Minnestar
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Let’s do our very first ride on St. Patricks Day at 5:30pm with a 30-minute EDM ride with Jess King! 🎉 Join the class! 🗓 If that link doesn’t work please try another device or another time. It should open into the Peloton iOS app and allow you to sign up for the scheduled session. If it opens in a browser it will give you a beta feature message.
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Tag yourself to join our community and add the MInnestar tag to your Peloton profile! 🏷
- Computers Are Easy; People Are Hard with Bridget Kromhout
- Propelling More Women into the Ranks of Engineering Leadership with Ashley Monseth, Rebecca McCann-Young, Ethan Sommer, Cailin Wertish, and Millicent Walsh
- Blogging for Fun…..and Profit? with Chris Moffitt
- Web 3.0: Blockchain May Provide Us the Most Human Version of the Web with Matt Bauwens
- Pragmatic intro to functional programming with David Price
- Docker 101 with Rebecca McCann-Young
- Building Sandcastles with Leah Cunningham
Techies who Peloton First Ride
When Minnestar decided to launch these “Techies who …” communities I was really excited to get a Peloton group setup! As if by design, Peloton also just launched their brand new scheduled session feature that works perfect for this. So we are getting our very first ride scheduled, and I thought it would be fun to do it on St. Patrick’s day!
If you are a Peloton Cyclist join our first Techies Who Peloton ride! 🚴
The Importance, Accessibility, and Inclusivity of Connecting Online
We have all shifted quickly to online platforms for many of our interactions. It is easy to see some of the challenges with this. Technical barriers. Cognitive confusion leading to “zoom fatigue”. There are also some powerful benefits online that were not as obvious before.
Work
For “knowledge workers,” most everyone is doing their work distributed, and I have noticed an equalizing aspect to it. The two dimensions that I see the most are geography differences being lessened, and more balance between those that are outgoing versus more introverted. When everyone you work with is in an equally sized video frame right in front of you, geography is only notable to the extent that it may be evening where they are and morning for you. I’ve had many team members share with me that they have never felt more connected with the members of our various offices. And perhaps more powerfully, our team members in other offices have felt like they can contribute and engage better with the rest of the teams.
This reinforces one of my beliefs about remote versus centralized teams that it is hardest to do both. Fully remote is a considerable leveler, and everyone will have to accommodate. Entirely local is the default that humans have used for millennia. The tricky part is doing both. My hope is that we can take the learnings developed during this pandemic and apply it to improvements and empathy going forward to keep these benefits in place.
Large group gatherings have also surprised me online. They work very well, as long as you keep the time short. And one of my favorite parts is that you can successfully engage in Q&A with the audience. I’ve held team all-hands meetings for decades, and I long ago decided to not open up time for Q&A because the chances of someone asking a question were near nil. The social dynamics of being that one person in a room of 250 that stands up with a question are just too challenging for most individuals to navigate. Online tools though by necessity must create a feature to do this. They have to enable it. And in doing so, they remove the barriers that inhibit people. I’ve found much more engagement than I’ve ever seen in in-person large group meetings.
mini minnebar
Last weekend was supposed to be the annual Minnebar unconference. Minnebar is one of my favorite events of the year. Over 1,000 technologists, collecting around community-led topics with about 70 sessions throughout the day. Minnestar, the non-profit behind the Minnebar, pivoted online and held mini Minnebar and I thought it was great!
The event was hosted on Crowdcast, and it was impressive. The event had a single track, versus multiple parallel sessions as it usually has. That was just fine to me, and it made me think that there could be five or six events like this throughout the year and get the same quantity of content to an even broader audience.
However, the big win to me was opening the event to a broader geography. One of the sessions I realized my brother would like. He lives three hours away and would usually never be able to attend Minnebar. But since it was online, I sent him the link, and he was on in 5 minutes. The event drew people from around the state. Minnestar has debated for years about how to reach people outside of the metro area. I know from dozens of board conversations. We considered for years bringing our events to other cities, but getting them online and opening up globally brought the program there. There was even a person from Turkey who attended Minnebar!
I also felt a lot of energy from the event. It hit me how important it was that the event happen, in some form. I needed the connection to the technology community to still be there. It was so great to see comments in the stream from friends and give a 👋 to them. It filled my day with energy to connect and so what if we couldn’t do it in person with happy hour, we still did it. It reminded me how vital these connections are, and we all must forge ahead.
A New Way to Mourn
My last observation on this topic is from an episode of the Daily called A New Way to Mourn. I highly recommend listening to this. It is a touching story with a powerful message. In short, this highlights that many funerals are being queued into the future. “We will get together to remember Bob when we can connect as a community.” There is a massive problem with this. These are essential rituals and are vital to loved ones and friends going through the mourning process. Deferring them to some unknown future date is going to cause significant problems.
This story about mourning and celebrating a departed loved one online is incredible. And again, I note the accessibility component. Some people can’t travel for various reasons and may be unable to attend a traditional funeral ceremony. Typically they would be excluded from this critical aspect of the mourning process. Hosting a visitation and funeral over Zoom opens up new avenues and accessibility for loved ones to be part of the process.
(mini) Minnebar
Attending (mini) Minnebar this morning, the very first online Minnebar! It is awesome to see minnestar pivoting to further its mission during the Covid-19 pandemic. 👏
Dan Lew’s opening session on “What Tech Can Do About Climate Change” was a great way to get started.
Of course very proud that SPS Commerce is a terabyte supporter! 💙
This is my first time using Crowdcast and the experience is very good. 👏
Joe Karlsson with “An Introduction To IoT (Internet of Toilets 🚽); Or How I Built an IoT Kitty Litter Box Using JavaScript”. Fun to see the interesting projects he’s doing. Predicts we will see this continuing to grow. For sure! 👍
Having Minnebar online is an interesting tradeoff. Something I could never do that I just did, was send the link to a number of friends, none in the Twin Cities, and suggest they sign on. There is a big inclusivity win with events moving online. 🤔
Kisha Delain with “Pair programming: Supporting Your Jr Devs Right”. It is so great to see #TeamSPS presenting at Minnebar! Kisha brought some great observations on what works to make pairing work well, which is one of the most critical ways that developers learn. 💻
It is interesting to me that online events tend to have a structured method for facilitating Q&A from the audience. This is one of the things that seems to work way better in online events. Asking questions in an auditorium with 500 people is almost always a bust.
… due to other commitments I had to cut out after the first three talks. I really enjoyed this Minnebar and can’t wait to see the next iterations of events from minnestar like this! They even made the playlist available if you dug the tunes! 🎶
See also Minnebar collection.
Adrienne Peirce and I were honored to be recognized for 9 years as Founding Board Members of Minnestar. We finish our board service at the end of this year, along with Kevin Spreng, who wasn’t able to be there tonight. It’s been an honor to be part of this organization!
Minnedemo tonight was absolutely fabulous. Such a great variety of demos! A couple apps I installed while watching the demo!
Crowd queuing up for Minnedemo 33 at the Riverview Theater!
Minnebar 14
Minnebar 14 kicking off! Looking forward to learning a ton again this year! 💙 this event, organization, and the community that makes it!
Great energy going into Session 0 at Minnebar 14! Record registrations!
We have a growing, thriving technology community in the Twin Cities and Minnebar is an integral part of that community! I’ve been lucky to be involved with this organization since the beginning and love that SPS Commerce is a terabyte sponsor!
Good Session 0 at Minnebar 14 with a wake-up call from Sharon Kennedy Vickers on the issues that come from a lack of diversity in technology, and what we can do to improve as an ecosystem!
Good Minnebar open session on Product Management with Adrienne Peirce, Shawn Heller, and Jeremy Moede. Lot of knowledge sharing!
See also Minnebar collection.
Minnedemo 30
Excited for Minnedemo 30 tonight! And always proud to have SPS Commerce as a Terabyte sponsor!
Great Minnestar board meeting today! Lucky to be part of a great organization helping to connect the Twin Cities technology community. 🙌
Minnebar 13
Today I went to my 13th Minnebar — I haven’t missed one yet! For the first time ever we had a blizzard to contend with. Usually Minnebar is competing with the first great days of spring. This year, we were worried if people could get to the event because of the snow. This was also the first Minnebar for our new Maria Ploessl, our new Executive Director, to take the lead on. The event went off great, with more coordination than the last couple of years.
The sessions I went to today at Minnebar.
Here are some pictures from some of the sessions I went to.
See also Minnebar collection.
Minnebar lunch panorama.
Join me in supporting Minnestar and the Twin Cities technology community by becoming a Community Supporter. As a board member, we are matching the first $10,000 in donations over the next 100 days! Donate today!
Bridget Kromhout kicking off Minnebar 13 Session 0. 👏
Three new board members joining the Minnestar board! Great to have more talented people driving this organization forward! 👏