For someone who covers startups, it’s incredibly interesting to keep tabs on an economic development body—especially one that’s a startup itself—like Greenlight Greater Portland.
Last year, I gathered a table of Portland startups and influencers to listen to the Greenlight Greater Portland’s first “Greater Prosperity Index” report. This year, I decided to do exactly the same thing for Greenlight’s second report.
Not familiar? Well, Greenlight Greater Portland was established to assist with economic development throughout the three counties of Portland, as well as across the Columbia in Vancouver.
A few years back, a handful of greater Portland business leaders pooled their resources and invested their time to launch Greenlight Greater Portland, now the region’s only private-sector-led economic development initiative. Greenlight’s mission is to promote the greater Portland-Vancouver MSA to bring good companies and jobs to the region and to support and grow the diverse businesses that have made their home here.
I think it’s important for startup types to hear the report, but I think it’s even more important for Greenlight Greater Portland to know that we’re listening and paying attention. Hence, the table.
So who is going this year? I’m glad you asked. I’m proud to have the following folks at the table:
- David Abramowski, MioWorks
- Carolynn Duncan, Portland Ten
- Dawn Foster, Shizzow and Fast Wonder Consulting
- Josh Friedman, Nedspace
- Jason Grigsby, Cloud Four
- Ray King, AboutUs
- Scott Kveton, Software Association of Oregon (SAO) and Bacn.com
- Toby Lucich, Return
- Eva Schweber, CubeSpace
Last year, I had hoped there would be some sort of Q&A period, but there wasn’t much of that after the PDC morning session. So this time around, I’m encouraging you to ping these folks to let them know that you’d like their perspectives on the event itself.
I know I would. I’d like to hear their responses to any number of questions. What is Greenlight Greater Portland doing for the startup environment? How are they helping the Creative Class whom they featured, last year? How are Greenlight’s efforts going to directly affect us?
Hopefully, we can get a good selection of blog posts and tweets from this very insightful crowd—both during and after tomorrow’s annual report.
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