If you’ve spent any time on this blog, you’ve no doubt heard me bemoan — or maybe even wax poetic — about the fact that it’s very rare for Portland or the region to have a a succession of exits or liquidity events. They generally happen as one offs. Or blips. But with recent activity for Cozy and Radar followed quickly by news of Mirador and Dakine, I’ll be darned if I’m not getting a wee bit optimistic about breaking that curse.
For as many consumer products as we produce around Portland—and throughout the state—its still rare for Portland’s tech startups and consumer brands to cross paths. It happens. Most notably with companies like Brandlive, embodee, Opal, and Orchestra. But not as often as you’d think.
I just wanted to take a second to say “Thank you.”
I wanted to thank you for caring about what’s happening in the Silicon Forest. To thank you for keeping your eye on the Web and mobile startup scene. To thank you for giving all of the amazing developers in the area the attention they so richly deserve. To thank you for giving the entrepreneurs of Portland, Corvallis, Eugene, Bend, Ashland, Hood River, Vancouver, and all of the Oregon and Washington towns in between the opportunity to wow you with the products they’re building and the problems they’re solving.
I’m constantly reminded of how incredibly lucky I am that I get the opportunity to write about this stuff. And even luckier that you swing by to read about it. So thanks for letting me into your browser or feed reader or mobile device every once in awhile to share what people are sharing with me.
SXSW Interactive always reaffirms my belief in how lucky we are to have the community we do.
The outpouring of emotion, passion, and volunteerism that erupted last week—upon the news that ORBlogs was shutting down—has been nothing short of amazing. And I’m honored to have been part of it.
Thank you very, very much to everyone who read about the situation, commented, blogged, spoke, and wrote about the effort to save ORBlogs. The response was incredible. And please, to paraphrase Betsy Richter, don’t take the lack of communications as any sign that things aren’t happening.
Rest assured, things are moving.
And in an effort keep everyone in the loop and to keep the momentum going, I thought it would be wise to provide an update.
In short, John Metta of Hood River has taken up the gauntlet and is moving forward—at an accelerated clip—on figuring out how to bring an Oregon blog aggregator back online. He’s got a great plan, he’s working on creating a project site, and he’s established a mailing list to discuss ORBlogs 2.0. You can also follow John on Twitter as Mettadore.
John is in touch with Paul Bausch, ORBlogs creator. So hopefully, we’ll hear more soon.
And as I’ve mentioned before, while John has graciously offered to take the lead on this project—and has already been exceedingly active in that regard—it will still be important to figure out two things:
How do we thank Paul for five years of supporting ORBlogs, our blogging historical landmark?
How do we, as a community, support John as he works to transition to ORBlogs 2.0?
Getting involved and staying involved is the first step. I’m really looking forward to see where this goes.
