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Same Portland Lunch 2.0 building, new Portland Lunch 2.0 host, also bacon

Rick Turoczy on May 7, 2008

Sad that you missed seeing the eROI space at the last Portland Lunch 2.0? Well, wipe away those tears, gentle reader. We can get you close.

The latest Portland Lunch 2.0 date and location have been announced. And, as luck would have it, it’s in the same exact spot, only one floor down.

Vidoop, one of the ever-burgeoning residents of the eROI-owned space in Old Town, has volunteered to host the next Portland Lunch 2.0, to be held May 28. Those interested in attending can RSVP via Upcoming.

This lunch marks a celebration of sorts for the Vidoop team, in a Welcome Wagon sort of way:

From what I hear, this will be a cool time for Vidoop. Apparently, their entire Tulsa office is transplanting itself to Portland this month, in an epic roadtrip. So, this will be a great chance to welcome them to Portland and give them a taste of how we do Lunch 2.0 here.

No word on the amount of bacon to be had. (Knowing the hosts, I’m assuming this is not an “if” question, but rather a “how much” question.) But, rumor has it that Ford’s on Fifth may be tapped to cater the event.

Jake Kuramoto, the energy behind Portland’s version of Lunch 2.0, has said he’s interested in squeezing a few more Portland Lunch 2.0 gatherings into the summer months. So, if you’re interested in hosting, please ping Jake on Twitter or feel free to comment below.

Future Portland Lunch 2.0 hosts include Wieden + Kennedy and maybe, just maybe, yours truly. But first, let’s all head on over to see Vidoop’s new digs.

I’m looking forward to seeing you there.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for May 07

Rick Turoczy on May 6, 2008

The Associated Press: The chi of Portland: High weirdness in Nirvana

Wha…? No mentions of “open source” or our tech scene? Pshaw. Worth a read anyway.

Sharing Features

From the Green Renter blog “We added a new feature today making it easy to share green buildings with other social sites like Delicious and Flickr, in addition to emailing your friends. On a building detail page, simply look for the ‘Share’ tool bar on the right side of the page.”

Lifestyle Entrepreneurship – Having a Business So You Can Live Your Life…

Trevor Mauch writes “To me, ‘lifestyle entrepreneurship’ is all about creating a business (or businesses) that allows you to truly lead the life you want to live.”

 

[Please note: ma.gnolia, as much as I love it, has been choking a bit recently on my link posts. As such, some folks—whom I would really like to highlight—have not been shared here. (When I force ma.gnolia to post, the most it can post is three entries.) So, if you’re willing, I’d highly encourage you to peruse the wealth of links in the Silicon Florist group on ma.gnolia.]

Iterasi: Get your own personal Wayback Machine

Rick Turoczy on May 6, 2008

[Full discloure: Iterasi is a client of mine. I worked with them a great deal on the initial announcement of their product in February, but aside from some ad hoc consultation, I did not participate in this launch.]

Vancouver-based Iterasi, the service that allows you to run your own personal Wayback Machine, has come out of private BETA and announced general availability for the Windows version of their browser toolbar. Using the toolbar, you gain the ability to capture an entire Web page, exactly as you see it—dynamic elements and all—and save it in that state, forever.

Sound interesting? Head over to the site to register and download your Iterasi toolbar.

The team has added some compelling features since the last time I wrote about the product back in February. Most notably the ability to embed captured pages within Web pages.

I’ve posted one of my favorite examples—the ability to save a Google search for future reference—below.

http://www.iterasi.net/embedded/?sqrlitid=_usQPoEYdU6mizC1xaJXOQ

As you’ll see from the embedded page, Iterasi saves the entire Web page as fully functional HTML, including any AJAX wackiness or completed form fields. In many ways, it’s the evolution of bookmarking. Moving from saving the location of a Web page to saving the Web page, itself.

But even that description might not give you a full feel for the potential of the product. So, if you’re a Windows user or have access to Windows on your Mac, I’d encourage you to download it and give it a shot.

The Mac version of Iterasi’s toolbar is still under development.

For more information, visit Iterasi.

OregonLive Reddit now based on latest not greatest

Rick Turoczy on May 6, 2008

OregonLive Reddit is completely borkedSince I had written an earlier editorial on OregonLive Reddit about its wealth of potential, I thought it appropriate to post that—until further notice—that potential is now completely gone.

Why? Because now OregonLive Reddit stories make the front page of the OregonLive not as a result of their popularity or user voting, but as a result of the order in which the OregonLive Reddit articles were submitted.

That’s right.

It’s important to note that the OregonLive home page now features the most recent submissions, and not the hottest posts.

And here’s my favorite part…

This change took place about one week ago in order to keep the Reddit posts fresh on the home page.

Perhaps the folks at The Oregonian and OregonLive are even more Web 2.0 than I thought, given that the new system follows the logic that “shiny and new” far outweighs “relevant and interesting.”

So go ahead and vote the Silicon Florist submissions up or down. It doesn’t really matter.

-1 for social media

At a time when the OregonLive Reddit user base was in the midst of asking good questions and having deep discussions about the nature of the service—at a time when many were working to embrace the potential of this feature—the team at OregonLive chose to remove the one and only thing that made the feature worth using: the voting that allowed the populous to determine what appeared on the front page.

Currently, the social feature has absolutely no bearing on what appears on the front page. It’s all chronological.

Kind of like, oh I don’t know, a printed newspaper?

I hear you, “Sounds like sour grapes to me, Turoczy. You’re just mad that you can’t keep content on the front page.”

You’re right. You’re absolutely right.

But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.

As I mentioned in my earlier editorial, I felt this service was one of the more promising avenues to give startups in town some of the much needed limelight they deserved from traditional media. And I find it unfortunate that that avenue—an avenue that I thought had so much potential—has taken a hit.

Here’s hoping they reconsider this move.

Until that point, I’ll continue my search for other resources that truly have the potential to highlight the great work many of you are doing here in the Silicon Forest.

Because the people around here need to see the amazing things you’re doing.

Just not on OregonLive, I guess.

Interesting gigs on the Silicon Florist Gig board

Rick Turoczy on May 5, 2008

Looking for a new gig? You might want to take a look at the Silicon Florist Gig board to see what’s what. Web startup looking to hire? Use the discount code freebie to post your open gigs for free.

Or maybe you’re a Portvangelist-to-be looking to move to the Rose City? Or someone who already lives here who’s looking for something new to do or a side project?

Well, don’t be shy. Feel free to use the gig board to pitch you skills. Just make sure you use a subject that makes it obvious like “inbound” or “looking” or “I am really cool” or something. Again, freebie at checkout and it’s, well, free.

As far as gigs, here are some of the newest ones:

  • Flex programmer at toonlet
    “toonlet is looking for a skilled contract Flex programmer to help us build out our online comic-creation tools on a short-term, per-project basis. If you’ve got the skill-set, we could really use your help.” [Editor: Personally? I’d jump at the chance to work with these guys. Not only are they exceedingly pleasant, they’ve got some really cool ideas going with toonlet. And obviously, much more to come.]
  • Django developer at Extreme Arts & Sciences
    “Extreme Arts & Sciences, a change management and business consulting firm, is looking for an established freelancer to tweak our django CMS to better conform to our needs. We also anticipate a revamp of our site architecture and look-and-feel update coming soon, and will need to meld the new graphics and whatnot with the django CMS.”

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for May 05

Rick Turoczy on May 5, 2008

The Portland Pulse beats in 4/4 time

Michael Kelly writes “Since Intrigo has moved offices to Portland, the substantial amount of tech resources to both pull and contribute to trumps any other city I’ve been intimate with. Portland is an enabler, connector, grower, and supporter of it’s business residents. I can’t say this about Tucson or any other (unnamed) cities.”

Congratulations! You’re Our 1,000,000th Color!

Darius Monsef writes “Almost 4 years ago I had an idea and threw down some code that would allow people to share colors and rate them… Just a few days ago our 1,000,00th color was named and shared on the site. It was only 10 days ago, but since that milestone color was upload… another 32,000 have been shared. That’s some serious color love!”

Four Lessons for Entrepreneurs from Working Two Weeks as Press

Shannon Clark writes “Although I am an entrepreneur, for the past two weeks I have also been active press as I covered parts of Ad:Tech San Francisco and Web 2.0 Expo also here in San Francisco. Having done this for the past two weeks as well as a few earlier conferences, I have learned a few lessons and would encourage all entrepreneurs to spend some time working as a member of the press.”

Updates to OsoEco!

From the OsoEco blog “Phew. We’ve just uploaded some updates to the site – most notably with language changes, ratings, tag me nots, and search.”

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

BarCamp Portland: The Weekend that was

Rick Turoczy on May 5, 2008

BarCampPortland 2008Another (dare I say “wildly successful”?) BarCamp Portland is in the books, thanks to the efforts of the Legion of Tech, the hosts, the sponsors, and—of course—the attendees and session leaders.

I could easily prattle on for pages about the wide range of interesting topics, the community building and strengthening, the learning opportunities both inside sessions and out, and the general just, well, geeky fun of the whole thing.

But, I always find roundups to be the best way to provide the most coherent and well-rounded picture of these kinds of events. There’s no possible way of covering the entire thing from one perspective, so only many perspectives will do.

That’s what I’ve seen so far.

No doubt, many people are still recovering and gathering their thoughts.

If I’ve missed you or if you’ve just posted your thoughts, please by all means, comment below with a link to your post or resource, and I’ll be happy to add it to the list.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for May 04

Rick Turoczy on May 3, 2008

BarCamp Portland

Looking for more details on what’s happening at BarCamp Portland? Look no further. This site is a great place to keep up to date with BarCamp Portland schedule and notes from the sessions.

What is BarCamp?

Pete Forsyth writes “BarCamp is clearly born of the tech community. It has a wiki for session planning. Participants are encouraged to share their Twitter and blog addresses. Sponsors are a virtual ‘who’s who’ of Portland tech startups. But it would be a mistake to think the conference is ‘about’ technology, or that you have to be a tech geek to get something good out of it. “

BarCamp Portland… Today

Matthew G. Monroe writes “For those of you in the Portland area who feel like swinging by BarCamp today (Saturday, May 3rd.), both myself and photographer Aaron Hockley will be doing a set of very loose, very informal workshops at 3 o’clock and 4 o’clock this afternoon.”

BarCamp Portland so far – it’s keeping me awake

Elizabeth Grigg writes “So far I was supposed to attend 3 sessions but really I just want to count it as two. The earliest session was in the largest space, and was pretty free form, with the topic of How to do what you Love / How to turn your Hobby into Full Time. It got pretty technical and jumpy pretty quick. Perhaps a question better suited to an interview than to a large group format. The next session proposed the idea, which apparently was thrown up on twitter and got a huge response, of a coworking space that also had an adjoining daycare for small families. “

BarCamp PDX

Dawson Hunter writes “This morning I participated in two presentations: ‘Beyond OpenID’ and ‘My Mom Can’t Use OpenID.’ Both were obviously focused on OpenID, but I was particularly interested in the conversation surrounding OpenID as it concerns data portability and users’ control over their data.”

Seaside presentation at BarCampPortland a success!

Randal Schwartz writes “I had about 20 people in my room at BarCampPortland, which made it ‘standing room only’ for the last few who showed up. The audience was attentive, and asked good questions. Monty Williams of GemStone was also along, and helped me with a few answers.”

BarCampPortland: My Other Thing

Audio from the “My Other Thing” session at BarCampPortland, thanks to Sam Churchill of DailyWireless.org.

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

BREAKING: Ignite Portland 3 throws out the first spark

Rick Turoczy on May 2, 2008

I just received word that we now have an official date for Ignite Portland 3. The next Ignite Portland—a wildly popular event that features 5-minute presentations on just about anything—will be held June 18, 2008, in the same location as Ignite Portland 2, the Bagdad Theater.

While the site is still getting tuned up, the Ignite Portland 3 Upcoming page is available, so let the RSVPing begin!

For those of you who might not be familiar with the Ignite format:

What is Ignite Portland? A bunch of fast-paced, interesting presentations – 20 slides for 15 seconds each. Our mantra is “share burning ideas” – just about any topic will do, as long as it’s interesting. From tech to crafts to business to just plain fun! There will be time to network and chat after each series of presentations.

(One of these days, I’m going to run out of fire analogies, but man, do I love writing about Ignite Portland.)

More news as it becomes available.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

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