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Open Source Bridge: Get involved in bridging the gap

Rick Turoczy on October 30, 2008

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:

Selena Deckelmann writes:

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.

Audrey Eschright writes:

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.

Dawn Foster offers:

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

Rick Turoczy on October 29, 2008

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!”

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Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 28

Rick Turoczy on October 28, 2008

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.”

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Portland team quintessential to new ReadWriteWeb Jobwire

Rick Turoczy on October 28, 2008

ReadWriteWebWith 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 efforts. But that changed today, thanks to ReadWriteWeb‘s Marshall Kirkpatrick, well, marshaling some Portland 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.

According to RWW:

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.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 27

Rick Turoczy on October 27, 2008

Shizzow Google Gadget

Via the Shizzow blog “A huge thank you to Matthew Gifford for creating the Shizzow Google Gadget. His reason for creating it was simple…”

Portland Tech Event Extravaganza

Amber Case writes “Looking for something to do this week/month/season in Portland? Itching to get to know more people/minds/ideas? Look no further. I’ve created this list for you of a bunch of Portland tech events for your convenience. Hopefully it is a useful resource.”

Yes, your organization does need a blog.

John Metta writes “Get a blog, people. Really. More and more of your customers are expecting it. They want updates on your humanity to hit their RSS feeds. They want to know that there’s a person there.”

Quiz: Are You the Entrepreneurial “Type”?

Via Get Rich Slowly “So here’s a reliable true/false quiz to test whether you match the typical profile of an entrepreneur. I adapted these questions from a comprehensive new study of entrepreneurship completed earlier this year by Professor Scott A. Shane (on which more later). In this quiz, the word ‘entrepreneur’ is defined as someone starting a new business of any kind, and includes the solo self-employed.”

Microsoft Half-Asses Their OpenID “Support”

Aaron Hockley writes “Lots of folks are excited today because Microsoft has announced that Windows Live IDs can now be used as an OpenID. I’m less than thrilled.”

Relax with CouchDB

Chris Anderson writes “We’ll be soliciting reader feedback as we develop the book and API documentation. The content is freely licensed, so we’ll make it available as we write. Expect to see a few chapters and a some API docs up by the end of the year.”

Viewing Habits Online Changing (or, I think it’s time to cancel my cable)

Tom Turnbull writes “In other words, the audience for full length video content online has doubled and is north of 50 million people. That’s far from a niche.”

Dia de los Muertos Breakfast Tweetup at Kenny & Zukes (Thursday October 30, 2008) – Upcoming

The spookiest breakfast of the year takes place at Kenny & Zukes this Thursday. Join Portland Twitter friends for amazing latkes and awesome chats. This is a buy-your-own affair that often spills over into coworking time afterward

Interview with Linus Torvalds of The Linux Foundation | Linux Foundation Events

Mike Rogoway writes “It was invite only, so if you — like me — couldn’t wrangle an invitation, here’s an interview that Portland’s own Linus Torvalds gave at the summit.”

Seeking Gardeners

Via the Calagator blog “We often talk about Calagator as a wiki-like collaborative calendar, so we borrowed an idea from the wiki world, and added event and venue versioning. This way, if someone (human or bot) decides the SAO Poker Night really needs a bunch of links to [insert generic spam topic here], anyone can roll back the entry to the previous version, cleaning it up.”

Building a new Portland ; October 29th Event

Via the WhereCamp PDX blog “There’s a sense of disconnection, on the one hand, from the realm of finance and the direction of the economy. This is linked to confusion, anxiety, and fear that people won’t have basic needs met. And there’s a strong desire, excitement, for there to be major changes in which we all have a role in supporting each other to meet collective goals.”

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Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 24

Rick Turoczy on October 24, 2008

Instant personalized TV entertainment developer, Gravity R&D, winner of the Strands $100k Call for Recommender Start-Ups

Via the Strands blog “Gravity R&D has created IMPRESS, a ‘magic button’ that provides TV viewers with instant personalized entertainment at any given time with relevant program tips instantaneously on customer demand. It automatically schedules recordings with the highest probability based on user’s interest.”

Africans and Their Mobiles, Part 1: Numbers and Usage Patterns » Techcraver.com | Craving tech, craving life!

Jason Harris writes “This post is the first in a two-part series about 1) the African mobile marketplace and how Africans utilize their mobile phones; and 2) how organizations are using social marketing to reach this highly mobile population for social change.”

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Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 23

Rick Turoczy on October 23, 2008

Janrain Blog: OpenID User Experience (UX) Summit

Via the JanRain blog “On Monday of this week over 40 people from Yahoo!, AOL, Google, Microsoft, MySpace, Facebook, Plaxo, JanRain, SixApart, Vidoop, and others came together at an OpenID user experience (UX) summit hosted by Raj Mata and Allen Tom of Yahoo.”

Coffee Deals

Via Around the Sun “Free coffee. Need I say more? With this coupon, you can get a free tall coffee, latte, espresso, cappuccino, or hot tea at Barnes & Noble. The coupon expires on October 31.”

COWPU on Rails

Upcoming COWPU on Rails at McMenamins Old St Francis School (Thursday October 23, 2008)

O’Reilly Media postpones iPhoneLive | raven.me

Raven Zachary writes “As you can imagine, I am disappointed by this decision. I believe the iPhone market to be fundamentally strong and growing rapidly, and Bill Dudney and I have spent a significant amount of time planning this event over the past few months. I plan to continue to work with O’Reilly Media on future iPhone related activities, including the possibility of an iPhone conference in 2009, and more regular blogging about the platform on O’Reilly Radar and Inside iPhone.”

Starting Up in an Economic Downturn

Via Internet Astronauts “I’m no economist, but even I can tell that the world’s finances aren’t in their best shape. Tech blogs are writing about layoffs in startups everywhere, investment advisors are urging their clients to knuckle down for a long, economic winter and news analysts are calling doom and gloom at every turn. So it’s probably a bad time to start your web startup right? Wrong. This may very well be the best time.”

Spreading the news at Finovate 2008

Via the Vidoop blog “Vidoop headed out to the Big Apple last week for Finovate 2008, and after seven minutes of presentation, eleven media interviews, 50+ partner and customer meetings, 12 hours of round-trip flying and 5,000 miles of total travel, Mitch Savage and I are back home in Portland.”

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Prolifiq gets blue—in a good way—with IBM Bluehouse

Rick Turoczy on October 23, 2008

ProlifiqBeaverton-based Prolifiq may be one of the most successful companies in the Silicon Forest of which you’ve never heard.

And I have to admit that part of that is entirely my fault. I had the pleasure of speaking with the folks over at Prolifiq quite a while ago, and I have a half-composed post about what they’re doing. But it never seemed to make it out of drafts.

Well, I’m happy to say that Prolifiq has some big news, today, that forces my hand. And it involves another company that you may know. One with one of those “acronym names,” IBM.

So what does Prolifiq do? They actually help sales teams and marketing teams work together. That bears repeating: they have come up with a solution that actually helps sales teams and marketing teams work together. And if this doesn’t sound like boiling-the-Willamette-River magic to you, you’ve obviously managed to dodge one of those roles in your professional life.

Prolifiq’s solution is the love child of customer relationship management (CRM) and content management (CMS) with some collaboration and social recommendation features, as well. In short, Prolifiq helps marketing types arm sales teams with immediate access to the information their potential customers need. And it allows them to crate it up and send it to anyone, lickety split. From a mobile device. Or from the desktop.

CEO Jeff Gaus calls it “the digital equivalent of a FedEx envelope.” I’d agree. Only it’s faster. And you don’t have to deal with the goofy guy in the purple shorts.

So where does Big Blue come in? IBM recently launched Bluehouse, which is basically Lotus Notes “up in the cloud,” as the cool kids like to say.

To hear IBM tell it:

“Bluehouse” is the place where businesses come to get work done. Whether you need to prepare for tomorrow’s meeting, are ready to host one today or want to collect feedback from yesterday’s call – “Bluehouse” can help.

So where does Prolifiq fit into the mix?

“’Bluehouse’ integrates key tools that enable teams to work more effectively,” said Sean Poulley, IBM Vice President of Online Collaboration Services. “Prolifiq for ‘Bluehouse’ provides sales organizations with the content they need at their fingertips that is branded, formatted and ready for use. Sales teams that use Prolifiq for ‘Bluehouse’ will have more time to do what they do best—close deals.”

Something tells me that a lot of other folks are going to be telling people about Prolifiq, now. Especially given the stage on which they find themselves, today.

But I still need to finish that draft.

Prolifiq revolutionizes personal email between sellers and their customers or prospects. The company’s smart email solution enables sellers, such ad Cisco Systems, General Electric, and Getty Images to send personal email that projects the brand, uses content that works and measures 1:1 conversations with customers.

For more information, visit Prolifiq.

Where I catch up on WhereCamp PDX

Rick Turoczy on October 22, 2008

Last weekend, Portland played host to all sorts of geolocation goodness at WhereCamp PDX. And proud as I was to sponsor this unique event, I was unable to attend.

What to do? Read the blog posts about the event, of course! And since I’m tracking down those posts, anyway, I thought it might be nice to share them with you, gentle reader.

Let’s get going, shall we?

  • WhereCamp PDX Roundup
    “As you can probably guess, WhereCamp focuses on geo-geeking. It began in 2007 as a way to extend and build on conversations and topics presented at O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference.”
  • WhereCamp PDX Takes on PacManhattan
    “On the final day of WhereCamp, it was time for location-based games. After a late night of geohacking, several WhereCampers returned early to play PacManhattan, where city streets become the game board.”
  • Oh my gosh, it’s like being immersed in the brochure online!
    “So the conversation started off all over the board: discussing whether Google was a brand-neutral service or whether or not it over-shadowed the brand; why anyone would want to push branded content to the web; the cost-benefit analysis of any custom solution (including Google or Flash); the perceived need to require Geo-spatial accuracy and so on.”
  • Wherecamp PDX | Paul Bissett on Illuminating the Dark Geoweb
    “These are notes from the WhereCamp Portland morning session on dark content and the geoweb. It was led by Paul Bissett, CEO of WeoGeo. About 15 people were at the session, and brought up some very interesting points.”
  • WhereCamp PDX Resources
    “This Yahoo! Pipe for WhereCamp PDX [built by Amber Case] grabs FlickrPhotos, the Google Map Location, drop.io session note updates, and Twitter Feeds.”

For more details on the event, visit WhereCamp PDX.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 22

Rick Turoczy on October 22, 2008

OpenID Case Studies Highlight Website Benefits from Accepting OpenID

Via the JanRain blog “What do a social news and content aggregator, a map-based real estate listing service, and a programmer collaboration and community website have in common? They are all innovators in their fields who have implemented OpenID as a single sign-on (SSO) method for their users and seen a significant increase in new registrations and improved login for repeat visitors.”

GOSCON gives government good open source ideas

Via The 451 Group “As always, the Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON) in Portland, Oreg. provided some fascinating discussion about how governments across the country and across the globe are using open source and how they want to use more of it.”

AboutUs front page tops 20 million pageviews

Via the AboutUs blog “You may have noticed that I like to post the numbers from AboutUs. Some of them get smaller (which is good), like our Alexa ranking. Some of them get bigger (which is good), like our page count.”

Custom Searches and Mozilla Geode

Via the Shizzow blog “Since everybody was talking about Geode last week, we decided to give it a whirl. If you are using Mozilla Firefox, have Geode installed and have your wi-fi device enabled, the Shizzow dashboard will use Geode to try to auto-determine where you are at.”

GOSCON closing notes | OpenSourcery

Thomas King writes “Well, the two day core program of GOSCON comes to a close this evening, and I’m left with more ideas than I can possibly digest here. Instead of attempting to chronicle every presentation, I’ll share some high-level notes that I’ll take away from my interactions here.”

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