We all realize that there’s a ton of stuff happening in town. New startups, exciting side projects, crazy cool events. And every day it seems like we’re learning about more and more opportunities to draw the community together—or cool new technologies to test drive.
This leads to two issues. First, how do we keep track of all this stuff? And second, how do we filter all of this stuff?
Silicon Florist wiki to the rescue, my friends! Well or you can refer to it by its more common name: AboutUs.
That’s right. We’ve got a huge resource right here in our backyard that can help us capture, organize, and filter all of the cool stuff happening here in town.
How cool is that? That’s right. It’s very cool.
So let’s get started, shall we?
Capturing what’s happening in the Silicon Forest
Side project, event, user group, full-fledged business. If it’s got a Web site, you should make sure it’s indexed and built out in AboutUs.
Not a wiki type? That’s okay. I’m not either. And I’ve added hundreds of sites to AboutUs. So I can give you step-by-step instructions.
Ready? Here we go:
- Type the following into your browser: http://aboutus.org/%5BYour URL]. For example, http://aboutus.org/siliconflorist.com.
- Done!
Okay. So that wasn’t much a list. But that’s all you have to do.
If your site is already there, you’ll see your page. If your site isn’t in AboutUs yet, the page will be automatically generated.
Voila!
Now, you can do some tweaking and editing. Add some more content. Write a short description. And start tagging your site with “Topics.”
The topics are especially important. So while you’re adding them, make sure to throw this one in there: SiliconFlorist.
Why?
Organizing what’s happening in the Silicon Florist
Did you know that every topic in AboutUs has a “best of” list associated with it? It’s true.
So when you associate your site with the topic “SiliconFlorist” what happens? That’s right. We get a listing of the most popular Silicon Florist topics.
You’re one sharp cookie.
Like who, you ask? Well currently, the Top 10 sites in the Silicon Florist list looks something like this:
- AboutUs.org is creating an editable (wiki) guide to websites
- Shizzow.com is a location-based social web service
- JanRain.com is a leading provider of OpenID solutions; portland based
- Iterasi.net allows people to store & retrieve pages in their current state
- Bacn.com is the place to learn about, order and enjoy bacon!
- FastWonderBlog.com is Dawn Foster Social Media Consultancy
- BeerAndBlog.com helps bloggers help bloggers over beers
- SurveyMonkey.com is a custom survey tool.
- Vidoop.com provides high security password management and CAPTCHAs
- JiveSoftware.com is the leader in Social Business Software
Well sure, that list is great. But what about this “filtering” of which I spoke? Simple. Just continue whittling down the list by slicing and dicing it with other topics.
Like what if we just want the leading events in the Silicon Florist list? Done.
- IgnitePortland.com is about sharing your burning ideas: 20 slides, 5 minutes. Go!
- LegionOfTech.org an Oregon non profit dedicated to enhancing local community
- WebVisionsEvent.com is the future of Web design, user experience, business strategy
- OpenSourceBridge.org is a gathering of open source citizens in Portland, Oregon.
See where I’m going here?
Well, just in case, let me be explicit: if we spend some time tagging and organizing these topics, we’ll soon have lists of startups by focus—like iPhone apps—or by region—like Portland—or whatever.
This could be pretty cool.
It’s all about your aura
How are the sites ranked? Well that’s a little algorithm that the AboutUs folks have cooked up called the “aura.”
[Editor: Apparently, I had some rights from testing the AboutUs widget that gave me access to see some things that not everyone can see. So, I’ve removed part of this post. My mistake.]
Long story short, getting in there and building out your profile raises your chance of climbing the lists. And the more topic associated with your list? That’s right the more finely you can slice and dice the lists of information.
I’ve just started categorizing sites as “SiliconFlorist.” But that’s the beauty of the wiki: you can jump in and start doing the same thing.
So why not take a few minutes and make sure you’re listed in the Silicon Florist wiki?
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[…] the chronicler and cheerleader for the Portland tech community via his Silicon Florist blog, gave a detailed tour of what it’s like to create a topical list on AboutUs. AboutUs blog readers should remember […]
This is an awesome post Rick, thanks so much.
Here’s a re-blog over on AboutUs, including some more useful links for those interested in curating lists on the site.
This looked kind of cool but I’m only a gawker at the local tech startup world, but so I created a list for something else: Portland’s ever-expanding comics scene: http://www.aboutus.org/best-sites/Portlandcomics
Hmmm … I had to do a lot of cleanup on my page. First of all, it went and grabbed my address and telephone number! Second, two of the Related Web Sites are mine. The rest are irrelevant. Also, what’s up with the Google Ads? NLP? It picked that up from my bio somewhere, but I haven’t done NLP since 2005!