Startups are all about trying things. Sometimes those things work. Sometimes they don’t. And it’s no different with community. Sometimes, no matter how obvious and needed something appears to be, the community reacts otherwise. So you try. You observe. And you refine based on those observations. And that’s what former marquee startup community event Demolicious is experiencing with its planned reboot, this week. So it has been canceled.
While we’re all excited to have Demolicious back, it seems that maybe we’re not as excited for it to be a virtual event. So lead organizer Josh Carter is pressing pause on the event until we have the opportunity to get together, face to face.
There are a number of events that I hold in both high regard and high in nostalgia. One of them is Demolicious, a Portland technology event originally conceived and managed by Adam DuVander. The focus? Get people to demo a product or application that they were building — no matter how rough and unpolished it happened to be.
If you’ve been around Portland for a while, you might recall Demolicious, a quarterly series of events hosted by Portland Web Innovators that allowed Portland startups and developers demo interesting projects on which they had been working. It was a great way to see all the random stuff happening in town.
If you’ve been around Portland for a while, you might recall Demolicious, a quarterly series of events hosted by Portland Web Innovators that allowed Portland startups and developers to demo interesting projects on which they had been working. It was a great way to see all the random stuff happening in town.
So come on down to the Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE) tonight at 7 PM to see what some of Portland’s best and brightest are doing in 2010 during Portland Web Innovators Demolicious.
Today is one of my favorite holidays. Not that it really gets that much attention. Not that I actually ever celebrated it. But, I mean, c’mon. Who can’t like something called “Epiphany“?
And what better day to celebrate bright entrepreneurial ideas and new technology concepts with Portland Web Innovators? That’s right, my friend. No better day.
Interested in the freshest new products from the Portland technology types? Who isn’t? We all love the cutting-edge tech stuff around these parts.
Well, you’re in luck. Because there’s no better place to catch a glimpse of these new products in the wild than Portland Web Innovators’ quarterly Demolicious—an evening of folks demoing products you’ve probably never seen.
Even better news? It’s this week. That’s right! This Wednesday. I know. I can’t wait either. Read More
Interested in seeing some of the newest projects in the Portland Web scene? Then don’t miss Portland Web InnovatorsDemolicious. It’s a night of demos of some cutting edge projects from our peers here in the Silicon Forest.
Who’s up? Benjamin Stover with “I Need to Read This!,” David Abramowski with “MioWorks,” Jason Glaspey with “Black Tonic,” Sam Grover with “Avatari,” and Richard Forbes with “VoteFair ranking.”
The event will be held at Jive Software, starting at 7 PM. For more information (including how to get in the locked door), visit Demolicious on Upcoming.
Akshay Dodeja demoed Mugasha. Originally developed during Portland Startup Weekend, the site has gone through several iterations in development—now it’s ready to launch in private beta.
If you’re into electronica, you’re going to want to check it out. What’s it do? Basically, it parses DJ set podcasts—usually one long multi-hour track with no song info—into separate song tracks, allowing user to play the songs they want to play and actually know which tunes they’re playing.
Taking a different cut on a previous iteration, Kevin Chen demoed a new version of Metroseeq, a mapping application that gives you the options to search for resources around a town, in-between two locations, or by marking your own route and allowing the service to plot resources along that route.
The new version of Metroseeq relies on the Google API and returns to the four closest resource for any search.
The other three demos showed off some new development.
Michael Kelly showed us Foodisms, an early version of a restaurant and food searching site with a twist: rather than searching by cuisine, you search by ingredient. Foodisms then looks for that ingredient and suggests a variety of dishes at any number of restaurants.
The current dataset is currently limited to 100 Portland restaurants (which, for Portland, is a narrow subset) but the foundational structure for the product has been established. If they can scale the data entry—dish by dish, ingredient by ingredient—this is going to be very cool indeed.
Scott Andreas shared Sunago, community management software for nonprofits—especially advocacy groups. Its mission is simple:
“We’re tired of companies charging exorbitant amounts of money for apps that, well, suck. We’d rather you to spend your money on your vision, not software. That’s why Sunago is free for small organizations, and affordable for larger ones.”
Sunago has already been deployed with several nonprofits and Scott is constantly adding new features.
Finally, Dave Miller demonstrated OpenLaszlo, an ECMAScript tool for building “rich internet applications” that will let the developer script structured content that can be compiled and deployed as either HTML or Flash—from the same code. Dave showed off some of the capabilities and demoed an app he had built.
Based on the beginning of his demo, I’d also offer that Dave is available to perform as a mime for your kids’ birthday parties or your next corporate function. Or not.
Flirting with its third year, Portland Web Innovators is one of the old guard when it comes to the new Web tech scene in Portland. For many developers, it’s the best place to get together on a regular basis to share ideas.
As such, there’s no better way to get an early glimpse of the next big thing here in the Silicon Forest than with Demolicious, PDXwi’s quarterly demo round-up of new products.
And you’re in luck. It’s tonight.
Currently scheduled to appear:
Dave Miller, An Open Laszlo Project
Michael Kelly, Foodisms
Akshay Dodeja, Mugasha
Scott Andreas, Sunago
So come on out and see your peers demonstrate the cool stuff they’ve been building, tonight at 7 PM, hosted by NEMO design. To RSVP or for more info, see Demolicious on Upcoming.
So where better to launch the latest version of the leading OpenID plugin for WordPress—wp-openid—than Portland?
Will Norris, the lead developer of the wp-openid plugin, happens to be in town this week. And, as such, he has just announced that he will be launching wp-openid 3.0 this Wednesday at Portland Web Innovators “Demolicious!“, the new hip spot to unveil cool new tools here in town.
What does wp-openid do?
This plugin allows verified OpenIDs to be linked to existing user accounts for use as an alternative means of authentication. Additionally, commenters may use their OpenID to assure their identity as the author of the comment and provide a framework for future OpenID-based services (reputation and trust, for example).
So, if you’re a WordPress type who’s been using OpenID or who is interested in deploying OpenID on your blog, make sure to attend Demolicious! on Wednesday night at NEMO Design. Even if you’re just OpenID curious, I’d highly encourage you to attend.
Plus, as always, there will be some other cool stuff being demoed there, as well.
