Warehouse/North Loop : Innovation + Job News

Even if you’ve never been to the Big Apple, you’ve probably heard of Humans of New York — the wildly successful, ongoing photo essay that’s touched more than 20 countries and earned millions of social shares.
 
New York City has more than eight million inhabitants from all over the world, but it’s not the only place with a multitude of human-scale stories worth sharing. MSP has its very own analog: Humans of Minneapolis, Minneapolis-based photographer Stephanie Glaros’ often poignant look at the joys, sorrows and oddities of life in the urban North.
 
Glaros started Humans of Minneapolis as an occasional tumblr blog — a useful vehicle for her ample interactive talents. She’s since added a Facebook page and Instagram feed to bring her subjects to a wider audience. Last month, the Minneapolis Parks Foundation announced that Glaros would conduct a “summer-long portrait series profiling visitors to Minneapolis neighborhood parks,” showcased in Humans of Minneapolis’ digital ecosystem and the Park Foundation’s own social properties.
 
According to the Parks Foundation, Glaros will profile 15 park visitors in all. The portrait series aims to draw attention to Minneapolis’ 160-plus parks, which (per the Parks Foundation) attracted more than six million visitors last year. Shortly after the portrait series’ announcement, the Trust for Public Land announced that Minneapolis had once again earned the top spot in its closely watched urban U.S. park system rankings, continuing a dominant run that dates back to the early 2010s.
 
“Stephanie’s series will help us begin to tell the stories of the people who use our parks every day and show the multitude of ways people use and love our Minneapolis parks,” the Parks Foundation said in a release.
 
Some of the stories Glaros captures on the Humans of Minneapolis blog are challenging, to put it mildly. Interviews conducted immediately following Prince’s death were heartbreaking. More recently, she spoke with a young man whose ex-girlfriend’s brother had died violently the previous week; in the interview, he talked openly about his own mortality and agonized about carrying a firearm for protection.
 
It’s not yet clear whether Glaros’ park stories will hew toward the weighty, or whether they’ll focus on the lighter side of summer in MSP. No matter what the next few months bring, Glaros is excited to explore her beloved, snow-less home city and forge new connections with her fellow Minneapolitans.
 
“People are reserved here and they don’t want attention, so it can be a bit of a challenge to draw people out,” she told the Star Tribune in April. “I look at that as a challenge to get real and get outside of our shells and make a connection…[t]here’s something magical about connecting with a complete stranger.”
 
 

In February 2015, Minneapolis startup Vidku raised $17 million in a 17-day Series A funding round led by Arthur Ventures, a Fargo-based venture capital group. The speed and size of Vidku’s fundraising effort was unusual: According to data from CrunchBase, the average Series A raised $6.9 million in 2014 and it often takes months to close a successful round.
 
So it’s no surprise that MSP’s investors and innovators sat up and took note of Vidku’s breakout success. CEO Jim Leslie attributes his company’s achievement both to the far-reaching capabilities of Flipgrid, its core “asynchronous video sharing” product, and the boundless belief of Vidku’s 35-plus employees.
 
“Our investors weren’t interested because they knew who [Vidku’s leaders] were or trusted us to execute,” says Leslie, a self-described “serial entrepreneur” who ran a handful of successful firms (and sold his most recent venture for a cool $100 million in 2011) before joining the Vidku team. “The passion of our entire team regarding Flipgrid’s future possibilities was infectious — our investors got as excited as we were” about Vidku and Flipgrid.
 
Users believe in Flipgrid, too. According to Leslie, the product has hosted more than 3 million video shares since its January 2014 launch, spreading chiefly through word of mouth. (Vidku has no formal marketing operation to speak of, though that may change in the future.)
 
Flipgrid admins, typically classroom educators, populate “grids” with video or text questions, prompting video responses from student users. Everyone with access to the grid can see and share the responses. There’s no limit to each grid’s capacity for questions and responses, though admins are limited to a specific number of grids per year — typically five to 10, or roughly one per class for full-time educators.
 
Though Flipgrid was originally designed for educators, Leslie is quick to point out that about 20 percent of the platform’s volume is devoted to non-educational use. Private businesses and government agencies use Flipgrid as a collaborative tool, while wedding planners and religious institutions leverage it to create more social events and environments.
 
“Flipgrid is a growing, powerful and highly effective technology tool that’s getting stronger all the time,” says Leslie. Following Vidku’s “design first” imperative, “we’re constantly developing new ways for users to participate.”
 
Vidku’s development activities have accelerated since the company spun out from an eight-person University of Minnesota team led by Dr. Charles Miller. Miller’s team is responsible for designing and building out Flipgrid’s base technology and critical elements. Leslie and co-founder Phil Soran, also a wildly successful tech entrepreneur, caught wind of Miller’s innovation and offered to form a private company capable of turning Flipgrid into a disruptive technological force.
 
“We were only interested in [spinning Flipgrid out of the U and forming Vidku] if [Miller’s] entire team was on board,” says Leslie. He didn’t need to worry: The response was an enthusiastic “yes.”
 
For Flipgrid’s core team and the U itself, the transition to private enterprise has thus far been smooth. All eight team members remain on staff at Vidku, generously compensated for their efforts and diligently working on the next big thing.
 
Perhaps more importantly, the U is a major shareholder in Vidku; Vidku’s success is quite literally the U’s success. Such public-private synergies, wherein universities drive innovation and investors provide the capital necessary to bring transformative ideas to market, are commonplace in established tech centers like Boston and Silicon Valley, says Leslie, but less so in MSP.
 
“A strong public-private linkage is the hallmark of a healthy entrepreneurial community,” he says. “We’re on the cusp of that here” in MSP.
 
In addition to Flipgrid, Vidku also offers a video-based assessment tool called Avenue. “Whereas Flipgrid is suited for discussions” and other forms of knowledge and experience delivery, Leslie explains, “Avenue is ideal for more formally assessing knowledge.”
 
Vidku’s team also handles development work for Passport, a language-learning application initially developed by St. Paul-based EMC Publishing. Though Vidku doesn’t own Passport, Fligrid and Passport are kindred spirits with the same lofty goal: reducing friction and improving knowledge delivery in the classroom.
 
Later this year, Vidku plans to launch an application that offers a “significant enhancement” to Flipgrid’s capabilities, says Leslie. The new update “is the first tangible fruit of our intensive development efforts” since spinning off from the U, he adds, though he’s mum on the software’s specifics.
 

Minnesota Social Impact Center, a North Loop coworking and social entrepreneurship organization charged with “connecting change agents” from disparate professions and walks of life, is now Impact Hub Minneapolis-St. Paul.
 
The name change is about more than semantics. Impact Hub Minneapolis-St. Paul joins more than 80 other Impact Hubs worldwide — the latest addition to a disparate network of cohesively branded, locally controlled organizations that offer “a unique ecosystem of resources, inspiration and collaboration opportunities to grow the positive impact of the work of impact-focused innovators,” says Danielle Steer, Impact Hub’s manager of operations and member services.
 
As part of the global Impact Hub network, Impact Hub Minneapolis-St. Paul gains access to a “shared international database” that leverages the experiences and expertise of Impact Hub’s global membership, dubbed “Hubbers.” The global Impact Hub network provides consulting and logistical support to each member organization, a helpful perk as Impact Hub Minneapolis-St. Paul grows its membership and deepens ties to the MSP community.
 
With a much higher profile and the cachet of an international social entrepreneurship brand behind it, Impact Hub Minneapolis-St. Paul is “actively seeking organizational partners, financial support and more members to make this venture a success,” says Steer. The board is also expecting to outgrow its North Loop “prototype space” and is looking for larger digs nearby. And Impact Hub Minneapolis-St. Paul is looking to expand its day-to-day programming and special event schedule, building off a launch event in May and a just-finished meeting/event space at its current headquarters.
 
Before the organization could officially adopt the Impact Hub brand, Steer, her teammates and Impact Hub’s six-member board of directors (led by board chair Terri Barreiro and staffed, among others, by organization founder Katie Kalkman) put the question to an up-or-down vote of the full Impact Hub membership.
 
According to Steer, preparing the necessary applications and supplemental materials — including a polished team video — took the better part of a year. Throughout the process, Steer and her colleagues solicited input from Impact Hubs that had recently achieved full membership in the global network: Impact Hub Sydney (Australia), Impact Hub Oakland, Impact Hub Boulder and Impact Hub Malaysia.
 
The Impact Hub concept was born in Vienna, Austria, and now has a presence on four continents. Impact Hub Minneapolis-St. Paul is the first and only Impact Hub in The North; other U.S. locations include Boston, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco.
 
 

Though debate continues as to whether the average person needs eight glasses of water per day, many of us still forget to stay hydrated when we’re busy. Hidrate co-founder and recent University of Minnesota graduate Nadya Nguyen found out the hard way.
 
On the bus home from a 10-hour volunteer shift at TEDxMinneapolis, Nguyen felt faint and disoriented. Her head was pounding. With effort, she recounted the events of her jam-packed day and realized that she hadn’t taken a single sip of water since the morning. She simply hadn’t had the time, to say nothing of the mental bandwidth necessary, to stop what she was doing and take a drink.
 
Then it hit her: In the age of cloud-connected smartphones and tiny, powerful sensors, she didn’t need to remember to drink water. She could simply build an app that connected to a special water bottle that would remind her to hydrate. Along with three other recent U of M grads, she built out the app and a prototype water bottle—called Hidrate—during least year’s Twin Cities Startup Weekend.
 
“It’s so easy to forget to take care of yourself when life gets busy,” says Nguyen. “I wanted to create something that would make life better for people in this small but important way.”
 
The idea is breathtakingly simple: Users download the app for free on their phones and enter personal parameters (weight and other factors), location (temperature, relative humidity and altitude can affect water needs), and daily activity level, editing over time as this information changes. Hidrate uses this data to create a personal “daily water goal,” expressed in both ounces and water bottle equivalents. The app syncs with a 24-ounce, BPA-free, dishwasher-safe water bottle that can sense its own fill level and updates your total daily intake whenever you take a sip. If you go too long without drinking, a reminder message appears on your phone; if you really fall behind, the bottle glows gently until your fluid intake gets back on pace.
 
Hidrate isn’t the first smart water bottle to hit the market. But the talented, driven team enjoys the benefits of a heavily discounted shared workspace at Startup Venture Loft in the North Loop — a huge help for any startup operating on a shoestring budget.
 
The company’s Kickstarter campaign, launched June 1, had a seemingly ambitious goal: $35,000. Thanks to tremendous support from what Nguyen calls “a dedicated group of early adopters” and a high-visibility mention in widely read tech publication TechCrunch, the campaign blew through that ceiling in a couple days, notching nearly $200,000 from more than 2,500 individual donors in its first week. Everyone who donates $39 or more gets a personal bottle, with delivery expected in December 2015 or January 2016.
 
The Kickstarter campaign’s proceeds will mostly cover costs for the initial bottle-manufacturing round, which is likely to be larger than expected given the campaign’s success. Nguyen and the team are still working out a retail price for the bottle, but “it’ll probably be in the $39 to $45 range,” she says.
 
For now, interested buyers can reserve a bottle — in the color of their choosing — on Hidrate’s website. Longer-term, Nguyen expects to sell through gyms, sporting goods stores and other retailers. The team is already courting potential partners, though nothing’s ready to announce.
 
“We’re willing to work with any gym, specialty store or retailer that caters to our customer base,” says Nguyen. “We’ve been blown away by early demand for the product and can’t wait for the next phase of our growth.”

 
Hidrate Jobs in Minneapolis
 

1. iOS Mobile Developer
2. Android Mobile Developer

 

 
Kari Severson, a Minneapolis-based inventor and entrepreneur, has a fun, healthy, ultra-connected solution for sedentary office workers: the Walkway Workstation, a “treadmill desk designed with the purposeful user in mind.” On March 2, Severson and her team of contract designers and developers celebrated Walkway’s official launch at Startup Venture Loft (SVL), a North Loop coworking space and startup incubator.
 
SVL will permanently feature at least one Walkway desk, a high-visibility win for Severson’s health-and-productivity startup.
 
“We’re thrilled to have the support of Startup Venture Loft’s tenants and management,” says Severson, a self-professed fitness enthusiast who juggles a full-time job at United Health Group with her entrepreneurial duties at Walkway. “It’s gratifying to see people embracing the Walkway concept so enthusiastically.”
 
Walkway Workstation also recently announced a partnership with MSP International Airport. Severson’s team will deliver two Walkways to Concourse C, near gate C21, and one to Concourse F, near gate F3. More could follow in other locations this year or next.
 
The airport partnership is apt. Severson first came up with the idea for Walkway during a hectic, travel-heavy period in her life. Because her boyfriend was enrolled in graduate school at the University of California Los Angeles, and Severson had a full-time job in MSP and was pursuing master’s program Duke University in North Carolina, she was constantly crisscrossing the country.
 
“With all the travel and a generally unpredictable schedule, I found myself really inactive,” she says. She came up with a concept that improved upon existing treadmill desks, which didn’t feature the amenities or built-in controls that would eventually adorn the Walkway.
 
Each Walkway is a self-contained unit equipped with a sturdy treadmill, ample desk space, device charging ports and a free Internet hotspot. The treadmill’s speed is capped at two miles per hour, a relatively leisurely pace that facilitates multitasking and doesn’t tire out users too quickly. The setup is ideal for individual offices, common areas in open-plan workplaces, waiting rooms and institutional public spaces, says Severson.
 
“The goal is to make everyday lifestyle resources available to busy people,” she says, “and to seamlessly facilitate healthy choices in a convenient setting.”
 
Severson offers several different Walkway configurations, each ideal for a particular end-user. A light-duty treadmill base is ideal for home offices and small workplaces; a moderate-duty base works better in medium-sized, collaborative workplaces; and a heavy-duty treadmill supports near-constant use at large corporate offices, and airports and other public spaces. Each version comes with the user’s choice of a manually or electronically adjustable desk.
 
Though individual buyers and small offices can purchase Walkways at market price, Severson’s team seeks sponsorships to subsidize the cost of units in heavily trafficked public spaces. In effect, each public Walkway is an interactive billboard; sponsors pay for customized user interfaces and prominent, outward-facing logo displays visible to anyone who walks by.
 
And a lot of people can walk by: According to Walkway’s website, about 26,000 people per day walk by the company’s two MSP airport sites.
 
Severson is looking at other revenue-generation ideas, too, including a “freemium” model that offers free access for an initial period, and then imposes a per-minute or per-hour rate for continued use. She’s also mulling partnerships with content providers to deliver premium music and video to users willing to pay a fee for the service.
 
Severson is also keen on the concept of “Walkway pods,” which would feature two, three or more Walkways facing one another — good for “walking meetings” and other collaborative activities, she says.
 

Startup Venture Loft (SVL) tripled its physical footprint with a move into an 8,500 square foot space in the North Loop’s McKesson Building last September. The new digs were the final piece of a year-long rebranding and restructuring process that transformed SVL from Healthcare.mn, a healthcare-focused business accelerator, into a coworking hub and incubator for “investable startup companies with high growth potential,” says owner and executive director Peter Kane.
 
“Expanding to an 8,500 square foot space grabs people’s attention and lets them know we’re serious,” says Kane, who wants to “make the Twin Cities the best place in the country to launch a startup.”
 
Thirty early stage companies mostly in the healthcare and technology sectors now rent space at SVL, up from just five in November 2013. Healthcare.mn remains an SVL tenant.
 
Turning the Twin Cities into a tech hub requires a self-contained ecosystem of entrepreneurs and talented knowledge workers, plus venture capital funds, angel investors and service providers such as intellectual property lawyers and marketing specialists, who support and promote entrepreneurial efforts.
 
Kane cites Chicago—a city not known for its technology industry until recently—as a model for the Twin Cities. 1871 is the beating heart of Chicago’s tech startup scene, with tenants ranging from idea-stage one-person companies to established VC funds that funnel capital into proven technology concepts. Decision-makers from big technology and healthcare firms, including Google, either rent space in or routinely visit 1871, providing startups with access to larger, more lucrative markets and creating buyout opportunities—known as “exit strategies” in startup parlance.
 
SVL also aims to bridge a generational and cultural gap that hinders local startups’ growth. Many Twin Cities entrepreneurs, especially in tech and healthcare, are Millennials with different values and business strategies than the older, more experienced executives and investors they typically pitch ideas to. Kane’s two previous startups both failed in part, he says, because established company executives didn’t take him seriously.
 
“Our culture is somewhat risk averse, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” says Kane. “But [decision makers] want to know that you’ve been vetted, and that’s a tough sell when you’re a 20-something entrepreneur and everyone across the table from you is a baby boomer Pharm.D.”
 
“The response is often ‘who are you’ and ‘why should I trust that you know what you’re doing,’” he adds. “There isn’t the sort of informal vetting network that exists in more established tech centers like Silicon Valley and New York.” Kane wants SVL to be a core node in that network. With the support of a competent, technology-driven community, entrepreneurs associated with SVL would have a de facto stamp of approval from investors and corporate decision makers.
 
Bringing entrepreneurs and business leaders together also requires a mature digital media sector that trumpets the Twin Cities’ startup scene as worth of national and international attention—and investment.
 
“We’re not always great at telling our story [in the Twin Cities],” says Kane. “We need a beacon—the media—that churns out stories with national appeal and raises the local startup scene’s profile to where it needs to be.”
 
 

Drivers can now reserve and pay for parking spots in advance at most major sports and event venues in the Twin Cities, including the XCel Energy Center, Target Center, Target Field and the Hennepin Theater Trust, thanks to Baltimore-based Parking Panda. The parking-logistics company entered the Twin Cities market within the past 12 months and has already amassed more than two-dozen clients.
 
That initial response vastly exceeded Parking Panda’s expectations. Target Center saw more than 3,500 reservations for a single concert, says Parking Panda marketing director Bryan Lozano, just days after the company went online there.
 
“The Twin Cities has quickly become one of our best markets,” says Lozano. “We’re providing a service that really wasn’t available before and tapping into the region’s dynamic urbanism,” he adds. Parking Panda, he continues, is one more solution in a transportation mix that includes a world-class bike infrastructure. and multiple bus and train lines running connecting the two cities.
 
Lozano ascribes Parking Panda’s rapid adoption to its “great partners.” The company works directly with teams, like the Minnesota Wild and Twins, to promote its parking services and encourage fans to reserve space ahead of time. That reduces congestion before and after games.
 
“One of the biggest drivers of traffic and congestion is people driving around looking for parking,” says Lozano.
 
In addition to major sports and entertainment venues, the company also contracts with garages near West Bank academic buildings, the Minneapolis Convention Center and in the heart of Uptown’s business district. All are big draws for out-of-towners likely to be impressed by the Twin Cities’ smooth parking and transit infrastructure.
 
Parking Panda lets garage and lot operators set prices for individual parking spaces on the Parking Panda site. Drivers can search for spaces near their destination, selecting the cheapest or most affordable ones, and then reserve and pay in advance. Parking Panda takes 20 percent of each transaction and forwards the remaining 80 percent to operators.
 
Though it doesn’t yet do so in the Twin Cities, Parking Panda also lets homeowners and small business owners rent out extra spaces in small lots, driveways or alley, creating new income streams for individuals.
 
Parking Panda doesn’t have a local office, though a single sales rep does support operations in the Twin Cities. The company is exploring opportunities to organize parking for major events like the Minnesota State Fair—which could involve working with hundreds of property owners in Midway and the North Side of St. Paul. That may require a more robust local infrastructure and could create more opportunities for frustrated Twin Cities’ drivers.
 
“Parking can be a painful experience,” says Lozano. “Parking Panda works every day to take the pain out of parking.”
 
 

The Minneapolis Downtown Council recently announced that Aimia, a consumer loyalty and engagement management firm, would move its U.S. headquarters, along with more than 300 employees, to a 50,000-square-foot space in the North Loop’s Butler Square building. Aimia previously occupied space in a Plymouth office park near I-494.
 
Aimia is the latest company to relocate, expand or retain space in downtown Minneapolis since the launch of the Minneapolis Downtown 2025 Plan. Other notable companies include CenterPoint Energy, Valspar, XCel Energy, Olson and Be the Match. Three years into the Downtown 2025 Plan, the momentum is palpable.
 
“Aimia saw the merits of moving downtown...and all the opportunities and progress on display here right now,” says Steve Cramer, president and CEO of the Minneapolis Downtown Council & Downtown Improvement District. “Our mission is to create an extraordinary downtown.”
 
One of the core goals of the Downtown 2025 Plan is to create a more vibrant, energetic downtown for workers, businesses and residents. Another goal is to accelerate economic and cultural progress by eliminating the either/or distinctions between those three categories. The plan recognizes that a truly world-class downtown core needs a diverse mix of uses, and a high density of people, ideas and economic activity.
 
“Cities with a strong central business district thrive because they have companies, big and small, working in close proximity [and collaborating] with clients and partners,” Cramer says. “When the area as a whole succeeds, it creates new opportunities for everyone involved.”
 
The addition of thousands of new residents has raised downtown Minneapolis’s profile, too. With a broader, more creative pool of potential recruits within walking or biking distance, talent-driven companies like Aimia find it much easier to justify the temporary cost of moving downtown.
 
“Our population has risen to more than 37,000 people,” Cramer says, “and we’re seeing apartments and condos under construction across the area.” The increasing density of creatives downtown dovetails with other Downtown 2025 Plan initiatives, including the recently announced Minneapolis Idea eXchange and a street beautification partnership with the University of Minnesota’s College of Design.
 
Aimia’s move is just another sign of how far downtown Minneapolis has come. “For the first time in decades, we’re seeing an incredible trend of people moving in toward the downtown area,” Cramer adds.
 
“Downtown Minneapolis is a leader for the [Twin Cities] region,” he adds. “If it thrives, the region as a whole thrives.”
 
Aimia Jobs in Minneapolis
 
Director of Business Development - CPG, Retail, Finance
 
IT Sales Engineer
 
Mobile Delivery Manager
 

The Foundation is moving its 20+ employees from a small office shared with Atomic Data into a bigger space in the recently renovated Ford Center, near the heart of the North Loop. The “single source IT provider,” which serves as a one-stop help desk for design, architecture and nonprofit firms that use Apple systems, is also opening a new office in Co-Merge, a coworking space in San Diego, in what could be the first phase of a multi-city expansion.

A rapid expansion and a shift into mobile device support for national retail chains “caused us to run out of physical space” for housing employees and “storing pallets of iPads and iPhones,” says Matt Woestehoff, director of operations and business development. “Meanwhile, Atomic Data”—a data center operator co-owned by Jim Wolford, sole owner and CEO of The Foundation—“was growing rapidly and basically kicked us out of their office,” Woestehoff says with a laugh.

The new digs are “definitely an upgrade,” he adds. The Foundation shares one floor of the Ford Center with Seed, a small startup incubator that focuses on biotechnology and other high-tech ideas. Seed uses an old chemistry lab on one side of the building.

The Foundation’s new space belonged to a boutique soap manufacturer, a longtime client of The Foundation’s, which moved its operations to Milwaukee after a buyout by Johnson & Johnson. The space has a 32-desk bullpen and easy access to a highly secure storage area for valuable electronics. The Foundation has access to a guest parking lot, a huge perk for the 300-odd local clients that had to use meter parking at its old location.

Though The Foundation is growing rapidly, the Ford Center space should be fine for the foreseeable future. Unlike many IT companies, The Foundation lacks an office-based salesforce. “We’re not salesy people,” says Woestehoff. Instead, the company relies on referrals and search traffic to generate new business. The company’s engineer-heavy workforce spends “40 to 45 hours per week, per person” on site at local clients’ offices, freeing up space at the Ford Center.

The flexible work model first led Woestehoff and the team to explore the possibility of a second office last year. Two employees, an engineer and operations specialist, expressed interest in moving to southern California and remaining part of the team. Woestehoff investigated and found that San Diego’s business culture is remarkably like the Twin Cities’, “very forward-looking in terms of technology, but laid back and supportive too,” he says, without the competitiveness of tech hubs like San Francisco and New York.

Using The Foundation’s experience with CoCo, “a valued partner” that the company has worked with for years, Woestehoff found Co-Merge and set the two employees up there. It’s still early going, but initial business development efforts have been successful. He’s confident the move will pay off, noting that other cities with similarly forward-looking yet supportive cultures could be ripe for additional offices for The Foundation.

But not too fast. In today’s fast-paced IT world, The Foundation, now in its 15th year, prides itself on patience and strategic thinking. “A lot of our friends have gone out of business because they’ve acted fast and made mistakes,” he says. “If it takes another 15 years to open a third office, so be it.”
 

Minneapolis event-organizing company, GetKnit Events, is changing the way Twin Cities residents experience local businesses and attractions. On September 13, it pulled off its most ambitious and far-reaching experience yet: Rails & Ales, a self-guided tour of the breweries and brewpubs along the Green Line, from Target Field to Union Depot. Hundreds of participants sipped discounted brews, previewed special cask releases and rubbed shoulders with some of the most innovative brewers in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
 
For GetKnit founder Matt Plank, connecting Twin Citians with local business owners—preferably on a permanent basis—is the whole point. He and the company’s “core team” of paid employees, most of whom knew each other socially before GetKnit’s founding, are constantly looking for “ways that we [can pursue] our goal of community engagement while supporting local businesses in and around Minnesota,” says Plank.
 
Tickets for Rails & Ales sold out quickly, but a lucky group of several hundred attendees got their run of three establishments in Minneapolis and five in St. Paul, all within walking distance of the Green Line. (Though pedicabs were out in force to transport customers between stations and breweries, especially at farther-flung spots like Urban Growler and Bang Brewing.) Guests checked in at the Target Field, Stadium Village or Union Depot stations, where GetKnit staffers and volunteers handed out T-shirts, drink tokens (two per person, each good for a free pint) and “event passports” that listed participating breweries, their specials and Rails & Ales social media contests.
 
Other locally owned businesses got in on the act too. The Dubliner Pub, between the popular Raymond Avenue (Urban Growler and Bang) and Fairview Avenue (Burning Brothers) stops, ran all-day drink and food specials. Food trucks like Peeps Hot Box posted up outside participating breweries, tempting customers with daily specials. And even independent vendors, like the woman selling vintage glassware outside Bang, profited from the early-afternoon crush on a beautiful Saturday.
 
Meanwhile, the brewers themselves relished the chance to mingle with enthusiastic craft beer fans. At the Mill District’s Day Block Brewing, for instance, the head brewer handed out free pints to anyone who correctly guessed the varieties of hops laid out on the table before him. Rails & Ales wrapped up at 6 p.m., but brewery owners have to be hoping that the day provided a permanent boost in visibility.
 
GetKnit draws inspiration from other tour companies and event organizers, says Plank, but with a twist. Aside from the focus on locally owned business, which is lacking in some areas of the industry, the company aims for “wildly original” events “that our participants likely couldn’t do anywhere but through GetKnit.” You might be able to spend an entire Saturday riding the Green Line between breweries, in other words, but you probably wouldn’t be able to mingle with head brewers, try specially brewed cask releases or enter social media contests for free events and swag.
 
And unlike more bare-bones tour and event operators, GetKnit organizes well-staffed, all-inclusive events that “allow participants to turn off their brains for a day...and not worry about anything,” says Plank. For Rails & Ales, GetKnit had at least one representative at every participating brewery, in addition to staff at check-in stations. The goal was to facilitate “safe and responsible” enjoyment while showcase the ease of using local transit and “how much is accessible right off of its grid.”
 
GetKnit also designs bespoke events for private groups. Plank cites a recent example in which a group of Latin American businesspeople came to the Twin Cities for meetings and sightseeing. Many had never been to Minnesota, so Plank’s team set about creating the "quintessential Minnesotan experience” that included a horse-drawn carriage tour of St. Anthony Main, a brewery tour and tasting, a hands-on cooking class featuring Jucy Lucy burgers and even private curling lessons.
 
For now, GetKnit organizes events in the Twin Cities and greater Minnesota. But Plank doesn’t rule out the possibility of expanding the model to other regions, possibly with the help of knowledgeable locals. A recent St. Croix Valley winery tour did cross the Wisconsin border, and “we are playing with other events that might do more extensive tours of other areas in our neighbor to the east,” he says.
 

Next week, September 21-24, the Twin Cities will host Rail~volution 2014, one of the country’s most visible transit and development conferences.
 
Founded in 1989 in Portland, Oregon, as a local advocacy organization, Rail~volution expanded in 1995 into an annual conference that brings the country’s top transit and design thinkers together each year. According to the Rail~Volution website, the "conference is for passionate practitioners — people from all perspectives who believe strongly in the role of land use and transit as equal partners in the quest for greater livability and greater communities."
 
Rail~volution 2014 will showcase the vibrancy of the Twin Cities, thanks to two dozen “mobile workshops” spread across four days. The a la carte events include “Grow, Sell and Eat Local,” which will take attendees to Frogtown Farm, Urban Organics and the St. Paul Farmers Market. “BOD: Bike-Oriented Development + The Midtown Greenway” shows off “the nation’s best urban bike trail” on a 12-mile bike tour.
 
Other noteworthy events include a “cultural journey” centered on the Franklin Street LRT station, a tour through the Warehouse District/North Loop, and a “history and vision” workshop about the Northstar commuter rail line. Other workshops and lectures will take place at the Hyatt Regency near the Minneapolis Convention Center.
 
Another highlight of Rail~volution 2014 is a trade show that features more than a dozen rail-related exhibitors, from multinational rolling stock manufacturers like Siemens to smaller firms like Oregon-based United Streetcar and Northwest Signal. Local sponsors include Kimley Horn, a St. Paul-based design firm, as well as the Central Corridor Funders’ Collaborative, a consortium of organizations dedicated to fostering transit-oriented development and sustainable growth along the Green Line.
 
Local conference attendees will have plenty of opportunities to network with national players in the transit and development business. Before the conference officially kicks off, the Baseball + Hotdogs + Local Brews event combines a Twins game with a tour of the newly refurbished Ford Center, in the Warehouse District, and free-flowing Twin Cities beers. For non-baseball fans, a paddleboat cruise shows off the cities’ skylines and natural beauty from the Mississippi River. Those who want to pair art and transit can tour the Loring Greenway and Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, which precedes a Saturday-evening show at the Jungle Theater.
 
The location of its signature conference varies each year, but Rail~volution has plans to implement year-round programming that “fufill[s] our mission and vision that America's cities and regions be transformed into livable places—healthy, economically vibrant, socially equitable and environmentally sustainable,” according to its website.
 
 

Got big plans for April 26? Lu Lippold, the local producer for One Day on Earth’s “One Day in the Twin Cities,” has a suggestion: Grab whatever video recording device you can—cameraphones included—and record the audio-visual pulse of your neighborhood.

On the final Saturday of April, the Twin Cities and 10 other U.S. metros will host the fourth installment of One Day on Earth’s celebration of film, culture, and all-around placemaking. Founded by Los Angeles-based film producers Kyle Ruddick and Brandon Litman, One Day on Earth (ODOE) has a “goal of creating a unique worldwide media event where thousands of participants would simultaneously film over a 24-hour period,” according to its website.

The first event took place on October 10, 2010 (10-10-10); 11-11-11 and 12-12-12 followed. ODOE skipped 2013, but its organizers weren’t about to wait until 2101 for their next shot. Instead, they selected a spring Saturday—both to accommodate amateur filmmakers with 9-to-5 jobs, and to give participants in the Northern Hemisphere longer daylight hours to work with—for a bigger, bolder, slightly revamped version of the event.

For the first time, participants get 10 questions to inspire their creativity and guide their storytelling, from “What is the best thing happening in your city today?” to “Who is your city not serving?” The goal is to create a multi-frame snapshot of “cities in progress,” one that doesn’t simply answer the who-what-where of the places it covers.

As One Day in the Twin Cities’ point person, Lippold supervises local filmmakers and pitched the project to dozens of partner organizations, including the Science Museum of Minnesota and Springboard for the Arts to visual media companies like Cinequipt and Vimeo. (The McKnight Foundation and the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative are the largest local sponsors.)

The upside? “[The event] is a great way to shine a light on all the hard work that our nonprofit community does,” says Lippold.

Lippold also works with a handful of local ambassadors, some of whom enjoy national acclaim. These include noted cinematographer Jeff Stonehouse, veteran documentarian Matt Ehling, and community-focused filmmaker D.A. Bullock. They’ll be contributing their talents—and stature—to One Day in the Twin Cities’ promotion and execution.

One Day in the Twin Cities could be seen well beyond Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Along with their counterparts from other participating cities, local filmmakers may see their work incorporated into a condensed, three-part series that Litman and Lichtbau will market to PBS affiliates around the country. No word on whether TPT will air the special, but TPT Rewire has agreed to publicize the event in the coming weeks.

The real stars of One Day in the Twin Cities, though, are its filmmakers. Even if you’ve never filmed anything in your life, says Lippold, you can contribute meaningful work. Thanks to an interactive map feature on ODOE’s main site, the work will visible to anyone who visits.

“If I were just starting out in video, I would see this as a huge opportunity,” says Lippold. Since all contributions are credited by name and location, each participant “instantly becomes a documentary filmmaker,” she adds.

Source: Lu Lippold
Writer: Brian Martucci

It’s not quite “Pinterest for professionals” or “Facebook for freelancers.” But CreativeMinneapolis.com, developed by Mark Sandau of the Minneapolis design firm Sandau Creative in the North Loop, is an interactive, user-curated, free online community for designers, illustrators, writers, and other artists who want to get their work noticed.

After kicking the idea around for several months, Sandau soft-launched the site in early February. He invited his close friends and colleagues to make submissions and approvals. He followed up with a proper kick-off at the end of February.

According to the website, Creative Minneapolis’ member-submitted, member-approved content is “about the creative work, people, and events in and around Minneapolis.” After a trial period, during which creatives can submit their own work but can’t approve other members’ submissions, users gain “editing” privileges that give them a say over the approval and placement of the site’s content. By “hyping” chosen posts, editors can push compelling work to the “top” of niche-specific silos like “advertising,” “copywriting,” “photography,” and “digital.”

“This platform isn’t revolutionary,” Sandau says. “It’s evolutionary, an interesting idea.” The fact that users can shape submitted content—and, thus the very appearance and nature of the site—is a powerful proposition.

Sandau’s worked in the industry for nearly two decades. Prior to founding Sandau Creative 10 years ago, he worked several entry-level jobs. He then landed at Fallon for a seven-year stint. He understands how tough it is for rank-and-file creatives—especially freelancers, who often toil around the margins of the media and advertising industries—to get their work noticed by the right people.

Even smaller agencies like Sandau’s, unless they have a “sexy brand” under their belts, might not have the resources to devote to a tradeshow exhibit or promotional campaign. Creative Minneapolis aims to be a highly visible virtual portfolio for these folks.

Current focus notwithstanding, there’s nothing stopping Creative Minneapolis from morphing into something bigger or broader. In the future, Sandau hypothesizes, a close-knit group of gearheads could use the site to share pictures, videos, or animations of modified cars or motorcycles, and the most interesting of the bunch would bubble to the top alongside portfolio pieces from local graphic designers. 

“Done right,” he says, “Creative Minneapolis has the potential to mirror the audience that’s watching and contributing.”

For now, Sandau is content to see where this all leads. He has a business to run, after all, and doesn’t have unlimited time to promote the site. That’s okay, he says. “At the end of the day, it’s just fun to see other people’s work.”

Source: Mark Sandau
Writer: Brian Martucci

Corporate sponsors have long played an integral role in the development and dissemination of art and culture. OST USA, an IT company with a 125-employee office in the North Loop's TractorWorks Building, is further advancing corporate sponsorship.

As the highest-profile partner of the Art Leadership Program (ALP), an ongoing collaboration that provides emerging artists with resources, guidance, and access to markets, OST supplies studio space (ArtLab 111) near the building’s loading dock for the dozen or so artists-in-residence it has already sponsored (usually for three to six months), and a lobby gallery (Gallery One) that regularly hosts exhibitions and openings for ALP’s participants.

“OST is the quintessential corporate partner,” says Ron Ridgeway, ALP’s founder and chief visionary, who launched the partnership. Ridgeway is also a mixed-media artist and corporate branding consultant. “We maintain a meaningful venue [for our artists], as well as curatorial services and placement… as exhibitions are becoming an art form in themselves. These days, it’s all about the experience.”

One ALP alumni launched from the program into high-profile commissions. In early 2012, local artist Elizabeth Simonson displayed her “systems-based” installations at BMW of Minnetonka’s Gallery One—an off-site ALP exhibition space. That same year, she built on a commission for the Walker Art Center’s lobby with a $25,000 fellowship grant from the McKnight Foundation.

Simonson “set the benchmark for our program,” says Ridgeway, but there’s nothing stopping future ALP participants and residents from notching their own victories. Ridgeway describes ALP’s corporate sponsorship model as a classic win-win-win: Artists get funding and market exposure, corporations get the positive PR that accompanies art patronage, and business districts or neighborhoods gain valuable physical assets.

“What’s been most beneficial [about working with ALP] is just getting our work out there,” says Twin Cities artist Booka B (aka Adam Booker), a recent graduate of Metropolitan State University who is showing new work with Lindsay Splichal, a recent graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, beginning March 6 in Gallery One. But creating art is just one piece of the puzzle, he adds: “You also have to connect with the community.”

Traditionally, companies that invested in art curated permanent collections that would eventually “gather dust,” as Ridgeway puts it. The rotating installations or exhibitions put on by ALP’s visiting or resident artists, in contrast, feel like organic additions to offices, building lobbies, and other public spaces, he adds.

ALP has also hosted an exhibition at International Market Square and is currently working with potential tenants of Nicollet Avenue’s 9’s on the Mall. “We hope to build a sustainable model for this type of partnership,” Ridgeway says.

Sources: Ron Ridgeway, Art Leadership Program; Adam Booker
Writer: Brian Martucci

Although coffee shops have always attracted book lovers, one local publisher is using technology to make that relationship even more rewarding.
 
Minneapolis-based Hillcrest Media Group recently launched CoffeeandBooks.com, an online venture that pairs coffee house partners with publishers, with plenty of incentives thrown in for reading groups and bibliophiles.
 
Hillcrest CEO Mark Levine actually bought the domain name four years ago, but let it idle while he built the company into a leading local publisher, growing the company through other business divisions like Mill City Press, BPR Book Group, and Publish Green. Then, a chance connection with the head of Dunn Bros. put the site on a fast track.
 
"Once we had that anchor partner, the site became a priority," says Levine. "Dunn Bros. is very entrepreneurial, as are we, so it was a great partnership." The publishing firm tested the model about two months ago by putting together events for authors like Don Shelby and promoting them on CoffeeandBooks.com. When huge crowds showed up, they knew they'd found a powerful combination.
 
"The success we found with those early tests is very encouraging, and we're ready to go to the next phase," Levine says. That will involve putting a point-of-sale stand in participating coffee shops, with a selection of eight books, including both fiction and non-fiction. Although titles and publishers have yet to be fully finalized, Levine notes that some of the books will come from local favorites like Milkweed Press and the University of Minnesota.
 
He says, "So many publishers are dying to find non-retail places to sell books, and this is a fresh concept, so we expect to see a great deal of interest." Readers will also benefit from incentives like discounts on food and drinks, and a gift card for each book purchased. 
 
Source: Mark Levine, Hillcrest Media Group
Writer: Elizabeth Millard