Portland startups, open source, and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
Portland, Oregon, has long been celebrated for its amazing food, beer, urban environment, and quirkiness, among other things. But more and more, we’re starting to see the Rose City land on lists for its startup community and its tech scene. Now, Forbes has highlighted Portland as one of five cities poised to become tomorrow’s tech meccas.
In addition to the awesome companies who regularly post to the Silicon Florist job board, there have been a few new names posting interesting gigs as of late—and a couple of particularly high profile roles. So I wanted to be sure that you and/or your friends who are searching for new gigs didn’t miss them.
The next thing to come into full bloom with be a ton of big tech events. So get ready. Because here’s all the geeky goodness Portland has in store for you.
Well, well, well. The flowers are in bloom. The birds are singing. That strange burning orb in the sky is making more and more regular appearances. It’s Spring in Portland.
Know what that means? That’s right. The next thing to come into full bloom with be a ton of big tech events. So get ready. Because here’s all the geeky goodness Portland has in store for you. Read More
This week, Cami Kaos and Rick Turoczy discuss startup lessons from MioWorks and SplashCast, Microsoft layoffs, new podcasts from Dr. Normal and Cort & Fatboy, Google and Rupert Murdoch, Google acquiring AdMob and Gizmo5, and Google Dashboard. Oh and Cami is wearing a Bac’n shirt, this week.
Well, well, well. It kind of snuck up on you a bit, didn’t it? I know. These things happen. But it’s Thursday and that means it’s time for another episode of memePDX, the weekly podcast about the hottest tech news in Portland… and beyond.
This week, Cami Kaos and Rick Turoczy discuss startup lessons from MioWorks and SplashCast, Microsoft layoffs, new podcasts from Dr. Normal and Cort & Fatboy, Google and Rupert Murdoch, Google acquiring AdMob and Gizmo5, and Google Dashboard. Oh and Cami is wearing a Bac’n shirt, this week. Read More
I’m unofficially dubbing tonight “awards night” for the Pacific Northwest tech scene, given that we had two competing awards shows—Oregon Tech Awards and the Seattle 2.0 Awards—handing out statuettes to impressive tech companies all up and down the Pacific coast.
For the Oregon Tech Awards, two Silicon Florist regulars managed to walk away with top honors. Jive Software was named the Emerging Company of the Year and GadgetTrak was named Cool Product of the Year. The only downside was that Ontier—another one on whom I try to keep an eye—was also in the running for Cool Product. Read More
Concerned you’re going to get bored this spring and summer? Worried you’re not going to have enough geektastic events to keep yourself entertained? Worry no longer, my friend. There are a ton of good tech events just around the corner.
Like what, you ask? Like these, silly goose:
“We have secured Keynote Presenter Rahaf Harfoush, New Media Strategist, Member of Obama’s Social Media Team, & Associate Director of the Global Cooperation Initiative at the World Economic Forum, to present on Thursday, April 23, 2009. We have Scott S. Ballantyne, former VP General Manager, Personal Systems Group, Hewlett Packard kicking off this year’s eMarketing Summit @ InnoTech and we have a Windows 7.0 Sneak Peek session at InnoTech as well.”
For more information, visit InnoTech.
“BarCampPortland is an unconference for the Portland tech community, produced BY the Portland tech community. Interesting topics, cool people, great networking opportunities, wifi, and more! Building an active tech community in Portland, Oregon.”
For more information, visit BarCamp Portland.
“Explore the future of Web design, user experience and business strategy for three days of mind-melding on what’s new in the digital world. Get a glimpse into the future, along with practical information that you can apply to your Web site, company and career.”
For more information, visit WebVisions.
“Connecting developers across projects, languages, and backgrounds. Open Source Bridge is a new conference for developers working with open source technologies and for people interested in learning the open source way.”
For more information, visit Open Source Bridge.
Take 6 on Ignite Portland. “If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers.”
For more information, visit Ignite Portland.
“The 6th annual Internet Strategy Forum Summit conference is set for July 23 & 24, 2009. Confirmed presenters so far include Forrester Senior Analyst and Web Strategist blogger Jeremiah Owyang and Web Operations Management guru Lisa Welchman.”
For more information, visit Internet Strategy Forum.
“Inverge brings presenters and attendees together from a variety of professions and disciplines to explore changes and opportunities presented by the increasing digitization of media, the democratization of distribution and the proliferation of connectivity into new areas. The big picture is revealed via the unique integration of disciplines at the event. The presentations are high-level, informative and conceptual, pointing the way toward the future and facilitating advanced professional development.”
For more information, visit Inverge.
“LinuxCon is a new annual technical conference that will provide an unmatched collaboration and education space for all matters Linux. LinuxCon will bring together the best and brightest that the Linux community has to offer, including core developers, administrators, end users, community managers and industry experts. In being the conference for “all matters Linux”, LinuxCon will be informative and educational for a wide range of attendees. We will not only bring together all of the best technical talent but the decision makers and industry experts who are involved in the Linux community.”
For more information, visit LinuxCon.
“The Linux Plumbers Conference was created to bring together the key developers involved in Linux plumbing – the “Linux plumbers” – and give them an opportunity to discuss problems face-to-face, both within subsystems and across subsystems. Participants include invited attendees, speakers selected through an open, competitive review process, and students. Registration is open to the general public as well.”
For more information, visit Linux Plumbers.
And that’s not even counting all the awesome non-techie stuff and all the cool weekly events we have going around here. Not to mention the fact that I probably missed some other interesting tech events. Because I have a tendency to do that.
So don’t worry about getting bored, sugar. There will be plenty for you to do.
(Photo courtesy Aaron Hockley. Used under Creative Commons.)
So, you don’t have anything planned for tonight? Well thanks to our good friends over at Calagator, you do now.
At OTBC, we’ll be viewing the live video of this Enterprise Forum program. Join President of Oracle Corporation, Mr. Charles Phillips as he discusses, “The Future of Enterprise Software”. Will enterprise software go the way of the buggy whip? We’ve entered Web3.0, where everything is user-centric. But enterprise software continues to thrive. Join thought leaders and rabble rousers as we look into the future of enterprise software, exploring topics such as: – Where is enterprise software really going? – Where are the big opportunities for entrepreneurs? Get more information at the MIT Enterprise Forum site.
Concrete5 is an amazing content management system that just went open source last year. The community is taking off and the core developers are here in portland. Come drink a lot of beer and have a lot of fun at a casual get together where we can all let off steam. Don’t bring your Macbook, bring your thirst.
Now that the beta verison of the API has been released, you can finally build those Shizzow mobile apps and mashups you’ve been scheming about for the last couple of months. We wanted to make ourselves available every couple of weeks to help you get off to a running start on your new Shizzow-based apps. Meet us at the Green Dragon on Thursday, and we can discuss the API as well as some of the architecture principles behind people, places and shouts on Shizzow.
This will be the second meeting of the Portland WordPress user group. It will feature Justin Kistner talking about WordPress MU for Communities
Open Source Bridge Conference content committee meeting. Agenda.
Yes, it’s just another boring night. If only there were something to do. Oh well. Maybe next week will be a bit more eventful.
This evening, I had the honor to take a little walk down memory lane with the folks at Portland Web Innovators as we took a little time to reflect of the cool accomplishments of the Portland Web and Open Source startup community over the last 12 months.
It was kind of like signing yearbooks. A lot of nostalgia and a lot of kind words. And—of course—a lot of tweets.
I wanted to thank everyone who took time out of their schedules to come hang out and chat about our past and our future. And to those who took the opportunity to hang out online.
Here’s a quick round-up of what I’ve got at this point. I’ll add more as it rolls in, and as always, your comments are welcome.
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Thanks so much to Bram Pitoyo for streaming this video and moderating the chat room. (NOTE: There’s a bit of a hiccup at about 90 seconds into the presentation. If you wait, it comes back. Or you can click into the timeline to kickstart the video again.)
I’m holding a contest. Count how many times I say “amazing” during this presentation and post it in the comments. You could win… um… I don’t know. Something.
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We managed to accumulate quite a few tweets. You’ll be happy to hear that I managed to resist the urge to tweet during the presentation.
In reverse chronological order: #pdxwi 1, #pdxwi 2, #pdxwi 3, #pdxwi 4, #pdxwi 5, #pdxwi 6, #pdxwi 7, #pdxwi 8, #pdxwi 9, and #pdxwi 10.
And some folks have already taken the time to post about the event:
Last Friday was podcast day for me. And for as nervous as I was, I think they turned out pretty well. No doubt thanks to the talented people actually managing the whole podcast thing and me just having to spout off every now and again.
So, I thought I’d share the links, in case you were interested in listening.
Jim Zemlin, Raven Zachary, Audrey Eschright, and I had the opportunity to chat about open source and the open source scene in Portland. Topics include OSCON, how we all use open source software and may not even know it, corporate adoption of open source, Portland’s culture as a complement to the open source community, open-source rockets, and NTEN.
Download the mp3 of OPB Think Out Loud: Open-source City
Cami Kaos and Dr. Normal invited me over for a tech edition of Strange Love Live (if you’re not watching/listening, you should be). And we were lucky enough to command a live studio audience as well, featuring Michelle Anderson (mediachick), Amber Case (caseorganic), Bram Pitoyo, and Kelly Guimont (verso). Topics included the reasoning behind Silicon Florist, the Portland tech scene, Vidoop, Intrigo, OSCON, the Open Web Foundation, and more.
Download the mp3 of Strange Love Live Tech Edition with Rick Turoczy
[Update] If you’re interested in streaming the podcasts—instead of downloading them—Cami Kaos has posted the streaming audio files to her blog.
Once the serious Strange Love stuff is done, the cameras keep rolling for the #afterhours discussion. We continued talking about some of the tech topics, discussed my sleeping habits (or lack thereof), talked about and lightsaber-ed with the iPhone, made some tech predictions including hinting at Marshall Kirkpatrick‘s upcoming internet brain implant venture, thanked our luck stars for OurPDX, introduced folks to Planet PDX, talked about upcoming guest Melissa Lion, and got into a pretty serious bidding war for sponsoring Strange Love Live.
Download the mp3 of Strange Love Live #afterhours with Rick Turoczy
Suffice it to say, this was a trial by fire for me and audio. So I’d love to hear feedback as to a) whether I was intelligible at all and b) if I was intelligible, if you’d be interested in more podcasts from yours truly.
Looking forward to your feedback.
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.