Minnov8: My Other Blog

This blog has been my primary vehicle for thoughts surrounding anything internet, web, technology, and I’ve loved all the energy and time I’ve invested in it. Over the last few weeks, I’ve had several folks ping me on my apparent reduction in post frequency, and I thought a quick note on why was in order.

Though my first love is Connecting the Dots, I’m “having an affair” with another: Minnov8, a blog started by myself and four other geeks and one dedicated to Minnesota Innovation in Internet & Web Technology.

Born and raised in Minnesota — though with three years living in Chicago and most of my other jobs requiring extensive out of state travel over the years — I’m still fully invested here raising my family, staying involved with extended family, and enjoying my lifelong and new friendships.

Silicon Valley is the epicenter of technology and I’m constantly struck by the events, meetups, unconferences and other thought leader gatherings I would attend if I lived out there. I’ve been tempted on a couple of occasions to pack up and move out there (and my bride would be delighted as would my videogame and technoweenie 13 year old son), but there is too much holding us here. We have a business that’s 21 years old, several key clients and contacts placing us one or two degrees of separation from just about anyone in Minnesota.

Agitated that I had to connect with others outside of Minnesota in order to push against the membrane of the future to explore new ideas and possibilities, I found myself in a group of guys at MinneDemo, a gathering of startups, entrepreneurs, and interested others, lamenting the fact that there wasn’t a publication we could read to stay on top of the twice yearly connection received at this event.

Saying, “Well, maybe we should start a blog?” and having affirmative head nods from my colleagues, we started Minnov8 in February. Built on WordPress, we know that the next step is to add a participative aspect to the site, but we have no business model, sponsorships or other revenue streams (done so intentionally) and we’re realizing now that none of us can devote the time necessary to Minnov8 without some way of having an economic incentive to compensate for time not invested in our other pursuits. Building upon a white label social network, Drupal or some other platform would require time, effort, energy and/or investment that we’re figuring out how to make and it’s not obvious.

So that’s why I’m infrequently posting as well as the order of my priorities: Family is first; clients second; our business third; and then comes blogging, podcasting and other ‘net-centric pursuits. If you have any ideas or suggestions, let me know!

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3 Comments

  1. Lief Larson on July 2, 2008 at 11:21 am

    Steve, why don’t you just create a self-policing social network? The problem, from my humble perspective, is assimilating all the different fractions from around the state – one umbrella that everyone can fit under – like barcamp, internet practitioners group, tcphp, your groups, etc.

    We have the network framework here to put on the table, and enough interest to do the legwork, but we wouldn’t invest in this until we new all groups were committed to participation. Until then, it’s everyone for him/herself and Ning.

    – Lief



  2. PXLated on July 2, 2008 at 12:57 pm

    Time is finite – and more finite the older you get it seems – so have no idea how to solve the “so many things, so little time” dilemma. Struggle with that every day.
    Good luck!



  3. Paul on July 2, 2008 at 3:46 pm

    Steve,

    Applaud your priorities, even more that you are living by them.



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About Steve Borsch

Strategist. Learner. Idea Guy. Salesman. Connector of Dots. Friend. Husband & Dad. CEO. Janitor. More here.

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Connecting the Dots Podcast

Podcasting hit the mainstream in July of 2005 when Apple added podcast show support within iTunes. I'd seen this coming so started podcasting in May of 2005 and kept going until August of 2007. Unfortunately was never 'discovered' by national broadcasters, but made a delightfully large number of connections with people all over the world because of these shows. Click here to view the archive of my podcast posts.