Startups fight to raise money – Portland Business Journal:
Aliza Earnshaw writes “If it’s hard for established companies to raise cash these days, it’s nearly impossible for startups.”
Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for November 03
Lunch 2.0 at the Eclipse Foundation is Wednesday
Did you know the Eclipse Foundation has an office here in Portland?
They most certainly do, but you might not know this because only four people sit in that office. This Wednesday, the 5th, they’re opening their doors for a Lunch 2.0, and never fear, even though they have a small office, the building they inhabit has graciously agreed to allow us to mix and mingle in a larger area.
This will be more cocktail-party style than the lunchroom-style lunch we had last month at the Art Institute.
If you want to swing by and meet Anne, Bjorn and the good people at Eclipse, make sure you RSVP on Upcoming, so they can plan the catering accordingly.
Incidentally, their building is conveniently located on the MAX at the Oak Street stop. So, take the MAX and avoid the parking worries and the long walks in the rain. Hope to see you there.
Upcoming Portland Lunch 2.0s
- December? Nothing planned now, want to host one?
- January 14 in the ‘burbs at the new OTBC offices in the Beaverton Round
- February?
- March?
Thanks to all the hosts and people who’ve made this a success. If you want details about hosting, let me know in comments or drop me a tweet. I’m @jkuramot.
Vidoop has to let some folks go
I really hate to do this, but again, I feel obligated to say something.
As unfortunate as it is to report, newly transplanted Vidoop has had to cut back some of its staff.
No word on how many or whom. [UPDATE] The Portland Business Journal, which featured Vidoop in a cover story last week, reports that nine employees were let go. “The employees who were laid off Monday morning all moved to Portland from Oklahoma, and all are shareholders.”
CEO Joel Norvell states:
Portland’s gracious and enthusiastic welcome to Vidoop has been terrific for all of us at the company. Here less than two months later, the economic reality facing companies everywhere seemed remote, given our momentum and the exciting projects we are working on. But today, we had to face that reality, and tell several members of the Vidoop family goodbye.
I have to commend Vidoop for the public admission. They continue to remain a class act. I’m sorry to see them having to go through this. But they will survive.
At this point, I’m more concerned about the folks who have been let go. Vidoop is doing what they can, but additional help, I’m sure, will be welcome.
If you’re a recruiter, there is some very, very good talent on the market as a result of this. I encourage you to act quickly.
And I know I speak for the Portland startup community when I say if there is anything we can do to help, please let us know. Please feel free to contact me at siliconflorist@gmail.com, via Twitter, or by commenting below.
Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 31
Open Source Bridge: Our First Presentation
Via the Open Source Bridge blog “The Open Source Bridge team gave their first presentation to a large group at CubeSpace on October 30, 2008. Enthusiasm far exceeded my expectations, and I came away feeling confident that we’re going to make Open Source Bridge a reality together.”
Thrive – PDX at Kells Irish Restaurant & Pub (Tuesday November 11, 2008) – Upcoming
We want to open dialogue between all members of the tech community – corporate & indie, young & old, geek & nerd – to help figure out how we build a community that will survive & thrive during this economic downturn.
Standalone Applications with CouchDB – Daytime Running Lights
Chris Anderson writes “Over the last few days I’ve polished up my notion that CouchDB can be a perfectly viable application host, all on its own, without any 3rd tier between database and client. That is, CouchDB is capable of serving standalone applications. These standalone CouchDB applications can be deployed to any working CouchDB node and used from any browser.”
Get Naked
Via Needmore Designs “We just wrapped up production on our submission for Do Something for a Cause, a calendar fundraiser featuring Portland media/tech folks baring their flesh to bring community awareness and raise funds for local charities and educational groups. This year’s recipients include p:ear and girls inc, among others. I know they are still looking for a couple more participants and sponsors, so please do let them know if you’d be interested in helping out!”
Keeping a Large Scale Open Source Conference in Portland
Amber Case writes “We have everything in Portland. We have Linus, we have biking, we have Open Source, and we have an amazing Portland Tech community. Up until recently, we also had O’Reilly’s OSCON.”
Have a Happy Halloween at Beer… err Bat & Blog
Every week around this time, a group of Portland blogging and tech types gather at the Green Dragon to end the week on a good note with Beer and Blog.
This week, it just so happens that Beer and Blog falls on Halloween which has it—like a victim of an unfortunate zombie bite—transforming into the ghoulishly clever “Bat and Blog.”
But wait, there’s more:
Now, if you are like me (meaning, not into intricate costumes that involve actual planning) you may find yourself dressing up as yourself again this year (meaning, sans costume). All that thinking ahead for costume ideas really bums me out, so I usually skip the whole thing.
This year, however, I came up with an easy-to-create Halloween getup of the non-lame variety that lets you participate in the celebrated tradition of being someone else for a day. The best part is that this costume idea is of someone we all admire, whom men and women alike want to emulate. Someone smart, popular, good looking and super-dooper nice, who supports and promotes the Portland tech scene with unwavering love. A bona fide tour de force.
Who are they describing? You’ll just have to head over to the blog and see.
Suffice it to say, I’m buying. But you’ll have to show up to find out if that’s a trick or a treat.
An evening of Color, Final Cut Studio Color, that is
[Editor’s note: Thanks to Rebecca Gerendasy for this guest post. Looks like a very cool event!]
If you’ve been struggling with or wondering about the amazingly cool software, Final Cut Studio Color—Apple’s new professional color grading application—this is the meeting for you!
Jack Chavez is going to be here in town to give us a tour. Jack is a Creative Director and Producer at Intel Corporation where he has worked in-house for eight years. He was an early adopter of the software program that came to be known as Apple Color and has mostly recovered from the trauma of trying to finish high visibility videos with flaky beta software. Jack believes the future looks bright for Color.
And we’re excited to have Jack here to share some of his expertise and enthusiasm at the next Portland Final Cut Pro User Group.
If you create any type of media—be it for the web, mobile, or more traditional outlet—this meeting might hold the spark you are looking for to help your images stand out. Color is a professional color grading application. Once costing mid-5 digit range as a stand alone, it now comes packaged with Final Cut Studio 2. Once again, the tools are within our grasp, but how to use them and use them well. Whether you have Color in your arsenal of video applications or not, this will be a meeting worth coming to just to get a taste of the possibilities.
Date: Wednesday, November 5th
Meeting Time: 6:00 – 8:30p
Location: PCC/Cascade Campus MAHB, Room 104
Cost: Free to members & students w/ID. $5 for non-members
For more info: http://www.pdxfcpug.com/meetings.html
Portland Final Cut Pro User Group is an ongoing educational meeting the first Wednesday of the month at PCC/Cascade Campus. The meetings are geared toward learning about different aspects of editing, filmmaking, and also to give another opportunity to network with others in the film community. Our membership ranges from beginners to veteran professionals. For more information, or to be added to the monthly eNewsletter, drop us a note at: info@pdxfcpug.com
Open Source Bridge: Get involved in bridging the gap
We—and I’m using the royal “we”—were all a bit taken aback when O’Reilly decided to pull the plug on OSCON in Portland.
Was it something we said? Did we no longer have the “open source” cred? What did we do? Why hast thou forsaken us?
Confusion reined.
But it was only a momentary lapse.
You see, if there’s one thing I love about Portland, it’s our entrepreneurial spirit. We weren’t just going to sit around and cry in our microbrewed beers about it. We Portlanders are going to figure out how to do something else. We’ll show them.
And true to form, here’s Open Source Bridge, a new grassroots-organized open-source-developer-oriented conference that’s slated to be held in Portland, next summer.
What are we planning? I’m glad you asked. Let me let some of the Open Source Bridge organizers tell the story:
I love conferences. And I love Portland. Maybe you can guess what’s coming next.
During an intense brainstorming session at Side Project To Startup, a group of concerned Portlanders drew together a plan for a new conference. We packed a tiny room, and had a heated discussion about what we wanted, what Portland needed, and how we might do it. By the end of the session, Audrey Eschright and I agreed to co-chair. And with the support of Portland’s incredible tech community, we knew we could make it happen.
I am excited to be co-chairing this event. Portland is a fabulous place to be working on open source projects, and we’re the ideal community to build an inclusive, diverse conference that focuses on developers’ interests and needs.
Were you sad and dismayed to hear that OSCON was moving out of Portland? Are you looking for more open source events to attend? Would you like an open source conference organized by the community? Want one more tech event to attend in July? Need an excuse (any excuse) to visit lovely Portland, Oregon in July? Do you like to help organize events for fun in your spare time?
If you answered yes to any of my obnoxious questions above, I have a great solution for you: The Open Source Bridge event.
Oh, yes. It’s on, my friend.
I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in some of the early planning. And there’s a great team working to make things happen.
Who?
Well Reid Beels, Professor Bart Massy, Jake Kuramoto, Kelly Guimont, Adam Duvander, and of course the folks quoted above. And the team is growing, adding Ward Cunningham, Irene Schwarting, Harvey Mathews, and Clay Neal (from the City of Portland) since our initial meetings.
Now, we need some help from you.
That’s right. You. We need you.
If this sounds like an interesting concept and you’re interested in contributing some of your time, join us at CubeSpace tonight (October 30) at 7:30 PM to take part in the Town Hall.
The Town Hall will give the organizers a chance to chat with you about the proposed event. And give you a chance to voice your opinions on what you’d like to see. It will also likely give us a chance to guilt you into helping convince you to join the cause and volunteer some time.
Can’t make it? No worries. Just make sure to let one of us know how you’d like to help.
Open Source Bridge is going to be an amazing event. I can tell, already. And I’m already looking forward to seeing you there. Even though I’m not even really sure where there is yet.
At the very least, I hope to see you at CubeSpace on Thursday, October 30.
Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 29
Alltop – Top Bacon News
Alltop features all the Bacon news and headlines from across the web, a topic near and dear to many a Portlander heart.
One year later… the future of mobile looks even better
Via the Strands blog “This year in mobile has been an exciting one, but what the future will bring is even more exciting. In fact, the future is today: with so many possibilities open to developers to build cool services for iPhone, Nokia (S60), BlackBerry and soon Android, the future for mobile users looks great. And we will be making some great announcements soon. Stay tuned!”
Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 28
Shizzow Blog · Trick or Treat, Shizzow Style
Via the Shizzow blog “We thought it would be fun to do some trick or treating using Shizzow. Since we’re too old to wander the neighborhoods knocking on doors for free candy, we decided to have our own trick or treat party (costumes are optional). Here’s how it works…”
OpenID usability is not an oxymoron | FactoryCity
Chris Messina writes “Monday last week marked the first ever OpenID UX Summit at Yahoo! in Sunnyvale with over 40 in attendance. Representatives came from MySpace, Facebook, Google, Yahoo!, Vidoop, Janrain, Six Apart, AOL, Chimp, Magnolia, Microsoft, Plaxo, Netmesh, Internet 2 and Liberty Alliance to debate and discuss how best to make implementations of the protocol easier to use and more familiar.”
Portland team quintessential to new ReadWriteWeb Jobwire
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.
