MinneDemo 19

MinneDemo 19

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for February 8, 2015

On Tuesday, I left the house at 4:30 am to fly to Chicago.  I was glad to be able to go because only a couple days earlier Chicago had been hit by a massive blizzard, so our trip was left somewhat in question.  

Some parts of the city were still buried in snow.

We did our business and then stopped at The Blind Pig to have a couple before we drove back to Chicago.  Our plan was to fly home again the same night.  I would have preferred to spend the night at The Blind Pig because that place had character.

On Thursday night, Miss Sheri and I went to the Guthrie Theater in downtown Minneapolis to watch MinneDemo 19.

These events just keep getting bigger and bigger and the theater soon became standing room only before the presentations started.

The concept of MinneDemo is relatively simple.  Local technology companies and start-ups demonstrate their latest software, web sites, and applications to an audience of fascinated people.  The rules are that each presenter has seven minutes to showcase their work and must use working software.  No PowerPoints allowed.

The first guy up showed us an app called HashUp.  His system wasn't working at first, so they had to do some singing and dancing to cover the silence.  When he finally was able to show his stuff, it was an interesting presentation of an app where you can follow different hashtags on Twitter and connect with other users who are also following the same hashtags.  HashTag: #ProbablyWon'tDownloadIt

The guy who pitched EstateMap was pretty funny, even when he reminded the audience that we were all going to die some day.  His service is one I've actually thought about as something I would use.  Basically, it tracks all of your social media sites and online life, and gives access to your profiles to your loved ones after you die.  If you think this isn't something that could scale very large, the speaker reminded us that over 10,000 Facebook users die every day.  Some people might want to be able to able to manage their accounts after they die and Estate Map will make that transition process easier.  In any case, of the seven pitches we saw, this was the one that I thought had the best chance to succeed.  

On Friday night, we went to Mystic Lake Casino with our good friends, Jen and Jason.  We like to gamble on one another.

We like going to the casino.  There's always something fun happening.

On Saturday night, the boys were going to a Sweet 16 birthday party, so they had to get dressed up a bit.  I told them I also had a tie and would go with them if they wanted, but apparently I needed more than a tie to go to the party.  Not sure how I feel about that.

So we went over to our good friends Dr. David and Cynthia Bollig's house instead for a night of good food and good conversation.  They didn't even make me wear a tie to get in the door, so that feels like a better party anyways.

Dr. Bollig did not disappoint in the food department.  A little bit of steak and lobster was on the menu and it tasted like I climbed a ladder up into heaven and took a bite out of something up there.  It was just that good.

They even had a bunch of deer stop by in their backyard to greet us.  Such nice animals.  Unless you move when they're looking at you.  Then they get scared and run back in the woods.  But besides that, they were really nice animals.