Remember Encyclopedia Brown? He was this kid detective who could always figure out random stuff using random clues? He was kind of like the MacGyver of the youth sleuth scene.
Well we had a little bit of a mystery going on ourselves tonight in the world of the Portland, Oregon, social media scene that needed some solving:
Who had taken home the honors from the Social Media Awards—the coveted SoMe Awards?
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Hang in there, you entrepreneurial type you. You’re making progress. I know it. You know it. And now, other folks are starting to take notice. Like The Oregonian.
In a recent article entitled “Oregon’s high-tech better off now than in dot-com bust” business and tech reporter Mike Rogoway—one of the mainstream media folks in Portland who clearly “gets it”—had the following to offer about the under the radar startup scene: Read More
Yes, yes. I’ve been helping with the Open Source Bridge stuff as much as I can. I mean, I’m not an open source guy, per se, apart from my ever deepening appreciation for the talented people who make the world of open source what it is.
When it comes right down to it, I’m an observer. And, from time to time, an extremely lucky participant. A respectful tourist in the world of open source citizens.
But every once in awhile, I get to contribute. Today was one of those days. Read More
Yesterday, about 40 or so people gathered at TechShop Portland in Beaverton for our second venture into the wild and wooly suburbs.
Unfortunately, we conflicted with the opening day of InnoTech so many of the usual suspects weren’t able to make it.
I did see a lot of new faces, just like at Lunch 2.0 at the OTBC in January, which is a good thing. It’s always nice to meet new people or people you follow on Twitter but never see IRL because they live way far off in the ‘burbs.
TechShop is almost complete and ready for its official opening this coming Saturday, April 25. The warehouse area seems to be done, with only a few finishing touches and furniture remaining in the front office area.
To get us started, Denney Cole, our host, gave a quick intro about what is TechShop. The short version is it’s like a health club, for DIY people. You sign up to be a member, then you bring your projects.
What projects you ask?
Pretty much anything from soft goods (sewing, embroidery, upholstery) to wood-working (cutting, gluing, planing, sanding) to metal-working (melting, welding, grinding, cutting) to painting to robotics and electronics in any combination.
You could conceivably construct a couch from scratch, including the woodwork and finishing work at TechShop, or as Denney says, cut up the aluminum wheels on a junker, melt them down, and resurrect them as door handles and cabinet knobs.
Did I mention they have a laser etching machine too? That, apparently is the crown jewel of the original TechShop, in Menlo Park. I saw one of those in action at Web 2.0 Expo 2008, and that’s a fun toy to have at your disposal. The urge to etch can be strong.
Beyond providing tools and space to store your stuff, TechShop has classes. So you don’t kill, maim or embarrass yourself.
Wm Leler also talked about Open Tech Space, which is housed within TechShop.
Open Tech Space is a freely available gathering place for anyone interesting in creating prototypes, sharing and mentoring, and promoting business development in the technology and art communities. Even if you’re not a TechShop member, you can go to Open Tech Space and hang out with like-minded people. The goal is to put people with ideas together and encourage them to grow those ideas.
That’s really TechShop’s goal too.
After the talking, came the tour.
It’s probably best that we didn’t get a full crowd, since even with 40 people, it was a bit tough to hear Denney in the warehouse.
As we walked around, you could see the wheels turning in people’s heads. We like to build things, take them apart, improve them, and TechShop is full of the tools you need for that kind of learning. I overhead a few ideas flying around, and that’s the great thing about TechShop. It removes the sunk cost of buying and storing tools.
It also removes the spousal reminders to clean up your mess and finish the project already.
While in the wood shop, we saw this mold for a harp switch, which would have made Aaron very happy. Sadly, he didn’t make it.
When we went outside to check out the furnaces, we got a sweet demonstration. One of the furnaces got a bit cranky and decided to shoot flames about ten feet in the air. Not as dangerous as it sounds and very cool. Don Park took some video of a different furnace that gives you an idea.
As the tour wrapped up at the laser etcher, Amye pointed out this friendly reminder on one of the large cutting devices, a Pexto Jump Shear, used to cut large pieces of sheet metal.
Did I mention the safety classes?
After the tour ended, the lunch wound down as people wandered around more to soak in the awesome collection of toys, erm tools.
Thanks to Denney for having us. TechShop Portland officially opens on Saturday, April 25, and there will be an open house at 3 PM complete with demonstrations and ideally, fewer geysers of fire. Although, I enjoyed that.
Don’t forget these Lunch 2.0s, coming soon:
If you’re wondering about the WebVisions’ lunch, it will be open to anyone, attending the conference or not. There’s also a rumor that Open Source Bridge may be hosting a lunch before the conference (June 17-19) sometime. Any ideas on venue? Drop a comment.
Big thanks to all the hosts who have hosted or plan to host Lunch 2.0. Drop a comment (or tweet @jkuramot) if you want information about hosting one. It’s easy.
It’s no secret that we love the open source stuff around Portland. Tons of cool open source developers, projects, user groups, and as luck would have it, a few cool open source conferences.
And one of the latest open source conferences to call Portland home, LinuxCon, has just announced their keynote speakers:
LinuxCon combines the developer and end user communities to produce more than 75 sessions that address “all matters Linux.” The event takes place September 21 – 23, 2009 in Portland, Oregon at the Marriott Downtown Waterfront.
Speaking of announcing, um, speakers. Word around the campfire is that another open source conference in town, Open Source Bridge, will be announcing its final list of selected speakers Thursday at noon.
Well, okay, yes. I’m privy to that list. No, I won’t let you sneak a peek. More news on that as it becomes available.
(Hat tip to Mike Rogoway)
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To blog or not to blog? It’s a question with which any number of corporations wrestle. And today at the InnoTech eMarketing Summit, Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb and Josh Bancroft of Intel will answer that question—and likely many more about corporate communications, blogging, and microblogging sites like Twitter. (I’ll be on the panel as well, doing a lot of smiling and nodding.)
Here’s the basis of the discussion:
Whether out of curiosity or under pressure, you’ve likely started a company blog. Maybe you’re even letting employees blog. But making blogging a successful component of your organization’s communications and support programs? That’s another thing, entirely. Join this panel of panel of elite bloggers and microbloggers to learn how you can use blogs to increase transparency with your target market, create deeper and lasting relationships with your existing customers, and improve your company’s visibility on the Web. Attendees are sure to leave with both a renewed motivation to blog and specific steps for improving their organizations’ use of traditional blogs and new microblogging platforms.
The three of us will be providing our insight at 2 PM, today, in Portland Ballroom 256 at the Oregon Convention Center. So if you’re at InnoTech, we’d love to see you. For you Twitter types, the hashtag for the event is #emspdx.
Can’t come see us today? Well we can’t save you any… oh wait. That’s okay, but we’ll miss you. And I’d highly encourage to register to attend InnoTech on Thursday so that you can see Rahaf Harfoush talk about the Obama social media campaign.
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Our friends over at the Beaverton-based OTBC are always trying to help startups and entrepreneurs in the Portland area—like by hosting entrepreneurial speed dating sessions and sponsoring events like Portland Lunch 2.0 and Open Source Bridge.
Now, the OTBC could use a little bit of our help. In the form of feedback:
We get input at our lunches, and through our Meetup.com site, but we’d like to round that out with input from a larger sample of the Portland area tech entrepreneur community. So please take three minutes to let us know what kinds of programs you’d like to attend. These are mostly ratings of 1-to-5 to show interest level in a topic. Lots of ideas are listed, but it goes fast. Really! Three minutes. (OK, maybe four minutes at the outside.) Thanks!
I know you can help, because everyone has an opinion. They’re like… well, everyone has one.
So take a few minutes out of your busy schedule and click some buttons. The OTBC—and our entire startup community—will be better for it.
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As much as I love the startup tech community here in town, I love it even more when I see the community doing things for the greater good. One of those Silicon Forest startups that manages to accomplish this on a regular basis is Portland-based Cooking Up A Story.
What’s the latest? A partnership with the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education organization (SARE):
For those who may not be familiar with SARE, it provides critical funding grants to farmers, researchers, and agricultural educators to promote farming systems that are ecologically sound, and benefit all parties involved, including (of course) the farmers, eaters, and the local communities. Over the course of their 21 year history, they have come to the aid of countless farmers, and have provided the kind of assistance that has helped farmers to survive, sometimes by providing the means and the knowledge to branch into new production and marketing avenues for generating additional income and long-term growth.
The new partnership will help Cooking Up A Story expand their video offering with more stories, more how-to videos, and more profiles of farmers whose practices have benefited from SARE grants and SARE research. What’s more, it will enable Cooking Up A Story to expand their reach to other regions.
For more, see the Cooking Up A Story post on the SARE partnership.
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I was originally going to title this post “Open Source Bridge: We’ve only just begun” but I didn’t want you to get that song stuck in your head.
What’s that? Oh. Oopie.
Anyway, the fine folks of Open Source Bridge—the 100% volunteer run open source conference being held in Portland, Oregon, June 17-19—would like to do two things: 1) Bring you up-to-speed on all of the progress they’ve made and 2) Outline the programs, plans, and volunteer opportunities for the next few months.
To make it as interactive as possible, they’re inviting all interested folks to meet tomorrow (Tuesday) night at 7 PM at CubeSpace for a Town Hall discussion:
One of the challenges we’ve recognized in organizing this completely volunteer run conference is that sometimes it is hard to consistently and effectively utilize all of the willing people who have volunteered to help. We are hoping this town hall meeting will make some of this easier with the opportunity to interact face to face.
If you’re interested in volunteering, we hope to see you there. Even if you don’t want to lift a finger for Open Source Bridge, we’d still love to see you there. Or if you’re unable to make it—or simply immune to our charms—please check out the volunteer page or join the discussion groups.
For more information, visit the Open Source Bridge Town Hall on Calagator. To RSVP, visit Upcoming.
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This Thursday, Rahaf Harfoush, Associate Director of the Global Cooperation Initiative at the World Economic Forum and part of the Obama campaign‘s social media team, will deliver the keynote for InnoTech, one of the Silicon Forest’s premier business and technology innovation conferences.
The keynote will be a great opportunity to hear Rahaf’s insights into how the Obama campaign embraced social media to affect political change—and will likely cause you to reassess your use of social media. No doubt, her talk will also include an early glimpse of some of the themes she’ll approach in Yes We Did: An Inside Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand, her upcoming book.
I had the opportunity to send Rahaf a few questions ahead of her arrival, and she was kind enough to take some time to answer. Here’s what we covered:
How did you get started in social media?
I have always loved technology. I guess I inherited it from my dad who is an avid science fiction junkie and technology always seems to represent unlimited potential and opportunity. I’m fascinated by how we use the web to interact and collaborate with each other. I love people and I love information and social media is the perfect combination of the two.
I don’t really remember when I got into social media, but I do remember it was before we called it social media. 😉
What brought you to the Obama campaign?
I was on the research and writing team for Don Tapscott’s book Grown Up Digital, and I was responsible for gathering research on technology, young people and the political process. My research took me to the very talented Chris Hughes, Obama’s Director of Internal Organizing who was designing a social network for the campaign.
I interviewed him and we hit it off. I was really inspired by what they were doing in Chicago and asked Chris if there was anyway that I could help. One thing led to another and I went down to Chicago for the last few months of the campaign as a full time volunteer. It was an awesome, empowering, thrilling experience.
Prior to your efforts, the strongest US online political campaign was championed by supporters of Howard Dean. What, if anything, did you learn from Dean’s efforts that informed the Obama campaign?
I think the Obama campaign heavily refined a lot of the strategies initially pioneered by Dean.
Dean was the first to use social networks (like Meetup) to organize supporters and start building the beginning of an online campaign infrastructure. He was also one of the first to experiment with online donations, particularly small amount donations.
The one main thing the campaign built on was the need for all of that online organizing to translate into offline action. This was where Dean’s campaign faltered, online enthusiasm did not turn into tangible votes or on-the-ground support.
Ultimately, everything the Obama campaign did online reinforced the need for offline organizing. Blog posts, contests, house parties, canvassing events the emphasis was always on getting supporters to get out of their house and into their communities on behalf of Barack.
(Prefacing this with the fact that a bunch of Portland people were essential to the development of the Obama iPhone app… 😉 ) In your opinion, what was the most unique use of social media in the Obama campaign?
Even if I didn’t know that, I would have to say the iPhone application. It was an extremely innovative foray into the yet untapped area of mobility. It effectively turned every iPhone into a fully functional field office. It allowed the campaign to stay connected to supporters in a very intimate way and ensured that they received the most up to date information.
That is very powerful to me. I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface on what we can do with mobile.
If I had to pick a favorite social network for Portland, it would be Twitter, hands down. In both your work for the World Economic Forum and your personal life, within which social media site(s) do you find yourself most comfortable/engaged?
Twitter is my favorite too! [Editor: She’s @rahafharfoush.] I love my twitter community and I always find myself going to them for their opinions and advice.
For example, some people at the Forum were interested in identifying some thought leaders in particular industries. I asked my Twitter community and within minutes and over fifteen names of experts that had come recommended by people I trust and respect. You just can’t beat the speed or quality of information.
I am weary of this sudden mainstream appeal of Twitter, particularly those people that focus only on the number of followers. For me, it’s all about meaningful conversations. I’d take that over a big crowd any day!
Finally, a softball. I know you love to travel and explore. Have you been to Portland before? What would you like to experience while you’re in town?
I have never been to Portland before! I heard you have a beautiful waterfront. If the weather cooperates I would love to sit in a nice café with my new kindle and catch up on some reading and relax.
Thanks, again, to Rahaf for taking the time to provide those responses. I’ll be looking forward to seeing her speak on Thursday. If you’d like to join me, please register to attend InnoTech, this Wednesday and Thursday.
(Photo credit: Jesse Morgan. Used with permission.)
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