Dear Portland Twitter fanatics: Twitter API guy Alex “@al3x” Payne will be in town this weekend

[HTML4]Now, I don’t know if you know this, but Portland? Portland likes the Twitter. A lot. And those of us who happen to pop on to Twitter—every now and again, I mean it’s not like we’re addicted or anything—are quite proud of the fact that we have a Twitter employee—Rael Dornfest—here in town.

Well guess what, Twitter types? The number of Twitter employees in town is going to increase 100%. For this weekend, at least.

You see, Alex Payne will be in Portland through Tuesday. And his schedule seems pretty open.

Now before you get all Twitter-pated, it would probably be a good idea to hear what, exactly, Alex does. So let’s do that, shall we?

He serves as the Twitter Platform Lead. What does that mean? Well, let’s let him tell you.

[M]y daily work is growing and supporting a collection of services on which other developers can build. I’ve been working at Twitter since the beginning of 2007, several months before the service began to grow in popularity. Working at Twitter has been an education in scaling, performance optimization, and systems architecture.

What’s that mean? It means he works on the Twitter API. It also means that every time you start bitching about your Twitter client freaking out, you’re likely bitching about some facet of Alex’s work.

Yeah. That’s right. Think about that for a second, snarky pants.

You owe the guy a beer—or three.

Yes, you. Oh don’t give me that look. You know what I’m talking about. Mr. and/or Mrs. Fail Whale flag waver.

Ahem.

Now, while I’m not recommending jumping all over Alex the way we did with Wil Wheaton—although come to think of it… @theSquare are you listening?—it would be great to see if we might be able to get him to swing by Friday’s Beer and Blog at the Green Dragon or maybe the Summer Coders Social on Sunday at Laurelhurst Park or something.

I mean, if he’s looking for something to do or something.

The Portland plot thickens

Think Alex heading to Portland is interesting? Well then Alex’s coworking and mentoring concept—an atelier—may completely floor you.

A core group of principle partners would set the tone of the organization as disciplined, open-minded, and eager to expand the craft of programming through the exploration of new languages, technologies, and methodologies. The atelier practice of “systematic progression” would be employed for the continuing education of current partners and the enrichment of new partners.[HTML1]

Though partners may be working on different projects for different clients, cross-pollination would be made mandatory. The idea of “twenty percent time” would be expanded, and open source contribution would be all but a necessity.…[HTML1]

Possibly headquartered in Portland, Oregon, but with a strong emphasis on remote, distributed work.

Maybe in Portland, hunh? Interesting…

Safe travels. And whether we get the chance to see you or not, welcome to Portland, Alex. Hope you enjoy your stay in the Rose City.

And don’t forget, if you need anything—anything at all—you can always hashtag your tweet with #inpdx and the Portland Twisitor Center will get right on it.

(Image courtesy magerleagues. Used under Creative Commons.)

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