VISI is proud to sponsor both the Fringe Festival and the first annual Fringey Awards. The Minnesota Fringe Festival is a Minneapolis-based nonprofit organization that organizes an annual, 11-day festival. The Fringey Awards is a video contest for Fringe companies.

In a nutshell, each of the Fringe companies can upload one 60-second video trailer or preview for the show they’ll be performing at the Minnesota Fringe - a trailer which they feel captures the essence of their performance in a less than a minute. The trailer can be an excerpt from the performance itself, or not. It can be funny, dramatic, shocking or whimsical.

Evaluation of the videos were conducted by three independent judges with backgrounds in theatre, media, and technology, providing 75 percent of the judging weight. In addition, anyone visiting the Fringey Web site is allowed to vote three times for their favorite Fringey videos — these online votes will be combined to count as a fourth judge (or 25% of the total).

The voting period was July 1st thru July 28th, 2009. We’ve tallied the votes and the results are in. We will be announcing the winner on August 9th at the Guthrie Theatre.  For now, we’ll list the three finalists (in no particular order):

Sarah, Your Ovaries Are Drying Up: The Musical

The Traveling Musicians

The Harty Boys in: The Case of the Limping Platypus

The Minnesota Fringe Festival starts today!  Visit the Fringey Awards or the Fringe site to pick out the shows you want to see.  Leave me a comment with your favorite shows!

When I first found out VISI received permission from the Fringe Festival to construct an online video contest for participating Fringe Festival shows, I was giddy. The Minnesota Fringe Festival is 11 days of nonstop performing arts action. With multiple theatre locations and dozens of shows a day, choosing which Fringe Festival to see rivals an Olympic sport for some. For the casual festival-goer, the choices can be daunting. In 2008, the Fringe Festival issued 40,929 tickets to 154 shows.

VISI has launched the first annual Fringey Awards – and the exciting part of it is the mutual benefits it will give to Fringe Festival shows and festival-goers alike! Since the participating artists get a portion of box office sales for their show, it behooves them to promote their show as much as possible. By submitting their web trailers to the Fringey Awards, they increase their online advertising and a chance to win $500 to boot. The video submissions can be excerpts from actual Fringe Festival performances or simply teasers.

The benefit to the theatre-goers is being able to get a sneak preview of the shows before attending the festival. Any visitors to the Fringey Awards site will also be able to vote for their favorite trailers through July 28th.

Now that voting on the website is live and we’re spreading the word through Facebook and Twitter, I can say I’m still pretty giddy about this event. VISI is enabling the Minnesota Fringe Festival to further their mission: connecting adventurous artists to adventurous audiences. Go see a show!

Yesterday, VISI exhibited at the TwinWest Chamber’s pilot STEM summit - an event that brought together over 75 St. Louis Park ninth-graders with area businesses that focus on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. This smaller event will lead into a larger STEM event in December.

The goal of the program is to stimulate interest in the mention subject areas, and to promote the relevance between these interests and future career choices.  VISI’s exhibit featured members from our hosting services department, including manager, Ralph Awad and had students interacting with the VISI advergame: Interstellar Pizza Express. Ralph’s team was on hand to explain their role in what the game demonstrates.

The students were also asked challenge questions. How many riddles can you answer?

1. What is a computer’s first sign of age?
2. What does a baby computer call it’s father?
3. What is an astronaut’s favorite key on a computer board?
4. What happened when the computer fell on the floor?
5. Why was there a bug in the computer virus?
6. What is a computer virus?
7. How did the mouse get out of the Russian Cathedral?

VISI is proud to sponsor the Twin Cities Entrepreneurs event tonight featuring Scott Litman, the co-founder of the Minnesota Cup and Managing Director of Magnet 360. We’ll be hosting the event in the auditorium located on the first floor of our St. Paul Data Center location.

If you haven’t registered already, it’s not too late. The cost is $10 to register online or $15 at the door.

DATE:  Thursday, April 9th, 2009 @ 5:30 p.m.

WHERE:  In Downtown St. Paul

Jerome Hill Theatre
180 East 5th St
St. Paul, MN 55101
Map:  http://tinyurl.com/c9pf27

TOPIC:  The future of Advertising & Learn About This Year’s Minnesota Cup

DESCRIPTION:  The Minnesota Cup is an annual, statewide competition that seeks out aspiring entrepreneurs and their breakthrough ideas.

They are looking for the next great entrepreneurial success story in our state of Minnesota.

This competition is for all entrepreneurs, whether your breakthrough idea is high tech or no tech, whether you are just putting your ideas into a business plan or if you’ve been out building your venture.  This year’s cash and prizes are worth $130,000.

Join us on this night to find out more about this wonderful program and how you can get involved and possibly be the 2009 Winner.  Meet other business owners, network, have a great time!