Portland, Oregon, startup news, open source, and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
Strange times. I don’t have any better insights than you do. But I’m trying to make sense of it. Of this weirdness. Of this new abnormal. And trying to find threads or themes or paths that will help us move forward. That will give startups opportunities. And that will give all of us some strange semblance of a light at the end of the tunnel.
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If there’s a single bright point to what we’re experiencing, it is as simple as this. It’s humanity. At no single time has the entire globe been impacted by — and aligned against — something that so desperately reminded us all of our humanity, our commonality, and our need for one another. And that’s why stories like the Portland Maker Force story are both expected — and exceptional.
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When the pandemic isolation began, many tried and true ways of building connection and community — most notably, meeting face to face with people — disappeared, instantaneously. But the need for community didn’t. If anything, in fact, that need increased. Exponentially. But how are we to maintain and strengthen community in this new normal of self distancing?
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Looking for more ways to put your knowledge to work in the wake of this pandemic? Techstars, a global network of startup support and accelerator programs, is bringing their Startup Weekend model to help. With the Global Online Startup Weekend Unite to Fight COVID-19, a series of 54-hour sprints around the world seeking creative solutions to our most pressing issues.
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A few weeks ago, many of us were scrambling into action. Trying to think of simple but meaningful things we could do to help the community. Now, as the situation continues and folks are becoming more thoughtful and strategic about these efforts, we’re seeing some collaboration that could have lasting positive effects, even beyond the current situation. Like MakerForce.
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In an effort to curb the detrimental business impacts of this global pandemic, any number of politicians and government entities are working to provide reparations and grants at every level — local, regional, state, federal, global. And for all the potential benefit, the options can often cause more confusion than they solve. That’s why Built Oregon is putting together a series of online sessions to help decrypt these offerings for consumer product startups and the retailers who support them.
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One of my favorite things about Portland is its culture of craft and creativity. A close second is the culture of encouragement. When you combine those two things, you get the wackiness that is Portland. You get 200 different flavors of donuts, thousands of flavors of beer from hundreds of craft brewers. Food carts. Coffeeshops. It’s the combination of those cultures that truly makes Portland, Portland.
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You know those times when you’re ridiculously busy — you mean everyday? says every entrepreneur — and you’ve convinced yourself that that thing you forgot to do was actually done. But it wasn’t. Yeah. That. I meant to share the details of a survey Built Oregon and our partners recently completed to help give folks a better understanding of the impact of this whole COVID-19 situation on local business. But I didn’t. So I am now.
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I’ve tried to get away from promoting active campaigns on fundraising platforms, because I could honestly cover that all day every day. But in this weird new normal, I’m willing to shake it up a bit. Especially because these campaigns are working to Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) into the hands of healthcare professionals. And that’s desperately needed.
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Used to be, Portland had tons of hackathon opportunities. So many, that we kind of hacked ourselves out. And people found other ways to stimulate their creativity and occupy their time. But we have this latent hackathon potential. And a whole bunch of new folks in the ecosystem. So this seems like a really interesting and meaningful way to test the waters. There’s a COVID-19 Global Hackathon.
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