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Category: Oregon

Portland Business 2.0 at APNBA

Rick Turoczy on September 27, 2007

I’m a big proponent of the “cache of locality.” The idea that, given the option, people tend to gravitate toward services and products based on their location. Even if those products and services have absolutely nothing to do with the location in which they are being used.

Buying local, if you will.

That’s why I think it’s important for all of you globally-accessible businesses and Web 2.0 entrepreneurial types to take note of this local event.

On October 23, the Alliance of Portland Neighborhood Business Associations (APNBA) will hold its annual meeting—entitled “Portland Business 2.0: How to Do Business in the 21st Century”—at the Oregon Convention Center, featuring a Web 2.0-leaning keynote entitled, “Doing Business in a Socially Networked Climate.” The cost of attendance is $50.

The event is promoted as an ideal venue for networking with small businesses, startups, and individual contractors in the Portland area. It also promises to give the somewhat-disconnected home-office types a better understanding of what business is occurring in the neighborhoods around them.

A strong, active business district association is the glue that holds neighborhoods together, giving them the distinctive identities that characterize Portland. Many of them serve the functions of a small town, offering the services and providing space for public interaction and community celebration. The well-organized business district association can be the business voice of this “micro-village” to the surrounding municipalities.

For more details on the event, please see additional coverage from Portland Small Business, the CubeSpace registration page, and the APNBA site. If you’re already sold on the idea, download the registration form.

The event is sponsored and managed by the folks at CubeSpace. If you’re interested in being a sponsor of this event, contact Eva Schweber at eva@cubespacepdx.com.

The Alliance of Portland Neighborhood Business Associations (APNBA) is an alliance of the 30+ business district associations (BDAs) in Portland, Oregon. BDA members are the merchants, property owners, and employees in the commercial districts surrounding downtown. For more, see the APNBA site.

(Hat tip to Portland Small Business)

Attensa Feed Server now free for five

Rick Turoczy on September 25, 2007

There’s a been something gnawing at you. I can see it. And everyone else can see it, too.

You’ve been consumed with the curiosity about how Attensa Feed Server actually works, but you don’t want to pony up the cash to buy it.

Well, count your blessings, my friend, because today is your lucky day.

Portland-based Attensa, the company focused on helping organizations manage and make better use of RSS feeds, has released a trial version of Attensa Feed Server. It’s free. And it’s available for download, right now.

The trial version is fully functional for up to five (5) users, allowing unlimited feeds and unlimited groups. All you need is the hardware, and you’re off and running.

The Attensa Feed Server is a virtual appliance that provides enterprise customers with centralized administration, routing, security, search, synchronization, analytics and reporting for enterprise-wide RSS coordination. It brings together all of the tools IT administrators, team leaders and users need to manage and streamline the delivery of critical business information using web feeds behind the firewall.

Download your copy of Attensa Feed Server.

For more information, see the Attensa blog, read additional Attensa coverage on NW Innovation, or gain some insight from Brooks Jordan.

Portland Small Business wants you

Rick Turoczy on September 25, 2007

Local-startup tracker and small-business social network Portland Small Business is looking for a few good companies to review. The only qualifying factor? Portland Small Business hopes to make the pool of companies as diverse as possible:

I’m looking for 10-20 small businesses to review on this site. I want a representative sample of all the businesses in Portland. Everything from the soap carvers to SOAP developers.

Interested in having your company or product reviewed? Contact Kevin Spence at Portland Small Business.

PortlandSmallBusiness.com is a collaborative website, where members of the Portland small business community can go for peer advice and network. In addition to interacting in the forum, all members can post articles and place their business in the directory.

For more information, see Portland Small Business.

Baby needs a COO

Rick Turoczy on September 24, 2007

Word around the campfire It has been confirmed that CD Baby is looking for a short-term Chief Operating Officer (COO). Details about the position are as follows:

CD Baby (cdbaby.com) is looking for a short-term COO with possibility of becoming President.

CD Baby is one of the largest sellers of independent music online, providing retail sales and digital distribution for 200,000 musicians, with over $60M in sales. (And despite what you hear about the rest of the industry, sales are up 35% over last year, here.)

80 employees: 35 warehouse, 30 customer service, 5 digital distribution, 4 managers, and a few mysterious elves.

No music experience needed. We’ve got plenty of musicians here, and are looking for someone with a long proven history leading companies of a similar size, showing drastic operational improvements in a short timeframe.

Some of the areas you’ll be focusing on will be: developing and streamlining processes, improving customer service metrics, and leading the employees through the changes.

We’re looking for you to develop the plan, put it in action, and define the results.

This is a 3-month intensive project and pays $50,000.

You will report directly to CD Baby owner/founder Derek Sivers, and need to provide measurements to prove your operational improvements.

To apply, please send specifics of your history of operational improvements in a leadership role, whether COO, VP, President, or CEO – to jobs@CompassHumanResources.com.

Portland-based CD Baby describes itself as a “little online record store that sells albums by independent musicians.” That little store also happens to be one of the largest sellers of independent music on the Web. It is brother (or possibly sister) to Film Baby and Host Baby.

More information will be posted when available. In the meantime For more information about CD Baby, please refer to the CD Baby site or the CDBaby Wikipedia page for additional information.

Ignite Portland: October 25, Wieden+Kennedy

Rick Turoczy on September 20, 2007

It’s official! Ignite Portland has set its date and location: October 25 at Wieden+Kennedy.

We have a confirmed date and venue! Ignite Portland will happen on Thursday, October 25, 2007, at Wieden & Kennedy (224 NW 13th Ave, Portland, OR). Exact time TBD, but it will be in the evening, around 6PM to 9PM. The WK space is AMAZING – many thanks to Renny Gleeson and everyone at Wieden & Kennedy for being willing to host us.

That means you (yes, you) have got stuff to do, like:

For more information, see the Ignite Portland site. To stay up-to-date on the latest news, subscribe to the Ignite Portland feed.

In case you missed it: Speeding up Web performance, DevGroup NW

Rick Turoczy on September 20, 2007

Last night, Jason Grigsby presented at DevGroup NW on techniques for optimizing and improving Web performance.

We had an exceptional audience tonight at DevGroup NW for my presentation on how to speed up web pages. There were a lot of good questions and an engaged audience. Thank you to everyone who showed up.

If you—like me—were unable to make it, fear not. You can now download the presentation (with or without speaker’s notes) from Jason’s site, User First Web.

(Hat tip to Peat Bakke)

Stealth: Imindi thought engine

Rick Turoczy on September 20, 2007

Currently in stealth mode but scheduled to launch in the coming weeks, Portland-based Imindi promises to bring the visual aspects of traditional mind-mapping software to a broader spectrum of activities. The aggressive product vision, outlined on the Imindi blog, has the product helping with everything from collaborative writing to collaborative search to social bookmarking.

At its foundation, the company describes the Imindi product as a “thought engine”:

The Imindi Thought Engine enables you to input your Thoughts and the semantic connections between them (Why, What, Where, When, Who, How) in a naturally radiant fashion with one thought radiating outward to one or many asoociated thought that themselves radiates outwards towards other thoughts which radiate outwards towards others and so on and so forth. The interface is essentially a visual map of your mind what we call a “Journey” here at Imindi.

The concept is interesting. But it is important to note that the visual aspect of the mind-map is not especially expansive—at least at this point. Currently, the Imindi product relegates the results to the first orbit, the items within direct connection of the central thought.

Personally, I’ve always found the value of graphic representations of the nature to be the orbits that are 3 to 4 steps away from the initial thought. This is where you start seeing the really interesting stuff happening.

With Imindi’s current product, you can definitely get to that point—one a click at a time–but as far as I can tell, you cannot currently see the entire universe or the path that led you to your current thought. [Update] The Imindi folks were nice enough to swing by and comment on the exact functionality I was seeking: expanded maps.

Obviously, is that it’s incredibly easy for me to sit here and pitch stones with no idea of how much work the algorithms and relationship logic actually took. So, while I criticize, I’d encourage you to take a look for yourself by visiting Imindi.

Imindi has received seed funding from Mind Fund of Portland.

Portland tech startup co-op, concept proposed

Rick Turoczy on September 19, 2007

As any small company or individual developer discovers, there are a number of requirements to “running a business” that often detract or steal time from your “building cool and useful stuff” time. And while many developers currently outsource these tasks to business-service professionals, the cost and time to manage those services and contractors can be equally draining.

Peat Bakke of Blue Hill Solutions and Adam DuVander may have a solution: a co-op that supports the business-services needs of small and independent technology developers in the Portland area.

There are lots of independent software developers and consultants in the Portland area, and while the technologies and applications vary wildly, there are probably some very common frustrations that could be aided under a co-op structure.

Sounds like an idea whose time has come. A sort of “Really Small Business Administration” to fill the gap for the market that the local SBA isn’t really designed to serve.

The concept is interesting—and appealing—to say the least. If you agree, read Peat’s post on the topic and then head over to Portland Web Innovators to join the discussion.

Reminder: Portland Open Coffee, September 19

Rick Turoczy on September 18, 2007

Just a reminder that the Portland Open Coffee meetup will be held, bright and early, at 10 AM on September 19. The meeting spot will be the Stumptown on Division.

According to Upcoming, there are currently a bevy of watchers and only a few attendees.

The OpenCoffee Club was started to encourage entrepreneurs, developers and investors to organise real-world informal meetups to chat, network and grow.

Platial uses new API for latest build, new look

Rick Turoczy on September 18, 2007

Portland-based Platial, one of the original social-mapping and map-mashup sites, has announced that the latest build of their mapping tool has completed BETA testing and is now available to the general public.

While the most obvious changes are to the Platial interface, the most interesting part of the release—at least from my perspective—is that it marks the first build on the new Platial API.

It’s also the first major release on our new code framework Chris and Jake developed using our new api which Chris pretty much single handedly created

Some stability issues have been addressed under the hood, as well:

The reason we’re all so excited is that both the code base and the UI are more solid than ever (also lots of back-end tweaking and turning are targeting content eve[n] more effectively!). This was a methodical build and is just the first on the new solid framework which is going to allow us to be even faster and even more responsive to our amazing users!! Now that the Platial platform is for a good part established we can finally obsess over the details.

Platial enables anyone to find, create and use meaningful maps of Places that matter to them. The goal of the site is to connect people, neighborhoods, cities and countries through a citizen-driven common context that goes beyond geopolitical boundaries.

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