Category: Links

Via the Strands blog “Drew [Olanoff] is joining Strands as Community Manager / Evangelist, his job is to increase the number of Strands enthusiasts and to spread Strands awesomeness. Easy.”

Audrey Eschright writes “One of the things I realized during OSCON was that I had yet to see a central place to point people to for info on running user groups and tech events, that wasn’t specific to a particular place or technology. There are sites on how to start an Apple User Group, and for Portland we’ve gathered notes on our local tech scene, but we could use something a little broader. The Open Community wiki is a stab at addressing this.”

Amber Case writes “What’s creative and groundbreaking, and capable of topping iPhone buzz on Twitter? It’s Cre8Camp, the inaugural unconference that brought 50 creatives to SOUK, [last] Saturday. Within the first hour of introduction and networking, about 24 topics were developed for discussion, and groups of creatives went off to various conferences rooms and hallways to delve into some of the most intense dilemmas, new media techniques, and social prerogatives that currently exist.”

Steve Morris writes “Portland is no Cleveland — but it might need a little “goosing”, and the Jumpstart approach might be an interesting fit for the creative and sometimes vc-resistant tech culture in Portland. Your thoughts?”

Greg Hughes writes “Over on the Internet Evolution site I recently wrote an article discussing the fact that MySpace is becoming an OpenID provider. Of note is the fact that they will be provider-only, and not a relying party, at least initially. This is a trend we’ve seen with other big companies like Yahoo!, and many of us are not-too-patiently waiting for these companies to start trusting and relying upon other organizations, so the utopia of user-controlled Internet single-sign-on can become a reality.”

Robert Scoble writes “What is the disease? That you must make bucketloads of money (or at least have a shot at doing that) in the first two years of business. If you have a plan to make just a reasonable amount of money, or if it will take decades to make a big amount of money, don’t come to Silicon Valley. Walmart would NEVER have gotten funded by Sand Hill Road. It took decades to make bucketloads of money. That kind of business plan would never fit in here.”

Via the Attensa blog “Wikipedia is theoretically about respect for expertise, openness and integrity.Who knows more about the company, its technology, associated products and applications than the people who live and breathe it every day. The irony is that Attensa has its listings removed through the actions of one individual because we were transparent and telling the truth about the process.”

Mike Rogoway writes “Google is giving Oregon State’s Open Source Lab another $300,000, bringing Google’s total lab contribution to $750,000 over the past three years.”

Via the fifth+main blog “The Internet is in the process of giving rise to a new breed of journalist thanks to all these layoffs in mainstream media. This is an important shift, because it centers on the people who report the news, not the ego-bloggers and serial editorialists.”

Micah Elliott writes “So you’re finally ready to leave corporate life. Before you walk out the door, here are some things you should make sure to consider during your last couple months of employment.”

Gia Lyons writes “Our software engineers have been diligently working on Jive Clearspace 2.5 (formerly known as 2.1) over the past several weeks, and we’ve been putting it through its paces inside Jive. Many have blogged and videoed (?) about it:”

Via Louis Gray’s blog “Federation is the real answer. What does federation do and why is it different from Twitter creating a distributed architecture? A distributed architecture means you have various pieces of the application sitting on different servers…. Federation is different from distributed in one simple sense. Federation requires a full copy of the entire system. Federation is the cooperation between various systems to act as one.”

Seed Oregon is a unique competition for Oregon and Southwest Washington seed-stage companies who are seeking capital within the range of $100,000 to $2,000,000. One winner from each preliminary round will move on to a championship round, where a finalist will earn a coveted presenting opportunity at OEN’s Angel Oregon 2009, the premier angel investing event in the Northwest. The 2009 conference will be held at the Governor Hotel in Portland on March 12th.

It starts with a simple seed. But from that seed grows strong, vibrant and sustainable companies that are ripe for investment. Venture Northwest (formerly Venture Oregon) is the premier forum for new and emerging investment opportunities in exciting companies from Oregon, Washington, and throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Jason Glaspey writes “I’ve always been pretty outspoken about the fact that I think DRM is from the devil, so when I saw a Prius with this license plate, I had to take a picture. It was outside of my favorite coffee joint Albina Press, and I was able to ask the owner of the car if this was a true vanity plate, or a chance coincidence… Turns out it was just the license the state gave him. He laughed as he watched me snap the photo though.”

Via the Vidoop blog “Over the coming months, Vidoop will be delivering new services that not only take advantage of these new specifications but also make them easy for users and companies to use. The reality is users shouldn’t need to know about these technologies but they will be the underpinnings of the Open Web.”

Bram Pitoyo writes “I always thought that ‘Creative’ and ‘Tech’ were two different worlds: two landmasses that somehow needs to be bridged. I wrote about it. I talked about it to friends and people I met at various events: about how I wanted to ‘make creatives more open by introducing them to the vibrant, local tech community.’ It’s all good. But I was completely wrong.”

OPB Think Out Loud will be broadcasting live from OSCON. The premise? “Portland isn’t necessarily the capital of this revolution — one of the hallmarks of such a decentralized system is that the whole concept of a capital is anathema — but it’s certainly one of the most prominent nodes of community. Some people have argued that the aspects of Portland’s culture that make it such an ideal location for open source activity (i.e. a creative, collaborative, non-commercial mindset, speaking in broad generalizations) have also meant that fewer local OSS (Open Source Software) projects become commercially viable.”

Doug Coleman writes “I am excited to announce that iPhone DevCamp 2 PDX has an new venue! Thanks to Jim Goings and the wonderful people at Jive Software, iPhone DevCamp 2 PDX will be held August 2nd and 3rd at Jive’s Stark St. offices in Downtown Portland.”

Chris Messina writes “During this morning’s keynote at OSCON, David Recordon announced the formation of the Open Web Foundation (his slides), an initiative with which I am involved, aimed at becoming something akin to a ‘Creative Commons for patents’, with the intention of lowering the costs and barriers to the development and adoption of open and free specifications like OpenID and OAuth.”

Jay Lyman writes “Now OSCON is at the Portland Convention Center, and while the conference has a different feel, it is still the most unique tech conference with its developer focus, sandals and lack of ties. So while I still enjoy being able to wear shorts to a show and briefings, there have been some significant changes to OSCON in addition to the location move.”

Justin Kistner writes “Welcome OSCON attendees to the land of beer and honey known around the world as Portland. We’d like to invite all of you to enjoy a pint of delicious beer with us on Friday from 4-6 pm. Beer and Blog is Portland’s tech scene happy hour of choice and we usually help each other with our blogs. At least that’s what I keep repeating.”

Via the Vidoop blog “We are very proud that Chris Messina (aka @factoryjoe), a recent addition to the Vidoop team, has recently received the award for ‘best community amplifier’. You can read about the history and see past winners at the Google-O’Reilly Open Source Awards – Hall of Fame but the general idea is…”

An exceedingly thorough play-by-play with Mark Shuttleworth during Legion of Talk.

Andrew Chen writes “The major point I will make here is that Techcrunch and related blogs reach an audience of early adopters, but these may not be the earlier adopters that you want. After all, what’s the point of launching a music startup on Techcrunch, for example, if your startup is primarily for the teen mass market?”

IPhoneDevCamp Portland will take place August 1st to 3rd on the Cascade Campus of Portland Community College. This will be a satellite event to the main event being held in San Francisco.

Will Norris of Vidoop has released version 2.2.0 of the OpenID plugin for WordPress. This version includes “support for Email Address to URL Transformation – now you can use an email address anywhere you normally use an OpenID.” EAUT!

Chris Messina writes “Inexplicably I was absent when they handed out the award, hanging out with folks at a Python/Django/jQuery drinkup down the street, but I’m humbled all the same… especially since I work on a day to day basis with such high caliber and incredible people without whom none of these projects would exist, would not have found success, and most importantly, would never have ever mattered in the first place.”

Via the TechBoise blog “Those of you on Twitter or at OSCON have already seen the posts from @kveton and @turoczy about the press that Vidoop is getting as they move their corporate headquarters from Oklahoma to Portland. I think there are at least three important lessons in this article I am reposting from the Oregonian…”

Ariel Meilij writes “Matt is the CTO of Jive Software, and a real executive worried about customer satisfaction if he cared to read my post from swamp humid Central America (I am from Panama after all…) I am not only happy to hear from the CTO himself, but also to realize the new version is already in use by Nike, and my mark-up now makes a lot of sense. Not perfect yet, but almost there.”

Via the Strands blog “Back in March we announced the ‘Strands $100,000 Call for Recommender Start-Ups,’ the Fastest Path to Fund your Project. Now that we are getting closer to the end of the submission period, next September 15th, we’d love to receive your proposal!”

Doug Coleman writes “Good news! iPhone developer geeks do not have to travel all the way to San Francisco for DevCamp 2. There will be a live satellite event at Portland Community College’s Cascade Campus that is open to the public and is free.”

Scott Kveton writes “Tonight Chris Messina won a Google Open Source Award as ‘Best Community Amplifier’ for his tireless work spreading ‘open’ everywhere. I’ve known Chris for several years now and its been an absolute pleasure not only to be in the same space but now I get to work with him at Vidoop on a daily basis.”

Selena Deckelmann writes “Here’s my slide deck from People for Geeks. Will be uploading to slideshare soon!”

Jay Lyman writes “Attending the Open Mobile Exchange at OSCON today, I heard some differing perspectives on the role and impact of open source in the mobile software market. We heard from Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin how significant Linux is in the mobile and embedded spaces, some of the non-desktop Linux uses we predicted would be hot this year.”

Audrey Eschright writes “As we’ve been working on Calagator, I’ve told people ‘we want you to be able to have a calendar with only the Ruby and beer events if that’s what you like’ as our goal for tagging, search, and feeds. This weekend we accomplished that goal. Now, if you enter a search term into the box in the upper right corner of the page, you’ll be offered Atom and iCalendar feeds to subscribe to. It’s a proud moment.”

Amber Case writes “This is the full 84 minute audio recording of the talk that Mark Shuttleworth gave on Monday, July 21st at McMenamins Mission Theater. The talk was sponsored by Oregon’s own Strands and Legion of Tech. Mark Shuttleworth will also be speaking tomorrow at O’Reilly’s OSCON 08, a week-long Tech Event here in Portland.”

Mark Shuttleworth lends a hand in helping Peat Bakke launch “The Change Project.”

Selena Deckelmann writes “The Portland Ruby Brigade is cooking up a great FOSCON this year, hosted at Cubespace. It’s all happening on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 from 6pm-9pm.”

Raven Zachary writes “Another year has passed by in a flash and OSCON, O’Reilly’s annual open source convention, is upon us. Fellow 451 open source analyst and Portlander, Jay Lyman, will be with me all week at the Oregon Convention Center to check the pulse of the open source development community, meet with vendors and clients, reconnect with old friends, and count utilikilts (among many other things). It was my first trip to OSCON in 2005 that got me hooked on both the conference and the city. Now, heading into my fourth year at OSCON and my third year as a Portland resident, I’ll take the short commute tomorrow morning.”

Bram Pitoyo provides another one of his inimitable event recaps. This time it’s on the last Beer and Blog, “the Secrets Session.”

Brian Ford writes “If you’re headed to OSCON 2008, I hope I’ll have a chance to meet you. I’ll be speaking on Thursday afternoon, something about Ruby performance. Come and heckle me if you wish.”

Meet outside the convention center Starbucks at 11:55 to walk to lunch
or Meet us at Pho Green Papaya at 12:10. RSVP here.

Great blow-by-blow OSCON coverage from “Musings of an Anonymous Geek”

Via the Vidoop blog “OSCON 2008 by itself is enough to geek out about, but don’t forget about the parties!”

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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

Just noticed this new conference for entrepreneurs with some of the big names from the Web 2.0 world. Yes, it’s in San Francisco, but it looks cool. August 7.

Marshall Kirkpatrick spoke to a number of Portland tech types before writing “You know what little startup companies need these days? They need to hire more people! It may be a frightening thought, but in an increasingly social world – being social is becoming an important full time job. ‘Community Manager’ is a position increasingly being hired for at large corporations (see Jeremiah Owyang’s growing list of people with that kind of job) but what about smaller companies? We asked a number of people what they thought and the following discussion offers some great things to think about, pro and con.”

Josh Bancroft writes “We’re having a ‘tweetup’ at the bar in the Governor Hotel in Portland, starting at 8:30PM on Wednesday night, July 16. Charlene says if you bring your copy of Groundswell, she’ll sign it, and buy you a drink. 🙂 You can get the details on Upcoming (you can RSVP if you want, but this is way informal, so no guarantees, of course – it’s a bunch of people descending on a hotel bar).”

Via the ORBlogs blog “Just a note to let you know that I have closed the ORblogs directory to new listings for the rest of the summer. There are about 80 blogs in the queue I need to review, and I’ll try to add those soon. But my life and work are conspiring against ORblogs at the moment. I’ll still be monitoring updates and pruning the site, but I need to go into maintenance mode for a while. Thanks for your understanding.”

David Lowe-Rogstad writes “Wow. What a great start to this idea. Thank you to everyone who make it, and we hope the rest of you who couldn’t make it this time will be at the next.”