Following the Florist: Consuming content and interacting with Silicon Florist readers

It may be a short week, but it’s not a slow news week. That said, it is the Friday of a short week. And posting about really cool startups or important news may get lost in the haze of moving into the weekend.

What to do? What to do?

I’ve got it! How about taking care of some housekeeping around the ol’ Silicon Florist?

What kind of housekeeping you ask? Well, how about reminding you about all the ways you can consume Silicon Florist content and interact with the awesome startup community here in the Silicon Forest?

Sound good? I thought so too. So here we go.

Silicon Florist RSS feeds (News)

There are a number of Silicon Florist RSS feeds available for your consuming pleasure. If you’re interested in posts only, grab the main Silicon Florist feed. You can also keep an eye on the comments by the always insightful readers.

Looking for a little more from the firehose? Well, there’s the Silicon Florist combo feed which will give you posts, links, and events all in one fell swoop.

And if I ever decide to record my voice again, the Silicon Florist podcast feed will give you the dulcet tones of my monotone delivery.

@SiliconFlorist on Twitter (News)

There’s a little robotic Twitter account for Silicon Florist which—apart from being inside my head—is the fastest way to get alerts about new posts, breaking news, and other important stuff.

Be advised, @siliconflorist isn’t as chatty as the @ourpdx account. If you want chatty, you’ll want to follow @turoczy, instead.

Upcoming (Events)

If you’ve spent any time around the Portland tech startup scene, you know that we’ve got a ton of events happening on any given day. And while I love Calagator almost more than I can stand, there aren’t really any social features there yet.

So, I’ve opted for another Portland-y event tool, Upcoming, which was created by now Portland resident Andy Baio.

Upcoming allows folks to develop groups, so joining the Silicon Florist group on Upcoming will give you a pretty good idea of all the interesting techie events happening in Portland. If you’re holding events and posting them to Upcoming, you’re always welcome to add them to the Silicon Florist group as well.

Friendfeed (Discussion)

Like the Friendfeed? Who don’t? That’s why I made sure we had a Silicon Florist room on Friendfeed. It’s not terribly active in terms of chatter, but it’s yet another way to consume content and interact with other Silicon Florist readers.

Like the firehose feed, the Friendfeed room collects all the various Silicon Florist feeds into one spot. It also aggregates mentions of Silicon Florist from elsewhere on the Web.

If you’re a startup, you’re always welcome to share your news there or use it to get conversations going. Have at it. That’s what it’s there for.

I’d love to do more with the room. So if anyone has any suggestions in that regard, I’m all ears.

delicious (Links)

As I’m combing through all the Oregon news, I find a lot of good stuff that people are writing. Sometimes I even find relevant stuff from outside of Oregon. Go figure.

When I find something interesting that I think the community would like, I add it to the Silicon Florist delicious bookmarks.

And while that list appears over there in the right sidebar, the entire list is always accessible and searchable on delicious.

reddit (Links)

Silicon Florist reddit is a little ongoing experiment I started a while ago to see if there was interest in voting stories up and down. I was hoping to see folks add stuff here, participate in voting, and highlight some areas of coverage that I might be missing.

Right now, it’s very much the sound of one hand clapping. I think it still has potential, but I’m not sure if the interest is there.

If you’d like to give it a shot, please feel free to starting adding articles and voting at Silicon Florist reddit.

There’s even a quick bookmarklet. Just drag this link to your bookmark bar: Add to Silicon Florist reddit.

*NEW* Beer and Blog (Social)

Did you know that Beer and Blog has a social network embedded in it now? It does. No jiving.

They’re registering new members at Beer and Blog Portland on a regular basis. So, if you get signed up, feel free to join the Silicon Florist group on Beer and Blog.

*NEW* Facebook (Discussion)

A long, long time ago, someone suggested I start a Facebook group for Silicon Florist. Back in the dark ages of Facebook. But we never really did much with it.

Now—even though I don’t really like the whole “fan” thing—a Facebook fan page for Silicon Florist is probably a much better format for managing community interactions.

So if you’re into the whole Facebook thing, you might want to join the Silicon Florist fan page.

Think of it this way: I’m your biggest fan. That’s why it’s called a fan page. Ah. Much better.

*NEW* LinkedIn (Discussion, Jobs)

I have been ridiculously impressed with what the PDX Technology Professionals group on LinkedIn has been able to do. They’re attracting tons of people. They’ve got some great discussions going. And they’re connecting the technology types here in the Portland.

Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery. So, inspired by the PDX Tech group, I created a Silicon Florist group on LinkedIn.

I see the Silicon Florist group as a subsection of the larger PDX Tech group where we can focus on startup issues, the startup environment, and highlighting startup gigs and jobs.

If you’re into LinkedIn, I’d encourage you to join both the PDX Tech group and the Silicon Florist group.

Whoof. That’s a lot Silicon Florist outposts.

Long story short, I want to make sure that the companies and side projects that I’m covering get the broadest exposure possible. So I’m always looking for ways to make that happen.

What else should I be doing? Where else should Silicon Florist be? Where else do all of these cool startups need exposure?

I’m looking forward to seeing you participating in some of the forums above and I’m looking forward to your feedback and ideas.

[HTML1]