmartThings from a Kickstarter campaign to a Samsung acquisition in just two years.
He currently leads people operations and team growth at Contextual, an AI solutions platform for technology consultants, and is also co-founder of Incogneato, a SaaS company in the autonomous feedback collection space. Ben also advises startups on strategy, product, design, and marketing and is also a fund advisor at Great North Ventures and TechStars mentor alum.
Ben is particularly proud of his role in the genesis of Minnestar—the nonprofit he co-founded to foster technology and startup activity in Minnesota—growing it into the largest unconference event series in the North America.
Links- GitHub
- Bluesky / micro.blog: @alttext
Presenting Sessions
This person isn't presenting any sessions.
Past Presentations
Participating Sessions
- All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace
- 🚀 AI Is Changing What Matters in Software
- What should I do while AI is working? answer will shape the future of humanity
- The Good Years: Formative Tech Companies in the Twin Cities
- Real World Speech Interfaces: What Builders Are Seeing
- Design - AI Agents + Skills in Figma
- You’re Not Leading. You’re Reacting.
- Building a Knowledge Graph Your AI Can Actually Use
- AI Is Becoming Infrastructure: Why Context Engineering and Platforms Will Define the Next Decade
- Recruiting, Hiring, and Building Teams In An AI World
- Session 0: 20 Years of Minnestar (Trivia Edition)