Portland startups, open source, and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
In case you’ve been hiding under a tech news resistant rock, I wanted to let you know that TechCrunch — the 800 lbs. gorilla of tech blogs — has been acquired by AOL. Yes, that AOL. And the news, strangely enough, is topping Techmeme. Much like TechCrunch posts have for years.
Say all you want about Michael Arrington, the guy who started TechCrunch. It’s an important event to note. Because it’s a five year old blog being sold to a major corporation for a rumored $25 million or so. Read More
Portland-based NEMO Design, in conjunction with Group y, brought a bunch of marketing folks together to listen to a panel of social media savvy folks, including Dave Allen, Lee Crane, Matt Savarino, James Todd, and Tony Welch all moderated by Marshall Kirkpatrick.
[HTML3]Last week, Portland-based NEMO Design, in conjunction with Group y, brought a bunch of marketing folks together to listen to a panel of social media savvy folks, including Dave Allen, Lee Crane, Matt Savarino, James Todd, and Tony Welch—all moderated by Marshall Kirkpatrick.
With a great group of opinionated speakers, the lively conversation jumped from topic to topic. And even though it got a little derailed by an SEO-focused comment and perhaps a little too much “Twine, drink!” it provided a great deal of insight for the “marketing savvy but potentially social media uninitiated” folks in attendance.
So, who killed social media? Like the seemingly unanswerable “how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?” the world may never know. But here’s what folks had to say. Read More
Remember that one scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? You know the one. Near the end? Where they finally find the Holy Grail but it’s mixed up with all the chalices and cups and whatnot? Well, there will be no “He [or she] chose… poorly” tonight, my friend. Pick either the Open Source Bridge Volunteer Orientation or Portland Web Innovators featuring Marshall Kirkpatrick on APIs. No matter what, you’ll come off as wise as Indiana.
Need more than that to go on? Okay okay. Here’s what you’ve got. Read More
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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It’s Friday. It’s kind of chilly outside. You’re looking for something to do. Why not spend some time by the warm glow of your monitor learning some interesting stuff from some interesting people?
That’s why there’s Strange Love Live, the weekly podcast hosted by Cami Kaos and Dr. Normal. Dare I say, “the best podcast in Portland”? Indeed, I dare.
What’s that? You haven’t seen Strange Love Live? Are you kidding me?
They’ve got a guest list that boasts a veritable who’s who of the Portland tech scene—Nate Angell, Josh Bancroft, Bram Pitoyo & Amber Case, Aaron Hockley, Scott Kveton, Don Park, Chris O’Rourke, Craig Schwartz, the Shizzow team, and many, many more. And while the podcast is always well worth the listen, there’s nothing quite like watching the show live.
And tonight would be a great night to tune in, because the special guest is none other than Marshall Kirkpatrick, the Emperor of RSS, VP of Content Development at ReadWriteWeb, and just all around nice guy.
The show starts at 10-ish on Friday nights.
And I’ll look forward to seeing you in the chat room, tonight.
Portland-based blogger extraordinaire, Marshall Kirkpatrick, is well-known for his investigative skills, his objective reporting, and his almost Barnum-esque flare for hinting at the “big news” he’s just about to publish.
So when @marshallk sent the following tweet on Thursday night…
… hinting at news that he had already queued up nearly a week before, a whole bunch of us waited with near-breathless anticipation for the news to drop.
And at 7:00 PM Pacific time, the news broke.
So what’s up with Marshall? Two things.
Let’s do the business thing first and the personal thing second, because I’ll probably get all gooby and misty by the end of this thing.
Marshall has served in a part-time role as Lead Writer at ReadWriteWeb for nearly year, helping the publication climb the ranks of the tech blogs—and truly all blogs—to crack the top 10 of “most linked” blogs worldwide and to a near-permanent residence in the top 10 of the Techmeme Leader Board.
Marshall’s effect on ReadWriteWeb has clearly been felt. And, as such, his promotion to Vice President of Content Development is both timely and well deserved. Bringing him on as a full-time employee will only strengthen his ability to contribute to the publication.
So what will this new role entail? And does it mean we’ll see less of Marshall’s posts? Richard MacManus, RWW founder, described Marshall’s new role:
The grand title reflects Marshall’s senior position within ReadWriteWeb, where he will be responsible for driving a lot of our upcoming content developments. These include premium content, publishing system enhancements, and more magic things. Marshall will also continue to be ReadWriteWeb’s Lead Writer, so don’t worry his writing isn’t taking a backseat at all. He will be going full-time at RWW sometime over the next couple of weeks.
There’s no telling what Marshall has up his sleeve. But, before too long, we’re sure to see some of that Kirkpatrick magic beginning to wend its way into regular rotation on RWW:
I am really excited about getting to bring some of my other ideas to fruition with a team of good people and Richard’s support, though…. I think many of you will really like what you see us come up with over at ReadWriteWeb.
In my opinion, this is a shrewd and necessary move for the ReadWriteWeb team. Embracing one of the leading bloggers in the industry and giving him more control over the content on the site will only help RWW continue its ascent in the tech blog world.
That, and I never get tired of hard workers getting just rewards for their efforts.
I know. Call me crazy.
But here’s the even bigger news…
Tech jobs come and go. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started chasing the next shiny Web 2.0 bauble.
So that’s why it’s I take a distinct pleasure in reporting truly important news like Marshall’s and Mikalina’s engagement.
Marshall puts the announcement in context:
Most important, I’m getting married to my partner Mikalina! Many of my work contacts here on the blog haven’t met Mikalina but many of you have. She’s wonderful and I love her very much.
I’ve been lucky enough to work with Marshall as a consultant, as my blogging mentor, and—yes—even as an entrepreneur on the receiving end of his objective reviews. But for all of that fun, learning, and excitement, I always feel luckiest about the fact that I get to count Marshall among my friends.
And there’s nothing better than seeing friends happy.
(See? I told you I’d get all gooby.)
So congrats to Mr. Kirkpatrick on two very exciting—and life altering—announcements. I can’t wait to see where he goes from here.
And, I can’t tell you how much I love it when this kind of stuff hits Techmeme.
Marshall Kirkpatrick, up until a few short hours ago the Director of Content for SplashCast, has announced that he is he is leaving SplashCast to join Web 2.0 blog Read/Write Web.
According to Read/Write Web, Marshall will be a lead writer, a role with which he is intimately familiar. (Many of you may remember that he held a similar position at another little Web 2.0 blog called TechCrunch.)
Richard MacManus, RWW’s founder, writes:
Marshall will focus on breaking news for Read/WriteWeb, something he is very skilled at and which will complement Josh and I well.
While I’m sad for SplashCast, I couldn’t be happier for Marshall and Read/Write Web.
For all of you startups looking for coverage, I’m the first to admit that Read/Write Web pulls in a bit more traffic than Silicon Florist. A bit. And Richard and team have really come back into their own after re-dedicating themselves to the space and refocusing the blog.
So heed Richard’s advice:
A note to startups and companies wishing to be covered by Read/WriteWeb: it is even more important now that you use the tips@readwriteweb.com email address to contact us with news. Josh and Marshall will be monitoring that address daily.
Finally, you should all know that Marshall has been a great supporter and promoter of Silicon Florist in its infancy. (I have no reason to expect that will change.) In fact, I’m quite sure that a good many of you are reading this post because of Marshall’s efforts to promote Silicon Florist. And for that I cannot thank him enough.
At the same time, Marshall has also been an exemplary contact for SplashCast. But I know that both Alex Williams and Kim Ramage will be equally sterling representatives for SplashCast. Which, by the way, is the first media player to include Twitter functionality. In case you were wondering.
I’m very much looking forward to poaching Marshall’s Portland-oriented RWW articles working with Marshall in this new role, and I hope all of you will extend your congratulations to him, as well.
For additional details on Marshall’s move to Read/Write Web, see Marshall’s blog post, the RWW announcement, the SplashCast blog post, and the growing list of coverage on Techmeme.