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All posts 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

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Vidoop execs to be profiled in The Oregonian

Rick Turoczy on July 21, 2008

VidoopIt’s no secret that I started Silicon Florist as a way to shine a spotlight on the Web startups in town who—for whatever reason—don’t get the proper attention from the local or national media.

There’s cool stuff happening here. And stories that need to be told.

And when the traditional media starts taking notice—like when Oregon Business Magazine covering local Web 2.0 startups—that makes me happy. Because, quite frankly, these folks deserve the recognition.

And now, I have some more good news of the traditional media taking notice. I think. At least I hope.

For in a recent post on OpenID, Mike Rogoway of The Oregonian and Silicon Forest blog mentions:

Meet Vidoop‘s bosses in tomorrow’s Oregonian.

Just a passing mention. But, hopefully, the precursor to some real coverage for one of the most forward thinking companies in town.

I’ll be sure to hit the newsstand tomorrow, in hopes of seeing some decent ink on Vidoop.

[Update] And here’s the article from The Oregonian, “Coffee Break: Vidoop’s bosses.”

OSCON: Concrete5 demo tonight

Rick Turoczy on July 21, 2008

I just received word that Portland’s Concrete5, one of our favorite content management systems, will be presenting tonight at OSCON.

What’s that? You thought Concrete5 was commercial software…? Yeah, well it was. Until recently.

Concrete CMS was first developed in 2003 as commercial enterprise software. Headquartered in Portland, OR, the Concrete team had always been proponents and enthusiastic users of open source, but until this year had only released full source code to their clients for a fee. Now at O’Reilly OSCON 2008, concrete5 will be released to the public under the MIT License, a popular and nonrestrictive open source license.

The session will be held tonight (Monday, July 21) at the Oregon Convention Center, E143/144, at 7:00PM.

What’s Concrete5?

 

concrete5 is a PHP/MySQL based CMS that is easy for site owners to use, flexible for developers to work with, and is simply the new version of our enterprise level solution that powers such sites as Lemonade.com, Indie911.com, and LewisAndClark200.org to just name a few. After years of being evil software guys, we’ve seen the light and have gone fully open source.

We’ll give a tour of why and how c5 was put together and what it’s doing well today. We’ll quickly install and build out a small site, and then we’ll get into some geeky stuff and do questions.

For more information, see the OSCON listing for the Concrete5 demo.

OSCON 2008: Sourceforge offers free Open Source tattoos

Rick Turoczy on July 18, 2008

Open Source tattoosInterested in placing a penguin on your posterior? Or maybe the Debian swirl? Or the Ubuntu circle thingee? Or maybe—just maybe—putting your OpenID somewhere you’re sure to never, ever forget it?

Well, next week at OSCON here in Portland, you may be able to make that dream come true. Because it seems that the nice—or is that sadistic?—folks at Sourceforge are offering to ink you up with your favorite open source icon—for free.

That’s right. Ten lucky winners will get the opportunity to go under the needle to make their ass officially open source. Well, or their arm or leg or what have you:

We are looking for people that are willing to sign up for a tattoo and show it off at the CCA party later on in the week. Only requirements – participants have to be able to meet with Ross Turk, Sourceforge’s Community Manager, at the beginning of the week to get the gift certificate, they have to sign a couple waivers (one for the tattoo parlor and one for Sourceforge), the tattoo has to be open source themed or techy in nature, and they have to show up at the CCA party Thursday night.

I’m not sure exactly which tattoo studio is going to be doing the work, but given that it’s going to be one near the Jupiter Hotel, I’m going to assume that it’s Colorbomb Tattoo with the drawing honors.

Is your interest piqued? You willing to take the pain all for love of open source? Maybe you should contact Ross at Sourceforge and let him know: rturk at corp.sourceforge.com.

And please, oh please, if you’re crazy enough to do this—and (and!) you happen to get picked—do let me know.

What’s that? Tats not your pot of ink? That’s okay, kiddo. There are still plenty of cool things to do in Portland while you’re at OSCON.

Photo credit vonguard used under Creative Commons

WeoGeo outlook cloudy… and that’s a good thing

Rick Turoczy on July 18, 2008

WeoGeoWell on its way to being Portland-based WeoGeo will be providing its cloud computing expertise to Vancouver-BC-based Safe Software as part of an effort to get more out of Safe’s spatial extract, transform, and load (ETL) capabilities.

And WeoGeo gets something out of it, as well:

WeoGeo will use [Safe] FME technology as the basis for its spatial ETL offerings in the marketplace, providing users with the ability to restructure their spatial data into the required format and data model. Specifically, organizations will be able to author spatial data flows that convert and integrate spatial data using FME Desktop and then push the resulting datasets to the cloud for distribution using FME Server.

Yeah, okay. But what the heck does that mean?

Well, I didn’t know either. Luckily, Directions Magazine explained it to me:

WeoGeo allows users to search, find and download geodata for use in various analytical and cartographic pursuits. The one thing missing: the ability to transform and deliver data in various formats. That’s just some of what Safe Software’s FME Server can do.

Directions goes on to opine:

I think these two companies are on to something. The cloud is becoming part of our daily lives – for e-mail, for Google Earth use, for calendars. It’s time to put its reliability, scalability and offsite hardware management to the test in geospatial. I feel pretty confident everyone involved in geospatial is already using applications that run in the cloud and the number they use will only increase in the coming months and years.

So with Safe, all of WeoGeo’s cool data becomes much more usable—and more accessible. And that, alone, makes the WeoGeo existing geospatial data more valuable.

Now, combine that with whatever other geospatial magic they have up their WeoGeo-sleeve and we’re sure to see some cool things coming out of one of our newest startup residents.

WeoGeo creates a one-stop marketplace for the mapping industry. It supplies surveyors, engineers, cartographers, and scientists with the ability to conveniently store, search, and exchange global mapping and geo-content. Geo-content providers can easily list their data for sale, and users can quickly find the data they need.

For more information, see the press release, WeoGeo’s insight on the partnership, and Directions Magazine.

OTBC reboots Founders’ Friday

Rick Turoczy on July 18, 2008

OTBCAre you the founder of a startup? Beer and Blog not exactly your speed?

No worries, gentle reader. We have a Friday afternoon activity for you, too.

Steve Morris out at OTBC is bringing back Founders’ Friday, a networking event for entrepreneurs that focuses on those folks who have had the opportunity to found their own startup.

The event is held at the OTBC offices in Beaverton, located just off Sunset Highway and NW 158th. Plan to arrive around 4:30. A $3 donation is requested to cover food and drink expenses.

For more information or to RSVP, visit Founders’ Friday on Meetup.

Beaverton-based OTBC provides incubation services and entrepreneurship programs to help high-tech and biotech start-up ventures succeed. They can help you validate your market, develop your business plan, and help you understand what steps are required to get your company investor-ready.

Psst! Beer and Blog will be about secrets. Past it on.

Rick Turoczy on July 18, 2008

Beer and BlogIt’s Friday. And that means, it’s time for our favorite Portland wrap-up for the week: Beer and Blog.

So what’s the topic?

Well, I’d like to tell you, but it’s a secret.

Most of us have more than a few cards up our sleeves that give us a competitive advantage. I know I’ve got a whole bag of tricks that I’ve built up over the years. Today, we’re going to share some of those sweet secrets with the group. The idea here is not to spill your guts and tell all, rather that if we all share a little somethin’ then we will all learn a lot.

For more information or to RSVP, visit Beer and Blog on Upcoming.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for July 17

Rick Turoczy on July 17, 2008

OSCamp / FOSSCoach at OSCON

Via the Legion of Tech blog “While this is not a Legion of Tech event, we thought that many of the local Portland technology crowd might be interested in attending some or all of this BarCamp style event being organized by our own Portlander Sam Keen, Open Source Community guru Zak Greant, and others.”

Summer Coder’s Social at Laurelhust Park (August 3, 2008)

Last December, many of the local software developer User Groups banded together and had a party (instead of the regular meetings). It was know as the Winter Coders Social (few pics). Summer Coder’s Social is the outdoor and (hopefully) sunny successor! This will be a very casual geek event with outdoor activities, games and BBQ so be sure to bring the whole family.
Sponsors will provide the basics of Hamburgers and Hotdogs (and Vegan equivilants). Potluck will provide the rest. This is also a BYOB event.

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Elemental Technologies sparks $7.1 million investment

Rick Turoczy on July 17, 2008

Now, I don’t usually write about traditional software companies. But it seemed like this one definitely deserved it.

Portland-based Elemental Technologies has secured more than $7 million in its first round of funding.

Okay. So what’s being funded and why am I writing about it?

Utilizing general purpose, programmable “off-the-shelf” graphics processing units (GPUs), ETI software performs video encoding, transcoding, and filtering at unprecedented speeds while maintaining the highest video quality.

Who’s a-what-uh hunh? Okay. Maybe this will help:

[This technology] allows consumers to format their media up to 10 times faster than existing solutions.

Ah ha! Now you’re talking.

With the growing popularity of services like Seesmic, Vimeo (Portland connection), and Viddler—oh and that little site called YouTube—it’s obvious that video is very much a part of our future existence in the Web world. And while any number of companies have come up with ways to deliver that video content on the Web, there always seems to be one major sticking point to widespread adoption: Encoding video content for posting is excruciatingly slow.

To be successful, we’re going to have to be able to encode and upload video as quickly as we can download it. And Elemental may just be able to deliver.

According to NewTeeVee:

The first product out from Elemental is consumer oriented, will arrive sometime before September and is expected to cost between $30 and $100, depending on the features. The software will allow consumers to take HD inputs such as a Blu-ray disc or homemade HD video and rip it to a computer, iPod or other device five to 10 times faster than existing technologies using the CPU.

No doubt, the infusion of cash will go a long way in promoting this offering—and ensuring that development continues.

Industry-leaders General Catalyst Partners of Boston, Massachusetts and Voyager Capital of Seattle, Washington co-led this $7.1M investment. Mike Rogoway of The Oregonian and the Silicon Forest blog notes:

In Oregon’s venture capital community, [Elemental]’s new investment represents the second big funding round this month. Last week, NexPlanar Corp., a small semiconductor company that recently moved to Hillsboro, announced it had raised $14.5 million in venture capital.

And let’s hope that greases the skids for other Silicon Forest startups looking for some backing.

For more information on the funding, see the Elemental press release on the investment. For more on the company and its technology, visit Elemental Technologies.

Bot Recap of Lunch 2.0 at souk

Rick Turoczy on July 17, 2008

souklogo.jpgLunch 2.0 happened yesterday at flexible workspace provider souk in Old Town, and even though I didn’t make it, the accounts I’m hearing are overwhelmingly positive.

Dawn and Todd graciously agreed to MC the event, in my absence, and approximately 75 people came through during the two-hour lunch.  Julie, the gracious host, had Thai food for everyone with lots of vegetarian options. The food was well-received and completely gone by the end.

heathertodd.jpgDawn tells me souk’s space was great for conversations, the wheeled tables and chairs allowing for spontaneous rearrangements to accommodate the constantly morphing threads of discussion. While people sat to eat, they had in depth conversations, but as eating finished, people stood up to mingle, cocktail party style. Apparently, the chatting went right up to the end, which is awesome

Sounds like a great time. I’m bummed that I missed it.

If you hurry over to Summize, newly acquired by Twitter, you can catch the tweets from yesterday about Lunch 2.0 to get a running chronology of how it went.

I caught a few “what is Lunch 2.0” tweets in the mix. So, we still have some collective education to do. Dawn reported that in addition to the usual suspects we see at Lunch 2.0 (and Beer and Blog, Barcamp, Ignite, Legion of Tech Talks, you know the hardcore community people), there were a lot of new faces. This is good.

soukbooth.jpgAaron Hockley, the default Lunch 2.0 photographer, has posted some great (as usual) shots in his photostream. Julie has an album as well. Check these out if, like me you didn’t get there.

Thanks again to Julie for hosting a great lunch.

As of now, there aren’t any solid plans for the next iteration of Lunch 2.0 Portland. I have a few leads, but nothing definite. If you want your company to host one, or you know a place that would love to have the Portland community in for lunch, let me know in comments.

Photos courtesy of Aaron Hockley used under Creative Commons.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for July 16

Rick Turoczy on July 16, 2008

Strands to power BBVA’s Personal Finance tool for its 4.1 million online users and 1.3 billion online financial transactions

Via the Strands blog “We are happy to announce today that Strands will be powering the online personal finance tool that BBVA, one of the world’s largest retail banks, will be offering its customers. Developed by BBVA and Strands, BBVA Tú cuentas (You count, in Spanish) is an innovative personal finance tool that allows online users to manage their personal finances better, offering friendly analysis tools to better understand spending and savings.”

Strands Brings Recommendation Technology to Banking – ReadWriteWeb

Marshall Kirkpatrick covers the Strands news, noting “With interfaces for the iPhone, BlackBerry and Nokia phones – analytics and recommendations will also be available outside of the desktop web browser. This is the kind of heavyweight application to see coming from online recommendation services.”

OLPC and Beer – Thursday

Dieselboi writes “Hey you, yeah you with the OLPC, your fellow OLPCers are having a meetup on Thursday evening at Lucky Labrador Brew Hall in NW Portland. You should come on out, meet your fellow OLPCers and mesh. Earlier this year, Wayan of OLPCNews came to town to talk about the OLPC and we had a great time meeting others who were supporters of the technology and the vision.”

WiMAX update: Clearwire still coming to Portland

Mike Rogoway writes “Clearwire has been beta testing its Portland service for several weeks with ‘a very small group of Intel employees’ (Intel is among Clearwire’s big financial backers, and the companies held a joint WiMAX trial in Hillsboro last year.) The company tells me it will announce its rollout plans, including a Portland timetable, on its quarterly earnings call early next month.”

WordCamp Portland Planning Meeting at Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub (Thursday, July 17, 2008) – Upcoming

Aaron Hockley has posted the WordCamp Portland planning session to Upcoming. Please take a few moments to RSVP if you’re planning to attend. Aaron writes “For those of you local in the Portland area, several of us will be gathering this Thursday, July 17th at 6:00pm at the Green Dragon (928 SE 9th Avenue, Portland OR). We’re going to nail down some details on registration, scheduling, speakers, and facilities/logistics. All are welcome; volunteers are needed.”

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