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Minnebar 19

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By Mark Norgren
4 min read
Minnebar 19

Minnebar 19 - Minneapolis, Minnesota — May 3, 2025

Summary

Minnebar 19 is the largest Minnebar yet. 2000+ people registered; 1400 attended in person. The event featured 167 sessions.

Sessions

Playful Learning Lab Intro

Dr. AnnMarie Thomas

  • Dr. Thomas runs the Playful Learning Lab
  • Play has rules, is social, is joyful.
  • Play focuses on process, not outcome.
  • Joy can come from designing things to make people smile.
  • All projects involve people.
  • Examples included Coding Chords and Code Concert.
  • Project: OK Go Sandbox — https://okgosandbox.org

AI Told You So: The $1M Business I Actually Built Using ChatGPT

Lou Abramowski

  • Lou Abramowski @hotlou on social media platforms.
  • Built Combat Candy, a creatine gummy company, using AI.
  • Company has $500K seed funding and five-figure monthly sales.
  • AI Tools Used:
    • ChatGPT for ideation, legal research, conversion copy.
    • Midjourney for initial visuals.
    • Vectorizer.ai for vector conversion. (best vectorize tool on web)
    • Illustrator with ChatGPT guidance for edits.
  • AI daisy-chaining combines multiple tools.
  • AI empowers users rather than replacing them entirely.
  • Used AI for conversion optimization (email open rate, CTR, website conversion, Meta ROAS, SEO).
  • Used ChatGPT for preliminary legal research (trademark issue) but advised keeping lawyers.
  • Mammouth.ai
  • Runs Evergreen software company.
  • Combat Candy product
  • AI limitations: Hallucinations still occur; video generation is not mature.
  • Quote: “This is the worst it’s [AI] ever going to be.” – Matthew Gurman (?)

DevTool Diamonds: Power Features You Didn’t Know Existed

Nick Krantz

  • GitHub: https://github.com/nick-krantz
  • Talk Repo
  • Session covered underused browser DevTools features.
  • Open DevTools: cmd + opt + i or right-click/cmd + click.
  • Key Panels: Elements, Network, Console, Sources, Memory, Application.
  • Network Panel:
    • Override headers.
    • Network conditioner (disable cache, throttle speeds).
  • Elements Panel:
    • Navigate DOM structure.
    • Badges highlight scroll, grid, flex containers.
    • $ is alias for document.querySelector.
    • $$ is alias for document.querySelectorAll.
    • Accessibility tree (via Experiments).
    • Firefox shows tabbing order.
    • Live expressions (eye icon) track values like document.activeElement.
    • Event listeners tab shows attached listeners and links to code.
  • Snippets: Save/run code snippets, override content.
  • Sensors Tab: Override device sensors (location, orientation).
  • Console Panel:
    • copy() copies object/value to clipboard.
    • console.table() displays arrays/objects as tables.
    • Grouping (console.group), debugging (console.debug), stack traces (console.trace).
    • clear() clears console.
  • Styling:
    • Styles tab shows applied CSS.
    • Color picker includes contrast ratio checker and suggestions.
    • cmd + p opens files quickly.
  • CSS Overview Panel: Summarizes colors, fonts, media queries, unused declarations.
  • Screenshots:
    • cmd + click element -> “Capture node screenshot”.
    • cmd + shift + p -> “Capture full size screenshot”.
  • document.designMode = "on" makes the page editable directly.
  • Firefox DevTools Features:
    • CSS Changes tab tracks style modifications.
    • Fonts tab shows applied fonts.

Building Efficient & Resilient Engineering Teams

Forrest Tracy

  • Forrest Tracy is Director of Engineering at Livefront.
  • Efficiency: Doing something well without wasting resources.
  • Resilience: Withstanding or recovering quickly from difficulties.
  • The “15% Problem”: Consistently failing to deliver the last 15% of a project.
  • Symptoms of the 15% problem:
    • Never-ending production issues.
    • Too many #1 priorities.
    • Engineering burnout.
    • Lack of pride in work.
    • Inflexible codebase.
  • Soft Skills (Immediate Actions):
    • Hire the right people; interviewing for needed skills.
    • Empower engineers.
    • Build trust through regular 1-on-1s and open retrospectives.
  • Concrete Practices (Longer Term):
    • Build things right the first time with careful planning.
    • Iterate frequently with small, deliverable pieces.
    • Work effectively against deadlines with clear milestones.
    • Ensure team buy-in.
    • Protect engineers’ focus time; delegate meetings appropriately.
    • Adjust agile ceremonies thoughtfully for the specific team.
  • Controversial Statements:
    • Engineers need dedicated focus time.
    • Agile is flexible; adjust it.
    • 1-on-1s are important.
    • There can only be one #1 priority.
  • Building resilience takes time and dedication.
  • Livefront Principle: “0 todos” (track all work).

How to (Privately!) Surf the Internet

Dan Lew & John Benninghoff

  • Dan Lew
  • John Benninghoff
  • Session covered practical internet privacy measures.
  • Privacy: Intended reader is the ONLY reader.
  • Security: Trust in applications used.
  • Anonymity: Hiding identity.
  • Privacy involves tradeoffs between ease of use and protection level.
  • Threat Modeling Questions:
    • Protect What?
    • From Who?
    • How Likely?
    • Consequences?
    • Allies?
    • Personal effort required?
  • Telegram end-to-end encryption is not default; group chats cannot be encrypted.

How to Newsletter: Lessons from 300 issues of the Weekly Thing

Jamie Thingelstad

  • Jamie Thingelstad
  • Published Weekly Thing newsletter for over 300 issues since May 2017 (~6 years).
  • Content Discovery:
    • Collect links via Feedbin, Safari Reading List.
    • Read and filter quickly.
    • Curate links in Pinboard using _featured and _briefly tags.
  • Time commitment: 90 minutes to 3 hours per week, fragmented.
  • Workflow:
    • Uses GTD methodology with OmniFocus Taskpaper Template.
    • Four phases: Create, Curate, Build/Send, Finalize.
  • Automation Tools:
    • Apple Shortcuts (master build script, colors, sections).
    • Pinboard API and Blog RSS ingestion.
    • Drafts app for Markdown editing and automation.
    • S3 for image resizing.
    • Data Jar app as an in-memory database for Shortcuts.
    • Logger (?) app.
    • Unread app for RSS reading.
    • Buttondown for email list management.
    • Stripe for premium subscriptions.
  • ChatGPT Uses:
    • Generates subject line options based on headlines.
  • Sustainability:
    • Rigid Thursday content cutoff, weekend send window.
    • Scheduled summer and winter breaks (Dec 15 - Jan 15, summer).
    • Ignores open-rate metrics; avoids audience capture.
    • Treats newsletter as a playground for experiments.
  • Subscribers: ~1,500.
  • Advice for starting:
    • Automate repetitive tasks.
    • Ship on a consistent rhythm.
    • Take intentional breaks.
    • Start with small experiments.
  • Example newsletter: Five Things on Friday
  • Toolchain: Drafts, OmniFocus (Taskpaper), Shortcuts.

General Links & References

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