Lots of New Faces at Lunch 2.0

Yesterday, well over a hundred people gathered at Hive-FX‘s office in the SE waterfront for a Reese’s-like Lunch 2.0 co-hosted by Oregon Film (@oregonfilm), Beam Development and Hive (@hivefx).

I’ll explain. If you read here, you’ll know one of Rick’s favorite expressions is the classic:

“You got your peanut butter in my chocolate!”

“You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!”

As with those two great tastes that taste great together, yesterday’s Lunch 2.0 brought together several communities, ones that don’t normally mix, and the result was good.

This particular lunch was the brainchild of Vince Porter (@vinbutterknife), the Executive Director of Oregon Film, who called me up about a year ago to chat. Vince’s vision was a co-mingling of the tech and entertainment/creative/production communities that would inspire conversations and collaboration.

Vince articulated his vision yesterday with examples of these types of collaboration (YouTube, Netflix, TiVo and 3D video) from the last decade that have forever changed the way we consume film and television.

He also debuted Oregon Film’s new blog, Oregon Confluence, which, like any good product is in beta right now. He and Nathan Cherrington, the blogmaster, are looking for feedback, ideas, suggestions and comments on their blog. Check it out and provide your thoughts.

In addition to Vince, the assembled crowd heard from Jonathan Malsin of Beam Development, the company that has transformed several areas of the SE waterfront into great working spaces, and Jim Clark from Hive-FX who said a few words about his studio and their projects.

We also heard from Skip Newberry (@skipnewberry), economic development policy advisor to the Mayor. He mentioned that Portland was answering Google’s RFI for the 1 gbps fiber-to-the-home network, a.k.a. Google Fiber for Communities.

ZOMG WANT!

Anyway, I saw a lot of new faces and saw lots of cross-pollenated conversations happening, so I think the lunch was a rousing success. I, on the other hand, was guilty of chatting with people already knew about SXSW plans. Bad Jake.

Now, if we could only sustain some momentum.

Normally, this is the part where I would suggest people attend the upcoming lunches, but there have been none announced.

Don’t fret, I’ll soon be announcing hosts for April and May, followed shortly, I hope by June and July announcements.

Stay tuned.

Now, the boilerplate:

If you’re interested or know someone who might be interested in hosting a Lunch 2.0, drop a comment or hit me up on Twitter (@jkuramot). Also, check out the how-to primer.

Big thanks to all the hosts who have hosted or plan to host Lunch 2.0.

(Images courtesy Jim Clark. Used with permission.)