.

Sunday Sunday Sunday! For one night only! Sarah Lacy swings through Portland

Rick Turoczy on August 19, 2008

Once You're Lucky Twice You're GoodIt’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.

But this Sunday, we get one of those opportunities.

Sarah Lacy, arguably one of the most important voices—female or otherwise—in the world of Web 2.0 apps and startups, will be swinging through Portland as part of her User Generated Book Tour in support of Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0.

“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.

As I’m sure would others.

So now, here comes my begging and pleading

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.

For more information or to RSVP, please see the Sarah Lacy Tweetup on Upcoming.

Waiting for the right gig pays off: Troy Harlan joins Vidoop

Rick Turoczy on August 19, 2008

One of the regular fixtures of the burgeoning Portland Web tech scene has been Troy Harlan (@theInfovore), a recent transplant from the Bay Area.

And time and time again, I would hear the inevitable small-talk question arise. “So… where do you work?” And time and time again, Troy would respond that he was “looking for the right thing to come along.”

Last week, Harlan hinted that the wait might be at an end, but that he “didn’t want to jinx it.”

Well, it looks like the waiting has paid off. And how.

Troy will be joining Portland-based Vidoop on September 2nd as Senior Sales Engineer. He will serve as a primary technical resource for Vidoop’s newest customers, helping them through their integration testing and shepherding them into production.

Mitch Savage, Troy’s new boss, shares that Vidoop was eager to work with Troy because of “his strong technical chops and his broad experience with system integrations.”

“The hardest thing about bringing Troy on is that his start date occurs during Vidoop’s all-company move to Portland,” said Savage. “But we’re making it work. That’s how much we wanted Troy on board.”

Congratulations to Troy on his new gig. And congrats to Vidoop on continuing to snap up the best and brightest in town.

The rest of us are still polishing our resumes.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for August 18

Rick Turoczy on August 18, 2008

The Road Show To Gnomedex

Via the iterasi blog “Come join iterasi as we travel on a converted school bus from Portland’s verdant valley to the maritime climate of Seattle for Gnomedex, arguably the best geek event you will ever find. Check out our Facebook page for the full details.”

Geek Fair 2008! Portland, OR | Portland Octopus

Via Portland Octopus “On Saturday, August 23, Free Geek Community Technology Center will celebrate eight years of operation with a Street Party. Geek Fair 2008 Is a free event for all ages.”

Techpaulogy: Clearspace just took enterprise collaboration to a whole new level – hello 2.5

Suspend your disbelief about the fact that Paul Biggs needs to get out more as he states “I am so excited. Hunkered down here at the Jive HQ (Club Fed), our whole team has been cranking like never before. Engineering, Marketing, Product, Sales, you name it — everyone has been heads down building, testing, re-mixing, and giving feedback on our Clearspace platform.”

Twitter Sniffer for Brands at Fast Wonder Blog: Consulting, Online Communities, and Social Media

Dawn Foster writes “I’ve found that many of the Twitter search services are unreliable, and they return different results when searched. Even Twitter’s own search misses some tweets. This pipe currently combines three separate Twitter search engines into one result with duplicates filtered out and everything sorted by date.”

Portland Ignites Gnomedex at Josh Bancroft’s TinyScreenfuls.com

Josh Bancroft writes “The coolest thing about all of this? The idea for Ignite Portland was hatched at last year’s Gnomedex. They highlighted some of the previous evening’s Ignite Seattle talks, and I loved them. The energy and excitement were off the charts, and I immediately started thinking (and Twitter-ing) about how awesome it would be to do an Ignite event in Portland. Connections and plans were made, venues were filled to capacity, Legion of Tech was born, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Clearspace 2.5: Jive raises the bar

Rick Turoczy on August 18, 2008

Jive SoftwarePortland-based Jive Software—which VentureBeat dubs “one of the more successful startups offering collaborative software to large corporations”—has announced the latest release of its Clearspace product, Clearspace 2.5.

It’s a release that marks a decided step forward for one of the darlings of the Portland startup community.

In my opinion, it’s always a smart move to “let people work where they’re comfortable” while providing tools that extract and share data with the enterprise as a whole. Clearspace 2.5 does this in spades, ensuring that Clearspace has a more deeply integrated position among a number of traditional enterprise communications tools.

Just as important, the release marks a decided move from Clearspace as a tangential and “nice to have” social media service to the role of aggregator and “nerve center” for all communications within the enterprise. A role which Jive’s CMO, Sam Lawrence, describes as moving from a presence in the organization to full-fledged “ubiquity.”

But what exactly does that mean? Well, let’s let Jive tell it:

[HTML1]

According to VentureBeat, these seemingly straightforward improvements are all the more powerful in combination:

None of the features are all that innovative on their own, but collectively they mark a smart move forward. For one thing, users can now participate in discussions, check updates and more via text message or email, so Clearspace becomes more accessible and useful outside the office. In addition, Clearspace now integrates with customer relationship manage (CRM) service Salesforce.com, so a Salesforce customer account page can show relevant activity and information from within Clearspace. Finally, it’s now much easier to enable Clearspace-managed customer comments on any webpage by just adding a few lines of code.

And well-known social media proponent Chris Brogan sees the new Clearspace features as a way to weave social media into the workings of the enterprise:

We have to stop thinking of social software as an island. It’s going to be part of the fabric, and that requires integration points, connectivity to the way people create business processes, and flexible enough to fit within an organization’s existing business styles. I saw lots of that in Jive’s latest release, and Sam talked about the company’s further efforts in that department for future visions.

I know the Jive team—quiet as they have been—has been very much “heads down” working on this release. And, as a testament to that focus, they’ve released some very impressive features. What’s more, those features definitely embed Jive’s products more deeply into the enterprise environment.

Hopefully—for Jive’s sake and for Portland’s sake—we’ll see some forward thinking organizations jump at the chance to have this kind of social media interactivity behind the corporate walls, informing the actions of the employees. I’d like to think it could happen. And I hope it happens sooner rather than later.

For more on the features of Clearspace 2.5, see Sam Lawrence’s post on Go Big Always. For more on the company and its products, visit Jive Software.

[Update] Oopie. Apparently I beat Jive to the punch on posting on their own product. Here’s the official Jive post on the Clearspace 2.5 release.

Portland Start-up Index for August 2008: Metafilter, Digital Trends premiere in top 10

Rick Turoczy on August 18, 2008

It’s that time again. Time for the Techvibes Portland Start-up Index, the monthly round up of Portland-area startup companies and products, ranked by the average of their Alexa and Compete rankings.

Admittedly a work-in-progress, the Portland Start-up Index often premieres “new” entries that have been—in actuality—heavy hitters for far longer than some of the “old” companies and products on the list.

This month’s list is a perfect example of that dynamic in action, as MetaFilter (July 1999) and Digital Trends (2001) premiere in the top 10 at and respectively.

So how did the rest of the startup scene fare this month?

Portland Start-up Index for August 2008

  1. AboutUs
  2. MetaFilter
  3. Kongregate
  4. Discogs
  5. Digital Trends
  6. COLOURlovers
  7. Frappr
  8. Jive Software
  9. Clicky
  10. Splashcast
  11. MyOpenID
  12. Platial
  13. Earth Class Mail
  14. Sandy
  15. Gone Raw
  16. eROI
  17. Vidoop
  18. NetworthIQ
  19. Attensa
  20. Stikkit
  21. Active Reload
  22. Walker Tracker
  23. Grabbit
  24. GadgetTrak
  25. Iovation
  26. UrbanDrinks
  27. ChoiceA
  28. KnitMap
  29. Art Face Off
  30. Pibb
  31. Lunarr
  32. Iterasi
  33. WeoGeo
  34. FreeRange
  35. fmyi
  36. Goboz
  37. Rocketbook
  38. GoLife Mobile
  39. Picktastic
  40. Kryptiq
  41. Jama Software
  42. GreenRenter
  43. Imindi
  44. MomHub
  45. Pheedo
  46. Workplace2go
  47. Lightfleet
  48. VocalNation.net
  49. Collaborative Software Initiative
  50. Box Populi
  51. Cendix
  52. Avnera
  53. GoSeeTell
  54. YourList
  55. Techchex
  56. Kumquat
  57. IDP Solutions
  58. Worldwide Nest

To see the rankings, metrics, and movement within the list, visit the Portland Start-up Index on Techvibes.

Former Googler leaves WebTrends searching for a new CEO, finding Alex Yoder

Rick Turoczy on August 18, 2008

WebTrendsIt seems like only yesterday—or April—that I was pitching conspiracy theories about Portland-based WebTrends‘ new CEO, Dan Stickel. With Stickel being a former Google employee, I thought I saw the potential for our local Web analytics company—one with a bit of a checkered history—to have a clear path toward acquisition.

But that changed today with the news that Stickel was resigning and that Alex Yoder, a WebTrends veteran, had been appointed CEO:

In naming Yoder as CEO, the board turned to a WebTrends insider with seven years of experience at the company, and who most recently led WebTrends to its most successful quarter in history as its vice president of sales. He also has been one of the key executives leading the company’s long-term strategic planning, and has over 20 years of global business experience.

Sources close to the announcement say that there is a “tremendous amount of excitement” about Yoder ascending to the leadership role. And that the news was incredibly well received throughout the company.

According to Yoder’s WebTrends bio:

Yoder has been responsible for strategic oversight of all WebTrends marketing and sales activities in North America. Alex has built his team around industry and product expertise and has transformed the culture to emphasize customer relationships, providing complete online marketing solutions with world class services.

On a tangential and random “isn’t it a small Portland Web scene?” note, Yoder also graduated from the same tiny college that Mike Rogoway of The Oregonian and I did—Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. So I mean, that’s good, right?

And speaking of Mike, he got the chance to chat with Yoder and share some insight on Yoder’s new gig:

Yoder joined WebTrends in 2000, then left early in 2007 to become vice president of sales at a company called Touch Clarity after becoming disillusioned with WebTrends’ direction.

Yoder rejoined WebTrends in January of this year, feeling that the company’s focus had returned. He said he hopes to bring stability to the Portland company, and said that he expects his history with the company will help him build trust with WebTrends’ employees.

In my opinion, having someone like Yoder, who has been with the company through the thick and thin of the last few years, should prove a positive move for the company. And should—hopefully—help WebTrends continue along its path to recapture the heights of its dotcom-days greatness.

And while it doesn’t necessarily take the whole acquisition conspiracy theory off of the table. It does make things seem a great deal more stable.

Upon hearing of the new change at the helm, I couldn’t help but think of another Oregon company—Nike—who not-so-long-ago had its own share of CEO drama as it rapidly transitioned through an outsider CEO, only to bring Mark Parker, an insider, up to the chief executive office.

The move has been a successful one for Nike. And here’s hoping that it’s equally successful for WebTrends.

Portland-based WebTrends provides web analytics and online marketing solutions to optimize marketing campaigns and customer engagement. WebTrends Marketing Lab delivers the industry’s most recognized analytics, SEM, and visitor intelligence solutions to enable companies to understand their customers, drive customer engagement, and enhance marketing and brand awareness. Thousands of leading global organizations, including General Mills, Microsoft, Reuters and Ticketmaster have chosen WebTrends business solutions and client services expertise to optimize their customers’ online experiences. For more information, visit: www.webtrends.com.

Raven Zachary’s Apple iPhone obsession now his full-time gig

Rick Turoczy on August 18, 2008

Raven Zachary Apple iPhoneWithout a doubt, one of the busiest people in Portland—when he’s actually on the ground here in Portland—is Raven Zachary. Working with Legion of Tech. Founding iPhoneDevCamp. Running around consulting on Open Source. Standing in line waiting for iPhones. And helping folks with all things iPhone.

Yeah, you caught that, didn’t you?

It’s no secret that Raven’s interest has definitely been leaning more and more toward the iPhone, as of late. And you know what they always say? Follow your passion.

So now, Raven is taking the opportunity to do exactly that, turning his iPhone obsession passion into full-time gig.

For those of you who know me as the founder of iPhoneDevCamp, this will probably not come as much of a surprise. Over the past few weeks, a number of professional opportunities relating to the iPhone have emerged that are too compelling to pass up. Some of these project I can’t talk about just yet, but I am looking forward to sharing them with you as soon as I able to.

Well, sort of.

Raven will still be supporting some of his consulting clients for The 451 Group. But instead of being a full-time analyst, he’ll move into the part-time role of contributing analyst.

So, he’ll still be crazy busy. Just with a different priority ranking on his efforts.

I, for one, couldn’t be happier for Raven. His passion is infectious. And this opportunity to channel his energy into this gig will be a delight to see.

And it looks like I’m not the only one. Twitter is running rampant with congratulations for Raven, this morning. Including a retweet from none other than Tim O’Reilly, himself:

Tim O’Reilly on Raven Zachary

Raven’s new venture can be found at raven.me or you can follow him on Twitter at ravenme.

raven.me is an iPhone site. It serves two functions – to provide interesting iPhone content to the general public and to promote my iPhone advisory business and other iPhone-related pursuits.

Again, best of luck to Raven. I know he’s going to be a phenomenal success. And that bodes well for all us here in the Silicon Forest.

Ignite Portland to light up Gnomedex

Rick Turoczy on August 18, 2008

GnomedexI like to think that Portland’s version of the Ignite format, Ignite Portland, is one of the best Ignites around. So it’s always nice when someone like Chris Pirillo validates that.

As you may know, Pirillo’s Gnomedex 8.0 is being held in Seattle at the end of this week. And any number of tech types are making the journey north for what has become one of the premiere events to gather and share ideas with some of the leading minds in tech blogging and podcasting.

This year, as part of the event, five folks from Ignite Portland have been invited to Gnomedex to give their 5-minute presentations all over again. (There are also folks from Ignite Seattle speaking.)

“As you know, Ignite Portland was inspired from the Ignite talks that I saw at Gnomedex last year,” said Portland’s Josh Bancroft, who will emcee the Portland presentations. “That got the ball rolling for Ignite Portland, and the rest, as they say, is history. ”

And what a rich history it is. Even with only three events under its belt. I honestly can’t think of any one event that has so captured the town’s imagination in such a short time.

So who from the Portland Ignites got the call?

  • Kevin Fox of Vidoop for “How To Buy a Car for Under $1000”
  • Jason Grigsby for “Cup Noodle: Innovation, Inspiration, and Manga”
  • Vanessa Holfeltz for “Boiling Water in 5 Easy Steps”
  • Mario Schulzke for “Why Deutschland Loves David Hasselhoff”
  • Eva Schweber of CubeSpace for “How To Run a Startup and Not Lose Your Mind”

I’ll be up at Gnomedex, this year, as well. And I’m really look forward to seeing these folks present again—and to get the chance to see our compatriots from Ignite Seattle giving their presentations, as well.

Like every other Ignite, I can’t hardly wait for the show.

On a tangential note, I just noticed that there is an Ignite Portland 4 planning meeting tonight. If you are interested in helping the Legion of Tech plan the next Ignite, RSVP on Upcoming.

Lunch 2.0 at the Eclipse Foundation

Rick Turoczy on August 18, 2008

The Lunch 2.0 beat goes on into the late Fall with the Eclipse Foundation set to host on November 5.

Did you know they had an office here? It’s in downtown, conveniently located on the MAX at the Oak Street stop. Tough to think about November now, but by then, you’ll be excited that it’s so close to MAX. No parking worries and no long walks in the rain.

eclipse_home_header.jpgHere are the details:

Hosts:  Eclipse Foundation

Where: 308 SW First Avenue, Suite 110, Portland, OR 97204

When: November 5, 2008 from 12:00 to 2:00 PM

RSVP on Upcoming

Thanks to Anne Jacko for coordinating this and arranging for extra space. The building is a bit confusing, and the Eclipse office is itty-bitty, by office standards. Happily, the building has allowed them to use a conference room and an adjoining open area. Should be perfect for networking and in-depth conversations.

If you’re not familiar with Eclipse, here’s the About.

I almost forgot to include the upcoming section, so you can plan your lunches.

Upcoming Portland Lunch 2.0s

  • September 17 at SplashCast: The guestlist is closed, since the space is pretty small. Don’t despair.
  • October 15 at the Art Institute of Portland: This space is huge, plenty of room for everyone, so bring friends and colleagues.
  • November 5 at the Eclipse Foundation

This could be a mistake but… here’s the Silicon Florist podcast (alpha)

Rick Turoczy on August 18, 2008

Well, any number of people have come up to me and said, “Your posts are too long,” “I wish there were a quicker way to digest the information you’re providing,” and “Why don’t you do a podcast?”

So, despite my better judgment, I’m going to be giving the podcast a shot.

If you’re interested in suffering through my dulcet tones, take a few minutes—or 20—to listen to the alpha version of the Silicon Florist podcast.

Now, rest assured, I’m no audio expert. And trust me, I’d love to get your feedback. Anything is fair game. Too loud? Too quiet? Do I need to do a little Chocolate Rain maneuver? Not breathy enough?

And please, by all means, let me know if this is something you would like to see continue.

1 … 552 553 554 555 556 … 616
×