Portland Oregon startups, tech, news, events, jobs, and community

I’d love to prattle on and on about how great and amazing and inspiring WordCamp Portland 2008 was. But I can’t.

I’m simply at a loss for words.

Yes, it was that good.

And I remain ever so proud to have had the chance to sponsor and participate.

What was WordCamp Portland, you ask? Well, it was a very long day of love and learning focused on WordPress—a popular open source blogging platform and content management system. Throughout the day, more than 150 WordPress enthusiasts and soon-to-be enthusiasts shared their ideas, their problems, and their insights.

And, perhaps the most amazing thing? It was almost single-handedly willed into being by Aaron Hockley, following a conversation at Beer and Blog. And with the support of team of volunteers and sponsors, he and his team turned WordCamp Portland into a truly incredible event.

I’d love to tell you more, but honestly, I can’t really do it justice. So—as is my general wont after these types of things—I’m going to round up the stuff that other people are saying.

Let’s let them do the talking:

• Twitter posts tagged with #wordcampdx (It was the #1 topic on Twitter throughout the day.)
• Flickr photos tagged with wordcampdx
• Thank YOU (WordCamp Portland)
  “We’re wrapping things up here at WordCamp Portland, but I wanted to post a quick thank you to everyone. Thanks to our sponsors for providing cash and services that helped make this possible. A big thank you to all of our speakers, some of whom traveled quite a distance, for sharing their expertise and helping to facilitate a ton of great discussion. Thanks to all of our attendees – hopefully you learned something, and we appreciate all of your knowledge that you’ve shared.”
• Presentations Links Roundup (WordCamp Portland)
  “Many of the WordCamp Portland presenters referenced links, information, or slides which are shared online. Here’s a roundup of pointers to the presentation information, roughly in the order presented…”
• Liveblogging WordCamp Portland (Critical Games)
  “8:33am: We’re all set up in the main conference room at CubeSpace, bagels and coffee in hand… slide on the project points out that if you want to search on twitter or flickr or anywhere, the hashtag to look for is #wordcampdx…. “
• Liveblogging WordCamp PDX (Eric Stoller)
  ” The tag/hashtag for WordCamPDX (only 1 p) is wordcampdx. Aaron Hockley is kicking off the event promptly at 8:36. Very diverse group of attendees.”
• WordCamp PDX (superfancy)
  “Anyway, the reason I attended was for information overload! And I was not disappointed in the least.”
• WordCamp PDX! Resources and Morning Recap (Hazelnut Tech Talk)
  “Saturday morning cartoons and sleep were replaced with a hundred bloggers at CubeSpace. We woke up collectively to a series of speeches, tips, and new friends we didn’t expect.”
• What I learned from WordCamp Portland (OurPDX)
  “Sitting in the sold out room for WordCamp Portland I was struck by just how dynamic and exciting the internet community in Portland has become. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to write about it, doesn’t want the rest of the world to know about our little secret (but I think the secret is already out). Big things are happening here in Portland. When I say big things, I don’t mean some major Internet company is going to be opening its doors, and I don’t mean there will be some huge announcement of some grand Oregon based product. The magic of what’s happening here is that it’s a million little exciting things that all add up to a very significant and flourishing community.”
• I survived WordCamp Portland (My Whim is Law)
  “Yesterday, I met other people who are in the business of changing lives – their own, or those of the audiences or organizations or causes they represent. I added several more people to my Twitter stream, or shared my knowledge with them (and vice versa.) My life is immeasurably richer because I blog. It’s immeasurably easier because I use WordPress.”
• WordCamPDX Wrap-Up (Critical Games)
  “The short of it: it was a REALLY fantastic event, and I’m very glad I went (it would have been worth coming down from Seattle for were I still in Seattle, let me put it that way). As can be gathered from my previous post, there was a virtual wealth of information regarding blogging, and thats not even getting into the deluge of tweets on Twitter regarding it — at several points in the day, we were anywhere from the number one to the number three item in Twitter Trends, even beating out the political stuff the day after the debates. And the attendance was just 150 people(ish), so that should be saying something on just how much everyone was tweeting. I about doubled my Twitter Follows/Followers.”
• #wordcampdx Changes Lives (TechnoEarthMama)
  “Today I attended the excellent conference/unconference WordCamp Portland, and was amazed.”
• WordcamPDX (Vin Thomas)
  “If you don’t know by now, I use wordpress for this blog. I love it! It is really one of the great developments in open source web development.”
• I learned a little something (Moody Meow)
  “Entering Wordcamp I was almost overwhelmed by the sheer number of people. They announced that they would let more people in, and I’m glad. I almost registered too late, intending on going, but trying to convince myself not to go because I wouldn’t know a soul there.”
• chrysalis (Cami Kaos)
  “On Saturday I attended WordCamPDX which answered a lot of questions that needed answering and raised about 6,000 more that I’m looking in to. I’ll have an entire post on my experience at word camp later in the week but for now I leave you with this picture of Verso and I taken by Jane Wells.”
• At WordCamp Portland 2008 (BoxedTofu)
  “Yes, I am a tech / blogging geek. That is why I’m spending the day in a sketchy part of Portland, listening to people talk about WordPress (an awesome blogging platform). If you’re looking to start a blog, it is what you should probably use (open source, plugins, community support, so good).”
• Wordcamp PDX is over… time to go home (BoxedTofu)
  “Wordcamp PDX was a smash hit. I made some new friends, learned a few new blogging-related things, and saw a lot of people with iPhones. Although I dont’ have much else to say, I did want to show a couple of images.”
• Josh’s Lifelog for 2008-09-21 (Josh Bancroft’s TinyScreenfuls)
• Tying your tubes (Steel Bridge Rag)
  “Just joined FriendFeed. Now we’re onto LifeStream, which sends anything I do to one place. These geeks move FAST! Overload!!!!”
• What is it about blogging platform conferences? (Develonizer)
  “I’ve been to many tech confrences, the only two that have really creep-eeed me out have been Drupalcamp and now wordcamp. I think that they evangelizm is all with good intent, and I’m not trying to be cynical, but think about it. Everyone who has payed $10, and showed up @ 840, so I think that we can assume that there is some level of love for the topic of the day, wordpress(wp).”
• Unlucky in photo competitions, lucky in radishes (Gwyn’s Blog)
  “It was cheap, cheerful, informative & well-organised. I am proudly wearing my free T-Shirt today. More conferences should have kegs of beer available from lunch time onwards too. Talking of which, I learnt about a Portland institution called Beer and Blog with weekly Friday meetups in PDX, so I might investigate that too.”
• At Wordcamp Portland Today (Viper007Bond)
  “13-14 hours later I’m home. What an awesome day. I’d write more, but I’m burned out and not big on word anyway. See me on Twitter as well as the #wordcampdx tag for a summary. So totally going next year.”
• WordCamp Portland Wrapup (Thieves Like Us)
  “More than any nugget of information I got during a talk, I think the most valuable thing I took away was a general sense of what is possible to accomplish with the framework in general.”
• Finding voice (Art Wells)
  “I went to Wordcamp Portland yesterday. Though I couldn’t stay for the whole event, and I’m far from a wordpress power user, it was still quite inspirational. I met good, positive people and saw some shining examples of people doing what they loved with good tools.”
• WordPress Presentations from WordCamPDX (Webmonkey)
  “WordCamp wrapped up in Portland over the weekend and all signs point to it being a success. Apparently the #wordcampdx hash tag made the front page of Twitter, if that’s any indication. Perhaps a better measure is the huge list of presentation wrap-ups, including slides, notes, videos, and more.”
• The Fairy BlogMother Lorelle (Liz Strauss)
  “On the Worldwide Day of Play, Lorelle VanFossen gave her Keynote at WordCamp Portland as the Fairy BlogMother. Amazing in every way!”

That’s what I’ve got, so far. Did I miss your post? Please, by all means, link it up below.

(Psst! If you’re among those who just couldn’t get enough WordCamp, I’ve got a little secret for you. Don’t tell anyone. Let’s just keep this between you and me. But, word around the campfire is that there may be a Portland contingent making the trip down to WordCamp Las Vegas in January, where Matt Mullenweg and Lorelle are already on the agenda. There might be a Portland-type speaking there, as well. Stay tuned!)