I try to say it as often as I can, but I still don’t think that I say it often enough.
So, thank you.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for commenting. Thank you for being part of the community. Thank you for being in the Silicon Forest—or interested in the Silicon Forest.
Today is a day for many of the readers to give thanks. And I’m reminded, yet again, how thankful I am for you.
Thank you. And the happiest of holidays to you and yours.
[HTML1]With WordCamp Portland fast approaching, I’ve had any number of folks approaching me with questions like “What’s WordPress?”, “Why should I use WordPress?”, “What can I do with WordPress?”, and “When will you shut up with the questions already? I mean, really?”
So rather than try to recount all my WordPress love in one egotistical post, I thought it might better for a little more “show” than “tell.”
So here—in a rough semblance of alphabetical order—are what some other folks in Portland and the Silicon Forest are doing with that magical open-source blogging platform, WordPress:
Whew! That’s a lot of WordPress going on.
If I missed your site (or screwed up your URL), I apologize. Please link it up below so that everyone else see the cool things you’re doing with WordPress.
I was just going to link to this. And then I thought better of it.
“A link?” I thought. “This is traditional media taking notice and giving credit where credit is due. This needs more than a link.”
So, I give you this piece from my former college classmate, Mike Rogoway over at The Oregonian entitled “Oregon losing high-tech jobs—with more bad news to come.”
A steady drumbeat of cutbacks in Oregon’s high-tech sector has reduced the number of technology jobs in the state to its lowest point in nearly three years.
Wait a second. Where’s the positivity? Where’s the “credit where credit is due”?
Well, that comes at the end of the article. From which I’ll judiciously quote (passage emphasis is mine, not Mike’s):
Oregon’s tech industry has one distinct bright spot: software.
Long the weakest link in Oregon’s technology economy, software has emerged strongly over the past few years—spurred by a vibrant community of open source software developers and Web services companies that require little investment capital to get started.
Software jobs are up 12 percent during the past two years, and now number 9,500. Although still a relatively tiny part of the overall state economy—which numbers more than 1.7 million jobs altogether—software is the fastest growing part of the high-tech sector and one of a small number of industries that is defying the broader economic slowdown.
Much of the activity is concentrated in Portland’s Old Town, home to a cluster of companies that develop software for the Internet. Examples include password-protection technology from Oklahoma transplant Vidoop, and collaboration tools from Jive Software.
“We’re just this wonderful hotbed of open source, brew-your-own-softwareville,” said Harvey Mathews of the Software Association of Oregon. “It’s a tight community, so we all help each other out. Which isn’t the case in lots of other industries.”
Can I get a “w00t!!!1!”? This is exactly the kind of thing we want to see. The kind of recognition you deserve. And the reason I continue to relentlessly document all the cool things you’re doing.
You’re making it happen. And you’re blowing the curve.
And for that, you need to congratulate yourselves, Portland and Silicon Forest startups. You deserve it.
Keep up the good work. Stay focused. And keep working to on that code.
I’ll be sure to let everyone else know: they ain’t seen nothing yet.
This week on the Silicon Forest podcast, I’ve got the usual review and preview of all that’s happening in the Silicon Forest Web startup scene. With an added bonus. I took a few minutes to chat with Dave Howell, CEO of Vancouver-based Avatron, the company behind the uberpopular iPhone app Air Sharing.
Click the Play button above to start streaming or feel free to download the Silicon Florist podcast.
Links from this episode include:
Oopie: I meant 501 c 3. I’m as bad as KGW’s iPhone G3.
Just a reminder that a bunch of local venture capital types, entrepreneurs, and other tech enthusiasts will be gathering at the Intel Jones Farm campus on Friday for the Silicon Forest Forum.
As I mentioned in a previous post and the Silicon Florist podcast, the co-founder of Tesla Motors will be the keynote. I’ll do my best to see if he’s willing to give a Tesla Roadster to each of the Friends of the Florist.
But I’m not guaranteeing anything.
I’ll be in attendance as part of my effort to continue the wacky week of Silicon Florist appearances at events. I had a great time at LivePitch Portland on Tuesday and was honored to moderate a phenomenal panel—Josh Bancroft, Dawn Foster, and Marshall Kirkpatrick—at the OEN PubTalk last night.
So what I am doing at the Silicon Forest Forum? More smiling and nodding, of course.
I’ll be moderating another all star panel entitled “Bloggers, Digital Media… and the Business of Creating Content.”
The panel will feature:
See? Smiling and nodding indeed. But at least it keeps a consistent theme to the week. That theme being “Great panel, but what is Rick doing up there?”
Sound interesting? I hear that there still a couple of seats left. So if you’d like to attend, swing by the Silicon Forest Forum site to register. And if you’re going to be there, please make sure to grab me and introduce yourself.
Now in its seventh year, the Silicon Forest Forum has been one of the premiere local gatherings for venture capitalists and technology entrepreneurs to discuss the technologies that are driving development and businesses in the Silicon Forest.
And while the event has always had a “technology” bent, its focus on traditional high-tech pursuits left its perceived “geek cred” a bit lacking, at best.
But this year, they’re clearly working to erase that deficit.
First, they’re bringing in the CTO and Co-founder of Tesla Motors, Marc Tarpenning, to keynote the event. And I would have a hard time arguing that any other automotive company carries as much geek and green credibility as Tesla. (No word as to whether the Tesla Roadster will be making an appearance.)
Second, they’ve put social media on the docket with a panel entitled “Bloggers, Digital Media…..and the Business of Creating Content.” The panel features Harry McCracken, the former editor of PC World who now runs Technologizer, a blog that gives McCracken the freedom to exercise his journalistic muscle on technology topics of his choosing; Leander Kaheny, the news editor at Wired.com; and maybe—just maybe—some local flavor.
The Silicon Forest Forum will be held at the Intel Jones Farm Campus in Hillsboro on Friday, September 12. General registration is $125. Members of the SAO can register for $95. For more information, visit the Silicon Forest Forum or RSVP on Upcoming.
(Hat tip Sean Sullivan)
Every once in a great while, I cover a company that doesn’t really “live” in Portland or the Silicon Forest. And I generally don’t do that—there are plenty of other resources that do that sort of thing far better than I—unless it has to the potential to influence what we’re trying to accomplish around here.
Etelos has that potential. And I got the chance to sit down with them at OSCON yesterday.
What’s the story? Well, Etelos provides a way of marketing and distributing open source apps for those folks who don’t have any desire to deal with marketing and sales.
Sound like someone you know? I thought it might.
And I think their marketplace idea might appeal to some of you.
The Etelos MarketplaceTM gives developers an easy place to license, distribute and support applications. The Etelos Marketplace also gives businesses a wide selection of fully customizable, on-demand business applications to license and deploy to the hosting environment of their choice.
“You take care of the code,” said Ahmad Baitalmal. “And we’ll take care of the rest.”
What’s that? Yes, yes, I hear you. “Why can’t I just do that with my current host?”
Simple answer? Instead of eschewing customization, these guys seem to thrive on it. They’re built so that every app gets exactly the environment it needs.
Let’s say you need an environment running PHP 5 with the latest Zend framework and MySQL 4.2 and you need it running with a certain amount of memory at its disposal. If you’re dealing with a traditional host, you just began a very lengthy conversation. And you just became a sysadmin instead of a developer. Not exactly where you want to be.
But with these guys, start throwing those specs at them and the response is likely “Okay.”
And you don’t have to be interested in selling your app. This may just be your distribution method.
Take for instance an idea that Justin Kistner has been discussing for some time that I like to call the “RedHat of WordPress.” The concept is based on the idea that every time you install a new WordPress blog—or every time you build a new environment for a client—you have to take an arduous journey of installing and updating every plugin you liked from your last installation. So what if—thought Justin—what if there was a “build” of WordPress that came with everything you needed and only one codebase to maintain that anyone could grab when they needed?
Etelos would be a great way to support that kind of distribution.
Or maybe you’ve built something you want to sell. Like the backbone for social mapping applications or the technology to aggregate calendars online or something.
Etelos could likely help you there too. They’d do all of the marketing and deal with the buying and selling. And all they’d take is a little cut of the revenue.
It’s an interesting concept that takes me back to the days of “shareware” distribution points like download.com and Tucows.
Back in the day, these download sites were incredibly popular place to find the latest in new and interesting software. They became destinations because of the variety of applications that they offered.
Etelos seems to have this same potential. And could serve a very similar role for open source apps.
It will be interesting to see if they can achieve that sort of notoriety. For both their company and the products they promote.
If you’re a developer who just wants to code and leave the business stuff to someone else? Etelos may be just what you needed.
For more information or to try Etelos for yourself, visit Etelos. Or if you’re at OSCON, swing by the Etelos booth to get a demo of their services.
While a good number of us here in Portland tend to interact on Twitter or via blog comments or at events, it’s rare that we’re all in the same place at the same time. So getting a comprehensive picture of the “Portland tech community” has been difficult, at best.
So what do geeks do to solve that problem? We employ technology.
Audrey Eschright has put together a Legion of Tech survey that will give us a view into the Portland tech community, in terms of the demographics and general foci of the folks living and working here in the Portland community.
It’s goals, according to Audrey, are pretty straightforward: get some semblance of an idea about who we are and what it is we do.
If you’re in Portland, and involved with any kind of technology activities for work or fun, please go to http://moourl.com/lotsurvey. The more responses, the better, since we want to see the breadth of our community, and whether Legion of Tech events are on your calendar. Tell your friends, coworkers, and neighbors.
If you consider yourself part of the Portland tech community—or if you’d like to be part of the Portland tech community—please take a few moments to walk through the Portland tech community survey.
I’ll make sure to highlight the results in a future post.
It’s officially Spring. And Spring is always a good time to plant some new stuff.
As I strive to make this site more useful for both the folks who are trying to create startups here in the Silicon Forest and the folks who are interested in following those startups, one thing has become abundantly clear to me: there are a lot of people looking for other people to help them.
And sometimes, they’re looking for people to work for them.
So I thought it might be helpful to launch a gig board of sorts. And then I posed a hypothetical question on Twitter. And the response absolutely convinced me it was the right thing to do.
So, I scrambled to create the Silicon-Forest-startup-oriented job and gig board.
Now, it’s not terribly pretty (neither was this blog up until a short while ago), but it is functional.
In the interest of time, I decided to use a canned solution for the proof-of-concept. Call it an agile mentality or use Guy Kawasaki’s phrasing. Either way, it seemed best to get it out there so we could start gathering requirements. But I would like to build something custom that better meets your needs.
So please bang on it, and then let me know what features you would like to see. And if I can’t accomplish that with the canned solution, I’ll work your ideas into the custom solution I’m planning to commission.
Oh, and at this point the job board is completely blank. Which is sort of detrimental to the whole “job search” thing. And, really, who wants to be the first to jump into the pool? [Update: Thanks to Marshall Kirkpatrick (Web designer) and MyStrands (Community Manager – Evangelist) for taking the plunge!]
Well this may help. Until the end of March, anyone can post up to three jobs completely free of charge by using the discount code “earlybird” at checkout.
What have you got to lose?
Now, I know many of you have more than three jobs to post. And the “underwriting the Silicon Florist” survey directed me to get creative about finding ways to fund the continued development of this site. So, I’ve started the cost of a job posting at $50 for 2 weeks.
That seems reasonable without being exorbitant. So, let’s see how that goes.
Again, I’m looking forward to your feedback. And I’m hoping that we can make the Silicon Florist Job and Gig board a valuable resource for all of the startups here in the area.
Don’t forget “earlybird” gives you a chance to try it out for free. So please do.
Earlier this week, I tried to shoot a hole in news that the “Web 2.0 sky is falling” by highlighting that Web 2.0 investments may be down in the Silicon Valley and Texas—but Web 2.0 venture amounts are up practically everywhere else, including the Silicon Forest.
Today, TechCrunch continued to take a look at the slowing:
In 2007, the median deal size was $5 million, up 22 percent. And the median pre-money valuation was $10 million, up 66 percent (from $6 million in 2006). Both deal size and valuation for Web 2.0 companies remained below the average VC deal across all industries ($7.6 million and $16 million, respectively)
But again, there’s a silver lining to this Silicon-Valley cloud. For us, at least.
Take a look at where the top investments landed. Lo and behold, there are two Silicon Forest companies on the list. Corvallis-based MyStrands appears on the list twice with nearly $50 million combined investment, and Portland-based Jive Software appears courtesy of their $15 million round, last year.
This is the kind of news that begins to put Portland and the entire Silicon Forest on the map. It’s news that, hopefully, makes the venture capital community take notice. And maybe, just maybe, the type of news that motivates those investors to take a second look at the Rose City technology scene.
I can’t wait to see what 2008 holds for our local companies. But the bar has been set. And I hope to see more than two of our companies on the list, next year.
(Hat tip Jeff the Great)
