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Month: May 2008

BarCamp Portland: The Weekend that was

BarCampPortland 2008Another (dare I say “wildly successful”?) BarCamp Portland is in the books, thanks to the efforts of the Legion of Tech, the hosts, the sponsors, and—of course—the attendees and session leaders.

I could easily prattle on for pages about the wide range of interesting topics, the community building and strengthening, the learning opportunities both inside sessions and out, and the general just, well, geeky fun of the whole thing.

But, I always find roundups to be the best way to provide the most coherent and well-rounded picture of these kinds of events. There’s no possible way of covering the entire thing from one perspective, so only many perspectives will do.

That’s what I’ve seen so far.

No doubt, many people are still recovering and gathering their thoughts.

If I’ve missed you or if you’ve just posted your thoughts, please by all means, comment below with a link to your post or resource, and I’ll be happy to add it to the list.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for May 04

BarCamp Portland

Looking for more details on what’s happening at BarCamp Portland? Look no further. This site is a great place to keep up to date with BarCamp Portland schedule and notes from the sessions.

What is BarCamp?

Pete Forsyth writes “BarCamp is clearly born of the tech community. It has a wiki for session planning. Participants are encouraged to share their Twitter and blog addresses. Sponsors are a virtual ‘who’s who’ of Portland tech startups. But it would be a mistake to think the conference is ‘about’ technology, or that you have to be a tech geek to get something good out of it. “

BarCamp Portland… Today

Matthew G. Monroe writes “For those of you in the Portland area who feel like swinging by BarCamp today (Saturday, May 3rd.), both myself and photographer Aaron Hockley will be doing a set of very loose, very informal workshops at 3 o’clock and 4 o’clock this afternoon.”

BarCamp Portland so far – it’s keeping me awake

Elizabeth Grigg writes “So far I was supposed to attend 3 sessions but really I just want to count it as two. The earliest session was in the largest space, and was pretty free form, with the topic of How to do what you Love / How to turn your Hobby into Full Time. It got pretty technical and jumpy pretty quick. Perhaps a question better suited to an interview than to a large group format. The next session proposed the idea, which apparently was thrown up on twitter and got a huge response, of a coworking space that also had an adjoining daycare for small families. “

BarCamp PDX

Dawson Hunter writes “This morning I participated in two presentations: ‘Beyond OpenID’ and ‘My Mom Can’t Use OpenID.’ Both were obviously focused on OpenID, but I was particularly interested in the conversation surrounding OpenID as it concerns data portability and users’ control over their data.”

Seaside presentation at BarCampPortland a success!

Randal Schwartz writes “I had about 20 people in my room at BarCampPortland, which made it ‘standing room only’ for the last few who showed up. The audience was attentive, and asked good questions. Monty Williams of GemStone was also along, and helped me with a few answers.”

BarCampPortland: My Other Thing

Audio from the “My Other Thing” session at BarCampPortland, thanks to Sam Churchill of DailyWireless.org.

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

BREAKING: Ignite Portland 3 throws out the first spark

I just received word that we now have an official date for Ignite Portland 3. The next Ignite Portland—a wildly popular event that features 5-minute presentations on just about anything—will be held June 18, 2008, in the same location as Ignite Portland 2, the Bagdad Theater.

While the site is still getting tuned up, the Ignite Portland 3 Upcoming page is available, so let the RSVPing begin!

For those of you who might not be familiar with the Ignite format:

What is Ignite Portland? A bunch of fast-paced, interesting presentations – 20 slides for 15 seconds each. Our mantra is “share burning ideas” – just about any topic will do, as long as it’s interesting. From tech to crafts to business to just plain fun! There will be time to network and chat after each series of presentations.

(One of these days, I’m going to run out of fire analogies, but man, do I love writing about Ignite Portland.)

More news as it becomes available.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for May 02

Transmit’s Magical Future Survey!

The Panic folks write “If you’re currently a Transmit user, we’d like to get your feedback on a few things to help us chart our course on future Transmit updates. Please take our quick Transmit survey and let us know what’s important to you! Thanks for your help!”

Andy Baio talks side projects and acquisition at Portland Web Innovators at Nemo Design (Wednesday, June 4, 2008) – Upcoming

The June meeting welcomes Upcoming.org founder, Waxy.org proprietor, and brand new Portlander Andy Baio. Andy will talk about his side project (Upcoming), which became a bigger project, which was finally acquired by Yahoo! in 2005.

Why Non Geeks Should Go To This Weekend’s BarCamp Portland

Bram Pitoyo writes “I don’t work with technology for a living, nor do I belong in a startup company. I am, by trade, a Brand Strategist, which in a nutshell involve talking with people to find out how a product or service can better serve them. I am secretly a nerd, too, but with dismal technical ability* (in an uh, what exactly does ‘ls -l’ does in Terminal? kind of way,) I stand no chance with all this programmers, developers and tech workers. But I decided to attend all these events anyway, from Mobile Portland, Portland Web Innovators, Beer and Blog, Innotech to Ignite Portland (check out the review series if you plan to attend one.) This is where it gets interesting.”

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

What does the Portland tech community look like?

While a good number of us here in Portland tend to interact on Twitter or via blog comments or at events, it’s rare that we’re all in the same place at the same time. So getting a comprehensive picture of the “Portland tech community” has been difficult, at best.

So what do geeks do to solve that problem? We employ technology.

Audrey Eschright has put together a Legion of Tech survey that will give us a view into the Portland tech community, in terms of the demographics and general foci of the folks living and working here in the Portland community.

It’s goals, according to Audrey, are pretty straightforward: get some semblance of an idea about who we are and what it is we do.

If you’re in Portland, and involved with any kind of technology activities for work or fun, please go to http://moourl.com/lotsurvey. The more responses, the better, since we want to see the breadth of our community, and whether Legion of Tech events are on your calendar. Tell your friends, coworkers, and neighbors.

If you consider yourself part of the Portland tech community—or if you’d like to be part of the Portland tech community—please take a few moments to walk through the Portland tech community survey.

I’ll make sure to highlight the results in a future post.