MinneDemo: ‘Woodstock for geeks’

Justin and I gave a demo at Barcamp MinneDemo last week. The projects were fantastic. We also got a writeup in the Pioneer Press. Here’s a copy of the original article:

Techies gather at a Minneapolis bar, hoping to dazzle one another with software ideas.
BY LESLIE BROOKS SUZUKAMO
Pioneer Press

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With pints of beer in hand and a laptop computer tucked into a backpack, Paul Wenzel and Justin Heideman waited among a crowd of techies in a South Minneapolis bar for their turn to show off the new software they made.

“We call it a reactive video utility,” said Heideman, the tall, lanky one with frosted-tipped hair that looked like he combed it with a tornado.

“It reacts to live sound,” explained Wenzel, the shorter, bearded one with the nerdy-cool glasses. It makes video or animation move to music in a way that is more spontaneous than similar programs, he said.

“We hope,” he added with a nervous swallow.

Welcome to MinneDemo, the Twin Cities’ latest networking event for techies that’s a cross between “American Idol,” “Animal House” and a “Star Trek” convention.

Networking among local techies isn’t new. The Minnesota High Tech Association, NetSuds and The Collaborative all sponsor events that promote the state’s technology industries, which have a combined annual payroll of $8.4 billion, according to the high tech association.

But those events require polish and stiff entrance fees. MinneDemo is a reaction against that.

MinneDemo’s organizers — Luke Francl, Dan Grigsby and Ben Edwards — said their event grew out of a desire to create a network for software developers that was less focused on impressing financial backers and more “true to the technology,” according to Grigsby.

MinneDemo is a spinoff of similar events popping up across the country called BarCamps.

BarCamp — which gets its name from a programming inside joke — is a daylong “unconference” to help early-stage Web applications get off the ground.

Organized by ad hoc groups around the country, the rules are simple: no fees, minimal structure and self-organized workshops that require participation, not passive attendance. The software is usually open-source — meaning free of charge and shared. The products often are rough or unfinished. The spirit is communal.

“If you want to call it Woodstock for geeks, I wouldn’t object,” said Grigsby, who calls himself a “CEO-in-waiting.” The 33-year-old made his fortune in 1998 creating and selling a St. Paul e-commerce dot-com called Merchant Planet. Now he wants to start another company.

BarCamps have sprung up all across the country since last year, and Francl, Grigsby and Edwards organized the first Minnesota BarCamp last April. Since then, the trio threw two MinneDemos — shorter, after-work versions of BarCamp, and they’re planning a second Minnesota BarCamp for next April.

The latest MinneDemo was held earlier this week at the Acadia Cafe at Nicollet Avenue and Lake Street in Minneapolis. While the event is designed to showcase Web software, the demonstrations showed that some creations maybe haven’t had all the bugs worked out.

More than 175 people crowded into a backroom hung with beer signs and hollowed-out electric guitars stuffed with transistors. The crowd was overwhelmingly young and male, with a few graying ponytails and a scattering of turtlenecks and blazer-wearing lawyers and investors.

Heideman and Wenzel, the “reactive video” developers, nervously sipped their black-as-espresso pints of stouts as they watched others demonstrate software for database graphics, job search and music and video sharing. They had formed a company called Co-Op Media and put together their software in two weeks in their “office” — the Minneapolis Public Library reading room.

They tested the software at downtown music club First Avenue the previous weekend, but this was the real show — the one for their peers.

Finally, it was their turn.

After a couple false starts, their video of a bomb explosion began to pulse to the music, blowing up and down to the beat. The audience laughed appreciatively.

Someone asked if Wenzel and Heideman plan to make a killing selling their animations.

“Uh, we’re very poor capitalists,” Wenzel told the audience. “We do it for fun. If I were being paid for this, I wouldn’t be having fun. I would be too stressed out about the money thing.”

Dan Carr, founder of The Collaborative, welcomes BarCamp and its MinneDemo cousin, saying they would complement the region’s other networking groups.

The Collaborative, which has 700 member companies and holds 13 events yearly, is geared toward small, fast-growing companies looking for an investment boost. Since 1994, companies that have presented at The Collaborative have raised $2 billion, or half of the $3.9 billion in venture capital raised by the state’s tech companies during that period, Carr said.

BarCamp is for earlier-stage ventures. “What it says about Minnesota is that it’s vibrant enough to support this kind of thing,” he said, even if it doesn’t have the critical mass of Web-centric companies to ride the wave of money and hype generated by companies like Google and YouTube.

But the MinneDemo organizers believe their showcases can unleash the passion of local developers.

“You can’t buy a spot at MinneDemo,” Francl said. “You’ve got to earn it.”

Leslie Brooks Suzukamo can be reached at 651-228-5475 or lsuzukamo@pioneerpress.com.