High Technology : Featured Stories

A proud "geek girl" from childhood, this globe-trotting scientist-businesswoman founded a local STEM-education program for elementary-school kids, moved away, then returned to find it still going strong. Now she's more committed than ever to strengthening science-and-technology training in our towns.

The University of St. Thomas's Minneapolis campus is home to a quiet program that's incubated and helped fund some of the Twin Cities' most prominent (and promising) tech startups--including several run by women. It's a place where professors turn into business advisors and colleagues and the help just keeps on coming.

The education innovators behind this charter school are hoping to create a 21st-century fusion of classroom and digital space, where kids' fascination with technology helps them learn--at their own pace.

The historic Minneapolis building, once given over entirely to commodities like wheat and rye, is turning into one of the major hubs for high-tech in the Twin Cities. Credit an ambitious coworking space as catalyst, an ideal downtown location, and (surprise!) the continuing need for techies to actually inhabit the same physical space.

Minnebar, our annual, semi-structured geek get-together, is becoming a tradition and a real force in the local tech community. This year's conference happened on Saturday, April 7--and two experienced tech bloggers gave their views of the confab soon after. Here are some excerpts.