The Iterasi Magic Bus to Gnomedex makes the pages of Found Read. “So Grillo and his team came up with a non-traditional marketing tactic. They found an old yellow school bus with a dubious battery and an owner/driver who wanted to get to Gnomedex, too. Then they invited several bloggers, a dozen programmers and tech folks from the Portland area to ride along with them to Seattle.”
Jeremiah Owyang writes “I’m often asked by companies and indiividuals on what they can do to stand out. Here’s what I’ve learned… but don’t just take my word for it, add your own tips in the comments.”
Anthony Ha writes “Okay, so you still have to deal with passionate disagreements and little things like that. But Portland, Oregon-based Zapproved handles the infrastructure, so you don’t have to worry about the little headaches — like wondering, ‘Hey, has everyone responded yet?’ or ‘Okay, after reading all of your comments I have no idea if you gave me a ‘yes’ or a ‘no,’’ — just the big ones.”
Sean Ellis writes “Marketing a VC-backed startup is one of the toughest marketing jobs you’ll ever face. The challenge usually falls on a lone marketer taking a venture to market for the first time. Even seasoned marketing execs find themselves in unfamiliar territory.”
Marshall Kirkpatrick writes “Embargoes aren’t as simple as they sound and they aren’t uncontroversial, either. We believe they can be a good idea, though.”
Use Platial’s Nearby iPhone app? You may want to participate in this contest. “Calling all nature lovers, urbanites, families, neogeographers, and mappers of all kinds: Add places, take pictures and explore to win!”
Nate Angell writes “For anyone engaged in the creative practices that are generating the continuing convergence of interactive media, technology and culture, Portland, Oregon will come alive next week with the convergence of both the second annual Inverge 2008 Thu-Fri 4-5 Sep at the Gerding Theater and Cre8Con, Sat 6 Sep at the Portland Center for the Performing Arts, not to mention the concurrent MusicFestNW, the Time-Based Art Festival and the only slightly more regular First Thursday.”
Via the Substance blog “This fall, we’ll be starting the Substance Substantial Internship Program. We’re looking for a handful of things in an intern…”
Greg Hughes writes “The Internet needs a good, strong, reliable, usable and secure standard technology to solve the issues related to user names, passwords, single sign on and identity protection. IDIB looks like a serious and positive attempt to start the journey directly down that path.”
At LivePitch, early stage entrepreneurs have 4 minutes to pitch to a panel of experts and a live audience in order to: The audience at LivePitch receives $100 of “fake money” to “invest” in their favorite entrepreneurs, with prizes awarded to both a panel and audience favorite. There will be 60 minutes of pitching, and 30 minutes for general networking.
Via The Oregonian “”We’re not too far away from Portland, and some investors already have second homes here,” said Bill Fashing, coordinator of the Hood River County Economic Development Department…. The first Gorge Angel Conference on Sept. 23 will showcase local startups competing for $100,000 in seed money. “
Via The Bend Bulletin “The two-year-old group, along with other technology-oriented user groups in the region, also has been instrumental in attracting attention from the Software Association of Oregon. Harvey Mathews, the association’s president, said COISUG is one reason the SAO has agreed to begin discussions with the groups to form a Central Oregon chapter.”
Via the Mail Tribune “What do you get when you cross the social-networking concept behind Facebook and MySpace with the job-searching tools in Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com? For five young Southern Oregon entrepreneurs, the answer is a dream of global proportions.”
Simon Willison writes “Django 1.0 beta 2 released! 1.0 draws ever closer. Important new features include major documentation and comment system refactorings, plus the removal of a bunch of deprecated code (including oldforms). Feature and string freezes are now in place, so it’s just bugs and documentation improvements between now and the final release.”
Now in its seventh year, the Silicon Forest Forum has been one of the premiere local gatherings for venture capitalists and technology entrepreneurs to discuss the technologies that are driving development and businesses in the Silicon Forest.
And while the event has always had a “technology” bent, its focus on traditional high-tech pursuits left its perceived “geek cred” a bit lacking, at best.
But this year, they’re clearly working to erase that deficit.
First, they’re bringing in the CTO and Co-founder of Tesla Motors, Marc Tarpenning, to keynote the event. And I would have a hard time arguing that any other automotive company carries as much geek and green credibility as Tesla. (No word as to whether the Tesla Roadster will be making an appearance.)
Second, they’ve put social media on the docket with a panel entitled “Bloggers, Digital Media…..and the Business of Creating Content.” The panel features Harry McCracken, the former editor of PC World who now runs Technologizer, a blog that gives McCracken the freedom to exercise his journalistic muscle on technology topics of his choosing; Leander Kaheny, the news editor at Wired.com; and maybe—just maybe—some local flavor.
So just how do you take a passion project and make it your full-time startup gig? It’s a common question. And a question any number of us have struggled to answer at some point.
The event will be a continuation of the discussion we started earlier this year at BarCamp Portland.
The seeds for ‘From Side Project to Startup’ were sown at a session of early May’s Bar Camp Portland. The conference generated a good amount of buzz, and brought up more questions than the time could answer.
And besides, I’d love to have you there as part of the discussion. So join us, won’t you?
You’ll notice the schedule includes a lot of ‘schmooze,’ snack, break and party time. With this as well as the unconference time to meet and discuss with people, it’s a goal of ‘From Side Project to Startup’ that a network of interested startups will form to provide each other with peer support and accountability. You can do it, keep going!
Via Mashable “Ultimately, all you will ever need is your single OpenID URL or an email address linked to it. Here’s where you can get your own OpenID and all of the sites that support it.”
Via Panic ” Coda 1.5 is now available for download from our web site. Full release notes for this version are also available. This is a free upgrade for all Coda owners. We encourage all Coda users to upgrade to this latest version. “
Via the Polymer Studios blog “It’s true that most corporate blogs are boring and nobody reads them. And that’s because many corporate communicators either don’t get blogging or, if they do, are having a heck of a time inspiring Glasnost in the executive suite. What’s the ROI? Who has time to blog? What will Legal say?”
Amber Case writes “The invention of the telephone ushered in an era of ‘on-demand’ social connection. These conversations were freeing, but were still limited to location and time. As communication technology matured, telephones became detached from their cords and were allowed to travel with their users. This detachment from location allowed conversation to happen in more times and more places.”
Gary Vaynerchuk says “Way too many people out there think that you have to quit your day job to start your new career online, I find that crazy and it just comes down to cutting out wasted time! It all comes down to Hustle 2.0.”
Thanks for all the feedback on the first Silicon Florist podcast. I’m working to incorporate the feedback, but please, by all means, keep the critiques coming! I really, really appreciate it.
Now, let’s get on with the latest show. Some important links:
Think this podcast sucks? Well, why not try listening to some people who are much, much better than I at this whole podcasting thing: Strange Love Live with Shizzow.
Sarah Lacy takes the time to sit down with Amber Case and Bram Pitoyo for the latest Hazelnut Tech Talk. If you missed the Sarah Lacy tweetup on Sunday, this will give you a good feel for what you missed (complete with Green Dragon background noise).
Lorelle VanFossen writes “The agenda of speakers for WordCamp Portland is out and I’m the keynote speaker. And I need your help. I will be talking about how WordPress is changing lives, not just from the blogging experience but truly changing your life from stem to stern. WordPress and WordPress.com free blogs give a voice to those who may never have had the chance to express themselves. With WordPress, they have the chance to be heard. I want to honor those people.”
Julian Chadwick writes “I had breakfast with Bryan of UrbanDrinks yesterday and he showed me something that might change your life. For those of you who use an iGoogle homepage (and the rest of you who will–you can only resist them so long), UrbanDrinks has created a Portland happy-hour Google ‘gadget.'”
After a long weekend at Gnomedex and a—no doubt—“conversation crammed” late-night ride to Portland on the Iterasi Magic Bus, Sarah Lacy took time out of her travels to spend some time chatting with Portland folks at the Green Dragon, last night.
A number of folks got into some pretty in-depth conversations with Sarah. And from what I could hear, those chats made the trip well-worth Sarah’s time.
The Portland stop on her junket was part of her User Generated Book Tour to promote Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good. And I’m proud to say that Portland was one of 13 cities that made the cut. Thanks, in no small part, to folks writing in and asking Sarah to stop by.
So thank you to all of the folks who wrote in and to all of you who took time out of your weekend to swing by and meet Sarah.
As I always say, I think it’s incredibly important for folks from outside of Portland and the Silicon Forest to meet the people who are doing cool things here. To get an understanding of what’s happening in our area. And to get them as excited about what we’re doing as we are.
I think we succeeded in doing that last night. And, I know Sarah really appreciated your being there, too.
But what if you couldn’t make it?
Buck up, little camper. Don’t be sad.
We’re already working—lobbying heavily, in fact—to get Sarah back to town soon.
And Sarah’s assistant, Olivia (who is from Portland), will be here in town for a few more days. So we’ll work on getting her out at some more of the Portland events.
Well, see here’s the thing. Sarah and Olivia had a few books and a couple of t-shirts and some stickers and stuff left. And they were going to have to check bags. And I knew that you would really like the book.
So, here’s what I did: I kinda bought them out.
And I was thinking of selling them on eBay—I mean, they’re signed and everything—but I like you more than eBay.
So I got this idea.
Join Friends of the Florist
You’ve been working hard and being good and whatnot. You deserve a little reward.
And then there’s me. I don’t really do anything and yet, every once in a while, I kind of stumble into some cool stuff. Like multiple copies of Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good, for example.
Seems like there’s some kind of disconnect here, doesn’t it?
I agree.
It struck me that, for all the nice things you do for me—like creating cool stuff for me to write about and showing up at cool events and being interesting—I’m not really pulling my weight.
By joining Friends of the Florist, you’ll get the opportunity to receive random physical mailings from me from time to time. No spam. No ads. Just cool stuff—or at least stuff I think is cool—from people like you who are busting their proverbial humps to make cool things.
Well, and you’ll probably get some Silicon Florist stuff every once in a while, too.
First mailing? Four lucky winners will receive a signed copy of Sarah Lacy’s book, Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good.
Your obligation? I just need a physical address to which I can send the stuff. Well, and your trust that I’m not going to do anything nefarious with that information. (Which I won’t, Seeger.)
If the idea of getting some little rewards and nice things from Silicon Florist from time to time sounds like a good thing to you, simply sign up to be a Friend of the Florist.
