First Crack Podcast with Garrick Van Buren

Bruno Bornsztein and I talk about;

• Open-sourcing CommunityEngine - the social network code behind Curbly, Uncooped, Teacherly, and many other community sites.
• Bootstrapping and maintaining a successful niche community site.

Listen to Bruno Bornsztein on Open Sourcing CommunityEngine [24 min].

Jason, You’re not the only one the forgets about the Wilde Roast.

I’ll be biking through NE thinking, “Where can I go for lunch and wifi?….Oh, yeah, there’s the Wilde Roast.”

Good grilled cheese as well.

I bought Tony Thomas from Minneapoliscast, Andrea Meyers from HowWasTheShow.com, and Justin Grammens from LocalTone.com, and Brian McDonough from MinnieIndie.com lunch to talk about the Minneapolis music scene.

We cover the goal of each of their sites, the challenges of finding good independent music, and Brian makes some band recommendations.

Listen to Lunch with Minneapoliscast, How Was The Show, LocalTone, and MinnieIndie.com [35 min].

Tyler Patterson just finished up a Masters Thesis project investigating adding all the University of Minnesota Twin Cities’ campus energy sources into the Chicago Climate Exchange.

In this numbers and stats intensive conversation, we discuss:

• The methodology of the measuring the campus’ carbon footprint
• The economics of the carbon trading and energy efficiency
• The trade-offs in determining energy sources (fuel oil vs. coal vs. oat hulls vs. natural gas)

Listen to Measuring Carbon Footprints with Tyler Patterson [41 min].

Matt Thompson (Snarkmarket, vita.mn) and I discuss one of Matt’s most compelling memes - telling stories over time. via:

• The rise and fall of monoculture
• Newspaper circulation - 1967 to 1991
• Future of journalism and the power of hyperlinks
• Joshua Micah Marshall vs. Trent Lott
• Google Finance

Listen to Time Traveling Journalism with Matt Thompson [28 min].

We catch up with Twin Cities coffee legend Jeremy Raths and talk about:

1. Moving The Roastery from a coffee shop in the middle of St. Paul to delivering coffee from an abandon convent.
2. The history of the speciality coffee market - nationally and locally.
3. How the coffee market is changing to benefit the small, local, coffee farmer.
4. The flexibility to choose just the coffees he finds interesting.

Listen to Jeremy Raths and the Search for Extraordinary Coffee [28 min].

Jeremy Raths, from The Roastery, teaches us how to cup - the traditional process for tasting and choosing coffee. He walks through:

• The cupping process
• How he teaches others how to cup
• The need to be emotionally self-aware when cupping
• How to get the cupping experience at home
• The responsibility and integrity of a good cup of coffee

Listen to How to Cup Coffee with Jeremy Raths [14 min].

Dan Haugen and I talk about Northeast Beat, his citizen journalism project covering my favorite part of Minneapolis, and hyperlocal journalism.

Listen to Dan Haugen on Northeast Beat and Hyperlocal Journalism [14 min].

Many thanks to AJ for putting together the first Minnesota PodSafe Music Awards and asking the PodcastMN community to help pull it together.

If you haven’t hear my voice in a while…I introduces the nominees and announced a couple of the winners.

Listen to the MN PodSafe Music Awards

Bruno Bornsztein, Ben Moore, and I talk about their recently launched project - Curbly.com - a social networking site for sharing DIY projects, tips, and finding help.

After we run through the site, we talk about;

• Using agile web development processes and what Ben calls WWIBAN (What Would I Bitch About Next) to be “one day behind the future”.
• The Ruby on Rails framework and the Ruby.MN developer group.

The follows my original profile of Curbly.com at MNteractive.com.

Listen to Curbly.com - The Home Improvement Social Network [23 min]