What I didn’t realize was that Lisa, while now working at Involta, used to work at APEX, a Duluth-based organization that was instrumental in attracting Involta to the area. So I got to hear about attracting high tech businesses to Minnesota from both sides – something I thought might interest readers.

In terms of an update, Involta is looking at opening their second location in Duluth in September. They are on the look for more places as they grow and as they strive to create a robust and redundant network.

In terms of why Duluth? Duluth was very thoughtful in their approach. APEX did a market survey and realized there was pent up demand. They had a natural advantage over warmer climates. They had the workforce and a public and private sectors that were willing to work together. That culture was key to getting on track and attracting likely candidates. As Lisa said – they had clients, community and climate – a perfect recipe for data center success.

“We’ve diversified our commerce using sites like eBay and Etsy,” says arts advocate Lynn Kasma, a recent MIRC participant from New York Mills, Minn.

In Akeley, Minn., 79 percent of local businesses have taken advantage of the program; in Sebeka, Minn., 57 percent. More than 1,500 individuals have participated in the grant-supported workshops, benefiting the vitality of rural Minnesota.

As part of a larger, ongoing research project, this paper discusses the digital presence of rural businesses in 23 communities. We define digital presence as any locally controlled webpages, social media, or GooglePlace pages devoted to an entity, i.e., a private business, nonprofit, or government office, within a community. Overall, the digital presence of 85 townships and cities were assessed.

Here are the results:

Across the 23 communities, an average of 42.6 percent of businesses had a website. On average, 9.9 percent of businesses in each community used social media. More businesses showed activity on their GooglePlace pages. No major difference was found between the control and intervention communities for website and social media use.

The research seemed to pinpoint a few reasons that communities seemed to have more businesses online that their cohort communities

• MIRC communities saw slightly higher use of GooglePlace pages. UMN MIRC business training sessions focus on GooglePlace.
• Businesses in growing communities have a higher proportion of websites, are more likely to use social media for business, and have a higher proportion of GooglePlaces with owner verification and content.

The report adds that since the study was inclusive, not random, in nature that it doesn’t necessarily reflect all of rural Minnesota – but it does include 23% of rural businesses. So I suspect the rest of the state would follow suit. Check out the actual report if you want to see the list of specific communities and how they fared.

One fun follow up – the researchers used business listing from InfoUSA (a tried a true market research tool) to get lists of businesses. While the raw data from the report if not available to the general public, they have shared it with the individual communities so that efforts can be made to approach businesses to encourage them to learn more about effectively using the Internet to market themselves. As Hans wrote to me, “the important thing is that this is information that can help communities make “informed, intentional, positive choices about their future.”

Winona has a unique problem that the $100,000 local grant is also addressing: the city needs to attract more workers to fill the jobs it has. Grant money is being used to create free wireless portals around the city that are comparable to similar offerings in urban centers.

With two universities, a technical college, and a history of entrepreneurial efforts, this scenic river town is long on innovation. The number of global companies that trace their roots to the city of 27,000 is notable by any standard, with many still headquartered there today. Global giants like Fastenal, Hal Leonard, Peerless Chain, Watkins, RTP and others.

Higher education, health care, arts and culture have risen to meet the needs of Winona‘s innovative business community, and now widely available broadband technology adds a crucial piece of the progressive puzzle. With slow population growth, the city needs more workers so local companies can continue to flourish.

Technology, business, and medical jobs are available, in a place modern job-seekers might not think to look. A place that’s historic, contemporary, innovative, culture-rich, and a welcome alternative to the big-city grind. And now, well connected to the rest of the world.

Notes: for more on modern-day Winona, go to www.cityofwinona-mn.com. Grant money was also used in Winona to provide computer training to 60 Hmong refugees, and home computers to 40 Hmong refugee families, in partnership with PCs for People.

This paper will explain the economic and societal gains enabled by broadband, and describe how different rural service providers and the communities they serve have embraced the challenges and opportunities of new technology.

They take a look at Education, Health Care, Agriculture, Electronic Government, Public Safety, Utilities and the Consumer’s Home. Each chapter includes a statement of need (generally backed up with statistics and citations), some specifics on what communities and providers ought to be thinking about moving forward and a couple of case studies taken from real rural communities.

I think this report can be used to compel a community to take a closer look at broadband. It could offer some advice on goals. And, as it’s been developed by the NTCA and therefore uses examples from local telecommunications providers, I think this could be used to engage local provider through examples of success approaches by counterparts in similar areas.

I would like to pull out two Minnesota examples used in the report – both highlight best practices in Education…

Halstad MN – Discovery Education Drives Use

Based in Halstad, Minn., independent telecommunications cooperative Halstad Telephone Co. (HTC) maintains an Ethernet, fiber‐based network that provides broadband service to each of the four K–12 schools in its territory. HTC is part of the Northwest Minnesota Special Access, a consortium of 18 rural telephone companies that connects 126 schools and 43 libraries in the state. Students often use a remote video connection to take advanced placement, foreign language and other specialty courses from a teacher located in another facility. The network is linked to the University of Minnesota, Crookston, enabling high school students to enroll in college courses via a video conferencing application.

Although the network has been in place for many years, HTC recently observed an exponential increase in online activity. In 2010, HTC arranged provision of Discovery Education service to its four local K–12 schools at the company’s expense for one year. Under the terms of the arrangement, instructors and students have access to Discovery Education’s multimedia and interactive content within the school building. Content includes audio files, images and videos, as well as interactive elements such as online quizzes, educational games, and math and science lab simulations. The rural communications provider reports that the various school systems engaged in this endeavor each have a 6 Mbps to 30 Mbps symmetrical connection, and due to the popularity of multimedia content, the various capacities are maxed out at least once per day. HTC also stated that combined with the increasing use of tablets, it expects many schools to double their broadband speed requirements within the next two years.

Spring Grove MN – Devices Drive Use

Headquartered in Spring Grove, Minn., rural provider Spring Grove Communications (SGC) enables its citizens to learn on cutting‐edge technology devices. SGC partnered with its local school district to outfit students with the latest laptops and tablets. Apple iPads are used in all of the elementary classrooms, and every seventh through 12th grader has an Apple MacBook Air available to him during the school day. If a student wishes to take home a MacBook Air, he has the option of renting one for $15 a month. Many of the families renting laptops have never had a computer in their home. The program engages students on a dynamic, digital online platform, providing for learning anytime and anywhere. It also is educating students and teachers alike about how to use this technology and the importance of broadband in today’s economy.

In addition to the student aspect of education innovation, virtual learning is a driver of economic development for small, rural towns. Under the traditional education system, a teacher is limited to open positions within driving distance of her home. With virtual education, a teacher residing in a rural area is able to teach from home and reach students across the state, district lines or the globe.

The Blandin Foundation’s MIRC (Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities) project was selected for a similar evaluation for adoption projects. It’s great that the Federal government is taking evaluation a step farther than you might think they would. All of the award recipients have to track a range of items such as jobs, people trained, miles built – the items obviously vary depending on the type of project. This evaluation seems to go that extra step to see if life was made better through the investment – both from a social and economic perspective. It seems like we’ll glean more info that can be used both in and out of the federally funded/supported projects.

Blandin had the evaluators to visit some MIRC sites last fall. (I did a series of posts on our Minnesota tour with the evaluators.) It will be fun to see the results of that visit and learn more about what happened with Anoka County.

• Broadband-connected businesses bring in approximately $200,000 more in annual median revenues than non-broadband adopting businesses
• About 83,000 Minnesota business establishments have websites
• 47,000 Minnesota businesses use the Internet to advertise job openings or accept job applications
• Online sales in Minnesota account for approximately $6.2 billion in annual sales revenue
• More than one-half of Minnesota businesses in the healthcare sector (55%) use the Internet to stay in touch with their customers and patients
• 40,000 businesses in Minnesota are still not connected to broadband and are unable to actively participate in the digital global economy

Connected Nation also put out a broader report based on the surveys in the nine states where they work. It’s interesting to note that  the broader reports broadband-connected businesses bring in approximately $300,000 more in annual median revenues than non-broadband adopting businesses; that number is reduced to $200,000 in Minnesota.

So shared with permission from the owner of The Cellar Door…

When I took the Computer Commuter Classes on Websites & Social Media I had 50 people who “liked” my business on Facebook. Today I have 206 and it continues to grow every week. Neil showed me how to switch back & forth from my personal site to my store site & how to utilize it. I post pictures of each item that comes in and nearly every picture is either commented on or liked. Sometimes it is shared with a Facebook page that has an audience of 1000+. Customers have come in to purchase something, solely because of a picture that was posed.

An important component has been making it personal, another idea that came from the classes. Facebook helps me connect with younger customers. During the class I realized that my website pictures were slow to download and have since updated the site to make it faster and more entertaining. I have enjoyed continual increase in sales and traffic.
These classes really helped me use the internet to my advantage at little or no cost. It has saved my hours of time trying to figure these things out on my own. At one of the classes I learned how to email a survey. After our Retail Group events, I am able to send one out and receiver invaluable feedback from other retailers in a fraction of the time it took me before learning about this tool.

These classes have been a springboard of ideas for me as an entrepreneur in a small town with limited resources.

Thank you.
Annette Seivert, owner of The Cellar Door in Dawson, MN

The buzz about the conference was the announced relocation of the MHTA. They will be moving downtown to the Grain Exchange Building. In the sessions, folks were talking very specifically about how to use technology to improve business. Social Media, Cloud Computing and Security were hot topics.

Talking to attendees, it was good to hear that most folks feel business is good. From Involta to the Eagan Data Center, folks were talking about growth and building capacity – broadband, workforce and knowledge. Folks were telling stories of how technology has worked for them and what they are doing to make sure that it continues to work.

I took notes from the sessions I attended. They aren’t full notes – but I offer them for folks who weren’t able to attend….

Margaret Anderson Kelliher

Recent jobs report indicates that the computer sectors is reaching levels we haven’t seen in 10 years. The question is – are we producing enough quality people to meet that need? We will be looking into that with listening sessions with MNSCU today.

MHTA is moving this summer to downtown Mpls – the Grain Exchange Building

Gov Dayton

Rick King – what sets you apart matters

Will talk about how to work with and create a community & culture in a global company. Branding comes down to image – and those who control the image control the brand.

Do you want to define your brand or do you want someone else to define your brand personally and professionally? You don’t want to leave yourself with nothing.

If you don’t know anything about something – you will define it yourself and generally less complementary terms than a product would want.

Thompson Reuters focuses on: Authentic – Transparent – Courageous

My job is to make the company and the brand better than you found it. You need to be able to walk the talk. The Brand Becomes the Verb

How do you share what you want people to do? People get more involved if they make connection to leadership. It makes sense to define the brand and then use that to start conversations. How do you start conversations when you’re spread over 11 countries? Technology tools can help you put the goals and brand out there.

How do I use tools to communicate with people about what I want them to know about the business or me?

TR uses LinkedIn and Twitter as a tool to communicate in and out of the company. Rick started a blog internally. The goal was 3-4 posts a week, mostly on business. But the most interesting posts to readers were the personal posts. Personal posts start a conversation that professional posts can’t. They build a conversations; they build relationships.

7000 person office. We don’t know everyone. Mostly people don’t say hello if you’re the executive – unless you speak first. Now people start a conversation based on past blog posts. That’s a program that starts engagement with the folks we want to reach.

Social media can raise engagement.

Shared Drive is a video – we focus on product launch or other event to highlight individual and team achievement. It’s a great way to recognize and reward people. Surveys showed that people thought reward and recognition were low.

Webcasts of technology leaders like talk shows. We get 1000-12000 live viewers (and twice that view the archive). People can post questions in advance and/or send questions during the session. The feedback on this programs has been great.

You have to make sure these things are authentic and transparent. So people can ask anything they want – and we will answer every question.

Tell Me Something Good – send Rick an email if you see something good happen. He will call and talk to the do-gooder. Doesn’t cost anything aside from a little time. Get great stories. Make someone’s day. It’s nice to get the call – but it’s also nice to know that someone thought enough about what you’ve done to share the story.

Sometimes it’s important to recognize people who do the right things – but where they don’t work. We were going to call it Hit Me with Your Best Shot. The problem is that people don’t want to admit that something has failed. If we want innovation – we have to find a way to allow people to fail.

PUBLIC CLOUD STRATEGY

Sponsored by: Perficient

You can’t read a publication that doesn’t mention the Cloud as the most strategic platform that our industry is embracing. Come hear our panel of experts provide their perspectives on how they are incorporating the Cloud into their strategic plans. The lessons-learned and business results will surprise you — from new opportunities, competitive offerings, Service Level Agreements and deployment challenges to feeding the bottom-line, our experts will help guide you through this new and challenging landscape.

• Moderator – Matt Russell, Perficient
• Jeff Kubacki, Chief Information Officer, ATK
• Casey Niemann, Microsoft
• Narinder Singh, Chief Strategy Officer, Appirio

Cloud brings agility, virtualization, scalability, redundancy.

Need to work on compliance and security.

How is Aerospace approaching cloud computing given security concerns?

We have a hybrid approach. We have people trying to get into our system every day. We want to keep them out. We chose solutions based on that need. Only 6 percent of our inbound email gets through. Our biggest concern is malware.

On the inside – we’re Windows. We have 90% virtualization. That puts us in good shape.

Now we ask when we can take the next step. We’re trying to reduce costs. The cloud is a good fit. I belong to a council of CIOs. The feds are trying to move their infrastructure to the cloud. One other company in the council has move entirely to gmail.

We are waiting to see this work with other aerospace/defense companies before we go too far.

The government is pushing as aggressively in a pragmatic way to cloud computing. If the government can move – what’s everyone else’s excuse?

Businesses should be moving faster. Compare Instagram to Kodak. (Or Netflix and Blockbuster.)

You need to ask about what your competitors are doing – even the competitors they don’t know about. We’ve seen several companies lose traction as they held onto an all of nothing attitude.

Also have to look at core competency and what you need to do stay on track. Stick with those – but maybe there are other functions that you can look to do on the cloud. Portfolio rationalization.

Systems were used deal with customers for years – or maybe they were used to not deal directly with customers – but rise of social media has forced businesses to go back to customer.

Think about how to use the cloud to deal with customers.

How to you get CEOs and others on board?

I get to present to the board a couple times a years. I have been talking about the cloud. I tell them that we use it for selective tasks but due to security concerns we’re holding off on other – but we are getting ready for action.

I told our vendors that we were interested in moving to the cloud.

It’s important to set expectations. The CEO is reading about the cloud but not necessarily thinking of business strategy in terms of cloud computing.

Facebook IT is about 70% in the cloud. That approach will apply. Without a forward looking CEO the company can’t get full ROI on cloud computing.

Patterns in Cloud Computing?

Small companies can act big; yet big companies can act small. People in the company can feel as if they have the tools they need when they need them.

Small companies can afford the larger solutions / Large companies can become more nimble.

Some folks (even at Dept of Defense) seem to think that the Cloud Computing may be more secure than other options eventually. There are difficult issues; but also dumb perceptions.

How are you prepping for the Cloud?

We are simplifying the departments. We have shared services. We moved to more virtualization. We talk to our vendors about what we need.

Most people are not cloud providers. You need to figure out what piece you can have it that.

Why are people going to the cloud?

The biggest draw to Cloud Computing is SAS applications – especially SalesForce, Google…

Customer related functions is drawing people in because it’s often a point of pain for a business.

Anything that is social or mobile by nature

Any net-new project

Cloud storage has a great ROI

SEO MEETS SOCIAL MEDIA

Presenters – GiveMN, Webranking, SpiderTrap, Padilla Speer Beardsley

Sponsored by: Padilla Speer Beardsley

Social media now plays a big role in search engine results. You not only need to create great content online, it needs to be sharable, even “likeable”. How can you make your organization more socially active and visible online? What does it all mean for traditional search engine optimization? Do you need a presence on Google+ to be a player? Join us for a lively discussion!

• Moderator – Bob Brin, Padilla Speer Beardsley
• Jeff Achen, GiveMN

How have recent Google tweaks changed SEO & SM?

• Google+ is a growing factor in SEO.
• Google focuses on fresh content. In the social realm – having a blog is a big part of any social media campaign. And you need to produce fresh content on a regular basis.
• Google rewards sharing (via Twitter, AddThis & other)
• Yesterday Google made changes to de-emphasize over optimization of sites.
• Search engines are trying to pull in more content from social media tools faster. In some way to combat immediacy of Twitter.

• Bing is not going away
• Using Facebook is important

What’s up with Google+?

• They have 170 million users. Some of that is people recognizing how Google+ has impact on business
• Google+ is fastest growing social network
• Many marketing folks got online – now folks are trying to figure out what to do.
• They are trying to push video and having out space
• Google+ will grow

YouTube and social media may lead to conversions – and search is happening off the search engines themselves.

How can you use Google+ in a business realm?

• Build an audience
• Engage an audience – but slowly
• Post updates that are newsworthy, post links to content
• Don’t post too spammy
• Google+ might be the same people who follow you on Twitter and Facebook.
• Google is starting to crawl content that are symbols (such as hashtags)
• Strategy for Google+ Try and fail, try and fail – learn quickly and adjust

What do you do when another site (such as aggregator) does better with your content that you do? And how can thwart it?

• They could have better links; they probably have more fresh content
• They could have better domain name, volume of content or age of site
• You can check out Google Universal Search
• Try channels such as PRWire/Web, think about blogging, think link building
• Paid search

Can you talk about content?

• There are many types of content – words, video, infographic. It’s something people can interact with.
• Fresh content that’s related to your audience is a key.
• Google wants to provide the best search results. So they look for content that’s shared. They also look at volume of content you share.
• Don’t focus too much on keyword density – but recognize that it will make a difference – think about it when using social media.

What about Slideshare?

• We use it on GiveMN.
• Good for informational outreach.
• It’s like YouTube – can be a good tool
• Results are less about SEO but more about content creation

How can you get the word out?

• Use blog as your hub
• Social media tools can be PR channel
• When you do a PR Campaign – optimize for it and use PPC/sponsored search

What makes a good SEO/SM person?
• Passion for the topic (it requires a lot of attention)
• Like to write
• Understand the tech side
• Someone who is data driven

Search engine marketing isn’t a term we use – you need to look at the broader scope and set goals that relate to conversion of action versus search engine ranking.

60 percent of BtoB businesses are seeing SEO rise because of SM

What are the best hubs that work for Social media strategy?

• A blog
• Tumblr
Other tips:

• Having a corporate guide on social media use is helpful.
• Encouraging user-generated content can be a great resource
• Creating a content calendar is helpful
BIG DATA

Sponsored by: University of St. Thomas Graduate Programs in Software

In the new era of “Big data” organizations gain strong insight and advantage through a keen understanding of how markets and organizations work. gives According to McKinsey & Company, big data is “the next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity.” This session will introduce participants to big data and business analytics: what it is, how to get it, and how to use it to an organization’s advantage.

• Moderator: Bonnie Holub, ArcLight, Inc.; UST Graduate Programs in Software
• Bradley Rubin, PhD, UST Graduate Programs in Software
• Carolyn Parnell, State of Minnesota
• Mike Edwards, Thoson Reuters

What do we mean by Big Data?

• Cassandra
• Hadoop
• mongoDB
• Google
• Data.gov
• Amazon
• Netflix
• Watson

How do we characterize Big Data?

• Volume
• Velocity
• Variety
• Visualization
• Value

Big Data & the State of MN - Presentation from Carolyn Parnell (Thanks for sharing!)

View from UST

Moore’s Law in effect has made a difference in capacity.
Cluster computing has also increased capacity.

QUESTIONS

Concerns of social implications of predicting via big data?

We’re working on a new product for lawyers – it mines public sources (legal documents) and inferring connections between people. They were very uncomfortable. Geeks think more analytics are better analytics – but that may not always be the case.

State has geospatial data. There’s a lot of potential – but risk too. Need to approach with caution.

How do you ask the right question?

Ask the neuroscientist – or whoever the customer is. The technologist is not as good as making up questions.

Does the State of MN have something like Data.gov?

http://www.mn.gov/data/ 

We need to get a handle on what’s useful and a handle on what needs to be handled more securely.

1. Online accounting services – potential annual saving $1,833.70
2. Online marketing materials – potential annual saving $378.07
3. VoIP for Phone – potential annual saving $432
4. Website design – potential annual saving $2,098.20
5. Mobile apps – potential annual saving $3,502.72
6. Specialty logo service – potential annual saving $458
7. Home office – potential annual saving $6,180
8. Incorporating online – potential annual saving $296
9. Video Conferencing – potential annual saving $1,023.12
10. Read News Online – potential annual saving $348.71