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Silicon Florist links arrangement for September 26, 2016

Rick Turoczy on September 26, 2016

Kicking off this week with links that include Econotechtrics on Portland, Treehouse teaches VR, Little Bird releases new features, an invitation to Consano, building stronger communities from the Latino Network, a new home for Hack Oregon, attending AutomaCon, a new take on employee stock options, and despite a stumble, Portland still gets to participate in Smart Cities.

Inside an Ecosystem: Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon, known for being weird, has created a great start-up ecosystem. Although at times playing second fiddle to San Francisco and Seattle, Portland has established a thriving ecosystem in its own right.

Introducing the VR Techdegree

Today I’m incredibly excited to announce the Treehouse VR Techdegree! In the VR Techdegree, you’ll gain the skills you need for one of the fastest growing areas of technology by learning how to build virtual reality apps.

Never Miss Out on Important Influencer Conversation with New Little Bird Alerts!

Then, Little Bird will alert you to any time your group of people being monitored mentions one of your keywords. We’ll send you an email. Many of us here in the office forward those emails to Slack (right), which makes it really easy to engage with them.

Top 10 Reasons to Join Me at Consano PDX

In the spirit of David Letterman (only far less funny), here are my Top 10 Reasons to join me at the Consano PDX event on Saturday, October 1st in Portland.

Latino Network’s Carmen Rubio on building a stronger community

Under Rubio’s direction, the Latino Network has expanded. It served 2,000 people last year, a figure that is projected to reach 3,600 this year. Its annual budget has grown from $550,000 to more than $2 million as more programs are rolled out with local government and different schools. It employs 130 people, 57 of which were hired this year.

Hack Oregon has a new home in a prominent Old Town Chinatown building

“I bought the building a couple years ago. It is a great building, but part of the objective is to add creativity through business modeling,” he said. “The first tenant was PNCA and then a boxing club, Portland City Boxing. What is an interesting and creative business? And I think that Hack Oregon can add a gravity to the neighborhood.”

AutomaCon

Modern DevOps concerns have evolved to encompass more holistic approaches to infrastructure automation. AutomaCon will gather the leading minds and practitioners in the DevOps community together to exchange ideas, with the goal of updating and unifying the industry’s definition of “Infrastructure as Code”. We will draw on the experiences of those who have stories to share, learn about new tooling & workflows, and identify vendor-agnostic best practices.

House Passes Employee Stock Options Bill Aimed at Startups

The legislation would let employees at startups defer taxes on their stock options for seven years, or until the stock is tradable on an established securities market. Bill sponsor Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.) noted that stock options are a large part of compensation for employees at startups.

FACT SHEET: Announcing Over $80 million in New Federal Investment and a Doubling of Participating Communities in the White House Smart Cities Initiative

With nearly two-thirds of Americans living in urban settings, many of our fundamental challenges—from climate change to equitable growth to improved health—will require our cities to be laboratories for innovation. The rapid pace of technological change, from the rise of data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and ubiquitous sensor networks to autonomous vehicles, holds significant promise for addressing core local challenges.

Tweets of interest

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Published by Rick Turoczy

More than mildly obsessed with the Portland startup community. Founder and editor at Silicon Florist. Cofounder and general manager at PIE. Follow me on Twitter: @turoczy