.

Jive Software selects new digs

Rick Turoczy on March 4, 2008

Jive Software, the rapidly growing young linchpin of the Portland tech startup renaissance, has been hinting for some time that it was getting a bit too big for its britches building. And with its need to hire showing no signs of slowing, it became clear that a move was inevitable. So, the search began.

Only one question remained: Where to go?

Well, now, that question has been answered as well. The winner? The Federal Reserve Building on SW Stark and SW 9th.

And according to the Daily Journal of Commerce, Jive’s buying up some room to grow:

When the dust settles, Jive will occupy three floors of the building: the current third and fourth floors, and a fifth floor, with a penthouse and more than 37,000 square feet of office space, that’s being added as part of the remodel.

Early reports point to the Jive employees being taken with the new location—or at least the thought of getting some more space. They’ve already affectionately dubbed the new locale “Club Fed.”

And while Jive relieves some growing pains, the rest of the Portland tech community may benefit, as well. Jive is well-known for taking a leading role in hosting Portland tech events and helping to foster (pun intended) a more cohesive tech community, here in town. No doubt, this new space will lend itself more readily to more of the same.

Vocal Nation takes political news in slide

Rick Turoczy on March 4, 2008

Vocal NationI was recently introduced to Portland-based Vocal Nation, a service that is part feed reader, part social political-news system.

Okay, I hear you. Any time the term “social news” is bandied about, the phrase “Digg clone” immediately jumps to mind.

But, let’s not jump there so quickly. I think Vocal Nation has a specific application and some interesting functionality that make it worthy of a second look, and potentially a strong niche showing.

And I’m not alone in that thinking. Kristen Nicole at Mashable, who has reviewed the tool previously, described Vocal Nation this way:

In an effort to differentiate itself from Digg, Digg clones and the Digg voting system all together, Vocal Nation’s new feature helps set it apart in two primary ways: an automated submission process and a sliding scale used for voting.

The “automated submission process” is Vocal Nation’s feed-slurping feature. Point Vocal Nation at an RSS feed and it will consume the details, automatically feeding articles into the voting system. Not only does it make the current set of articles available to the Vocal Nation community for voting, it keeps track of the feed and continues to update Vocal Nation as the feed updates.

As an example, here’s the Silicon Florist on Vocal Nation.

While Vocal Nation can handle any site’s RSS feed, it becomes truly useful when it’s handling news on politics. And, that’s where Vocal Nation’s second voting slider comes into play. With that slider, the service encourages users to provide feedback on each article’s political disposition. Is it conservative? Liberal? Neutral?

And that news arena is where Vocal Nation could really shine. With the number of political blogs in Oregon, alone, Vocal Nation could prove to be a key to navigating the girth of coverage that is sure to overwhelm us until November. And likely after.

When you combine those submission and voting features with its pleasant UI and some subtle AJAX transitions, the Vocal Nation site merits a second look.

For more information or to try the service yourself, visit Vocal Nation.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for March 4, 2008

Rick Turoczy on March 4, 2008

Sometimes, a link says more than I could ever say. Here are some fragrant little buds I’ve found recently, courtesy of ma.gnolia.

Improving entrepreneurship in your city.

Aside from #7 (which might be more appropriate as “state and local” for us), I’d say the Silicon Forest community is working in the right direction.

Three things productivity software can learn from game designers

Sam Lawrence asserts, “Shouldn’t productivity software make us want to work? I mean, it’s goal is to make us (and our company) more productive. Given that, the most goal-oriented software I can think of is gaming software. That industry is hyper-competitive. They know our attention and dollars are precious and they’re myopically focused on delivering value within their product.”

Washington Post: Wanna Talk Money?

“It comes from the whole MySpace generation. Once people become comfortable being social online, it extends into other areas, such as personal finance,” said Ryan Williams, co-founder of NetworthIQ, which allows people to publicly keep track of their assets.

Apparently, last weekend was the unofficial Portland “Face Lift Weekend”

Like Silicon Florist, Metroblogging Portland got a face lift over the weekend, as well. Dieselboi says, “As you can see, Portland Metblogs, along with the entire Metroblogging network got a face lift over the weekend. We’re pretty excited about the new interface.”

Calagator progress: New Views and iCalendar

We had a hugely successful code sprint this past Saturday. Reid Beels drafted wireframes that we used to change the main site areas over from scaffolding to something more “calendary”, so if you go to the site now, you’ll see the start of a new home page and event views. We also added iCalendar import and export options. This means you can now subscribe to all of Calagator in your personal calendar of choice.

Oregon Startups: Help with SBIR and STTR – March 31 Deadline!

The March 31st deadline for the Small Business Matching Grant Program (Phase 0) is quickly approaching. The program was created to increase Oregon’s competitiveness in capturing federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants. These two federal grant programs provide funding to small businesses for research and development of new technologies.

SXSW 2008 & Vidoop

Portland’s Scott Kveton, yesterday’s guest editorial writer, points out, “We’ll be out in force at SXSW Interactive this weekend. In addition to sponsoring BarCamp Austin III, we’ll also be busy on the floor at our booth (stop by for some cool SWAG!) we’ll also be roaming around the conference and all over Austin doing video interviews with attendees about things happening on the Open Web.”

The New Metroblogging – WordPress: Good. Barriers to Participation: Bad. » VanPortlander

The story continues. Metroblogging Portland is one of the major blog forces here in town, and former-Metblogger Aaron Hockley’s insight into the drama and goings-on are invaluable. Here’s hoping that the ship rights itself sooner rather than later.

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Guest Editorial: Scott Kveton

Rick Turoczy on March 3, 2008

[Editor’s note: Continuing the Silicon Florist’s guest editorial series, we welcome Scott Kveton, a well-known force-of-nature in the Portland technology community. And, as you’ll see, the de facto Chamber of Commerce for the Portland startup scene.]
Made in Oregon

Image courtesy Modified Enzyme under Creative Commons

Falling in love with Portland again and again

Last week was amazing. I spent most of it with Luke Sontag here in Portland, meeting with folks, spreading the good word about Vidoop and generally being in the city.

Having grown up in-and-around Portland, it’s always fun to see the reaction to everything-that-is-Portland from someone who doesn’t live here. (Oh, and the weather we had last week didn’t hurt either.)

I got a chance to talk a little bit about this at Ignite Portland 2, but I’ll say it again: This is the beginning of a fantastic renaissance period for Portland. It’s such a vibrant, eclectic, talented and diverse city with so many things going on, that it inspires the mind and spirit around every corner you turn. Even more, I think Chris Logan had it right: it’s time for Portland to step up and take its place.

There has been some talk about how “if you don’t live in the Bay Area and you’re in tech, you’re basically a wuss.”

So be it. The very last thing I want is for Portland to turn into the Bay Area or Seattle. I want it to be Portland. I want other cities to be saying “wouldn’t it be great if we were more like Portland?” I simply want Portland to come into its own in tech, in the arts, sustainability, green, etc.

But, how do we get to that point?

Well, it takes a bunch of us, it takes some time and, ironically, the city does most of the work for you.

For the past couple of years, I’ve made it a point to try to help people who are considering a move to Portland. I’ve spent countless days taking people around the city, introducing them to others in the city, and generally trying to give them a “locals’ view” of the city.

Now, the tour I take folks on covers a bit of ground and I’m seeking some input on the route. A couple of places I go to:

  • Tour of SW waterfront area with gondola love
  • Sellwood district (possibly for lunch, definitely for dinner at Saburo’s if it’s a weekday night)
  • SE towards 78th or so … Marshall has been kind enough to meet me more than once at the Bipartisan Cafe… soooo PDX
  • Alberta or Killingsworth… I used to live at Billy Reed’s at the turn of the century and I can’t believe how much it’s all changed since then
  • Pearl District for coffee (Caffe Umbria is amazing) or drinks (the Vault or even the Clyde Commons)
  • NW on 21st or 23rd… just too much to do, to eat, to see

Where would you take a touring visitor to get a taste of Portland from a local’s point-of-view? Bear in mind, I’m not looking for just a tech-person view on this. I’m all about diversity here.

The key to all of this, and the thing that I keep in mind at all times, is serendipity. Yeah, yeah, I know. Hard to quantify, huh? Well, I’m not the cheerleader type unless I really, really believe in it. Portland I can believe in. This city, the people, the places. It’s easy.

If you’re not predisposed to drink the PDX Kool-aid, then you’re probably not the type of person I’d want here anyway. And, if you’ve ended up in my Inbox or with my phone number, odds are, there’s a reason.

I’ll put this out there; if you have a friend or colleague that is thinking about making the move to Portland I’ll offer up my time for coffee or even the full-fledged tour to introduce them to the city and the people I know. It’s just the right thing to do. And, I’d challenge you to do the same.

Again, it’s not about trying to make Portland something it’s not… it’s about embracing serendipity and helping Portland realize its potential.

P.S. – first round is always on me … 🙂

Scott Kveton is a digital identity promoter, open source advocate, and Chairman of the OpenID Foundation. He has worked at Amazon, RuleSpace.com, JanRain, and MyStrands, and founded the Open Source Lab at Oregon State University. He is a regular speaker on the topic of identity and open source. Kveton currently serves as the Vice President of Open Platforms for Vidoop, a company he recently wooed to the Silicon Forest.

Silicon Florist gets some sprucing

Rick Turoczy on March 3, 2008

While it may not be obvious to those of you reading the feed, the Silicon Florist site has undergone some long-overdue “sprucing up” over the weekend.

Call me crazy, but it seemed like it was time to step away from the slightly tweaked default template. Because quite frankly, gentle reader, you’re worth it.

Obviously, as with all new digs, we’re still working out some of the kinks (like resurrecting the OpenID comment log-in). So your patience is appreciated. As is your feedback. We tried to implement this quickly, over the weekend. And we’ll continue to iron out the rough spots over time.

Before you start lobbing critiques (and I do appreciate the critiques), I’d encourage you to first lob congrats at Justin Kistner of Metafluence, whose Conversation theme for WordPress and design recommendations served as the foundation for the Silicon Florist redesign.

Word around the campfire is that a few other folks are already using the Conversation theme—or are preparing to implement it soon. And, I can see why. I’m still learning my way around it, but I’m really liking it so far.

A heartfelt, “Thank you,” Justin, for offering this theme up for use, sweating through the tweaking over the weekend, adding some incredibly nice features to the blog, and—last but not least—putting up with my nitpicking. I cannot thank you enough.

Hopefully, all of you will like this new direction as much as I do. I mean, I can only read my own stuff so much. So keeping you readers around—and happy—is of utmost importance.

And please, rest assured, that despite the snazzy new look, the writing around here remains fair to middling, as always. 😉

I’m looking forward to your feedback.

So, that’s that. Enough navel gazing. Without further ado, we now return you to your regularly scheduled Silicon Forest startup news, already in progress.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement

Rick Turoczy on March 3, 2008

Sometimes, a link says more than I could ever say. Here are some fragrant little buds I’ve found recently, courtesy of ma.gnolia.

A Great Time at Beaver BarCamp at Fast Wonder Blog

One of the highlights of the event for me was a tour of the Open Source Lab (OSUOSL) where they host the servers for some key open source projects: kernel.org, Apache, Drupal, and many more. The lab also does quite a bit of work with the OLPC (XO) laptops, and is currently working on improvements to the media player.

Pithering in Portland

Portland, Oregon, from a guest’s perspective. “So, after a couple of weeks of planning, I’ve arrived in Portland Oregon for three months. I’m here on a ThoughtWorks project, making use of the company’s perk of being able to move around.”

Oregon Startups: GoSeeTell Inks Deal with the Arizona Office of Tourism

The Phoenix Business Journal reported that Beaverton-based GoSeeTell inked a deal to create a website for the Arizona Office of Tourism: GoSeeArizona.com

Twitter on PortlandSmallBusiness.com

For those of you addicted to twitter, you can now tweet your friends when you post on portlandsmallbusiness.com. Just log into PortlandSmallBusiness.com account and associate your twitter account.

SplashCast Open Gym app springs to second

Quick update: the Open Gym splashcast is the 2nd most popular sports application on Facebook at the moment. After just 4 days since it launched, it’s been added to about 8,500 profile pages, and has about 6,000 daily active users.

Metroblogging Portland – Time for the Upgrade?

Could this be the new platform/infrastructure that’s been long needed? Might we see the end of minute-long waits for comments to be posted? From Aaron Hockley of VanPortlander, “Could there be comment feeds? One of the reasons I left as a writer for Metroblogging was that their blog infrastructure was downright painful to use. I’m excited to see what will be revealed after the redesign, and I hope that it involves performance and feature enhancements rather than just a new pretty face.”

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement

Rick Turoczy on March 1, 2008

Sometimes, a link says more than I could ever say. Here are some fragrant little buds I’ve found recently, courtesy of ma.gnolia.

AboutUs pagecount tops 11 million*

As of midnight last night, Portland, Oregon time, AboutUs pagecount stands at 11,003,771. Unfortunately, our Mediawiki statistics are broken…. So, it’s a ballpark figure and your mileage may vary. And it’s still fun to say we have 11 million pages.

PU.Camp is tomorrow [March 1]!

It’s not too late to sign up to present… in fact it will only be too late when the last person leaves and we turn off the lights at McKay Cottage. So if you get there and get inspired (maybe by the other speakers, or maybe by the beer*) there is still time to come up with a topic!

Jama Software adds Cadria

Although Cadria is not a typical customer for Jama, the meat of how their using Contour is really much the same. Marketing agencies like Cadria are experts in creating that certain thing that resonates with your audience. Managing the complexity, keeping alignment and consistency, and delivering within scope are all things that demand a disciplined process……which demands a tool to manage that process.

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

paidContent and mocoNews mobilized by FreeRange

Rick Turoczy on February 29, 2008

Portland-based FreeRange Communications has announced a partnership with ContentNext Media that will have FreeRange designing and delivering mobile versions of paidContent and mocoNews, currently the 439th and 4,146th most authoritative blogs in the world according to Technorati.

Justifiably classified as “must reads” by FreeRange CEO Jon Maroney, the mobile content for paidContent and mocoNews will be available at http://paid.mwap.at and http://moco.mwap.at, respectively.

Why FreeRange?

“The FreeRange platform gives our readers the latest breaking news with an attractive interface and quick load time,” said Ted Rupp, Director of Business Development at ContentNext. “FreeRange app’s vastly improve the mobile web experience, and provide an excellent outlet for sponsors as well.”

ContentNext chose FreeRange for two specific reasons. First, the FreeRange system updates feeds and content in the background, ensuring that the content is always updated and accessible—even if the phone is out of tower range. Second—and perhaps more importantly—the FreeRange mobile widgets are designed to run on practically all mobile systems, ensuring the widest reader base possible for the ContentNext sites.

And straight from the paidContent post:

The key benefits: all four feeds from our four sites are in one place, and are updated in real time so you get the freshest news. You can view the feeds at your leisure, even when you’re offline. Also, it can serve as your default mobile RSS reader, as you can add your own feeds and even your local weather. The app works on the majority of mobile devices with a data connection besides BlackBerry.

For more information on the ContentNext partnership, see the FreeRange release.

FreeRange Communications enables media companies and consumer brands to deliver their content and advertising to mobile phones in a way that is fast and easy to read. The FreeRange Mobile Publishing Platform allows publishers to have mobile widgets that work on nearly all mobile phones, extending their business models and content to mobile phone screens around the world. For more information on FreeRange and its mobile services, visit FreeRange.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement

Rick Turoczy on February 29, 2008

Sometimes, a link says more than I could ever say. Here are some fragrant little buds I’ve found recently, courtesy of ma.gnolia.

Lunch 2.0 » Portland Lunch 2.0 Launches

Yesterday, about 50 geeks and non-geeks gathered at AboutUs.org in their sweet, newly-remodeled space in the Olympic Mills Commerce Center for the inaugural Portland Lunch 2.0. The event felt very Portland with no formal agenda and no presentations, just a good lunch with good people.

PDX Tech Calendar: RSVP for March 1 Code Sprint

Another code sprint for the calagator.org project has been scheduled for Saturday, March 1. If you’re interested in joining in on the fun, make sure to RSVP here.

Beer and Blog – Update your blog software at Lucky Labrador Brew Pub (Friday, February 29, 2008) – Upcoming

It’s already time for another Beer and Blog. This week’s topic? Update your blog software – how to put your CMS on a SVN or similar automagic updating system.

March 1st is Calagator Code Sprint Time

Possible tasks for this week include: finally getting that iCalendar import working, sending polite emails to organizations that don’t currently provide a calendar feed, and drafting ideas for the full event listing UI. Programmers, designers, and other tech community members are all welcome.

GoLife Mobile framework and the imminent Apple iPhone SDK

The GoLife team are fans of Apple’s device and we’re excited by the opportunity to develop for it. The SDK poses a distinct opportunities for GoLife Mobile and developers who support our framework. Application portability benefits everyone from the developer down. Developers can devote time and resources to one medium and won’t have to worry about supporting multiple platforms. That’s the beauty of a mobile framework and thats the beauty of GoLife Mobile.

SplashCast creates “Open Gym” application for Converse (Nike)

SplashCast has announced the launch of the Converse splashcast application this week to promote the mega-sport brands’ cross-media campaign called “Open Gym”. The campaign is all about bringing great basketball facilities and equipment to urban centers across the country. Old gyms will be renovated and the kids will get free shoes and equipment for the courts. The initial Open Gym cities include Miami, Chicago, and Philadelphia.In other news, being a grammar geek, I’ve noticed some new SplashCast additions to the English language. SplashCast (proper noun) is the company while splashcast (noun) refers to the player in which the media resides, which of course makes splashcasting (verb) the act of playing media through the splashcast from SplashCast.

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Meet: SEMpdx Searchfest 2008 is March 10

Rick Turoczy on February 28, 2008

Just like developers’ language- and framework-specific gatherings, there are other tangential practices and events that can play an important role for Web startups, blogs, and the like, here in Portland.

One of those tangential practices is search-engine marketing (SEM). And Portland is one of the leading cities for professionals who are exploring and extending the white-hat techniques of this oft-maligned marketing communications practice.

So, it makes sense that Portland also plays host to one of the premiere national events for SEM, SEMpdx Searchfest.

This year’s event, SEMpdx Searchfest 2008, to be held March 10 at the Oregon Zoo, will consist of:

[A] full-day search engine marketing conference featuring multiple learning sessions and expert panels to help you leverage search engine marketing (SEM) in your organization. Whether you are an SEM professional, work in an advertising agency or part of an in-house marketing department, SearchFest 2008 will connect you with the leading thinkers and practioners in SEM today.

I’ve also been advised that the event has taken a decidedly strategic turn, designed to help folks understand the benefits of adopting—and strategies for incorporating—search engine marketing into the broader strategies for the business.

Sound interesting? You’re can still get the early-bird discount if you register before March 1. And if you want an additional discount of $40, the Silicon Florist is happy to comply:

How to get the discount:

  1. Register for SearchFest at http://www.searchfest.org
  2. Enter the code SEMBD in the “Coupons/Gift Certificates” text box and click “Add.” (This is at step 3 of the shopping cart)
  3. Enjoy your day at SearchFest

For more information, visit SEMpdx. Interested in attending? Or, take the opportunity to register for SEMpdx Searchfest 2008.

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