Well, this is a severely dated subject now, but I wanted to mention that MinneBar was really impressive this year. My session-fu may have been a bit off with a couple of my session selections, but I did learn plenty, and met some cool folks along the way. Rich Hoeg’s session on Connectbeam and other enterprise social networking tools stood out, and will likely influence a few things I’ll be attempting at work over the coming year. The Lightning Round sessions were great, too: One of the sites highlighed, scribbls.com, is seriously causing me to consider getting a graphics tablet.

(I have a small group of links I picked up over the course of MinneBar over on del.icio.us.)

Challenges facing the Twin Cities tech community, both external and self-imposed, turned out to be a running theme of MinneBar this year. There were lots of questions and conversations about where the talent is going (NYC and SF, even though the opportunities may be better here), whether money is really only available on the coasts (no, but it seems that way), and what the area needs to do to get its entrepreneurial legs back (one option, covered in the State of the State session: stop being so damn timid). It’ll be interesting to see how the local industry is fairing the same time next year. While the view from my place of employment may not be as dim as it is with some other companies in the area, the challenges mentioned of finding quality talent are exceedingly familiar.

Anyway, it was a great time. I’m glad I attended, and look forward to next year.