Minnesota is the home to an amazing advertising, marketing, and interactive development community – some would say that everyone who works the state that I call home is ‘Above Average’.

No other conference helps elevate Minnesota’s talent like the MIMA Summit.  It’s the biggest annual marketing and technology conference in the Midwest, presented by the oldest interactive marketing association in America. (FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m MIMA’s Vice President.  So, I have a soft spot in my heart for the organization – not to mention that I’m a bit of a Minnesota towny).  

This year’s theme is No Boundaries: The Rapid Evolution and Diversification of Digital Marketing featuring keynotes by gaming expert Jane McGonigal and former Apple chief evangelist and best selling author Guy Kawasaki, as well as over 32 sessions with an incredible roster of national speakers on digital leadership, mobile e-commerce, SEO, digital strategy, social media and more (breakfast, lunch and a happy hour included).

And, you’ll network with over 700 of the smartest interactive marketers around (I know most of these people and they’re good folks).  I’m attending and I hope you will join us.

via MIMA Summit 2012 with Guy Kawasaki & Jane McGonigal – Minneapolis, MN- October 10, 2012.

Only a year ago, the charts were dominated by stars who had come out of the old machine of radio and major-label promotion: Katy Perry, Rihanna, Adele, Maroon 5. This year’s biggest hits — “Call Me Maybe,” Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” and Fun.’s “We Are Young” — started in left field and were helped along by YouTube and Twitter before coming to the mainstream media.

via How ‘Call Me Maybe’ and Social Media Are Upending Music – NYTimes.com.

To receive the coupon, part of a much larger sampling program the brand engages in on a regular basis, the tweeter is directed to the website to download the offer. So far about 300 coupons have been fulfilled for people who have successfully used geo-tagging that was verified to have been taken from a required location.

via Clif Bar Gets People Geo-tweeting for a Coupon | Promo

Medium is at heart a blogging service, although right now it’s only open to a select few authors. The posts are organized into “collections” that use different layouts depending on the content. One section, “The Writer’s Room,” appears to be organized by Emergence author Steven Johnson and is a plain text article template, while “Been There. Loved That.” is a photo-driven page that looks squarely like Pinterest and is curated by a developer at the company.

via Twitter Cofounders Unveil Medium, A Publishing Platform That Feels Like Tumblr And Looks Like Pinterest | Fast Company.

As anyone who’s ever seen that dreaded tally knows, Twitter has a major problem with information overload. Keeping up with thousands of tweets, not to mention figuring out which ones are actually valuable, can feel like a life-consuming task. Twheel, an unusual new app aimed at reducing Twitter’s information clutter, solves the problem by turning your tweets into a beautifully designed map.

via A Tufte-Inspired App That Visualizes The Twittersphere | Co.Design