In Chinese philosophy and religion there are two principles, one negative, dark, and feminine (yin) and one positive, bright, and masculine (yang) whose interaction influences the destinies of creatures and things. This week we experienced both with the Internet of Things (IoT): The massive distributed denial of service on Friday was definitely ‘yin’ and today’s IoTHackday was definitely a positive and bright ‘yang’.

Hosts: Steve Borsch and Phil Wilson (Tim Elliott is off this week)

One of the most interesting Internet of Things (IoT) events of the year is IoTHackday, a fun, FREE day that brings together teams, novel ideas, and an entrepreneurial spirit to dream up and build cool new devices to solve everyday problems.

Teams form, submit their ideas ahead of the event, and hack for 12 hours. The public is invited to attend at the end of the day at 8pm, vote for their favorite teams. Top teams receive hardware and prizes!

Justin Grammens is our guest this week (see profile below) and he tells all about IoTHackday, an event started with Patrick Delaney, and one you will definitely want to attend.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson

Justin Grammens is a founding partner of Lab 651, building the next generation of connected devices, owner of Recursive Awesome, an IoT data analytics consulting company and publisher of IoT Weekly, a publication covering current trends on the Internet of Things.

He is also a co-founder of IoTFuse, a 501(c)(3) non-profit to advance the Internet of Things, and an adjunct professor teaching a graduate level course on the Internet of Things at the University of Saint Thomas.

In addition to all of that we’re told Justin occasionally sleeps and, when not doing so, is a devoted husband as well as a great father to two young boys.

We cover the usual Minnesota tech stories as well as other top ones, but our guest this week is all about the cloud. Tom Iverson is an Enterprise Solutions Consultant with a Minneapolis firm and we dig in to questions about cloud computing and why it’s the answer.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson

Tom Iverson (LinkedIn) is an Enterprise Solutions Consultant with RBA, Inc., a firm specializing in Cloud, DevOps, Application Lifecycle Management, custom software development, and integration. The firm is a national digital and technology consultancy based in Minneapolis and they’ve been recognized as one of the nation’s fastest growing private companies and consistently named a Best Place to Work.

We discuss RBA’s focus, the acceleration in cloud solutions, spend some time on cloud security, and chat a bit about their client base.

You may remember the protestor at Secretary John Kerry’s talk at U of Florida and that guy wouldn’t leave so the cops Tased him as he yelled out, “Don’t tase me, bro!!” The video of the guy screaming that out became an internet meme in 2007 and so it was the first thing that came to mind when we discussed one of our first Minnesota tech stories called High-tech Talent Grab. The focus of the story was about Twin Cities companies essentially being raided for their tech talent.

But is that apparent tech-talent-raiding a good thing or a bad one? Is it really happening? Find out what’s really going on in this week’s show.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson

Phil Wilson, aka “Mr. Acoustics“, comes to us from the Minneapolis BuzzFeed office conference room. As a former radio DJ, Phil knows a thing or two about good acoustics, microphones, and sounding your best. THAT is why it’s so fun to tease him about his “down the well” acoustics this week!  

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson