Portland startups, open source, and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
We like to say that Portland is the de facto home of open source. And by “we” I mean “me.” Which makes that sentence grammatically incorrect, doesn’t it? But I digress.
Portland’s place in the world of open source is never more evident than the summer, when any number of open-source oriented events come to town. This week, it’s time once again for our homegrown open source event, Open Source Bridge, this Tuesday through Friday. Read More
The next thing to come into full bloom with be a ton of big tech events. So get ready. Because here’s all the geeky goodness Portland has in store for you.
Well, well, well. The flowers are in bloom. The birds are singing. That strange burning orb in the sky is making more and more regular appearances. It’s Spring in Portland.
Know what that means? That’s right. The next thing to come into full bloom with be a ton of big tech events. So get ready. Because here’s all the geeky goodness Portland has in store for you. Read More
Today marks the opening of Open Source Bridge, the entirely volunteer run open source conference being held at the Oregon Convention Center June 17-19.
And I know you’re busy. But you’re still tempted right? I know. But three days? That’s a lot of time away from your projects.
Tell you what, why don’t you just go for one day? That’s right. Day passes to Open Source Bridge are now available for $99. Read More
[Full disclosure: I’m volunteering to help the Open Source Bridge team with marketing efforts.]
Open Source Bridge—a gathering of open source citizens and open source curious taking place in Portland, June 17-19—has been a labor of love for a number of members of our community. And for that reason, it’s really great to see the final pieces of the event begin to fall into place.
Today, the Open Source Bridge team released the final schedule for the structured portion of the event. (The final day will be in an unconference format.) Read More
Portland’s entirely volunteer run Open Source Bridge conference—which just closed its call for proposals—got some recent airtime on FLOSS Weekly portion of Twit.tv with Leo Laporte.
Selena Deckelmann and Audrey Eschright spent some time chatting with Leo Laporte and our fellow Portlander Randal Schwartz.
Legion of Tech, unconferences, no self-service gas, Portland and—of course—the 24-hour hacker lounge all get their fair share of love.
To listen for yourself, tune into the Open Source Bridge episode of FLOSS Weekly.
The word of the day for the Open Source Bridge team? Serendipity. Or maybe serendipitous.
Either way, it was quite an interesting day for the volunteers working to bring an open source conference to fruition here in Portland in June.
We were excited to get a mention from Dawn Foster in Web Worker Daily as she interviewed Audrey Eschright on community organized conferences:
I’ve worked on FOSCON (a free Ruby event that took place during OSCON in previous years), BarCamp Portland, Ignite Portland, WhereCamp Portland, and now Open Source Bridge. The camps (unconferences) were all quite similar to each other to organize, but Open Source Bridge is much bigger than anything else I’ve worked on. There’s a lot of extra planning involved in doing a 1,000-person conference compared to a 300 person BarCamp. You can pull off an unconference in a short period of time, with fairly limited resources, but a big conference requires more structure.
Then the folks at OpenSourcery were kind enough to give us a few minutes to talk about the conference during a packed Lunch 2.0. Unfortunately for me, Jake Kuramoto successfully threw me under the bus again, much like Seattle Lunch 2.0.
Then, little did we know that, while we were enjoying OpenSourcery’s hospitality, something incredibly—well serendipitous—was happening at the same time.
And then he found Open Source Bridge. And then he wrote a post called “An Alternate OSCON?” offering:
Then someone sent me a pointer to http://opensourcebridge.org/ which is in Portland on June 17-19. Now I have an incentive to see if people want to go there. San Jose is closer to Berkeley, so I’d rather go there, but a really open OSCON would be something that’s worth supporting. There are other new projects that don’t have space at OSCON, so maybe we could all get together in Portland and see what happens.
(If you’re not familiar with Dave Winer, you should be. According to Wikipedia, he is “generally credited with the exposition of RSS as ‘Really Simple Syndication,’ now a world-wide phenomenon, and the first to implement the feed ‘enclosure‘ feature, one of several necessary ingredients for podcasting at the time it first emerged.”)
Whoof. That’s a big unplanned day of serendipity.
It’s incredibly gratifying to see the momentum continue to build for this entirely volunteer run conference. It’s good for Portland. And it’s good for the open source community.
If you’re interested in helping bring open source citizens to Portland in June, we’d love to have your help.
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Yesterday afternoon, about 70 people came to the see the best kept secret in Portland Open Source, the Eclipse Foundation office.
Turnout seemed a bit lighter than usual, probably due to the lovely Portland weather, but those who did swing by were treated to a casual networking session.
If you’ve attended a Lunch 2.0 in the past, you’ll know we typically do a very short introduction of the host and what they do. Not so this time.
Our hosts, Anne Jacko and Bjorn Freeman-Benson, just wanted to mill around and get to know people. As Bjorn says:
Our goal was to get over the “I didn’t know that Eclipse had an office in Portland” and we met out goal: people know that Eclipse is here in Portland and that we’re nice people and we’re here to help.
All-in-all, it was a successful lunch, and now you know where to find the Eclipse Foundation.
Lunch 2.0 continues to attract a diverse crowd of interesting Portlanders, which is exactly how we like it. Aaron took a bunch of photos, but hasn’t uploaded them to Flickr yet. Watch his Lunch 2.0 set if you’re interested. Update: They are posted now, excellent work as always by the unofficial Lunch 2.0 photographer.
Upcoming Portland Lunch 2.0s
It looks like we’ll be taking a break in December, which is just as well considering a) the weather and b) all the seasonal activity everyone no doubt has planned. We’re back at in January at the OTBC.
Thanks to all the hosts and people who’ve made this a success. If you want details about hosting, let me know in comments or drop me a tweet. I’m @jkuramot.
And don’t forget that Seattle also has a Lunch 2.0 chapter, organized by Josh Maher. If you get up that way frequently, check them out and report back to me. Their next Lunch 2.0 is November 13 at RocketDog Communications from 4:30-6:00 PM. You can RSVP on Upcoming, natch.
And now for something completely different:
Some of you may know that there’s an Open Source (Bridge) conference brewing for next July to help us all get over the loss of OSCON.
Both Rick and I are assisting with the organization, and the whole crew of organizers will be in Beaverton today at the new OTBC digs in the Beaverton Round hosting a townhall meeting. The meeting starts at 11:30 and should go until about 1.
The townhall is your chance to hear what the conference is all about, meet the organizers and add your two cents. Oh, and if you like, sign up to help us. This conference will be volunteer-driven, start to finish, so we’ll need loads of help.
See you there?
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:
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.
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.
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.