kicking off some of the festivities tonight by joining KGW The Square for a Twitter-fueled Toy Drive and then heading out to another tweetup on Saturday to grab the 30 hour day tree—a whole week before the actual event begins.
While I’ve been resisting the urge to blather on and on about 30 hour day, here, the time is drawing near. And things are getting into full swing. While I’ll share—perhaps overshare—way more details next week, suffice it to say that 30 hour day is a joint effort between Strange Love Live and Silicon Florist. It’s a telethon to raise money for Free Geek, Oregon Food Bank, and Toys for Tots. 30 consecutive hours. No sleep. All for charity.
They’re all in good fun. But what if you’re interested in a more business-like get together? Well then. The PDX Uniquely Portland Oregon inaugural tweetup may be for you.
Now, if you’re in Portland, you’ve no doubt received the Twitter pitch. You know, the whole “Why aren’t you on Twitter?”, “I heard about it on Twitter”, “Isn’t everyone on Twitter?” treatment?
And if you’ve succumb to the pitch, you’ve likely been invited to a tweetup or two. Maybe at Whiffies. Or at the Green Dragon. Or maybe just a random get together.
These folks are literally the who’s who in social media and technology and they’ll be in P-town checking out Intel’s tech and touring their fabs and research centers. As a special bonus, they’ll be heading downtown in the evening to join several folks from Social Media Club PDX at The Green Dragon Pub for chit-chat and beer.
Sweet, huh? Join your fellow Portland Social Media Peeps on Thursday, April 16 from 7:30 to 8:30 for a Tweetup at the Green Dragon. And if the notoriety of these Insiders isn’t enough to spark your interest, Intel will provide the first round of beers (depending on how many people show up).
So who’s going to be there? Well, let’s take a look.
Sarah Austin was one of the first live streaming, life-casters popularized on Justin.TV and now hosts a weekly live show in conjunction with Pop17 at Mogulus.
Cathy currently serves a multi-faceted role at Seesmic, overseeing marketing, assisting with business development, and driving content. She was also instrumental in helping Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur develop LeWeb, now one of the largest and most well know tech gatherings in Europe.
Frank is best known for his blog, Somewhat Frank, which covers social media and emerging technology. In an effort to facilitate startup community, he co-founded TECH Cocktail, an organization that “that offers events and community-powered projects open to bloggers, technology enthusiasts, entrepreneurs & professionals interested in technology in under served technology communities.”
Irina is the co-founder and host of Geek Entertainment TV which has been on air since November of 2005. She also put together the Vloggies, an award ceremony for video bloggers.
Whoof. That’s quite a line-up.
So, if you get the chance, please swing by the Green Dragon, this Thursday (April 16) at 7:30 or so. Not only would it be a great opportunity for you to meet this interesting group of people, it would be yet another chance for us to expose some very influential folks to the amazing Portland tech community.
Plus, to repeat: free beer.
And if you’re interested in video on the Web *cough* Strange Love Live *cough*, I’d doubly recommend that you try to make it. Since there’s a heavy contingent of video savvy folks—Sarah, Cathy, Frank, and Irina—in this little gathering. I’m just saying.
Strangely enough, for a “social media” gathering, there wasn’t anything on any of the social event services. So I added the event to Calagator and Upcoming. Please RSVP if you plan to attend.
Next Thursday—a week from today—a worldwide gathering of Twitter types called (somewhat unfortunately) Twestival will be taking place in various cities around the globe. Portland, Oregon, is one of them.
The goal? To provide clean drinking water to the people who don’t have it.
As Portlanders we’re well aware of water. It surrounds us. It falls on us. And it bubbles up clean and clear from the Benson Bubblers.
But there are more than a billion of people who aren’t so lucky. Twestival is designed to fix that.
On 12 February 2009 175+ cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals which bring together Twitter communities for an evening of fun and to raise money and awareness for charity: water.
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Think about it this way: What if you had to drink directly from the Willamette instead of your tap? Not so pretty.
I’m always proud of what we’ve been able to achieve as a community. Whether it’s gathering to chat. Learning about technology. Or figuring out how to build a better community. To me, this seems far more important and worthwhile than that.
Making this happen would be a great way to start another amazing year for the entire Portland Twitter community, tech oriented or otherwise.
Some of you may be way ahead of me on this one. (It wouldn’t be the first time.)
It’s not often that Portland gets random “Internet famous” types swinging through town. I mean, yes, we have quite a few Internet famous types who live here, but we’re not often on the “swing through” route for those that don’t.
“Wait a second,” you’re saying. “On the Silicon Florist podcast, you said this gig was Monday Monday Monday!”
Well, you’re right. It was originally scheduled for Monday. But schedules being what they are, the event had to be moved up to Sunday. Same bat time, same bat brew pub. Just a different day.
But let’s get back to Sarah, shall we?
Lacy has been a reporter in Silicon Valley for nearly a decade, covering everything from the tiniest startups to the largest public companies. She writes a biweekly column for BusinessWeek.com called “Valley Girl” and is co-host of Yahoo! Finance’s Tech Ticker.
And the book? It’s been incredibly well received.
“Happily, one intrepid reporter, Sarah Lacy, stayed on — and she now has given us what will likely be the only real record of what happened during that remarkable era. Her portrayals of the founders of companies such as Facebook and Twitter are dead-on, and her reporting will no doubt be a vital source on this amazing time for generations to come. ”
– Michael S. Malone, author of Bill & Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World’s Greatest Company
So, much like the opportunity we had to meet with Garyvee not too long ago and like the missed opportunity with Charlene Li, I see this as a big opportunity for the entire Portland tech community to put its best foot forward in welcoming Sarah to town.
But there’s another important aspect to this. As much as I hate to admit it, there simply are not enough women’s voices in tech. Sarah is one of those voices, and a strong one at that. One that holds its own with the likes of Tara Hunt, Li, Kathy Sierra, and Kara Swisher.
Likewise, in Portland, I’ve always been terribly impressed by the number of incredibly strong women’s voices we have in our own tech scene. Voices like Dawn Foster, Audrey Eschright, Selena Deckelmann, and Amber Case to name just a very, very few.
And, this event—in my opinion—would be a really, really good opportunity to shine a spotlight on that wealth of female tech talent we have in town. And I would really like to see that happen.
In my opinion, this is one of those rare opportunities to give some new folks a view of what makes Portland so special. An opportunity to share our town. And an opportunity to give a brief glimpse into the incredible tech community in this town.
And you know, I’m all about making people appreciate what’s happening in the Portland tech scene.
I realize that it’s Sunday (trust me, I’ll be busting my hump to make it back to town after Gnomedex). And I realize that you may already have some stuff planned. And the shift in time doesn’t help.
But let’s try to make this happen, Portland.
So please join Sarah Lacy, me, and (hopefully) a full patio of people at the Green Dragon, Sunday, August 24 at 6:00 PM.
This is one of those rare opportunities to spend time with one of the thought leaders in the industry. And truly one of the leading proponents for the corporate use of social media.
Geek or not, it’s not an opportunity that should be passed up. (Which, as cruel irony would have it, is the very thing that I will be doing.)
If you’re considering meeting up tweeting up with Charlene (and I highly encourage you to take the chance to do so—or wasn’t that obvious?), please RSVP via Upcoming.
I’ll be living vicariously through your tweets, from my hotel room in Chicago.
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