Portland startups, open source, and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
We’re drawing closer to election season. And this time around, entrepreneurs are a hotly contested constituency for the Portland mayoral candidates, Charlie Hales and Jefferson Smith. That’s why Elemental Technologies will bring the two candidates together for a debate about the startup scene—and of course they’ll be livestreaming it. Read More
The Oregonian has a new project, designed to expose those blogs to an even broader readership, a staggering 2.26 million unique visits a month. The Oregonian News Network.
Portland is lucky to have some very strong local blogs. Very strong. Blogs that cover things that are important to residents of the town—and of interest to folks outside Portland, looking in. And even though it’s rare for those blogs to be run by traditional journalists, there is no doubt that they provide coverage and insight that rivals even the most seasoned reporter. Read More
As many of you know, OregonLive—the primary Web site for The Oregonian, the largest paper in Oregon—is managed far beyond the control of the local reporters and Web designers here in Portland. Like in New Jersey. What’s more, OregonLive runs exactly the same codebase as all of the other Web sites managed by Advance Internet, like New Orleans’ paper The Times-Picayune.
And since we all love to carp about the shortcomings of OregonLive, it seems only appropriate that we give them kudos for making marked improvements. Recently, Advance Internet has rolled out a few changes to OregonLive that are worth mentioning. Read More
The Oregonian’s Mike Rogoway (Happy Fathers’ Day, Mike!) has a great piece about the burgeoning market supporting Apple products—especially with iPhone app developers—here in the Silicon Forest.
Portland-area startups mentioned in the article include Portland-based Urban Airship, Small Society, GadgetTrak, PheedYou, and Vancouver-based Avatron. Read More
We knew full well that Portland-based SplashCast was shuttering their user generated content (UGC) features.
We knew full well that Portland-based SplashCast was shuttering their user generated content (UGC) features. That’s been coming for months.
When initial word of the change in direction reached the SplashCast user base, there was an expected outcry of dismay. But when it finally came down to it, keeping the UGC stuff going simply didn’t pencil out. As such, SplashCast decided to continue focusing on its Social TV efforts where it was gaining traction. And the June 1 shut down of the UGC features came and went without much notice.
Until today. Read More
Following up on some of the themes from the successful chat about the Portland startup scene, Mike Rogoway at The Oregonian will be bringing a few folks from the venture capital community to the table.
Interested in chatting with them? I thought you might be. Just swing by the Silicon Forest blog at 9 AM Friday morning. Read More
It’s no secret that one of the many reasons I started Silicon Florist was to get more people interested in what you’re doing.
Yes you, you silly goose.
You’re inventing incredibly cool stuff. You’re bending Web and mobile technology to your will. You’re taking risks. And you’re trying to build companies that will help Oregon and the Silicon Forest thrive.
Recently, Mike Rogoway of The Oregonian has been working on a piece about the small Web and mobile startups here in town and the community that has grown up around them. The article—entitled “Tech Entrepreneurs Defy the Recession“—has been posted to the Web and should be in the print edition on Saturday.
It’s an expansive piece that manages to bring together views from a number of different folks from the Portland Web startup scene. Among them, David Abramowski, Ward Cunningham, Dave Hersh, Harvey Mathews, Kevin Tate, Raven Zachary, and Josh Bancroft. Read More
Hang in there, you entrepreneurial type you. You’re making progress. I know it. You know it. And now, other folks are starting to take notice. Like The Oregonian.
In a recent article entitled “Oregon’s high-tech better off now than in dot-com bust” business and tech reporter Mike Rogoway—one of the mainstream media folks in Portland who clearly “gets it”—had the following to offer about the under the radar startup scene: Read More
It’s no secret that I started Silicon Florist to highlight some of the “under the RADAR” stories that might not garner coverage from traditional local publications.
So, when the mainstream pubs around town cover the stories I’d like to cover—and cover them before I do—it makes me ridiculously happy.
Today’s case in point: coworking spaces in Portland:
Several vintage Portland buildings have been renovated recently, blurring the line between co-working and traditional offices. Small creative entrepreneurs have office doors, but they share common areas and, sometimes, business.
Among the folks mentioned are some of our favorite coworking spaces in town.
Like who?
Well, CubeSpace, for one:
CubeSpace hosts evening events, including tech clubs and Beer & Blog gatherings. Schweber and Kominsky sometimes sweep through at 9:15 — quarter-past quitting time — and urge the crowd to move to a bar.
Souk for another:
When Julie Duryea opened Souk 2 1/2 years ago, cafes were the only choice for most freelancing Portlanders. She couldn’t find many co-working spaces beyond New York and London.
Now, her Old Town operation hosts an eclectic crowd: a footwear and apparel consultant, a strategic planner, a retail designer. Plus, Souk has company in the Portland market.
And up-and-coming Nedspace:
They recruit tenants through online networking, word of mouth and a startup event they hosted last month. Early residents are developing iPhone applications, an online rental payment service, board games, interactive music content and more. Some have started companies; others are first-timers.
If you haven’t checked out these coworking spaces, you should. Not only are they do they provide an amazing resource to our startup community, they serve as the warm little hub around which many of us gather.
And their continued willingness to support our events—often pro bono—is without a doubt a key to the burgeoning startup community with which we find ourselves enamoured.
For more, see The Oregonian article “Co-working: a room not of their own” by Laura Oppenheimer.
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