I’ve seen this report all over the place and only a few commentators have pointed out the most important piece of data – the sector with the most startups is construction. Construction is correlated with population and housing growth, which is occuring most rapidly in the south.

Most construction jobs are sole proprietors and each firm usually only employs 1 or 2 people (and likely will not expand beyond 1 or 2 people).

I’m trying to find the data with construction backed out but I suspect that would make Minnesota look much better.

Regards,
Frank

I have to agree with Sean above that innovation can take many forms and I’d like to add…”just not technology innovations”. I believe that you have to take a look at the “whole” and not just at the “parts”. Technology is important in this day and age but let us not forget “common sense”.

Merv-Omaha, NE

I think you guys are on track (no train pun intended) – it is helpful to think of Net Neutrality from the consumer and business perspective – because I think it makes the point that sometimes a tiered service is akin to adding HBO or not to your cable bill – but sometimes it not. As you point out it, sometimes it’s more like the train. I think the un-served communities feel that most acutely. We might visit a town without broadband – but would you ever live or start your business there?

In this post I will be addressing the impact that Google Wave had upon our business, and the speed at which we were able to integrate it into our corporate processes.

From reading early-user reports, I deduce that I am one of the lucky ones who joined Google Wave late in 2010, when there were no sign-up restriction, many initial start-up problems had been ironed out and a large number of extensions and add-ons were functional.

I will lead into my story by saying that I go through phases where I research new technology. This type of research leads you down “rabbit holes” (following links from one article to another).

I came across the Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009 which I started watching at around midnight. Around 7 minutes later my jaw just dropped.

Google was presenting the most advanced, most brilliant, extendable, open source enterprise collaboration tool that I had ever seen (and most likely that is out there) – and in inimitable Google style they were making it available for free?!?!?!

If there is anybody who can sustainably create something that is “too good to be true” – its Google – in this case it was just “far” too good to be true…

I finished watching the Video around 2am as I was pausing to check the application features while they were being demonstrated in the video.

By 2:15am I had sent outright orders – not requests but orders – to all Greenwavers (all the employees, outsourcers and entrepreneurs affiliated with our incubator) to sign up for a Google Wave account, watch some videos on how to use it and create at least one wave where I am collaborated to demonstrate that they were on the ball.

By 5:23pm the following day everyone in our organisation, spanning 4 continents was using the Wave and although many people did not initially understand how it differed from email and instant messaging, as soon as we started collaborating on everything from contract design, training development, copywriting, logo design and marketing collateral everybody started to understand what this would mean for our business…

It’s important to note that I added the following instructions around 2 days after we started using the Wave: “Wave was not to be used to replace email or Instant Messaging. The Wave is singularly used for team collaboration, and specifically for (multimedia) document collaboration. It is not an “instant messaging or email” platform”

I get the sense that there was a serious flaw in Googles PR and marketing that confused to many potential users about this fact.

For IM and VoIP you use Skype and for email you use Gmail and those are currently best of breed.

To get a glimpse of the awesome power of the Google Wave you should see the Pulpwave from the @getwhirled team. I only discovered it amidst my research on Google Waves future, and that is when I set up the SaveTheWave Google Page http://www.facebook.com/pages/SaveTheWave/140760779291210.

SaveTheWave: Don’t get me wrong, I have no real illusion that Google will reverse their decision on axing the wave, in fact I can’t even say that I disagree with them: The wave is a an enterprise solution and is unlikely to be usable for the consumer market (in its current state) – so if Google wants to pursue the consumer space and further their foray into social media, then the Wave is not the way to go.

What I am hoping for is that we can find a solution to retain the Google Wave infrastructure in its current state, so that companies such as ours will not be forced to migrate millions of waves into “alternative vessels”.

Please get in touch with me Ilya Spitalnik is@greenwaveincubator.com if:
1. Your organisation is directly affected by Google’s decision,
2. You love the wave and you want to be part of this effort,
3. If you are part of the Google Wave development team or
4. If you are a stakeholder in the Google machine in some other form.

The person who alerted me to the Hardcore funding announcement story in the Milwaukee Business Journal misinformed me! He obviously had *misread* the article. Upon revisiting it, I see it was *the VC fund* that recently announced it had raised $25 million, on their way to $100 million for the total size of the fund. The amount of the investment in Hardcore was not disclosed. However, I suspect it was in the range of the $2 million that I know they were seeking earlier this year, based on my contact with a MN angel group that told me that.

I knew there was something strange about that big number!

Graeme asked if there was a way to see Tweets if you haven’t joined Twitter and one answer was Twitter Search…I follow very few people on Twitter, basically only people that I want to direct message or they me…I follow people/topics via Search – Here’s why…
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If you follow someone on Twitter, all you get are the Tweets they post. You don’t see tweets to them, or tweets mentioning them, or related tweets. With search, you see the whole conversation. When following, you’re not getting the whole picture. I do the search (person or topic or keywords) and subscribe to the RSS feed for the results. So, the bulk of the Tweets I see come into my RSS reader rather than my Twitter client.
———-
With search, you also don’t necessarily need hash tags. If a Tweet uses a phrase or keyword you’re following, it shows up. No # required. Also with search, the @ sign is superfluous as the tweet will still show up in the results. The persons name doesn’t even have to be in the lead position.
———-
This was a method Steve Gillmor promoted in the early days of Twitter when they had “real time”. Since they don’t have that anymore – or haven’t reimplemented it – Search is the next best thing.
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Try it, Let me know how it works out for you.