TECHdotMN: News about Minnesota Startups

Half code warrior, half  street fighter, and all too human –  Zencoder co founder and CEO Jon Dahl will be joining us via live webcast tomorrow at 12pm to tell it like it is.

Zencoder is a cloud-based service that transcodes millions of videos each month for web, mobile, and TV delivery. Before Zencoder, he ran a Ruby development shop, blogged at http://railspikes.com, wrote a Master’s thesis on philosophy and theology, and made a failed attempt to become a Lisp hacker.

‘Outside coming in’ is a new series that builds off an earlier one in which former Minnesota tech entrepreneurs that have moved out of state would share their wisdom and reflect on differences in startup culture.

Having relocated to San Francisco this past June, Dahl has agreed to be our guinea pig and discuss some startup lessons learned via live webcam + chat.

This is an ideal opportunity for an intimate group of local early stage tech entrepreneurs to ask questions and receive personalized feedback on their own startups from someone who knows their stuff.  Register here to join the conversation tomorrow at 12pm.

Whatever the motivation — to learn, network, hire, pitch, find inspiration or quench curiosity — over 1,000 Minnesota technology, design and startup enthusiasts passed through the doors of Best Buy HQ over a a 12 hour window yesterday.

Heralded as the largest BarCamp in the US, the latest production of MinneBar (6th to date) was easily the best yet in terms of participation, session breadth / quality, reach and energy.  Guided by Minne* catalysts Ben Edwards, Luke Francl and Adrienne Pierce, the unconference was clearly a success on many levels; the message is clear: Minnesota tech has arrived.

Read More…

By Leena Rao, TechCrunch

“When Google acquired video compression technology company On2 for $106 million last year, the search giant also got encoding SaaS Flix Cloud as part of the deal. Now it looks like Google is shuttering Flix Cloud in November (and will stop accepting new customers as of tomorrow), and encouraging users to move to newly launching encoding startup Zencoder.”

Read More…

Last Saturday, Mike Bollinger and I moderated a panel discussion at Minnebar focused on the concept of improving Minnesota’s startup community.  This session, titled “How Can Minnesota Be Better“, can be viewed in its entirety above with credit to our panelists who generously shared their insights and perspectives.  Special thanks to Brett Thoreson for the steady hand and Andrew Frenz for collecting audience questions.

Joel Dahlin, Geoff Dutton and Derrick Shields have collectively summarized the experience.  Leave a comment if you have an opinion to share…

MinneBar is an (un)conference aimed at getting those in Minnesota’s tech and design communities together to discuss topics that interest them. This Saturday (5/22) from 9-6,  a crowd 500 plus will gather at Best Buy headquarters for one of Minnesota’s premier tech events – now on its fifth evolution.

Mike Bollinger and I will be facilitating/moderating a session focused on the Minnesota startup culture, aptly titled: “How can Minnesota be better?“

Below are the five hand-picked panelists who will be sharing their unique perspectives on the notion of  “improvement”.  Are there other local thought leaders, experts, executives, stakeholders and numerous people or parties equally interested in and actively working towards improving Minnesota’s startup culture?  Absolutely! This was the best we could do to pull together a diverse and complimentary group of qualified/concerned individuals  on such short notice.  This session will be held during the second part of the day, likely between 2-5;  please indicate your interest here so the organizers can anticipate the demand for this and any other sessions you’re attending.  If you have a question for the panel just leave it in the comments or grab us day of 

Read More…

Via TechCrunch

“Transcoding videos, which changes the format, size and or bit rate of a video file, is an arduous, yet necessary process for media content owners. Many sites outsource the technology transcoding to services like Encoding.com, which offer a SaaS application to format videos. Today, Y Combinator-backed Zencoder is entering the space, hoping to become the Amazon Web Services for Encoding.”

Read More…

In early October, Minnedemo partnered with MIMA for a “best of” technical track that ran throughout the day of the Summit. It was a great opportunity for exposure to the interactive/creative crowd that undoubtedly shares some inroads with the tech startup community. We managed to catch-up with some of the presenters from the event, exceptions being: Mike Bollinger from BannerFlow, Robert Metcalf of FlySpy, Brandon McKenzie from Zeplay, and David Carnes from Wonderfile.

Read More…