Portland startups, open source, and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
Okay, anyway. Secret one: Portland loves Marshall Kirkpatrick. Secret two: ReadWriteWeb one of the leading blogs in the world is a Portland blog.
I have two secrets to share that aren’t really secrets. But I’ll pretend they are. And you can pretend that you haven’t been paying attention… Wait a second. You have been paying attention, haven’t you?
Okay, anyway. Secret one: Portland loves Marshall Kirkpatrick. Secret two: ReadWriteWeb—one of the leading blogs in the world—is a Portland blog.
So what happens when ReadWriteWeb promotes Portland’s favorite blogging son to co-editor? We get happy, that’s what. 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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With the Portland Twitter types, #afterhours is a bit of a running joke that describes the time where we all wedge in a little extra work while more sane less busy people relax.
Generally, there’s little to publicly show for #afterhours efforts. But that changed today, thanks to ReadWriteWeb‘s Marshall Kirkpatrick, well, marshaling some Portland #afterhours talent to help build out a new, heretofore top-secret property for the popular blog.
Over the past few weeks, Doug Coleman, Nate DiNiro, and Dionne Fox—and of course Marshall himself—have been burning the midnight oil… on both ends… or whatever. Suffice it to say, they’ve been putting in a great deal of time and effort on the site.
And now those efforts are seeing the light of day (Still carrying the imagery through. I’m an English major, you know.) Meet ReadWriteWeb Jobwire.
Through a mystical recipe of technological magic that I don’t even comprehend, the RWW Jobwire will provide the latest and greatest info on who’s going where, who’s hiring whom, and what companies are securing the most promising talent.
At a time when a number of popular tech blogs (Silicon Florist included) are bordering on the second coming of F*cked Company, this will be a welcome and interesting addition to the tech scene. And no doubt a better indicator of what’s actually happening with the best and brightest the Web has to offer.
We’ve been working on it for months, well before the current economic climate unfolded, but we’re hoping that a whole site of good news will serve our readers well in these troubled times. Companies are still hiring, people are still getting cool new jobs, and we’re going to report on it. We invite you to check out the new Jobwire site to meet the Jobwire team, learn about our special guest editors and check out some of the great new jobs people have landed lately!
So, get some good news today! Head on over to see Portland’s handiwork in action at the ReadWriteWeb Jobwire.
There are a couple of things that have come up recently that I wanted to share with you. I think they’re good, but I’m always open to your opinions.
First and foremost, thank you. Truly. Thank you.
I had any number of Portland blogging and Twitter folks—Betsy Richter, Dawn Foster, Todd Kenefsky, and Paul Bingman, to name a few—questioning what was going on with the Oregon Startup Blog.
Thank you for watching out for me. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.
But it’s all good.
Many months ago, I spoke with the folks who run a bunch of regional startup blogs. And they were thinking about expanding their reach to create a national network of startup blogs.
As you well know, the whole reason I started writing Silicon Florist was to raise the visibility of all of the cool stuff you’ve been doing in Portland and the Silicon Forest. And I thought that this new offering would be a great opportunity to get more national exposure for the cool companies here in our neck of the woods.
So I threw my hat in the ring.
Recently, Oregon Startup Blog started syndicating Silicon Florist content and broadcasting it through Twitter. And while the implementation still has a few flaws, rest assured that we’re working through the kinks.
And it’s all on the up and up.
Hopefully, this will provide another venue to highlight all of the cool stuff you folks are accomplishing.
If you’re writing about startups in the Silicon Forest and would like to be added to the mix, I’d be more than happy to put you in contact with the folks running the show.
And again, thanks to all of you who pinged me with “Did you know about this?” I can’t tell you how much that meant to me.
It’s no secret that I’ve joked about ReadWriteWeb—one of the leading blogs in the world—being a “Portland blog.”
And with good reason.
I mean, while ReadWriteWeb’s founder, Richard MacManus, lives in New Zealand, there are two primary contributors—Marshall Kirkpatrick and Frederic Lardinois—here in the Rose City.
And that gave us more ReadWriteWeb contributors per capita than any city in the world.
Well—as luck would have it—they’ve just added one more writer from the Silicon Forest. So we now have a commanding lead.
This all happened fairly suddenly. And I must admit that I’m both humbled and honored to be asked to write for an accomplished publication like ReadWriteWeb.
I’ll do my best to do you proud, Portland.
And rest assured, I’ll continue doing my best to cover all of the cool stuff happening here in the Silicon Forest. And highlighting all of the amazing things that you’re doing.
Look at it this way: You haven’t lost a blogger, you’ve gained another blog.
And again, thank you ever so much, to all of the Portland folks who have already swung by RWW to comment.
I’m looking forward to see where this goes.
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.
ReadWriteWeb—the Adidas of tech blogs—is the second most influential technology blog according to the Techmeme Leaderboard (TechCrunch is the leader) and one of the top 20 blogs (#11 as of this writing) in the world according to Technorati. And now—continuing to extend the Adidas metaphor—they’re officially part of Portland.
RWW announced today that Portland-based Frederic Lardinois has joined RWW as the “News & Reviews” blogger. According to RWW founder Richard MacManus, “[Frederic] will be a daily presence on RWW throughout the working week.”
With this announcement, we’re soon to have more ReadWriteWeb content produced in Portland than anywhere else. Because Portland is now home to twice as many ReadWriteWeb bloggers as any other city in the world.
We have two: Marshall Kirpatrick and Frederic.
And I don’t know about you, but if you got the chance to meet Corvida—who was formally welcomed as part-time writer for RWW, as well—at Ignite Portland 3 or the Strands after party, I think we have a good chance at having at taking an insurmountable lead as the de facto home of ReadWriteWeb.
So much so, in fact, that let’s just agree that ReadWriteWeb is now a Portland blog. Okay? Okay.
I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time a major player, headquartered somewhere else, had more employees in the Silicon Forest than in their hometown. Now would it, Intel?
And, this isn’t the first time Portland has been lucky enough to attract a major blog to our fair city. Another high-traffic property—Waxy.org—became a Portland blog when Andy Baio moved here earlier this year.
Congratulations to Frederic and ReadWriteWeb on this new relationship. I’m looking forward to continuing to read what is now the most popular Portland blog. And I’m also looking forward to Corvida coming back to town—so that we can further increase our lead.
ReadWriteWeb began publishing on April 20, 2003 and is now one of the most widely read and respected blogs in the world. It has over 220,000 RSS and email subscribers. ReadWriteWeb is edited by Richard MacManus and is written by a team of Web enthusiasts.