.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for January 15

Rick Turoczy on January 16, 2009

Portland Data Plumbing User Group (pdpug) at Oracle (Tuesday January 27, 2009) – Upcoming

Several of us have read Marshall’s How to: Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet for Any Topic http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_build_a_social_media_cheat_sheet.php where he integrates data from many different sources and uses various plumbing tools to pull it all together. Marshall is a master of tools like Yahoo Pipes and Dapper, and it will be great to have him presenting at our Jan 27th meeting.

Five tips on network building for a successful 2009

David Abramowski writes “Many entrepreneurs find themselves in a strange situation where they have built amazing technology, have all the right marketing materials and then come product launch day nobody pays attention. This can be rather demoralizing and a blow that many young start-ups will find hard to overcome. There is no one size fits all solution, but having a wide network of people who know you and your team will go a long way to breaking the ice. Not only will your network give you support and encouragement, you may also find much needed assistance in the strangest of places.”

OpenID 2008: Momentum

Via the OpenID blog “2008 was an awesome year for OpenID where the community created significant momentum moving toward mainstream adoption. No, not every site on the web is using OpenID nor does every consumer know what OpenID does, but last year alone the number of sites that accept OpenID for sign in more than tripled. Today, there are over thirty-thousand publicly accessible sites supporting OpenID for sign in and well over half a billion OpenID enabled accounts.”

Portland WordPress User Group: Beginnings

Via the brand new Portland WordPress User Group site “Tonight we held our first meeting. Attendance was around 40 people from a variety of backgrounds and skill levels that ranged from one attendee who doesn’t yet have a blog but is interested all the way up through seasoned developers. Here’s a summary of some decisions and directions that were discussed.”

Day On | It’s a day on, not a day off.

Via Day On “Day On connects nonprofit organizations that need advice and assistance with volunteers who are ready to help. Our first project is Geeks Day On, a day of service during MLK Day, Monday, January 19, 2009 where geeks will offer free technology and Internet communications advice and assistance to nonprofit organizations.”

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OTBC Lunch 2.0 Recap, Welding for Giggles in the Future?

Rick Turoczy on January 15, 2009

Yesterday, Steve Morris and the OTBC hosted the tenth iteration of Portland Lunch 2.0 and the first one in the ‘burbs.

Even though we didn’t get an official count, estimates I collected put the attendance between 75 and 100. Pretty typical for Portland Lunch 2.0, but a pleasant surprise for our first venture to the ‘burbs. It was tough to count people because they filled up the OTBC office and its conference rooms and spilled into the lobby.

The fire marshal would not have been pleased.

The party train arrives

Photo by Don Park, used under Creative Commons.

Todd and his party train brought about 30 people from Portland, and attendance from nearby the areas seemed high. I didn’t do a scientific poll or anything, but based on the number of new faces, I think it’s safe to say that we had a lot of first-timers. It was a nice mix of the usual suspects and new people. The reactions I saw on Twitter right after lunch included several good-to-meet-yous and the like.

The fare was pizza, but as with most Lunch 2.0s, I didn’t eat. Too busy chatting and networking. Simeon Bateman liked it enough to ping me to find out who provided it. Bellagios if you’re wondering, and a couple of the OTBC’s companies provided it: Integra Telecom and Sonitrol.

A little nugget here: Sonitrol provides security systems and captures audio of intruders; Todd and I agreed that audio would be really funny to hear, like a YouTube for botched breakins. Turns out they do publish some of the audio clips, and they’re as funny as expected. I found this out while chatting with Chuck Mally and Pamela Singleton from Sonitrol.

This Lunch 2.0 also featured a field trip over to Denney Cole’s Portland TechShop. What is TechShop you ask?

TechShop is a membership-based DIY workshop that gives you access to a huge variety of tools and equipment, tons of friendly and easy classes, and a community of amazing people who share your interest in making things.

That’s right, it’s a DIY workshop, complete with tools and machines you just don’t have room for or don’t want to buy. I had to miss the field trip, which bummed me out because several of us agreed that welding stuff and then cutting it apart with an acetylene torch for giggles sounded like a blast. Denney agreed this was the type of activity he wanted to encourage. He might even name a class “Welding for Giggles”. Sweet.

Wm Leler will soon be opening an Open Tech Space there soon, which will be free to anyone, the ostensible reason for the field trip. Sounds like about 20 people made the trip, but I’m still focused on the heavy machinery.

The *big* machinery

Photo by Wm Leler, used with permission.

So, it was a great lunch all around, and judging by the number of new Twitter follows and good-to-meet-yous, we managed to make some new connections.

Upcoming Portland Lunch 2.0s

Interested in hosting a Lunch 2.0 this Spring or later in the year? Drop a comment (or tweet @jkuramot) if you want information about hosting one. It’s easy.

One more thing, will someone please remind me to carry business cards the next time? Every time we have a Lunch 2.0, I sheepishly have to tell people I don’t carry cards. Sorry about that.

REMINDER: Inaugural WordPress Portland User Group tonight at 6 PM

Rick Turoczy on January 15, 2009

WordPressJust a quick reminder that if you’re a fan of WordPress—and I know you are—you’ll want to make it to the first official gathering of the WordPress Portland User Group.

Enter Portland WordPress User Group, a new event designed to help newbies get the help they need, to ensure power users get more powerful, and to generally forge a stronger community among the WordPress types here in town.

The meeting will be held tonight at CubeSpace starting at 6 PM. For more information or to RSVP, visit Upcoming.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for January 14

Rick Turoczy on January 15, 2009

Thank You San Francisco! Get Ready Portland | SXSW.com

Via SXSW “The next SXSW Interactive mixer will be held at the Fez Ballroom in Portland (316 SW 11th at Burnside) on January 19th from 6:00pm – 8:00pm. RSVP to interpress@sxsw.com now to ensure your spot on the guest list. Porter Novelli, the official PR agency of SXSW Interactive, is the co-sponsor of these networking parties.”

Installing CouchDB Edge

Via Chris Anderson “CouchDB’s been seeing some interest growth lately, and we’ve been ‘on the cusp’ of an 0.9 release for a while. 0.9 is still ‘soon,’ but for those who don’t want to wait for a release, you’ll need to run against CouchDB trunk if you want to play with the latest codes.”

Raven Zachary on Jobs and Apple – Silicon Forest

Mike Rogoway writes “I happened to be walking to a coffee with top iPhone developer Raven Zachary this afternoon when the news broke about Steve Jobs taking a leave from Apple.”

Who Will Be The Bacon Master? | Our PDX Network

Cami Kaos writes “That’s right everyone, Masterbacon is almost upon us. Join the bacon loving masses this Saturday, 1 PM at Davis Street Tavern for a bacon contest. There will be a grand prize winner and a runner up plus several special awards. But don’t show up empty handed, all who attend are expected to participate in some fashion.”

CitySpeek » Girl in Your Shirt

Via Girl In Your Shirt “CitySpeek is a NEW micro-messaging service that allows you to stay in contact with friends, co-workers, teammates and customers. You can create public and private groups and upload photos.”

Top 15 Twitter Acronyms | Pistachio

Alexander Howard writes “There you go. The top 15 Twitter acronyms, along with a few extra ones in the explanations. If you have others that you think should be included, add ‘em to the comments. @verso & @ahockley maintain a whimsical wiki called the ‘Twictionary‘ where you can find more coinages.”

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Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for January 13

Rick Turoczy on January 14, 2009

We’re growing, again (Beer and Blog Las Vegas)! Come celebrate!

Via the Beer and Blog, um, blog “Last Saturday’s End Bloglessness workshops were blogtastic, were they not? A huge success, I’d say. Many, many people arrived ready to be workshopped into shape. One couple built their wedding Web site, and several business blogs went up as well. You can be sure there will be more valiant strides towards the End of Bloglessness. Oh, yes. I’m wondering, though, how many blogs actually DID go up. Please leave a comment and let us know?”

more blogs than you can shake a stick at…

Cami Kaos writes “On Saturday Cube Space played host to an awesome event called End Bloglessness. It was put on by the good people at Beer & Blog and was staffed by some wonderful volunteers, there are too many for me to name (especially since I didn’t make note of who all was there, sorry… my bad). “

Could This Be Your All-in-One Social Network?

Marshallk Kirkpatrick writes “Long time innovator Marc Canter has made a proposal for a system to let users integrate all their social networks from around the web into one central dashboard. He calls it the DiSO Dashboard.”

Where have all the community managers gone?

Via The 451 Group “In the end, open source vendors that are willing and able to continue building, strengthening and investing in their communities — and we do see vendors catering to community users and even monetizing them via per-incident support, documentation and other services — are the ones who will benefit most when things begin turning around.”

Welcome to 2009, New EE Resources

Via the ExpressionEngine blog “Of course, the real reason you are reading this is for 2.0 news. At this point I’m obligated to gently remind you we promised an update the second week of January, which is next week. Specifically the next 2.0 update will be 1 week from today on Friday January 16th and a second update on friday January 30th (or thereabouts). In any case, there will be at least two 2.0 updates from us this month to keep everybody in the loop.”

Fastest growing destinations on Twitter

Travel Oregon and Travel Portland are in the top 10. As it should be.

Shizzow Developers Meetup

Via Calagator “Now that the beta version 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 to help you get off to a running start on your new Shizzow-based apps. Meet us at the Green Dragon on Thursday, January 15th at 5:00pm, and we can discuss the API as well as some of the architecture principles behind people, places and shouts on Shizzow.”

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Why just Yay!Monday when you can Yay!Everyday?

Rick Turoczy on January 13, 2009

I’ve been a huge fan of Yay!Monday, an inspirational collection of cool design and thought-provoking imagery that refreshes—you guessed it—every Monday. Um, yay!

But, I must admit, it left me longing for Monday on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday… well, you get the idea.

Now, the curator of Yay!Monday, Vancouver’s Chris Kalani, has launched a new site to solve that problem. Introducing Yay!Everyday.

Yay Everyday

Yay!Everyday is curated by a community of users, ensuring that there’s always something new and interesting to see. And it’s got a fresh and eclectic feel that reminds me of other amazing inspirational design sites like k10k, surfstation, and Design is Kinky. But unlike those sites, Yay!Everyday is right here in our own backyard.

It’s always great to see another combination of creativity, design, and technology in the Silicon Forest. But most of all, I’m just thrilled I don’t have to wait until Monday to get my Yay! on.

If you’re lucky enough to secure an invite code, you’ll soon be submitting creative content that is sure to inspire your peers and fans. Otherwise, spend some time flipping through the content collected by the current participants.

TwitterLocal: It’s back… and now it’s all AIR all the time

Rick Turoczy on January 13, 2009

Remember TwitterLocal ne TwitterWhere? That great site that allowed you to access a stream of tweets based on where people lived? And that provided a list of the 30 most Twitter-savvy cities?

Well, when Twitter changed their API rules to survive the summer of FAIL whale, it crippled the service. And, as such, we’ve been scrapping and scraping to find resources that allow us to find local folks.

TwitterLocal is back—as an Adobe AIR application. Feel free to download the brand spanking new version and get to searching.

TwitterLocal

Never let anyone say that Matt King won’t find a better way.

Since Twitter cut off their Jabber feed from TwitterLocal, we had to rely purely on the XML API, which meant that only about 20% of Tweets from the public timeline got into TwitterLocal. Now that Twitter has a location-based search API, we don’t have to cache the posts anymore. So now, TwitterLocal is going to be purely an Adobe AIR based application that allows you to filter Tweets by location.

With the new Air app, TwitterLocal supports regional searches with various radii. And it supports multiple tabs—so that you can watch a number of different regions at the same time.

TwitterLocal Tabs

Plus, the beauty of AIR is that it’s crossplatform, right out of the box.

So nice to have this tool back. Now, if we could only get Matt back from his Great Britain junket—our own local version of “Where the Hell is Matt?“

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for January 12

Rick Turoczy on January 13, 2009

Talking with Audrey Eschright

Cami Kaos writes “Friday night we recorded our first episode of the new year with guest Audrey Eschright. We returned to the format we’ve come to know and love, 30 minute tech episode (Calagator, Open Source Bridge and much more) followed by good ol’ afterhours where my mind was clearly on food.”

Introducing the TwoJunes

Via Cooking Up a Story “Cooking Up a Story (CUpS) is growing, and we are in the midst of some major changes that we hope you will like. One of the changes we are building toward involves bringing on regular contributors; people of passion, knowledge, and expertise within the food and sustainability movement to share their unique perspectives, and information. The operative word is “share”; not a one-way communication, but a catalyst for rich interaction and discovery to benefit all of us.”

Commercial open source community strategies in 2009 and beyond

Via The 451 Group “I am also inclined to agree with The Silent Penguin’s prediction that ‘companies offering open source products will realize that without a community – that actually loves and is enthusiastic about the software – they are nothing.'”

Social Marketing for Publishers: The “Survivor IQ” Widget

Via StepChange Group “On Friday we released this ‘Survivor IQ’ Widget for Ben Sherwood’s upcoming book “The Survivors Club”. There’s a ton of buzz about the book’s release on Jan 26th, and Ben has landed himself in Parade Magazine and Good Morning America.”

WordCamp Las Vegas: Thoughts — Another Blogger

Aaron Hockley writes “WordCamp: Las Vegas was this past weekend and from what I saw, it was a great success. I’m a bit humbled that organizer John Hawkins had me present along with a rockstar cast of speakers including Chris Brogan, Jim Kukral, Liz Strauss, and Mr. WordPress himself, Matt Mullenweg. I had a blast. A big thanks to John and all of the other folks that made it happen.”

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Venture to the ‘burbs for Lunch 2.0 at OTBC on Wednesday

Rick Turoczy on January 12, 2009


It’s been a while, so I’m sure your appetite for good grub and conversation has been whetted.

In case you’ve forgotten, we’re off to the OTBC in the ‘burbs (Beaverton) for the first Portland Lunch 2.0 hosted outside city limits. I saw Steve Morris at End Bloglessness this past weekend; he’s looking forward to showing off the new digs the OTBC recently inhabited in the swanky Beaverton Round.

If you’re sitting in Portland, lamenting the trip West, never fear; turns out the OTBC’s office is only about 100 feet from the MAX Blue Line Beaverton Central stop. And, Todd has graciously organized a Party Train to Lunch 2.0. So, you’re going to need a better excuse than usual to avoid going West.

But wait, there’s more. Wm Leler wants to take advantage to show off his new Open TechShop, and he’ll be organizing a side trip during the lunch for anyone interested. So much good stuff.

Update: A blurb from Wm himself:

Many people have heard about TechShop Portland opening up soon, and since it is close to OTBC we are arranging a tour of TechShop and OpenTechSpace after Lunch 2.0, so people can see how it is coming along and find out how they can help. If you are going to take MAX out to OTBC, we will be carpooling to TechShop and will return you to OTBC. Lots of progress is being made — TechShop had their first class last week, and OpenTechSpace has workbenches and is starting to acquire equipment and tools. TechShop has a new blog at http://portlandtechshop.com and OpenTechSpace is at http://opentechspace.org

Convinced yet? Just be sure to head over to Upcoming to RSVP and make sure to include a comment if you’re vegan/vegetarian. This will ensure Steve has enough of the right kinds of food for you.

Hope to see your smiling face there.

In other PDX Lunch 2.0 news, thanks to Aaron Hockley, our semi-official photographer, for the plug at WorkCamp Las Vegas this past weekend. Aaron was one of three Portlanders who were invited to speak (along with Geoff Kleinman and Lorelle VanFossen), and you can watch his session “Beyond Beer and Blog” here.

Also, AboutUs, our host for the very first PDX Lunch 2.0 last year, will be hosting our one year anniversary lunch in February. They have lots to celebrate, having just closed a round of venture funding last week.

Upcoming Portland Lunch 2.0s

Big thanks to all the hosts who have hosted or plan to host Lunch 2.0. I hope we can keep the Lunch 2.0 train rolling this year. Drop a comment (or tweet @jkuramot) if you want information about hosting one. It’s easy.

Ignite Portland 5: Five minutes of fame or 15 seconds of flame?

Rick Turoczy on January 12, 2009

Ignite Portland

Things are starting to heat up with Ignite Portland again. It’s almost time for Ignite Portland 5. Or as I like to call it, “el Cinco.”

This time around, Ignite is offering two ways to get your burning ideas in front of the crowd—five minutes of presentation magic or 15 seconds of screen time. Well, there are actually three ways to get your ideas in front of the crowd. But these are the two that are free.

Want five minutes? There’s still time to pitch your burning idea to the Ignite crew. You’ve got until January 24 to submit your talk idea.

Maybe something shorter and far less terror-inducing is more your speed? There’s a new format for Ignite Portland 5—“15 Seconds of Flame”—that may appeal to you:

Do you have something to share with Portland? Can you share it in 15 seconds? If so, here’s your chance to get your 15 Seconds of Flame! Send us a video of yourself sharing your “Flame”, and if it’s selected we’ll show it during Ignite Portland 5 on February 19th.

What can I share? Anything! Share an idea, a skill, a poem, or something you’re passionate about. Silly or serious- it’s up to you. Tell us your plan to save the world or why you love living in Portland, do shadow puppets, sing a really short song, bust a dance move or show Portland that you really can tie a cherry stem with your tongue. Be creative and be interesting.

What can’t I share? Nothing gross or “spammy” (promotional). We also tend to shy away from politics, religion and high pitched squealy noises.

Again, both options are absolutely free. What better way to share your ideas with more than 500 of your closest friends?

Flame or Fame? The choice is yours.

Submit a video by uploading it to a video site—I’d recommend Vimeo given their Portland connection—and tagging it “Legion of Tech”, “Ignite Portland” and “15 Seconds of Flame.” Then, send a link to the video to IgnitePDX@gmail.com. Make sure it gets there by February 3.

More into delivering your message in person? It’s an Ignite presentation for you, my friend. Submit a talk proposal by completing the proposal form. Again, the deadline for talk submissions is January 24.

I’m looking forward to seeing you on stage—in person or virtually—on February 19.

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