MinneDemo

On Friday night I went to MinneDemo with Erik and Ming at the Intermedia Arts theater. I'd never been to a MinneDemo before, and if you haven't either the rules are that the presenters have to present on working software, have approximately seven minutes to complete their presentation, and cannot use a PowerPoint slide deck.

In addition, there's tons of networking with developers from around the Twin Cities. We bumped into Alan from work there, a friend of Erik's who used to work at Thomson, a guy from SAS who said I looked familiar (e.g. I look like my brother), Ed Kohler of The Deets (a real pleasure to talk to), Peter who used to work at Findlaw and was at CodeFreeze, and some guy who was sort of dressed as a poor man's ninja with a straw hat. For some reason that last guy focused on Ming, so the rest of us didn't have to deal with him. I'm not sure if he's the reason Ming snuck out later without telling us goodbye.

There was also free Surly. A lot of free Surly. I had the coffee and the Furious. The beer alone makes it the best developer event I've been to in a long time.

The presentations were good, at least the first four I saw. There were so many people at MinneDemo that only about 3/4 of them fit into the little auditorium. Even for the first four I was sitting on the stairs. There was a big screen in the entry way, where Erik and I stayed for the second half so that someone else could get a shot at the seats, but it was a bit fuzzy and impossible to hear. Fortunately, you can see them all at Minnov8. Re-searchr looked particularly interesting, albeit a bit slow. But they were streaming the presentations to the entry area, so it might have been a bit congested.

After the beer and the presentations, Erik and I went out for a late dinner at Fuji Ya Sushi on Lake. When we bellied up to the sushi bar, the place was packed. Two hours later we were completely alone. I hadn't been to Fuji Ya before and I strongly recommend the tuna flight (six pieces) and the tobiko wasabi roll that left little fish eggs all over the place. We were there long enough that the sushi chef prepared us a pineapple/strawberry/chocolate-raspberry sauce dessert as a free treat. Just a great evening.