MinneBar 2007: Minneapolis barcamp

Time for tech enthusiasts, geeks and others passionate about technology to plan for MinneBar 2007 on 21 April 2007.

A message was posted tonight on the BarCampMadison Google Group reminding people of MinneBar and inviting them to come see Minnesota in springtime. The main event occurs on Saturday, but a pre-event is also scheduled for 7 pm, Friday evening, 26 April at LoTo.

Several people at BarCampMadison indicated a desire to participate in MinneBar, so I'll be contacting them individually to confirm they're going. If you haven't participated in a barcamp but are passionate about some area of technology, you should strongly consider participating in MinneBar. Guaranteed -- you'll enjoy yourself, meet some interesting new people and come away from the event eager to participate in the next barcamp!

Organizing needs to be done for the FS3 project to lead two sessions at MinneBar. One session will be focused on the overall project goals and concepts to encourage discussions, suggestions and questions that will help direct and focus the project. If the intro session is successful, we'll also end up with a few more people interested in working on the FS3 project. The other session will be a technical session. It is hoped that by then some of the people involved with the project will have had time to learn a little more about the NVIDIA 8800 and the CUDA SDK.

Another FS3 goal for MinneBar 2007 is to connect with the CS department at U of M, and possibly other colleges in the region. So I'll be looking for contacts at the schools and with recent graduates who know the faculty at those schools. Please connect with me if you fall in one of those categories. We'd like to get them involved with the FS3 sessions at MinneBar.

It might also be interesting to have a MinneBar session discussing ways for the midwest tech community to address the tech worker issue discussed in an article I read today on the Wisconsin Technology Network website. If nothing else, we should be able to build a strong midwest tech community with the tools to help tech people connect with good jobs in the region and help small companies who need additional tech people connect with the right geeks. There's absolutely no reason a tech start-up or a small tech company shouldn't be able to find the right programmers, hardware people or other tech workers they need using the six degrees principles within the midwest tech community.

Mark your calendars for MinneBar 2007. If you need a ride, let people know, and if you have room for one or more passengers, why not make it a fun road trip to the Twin Cities!

*****