We are planning on 24 sessions at MinneBar. We may have room for more.

What do you want to talk about? Suggest session ideas below. Sessions will be discussions of 50 minutes in length (including time for Q&A) and can cover just about any topic you can dream up. Expect some topics to be introduced and added the day of the even as well as everyone gets a feel for the crowd and what they would like to talk about.

Got an idea? Add it to the Ideas section below.

Rather do a demo? Short 10 minute demos of working code will also be scheduled. See MinneBarDemos.

Sessions with Leaders

Pitching Agile

BenEdwards

Clients are often wary of Agile methods, if for no other reason than we have been telling them for years that they must define every detail up front so we can build it right. Now we want to tell them that iteration and collaboration is the way to go. Why should they listen? Come discuss this topic and tell us how you do it.

Marketing Your Technology Startup

Derrick Shields

Before you can pitch Agile development methods (see above), you've got to have someone to pitch to in the first place! You've put a lot of time and hard work into developing your product, but now you need to put yourself out there. We'll discuss marketing your services if you're a service-oriented group, and marketing your Web Application if your a product-oriented company.

Topics will briefly cover SEO/SEM, Social Networking (online and off), Viral Marketing, and utilizing Local Resources. This will be a very open discussion. If you have successfully launched your own brand in the past, please come and share your stories for those just starting out!

Product Launch: From the initial itch to a global marketplace

Matthew Dornquast

Have an itch? Launching a product? Launched one? Let's talk!

Over the last 6 years, Code 42 developed the technology that launched 6 other startups.

In January, we launched our own consumer product entitled CrashPlan.

I'll share why we did it, how we did it, what worked well and what did not.

JSAN

Dave Rolsky

JSAN is a project to bring the ideas behind Perl's CPAN to Javascript. JSAN is a code repository and mirroring system, but more importantly, it embodies a philsophy of building small libraries that do one thing well.

Intro to Catalyst

Dave Rolsky

Catalyst is yet another web framework, this time in Perl. Learn a bit about how it works.

Dojo Javascript Toolkit

Chris Barber

The Dojo Toolkit is the standard library Javascript never had. I'll talk about Dojo's package system and some of the more popular packages for doing Ajax and Widgets. Since Dojo is huge, this will be an overview, but if there's interest, I can give a second talk that dives deeper into Dojo.

Does the world need more storage?

Paul Prawdiuk

SAN, NAS and now Clustered Storage (AKA Grid Storage) Do we really need another way to store data?

FireSeed Streaming Supercomputer

Justin Kruger, Bob Waldron et al.

The FireSeed Streaming Supercomputer (FS3) is an ad hoc tech project for designing and building a GPU-cluster supercomputer. This session will give an overview of the project, elicit your suggestions, answer your questions and, with a bit of luck, interest you in participating in the project. If time permits, we'll get into some of the technical details with an NVIDIA 8800 and the CUDA SDK, or possibly have a follow-up tech session for those interested in poking at the guts of this technology.

A Highly Kinetic, Semi Dangerous Exposition

William Gurstelle

What is this about? Well, definitely *not* about virtual technology. Visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA3zqaz3kmM to get an idea of the topic

Innovation in a Convergent World

Bryan Strawser, Target Stores

In today’s world, when the world of IT and physical security are converging, how do organizations learn to work together internally and continue to innovate? In this presentation, hear one corporation’s example of managing through a major convergence effort and the lessons they learned along the way.

Revenge of the Type Systems

Paul Cantrell

Every day, the majority of the population goes about their daily lives, blissfully unaware that all around them, a secret war is raging: the war between static and dynamic type systems. Why do programmers care, and what's the difference? In fact, the differences are important, and present difficult and interesting trade-offs. This talk aims to take a level-headed look at those trade-offs, sans dogma. Crack programming expertise not required — this talk is for anybody curious about the fundamental differences between popular languages, code slingers and code dabblers alike.

Functional Languages and Agile Development

Robert Fischer (Blog)

Functional programming provides a lot of power in a little bit of code: they are a fundamental change in the way problems are thought about, just as object-oriented languages were before them. So how does this impressive new technical paradigm fit with the impressive new technical paradigm of Agile development? What practical consequences are there for adopting Agile development methods outside of the object-oriented realm? I don't have all the answers for these questions, but I've got some choice thoughts: anyone with some ideas is welcome to discuss.

RESTful Development

J Wynia - Software Developer, Writer and Geek

While SOAP and RPC dominated the stage a few years ago, REST has been stealing the stage as a way of developing for the web that's more in line with how HTTP itself works. Where SOAP and RPC are all about the verbs, REST is all about resources. So, what does that difference mean? How do you approach RESTful development? This discussion will provide an introduction to the topic using the Atom Publishing Protocol as an example. My own implementation of the Atom Publishing Protocol is in the planning stages and I'd love to hear from others interested in the topic.

Web 2.0: In business, out of beta

Bruno Bornsztein, Dan Grigsby, Aaron Mentele, Ben Moore, Matt Thompson, et al

Panel discussion: developing an app, getting noticed, building community, and making money.

Why you need to make your Web site accessible to the disabled

Jenny McDermott

Get more customers, prepare other Webmasters for your own old age, oh and avoid lawsuits too. This session is hands-on, so bring your laptop.

Pick your battles: Tales from the front lines of gaining design approval (and still being able to sleep at night)

Stefan Hartwig, Electric Pulp

A field guide to the design process and hanging on to design inspiration through client input and design constraints.

Ideas

From 0 to application in 20 minutes (Jesse O'Neill-Oine)

Ajax

Design oriented discussions, interaction, visual, information,etc.

Experiences building web "2.0" apps (Aaron Mentele)

Ruby on Rails - a basic intro to building a web app

Development with Virtual Machines/VMWare appliances (J Wynia)

Adobe Apollo/Spry/Flex Frameworks (someone should really do this :)

Microformats

Accessibility and Usability

Search Engine-Friendly Ajax/Flash/etc.

Integrated Marketing, web 2.0 style

Groovy - Java's best friend!

CoWorking

Dynamic Languages Panel

Also see the MinneBarDemos page or go back to MinneBar