While I love all of the startups in the Silicon Forest equally, SplashCast has always held a special place in my heart. Unfortunately, that scrappy Portland startup’s history has now come to an end. SplashCast has decided to shutter its operations.
While I love all of the startups in the Silicon Forest equally, Portland-based SplashCast has always held a special place in my heart.
You see, not too long after I came back to this side of the desk as a consultant, I had the opportunity to meet with QMind founder Mike Berkley a few years back—and signed an NDA, I might add—when he was getting ready to retool the company into what would become SplashCast. And then they hired Marshall Kirkpatrick. And Alex Williams. And they showed a great deal of promise.
Portland-based NEMO Design, in conjunction with Group y, brought a bunch of marketing folks together to listen to a panel of social media savvy folks, including Dave Allen, Lee Crane, Matt Savarino, James Todd, and Tony Welch all moderated by Marshall Kirkpatrick.
With a great group of opinionated speakers, the lively conversation jumped from topic to topic. And even though it got a little derailed by an SEO-focused comment and perhaps a little too much “Twine, drink!” it provided a great deal of insight for the “marketing savvy but potentially social media uninitiated” folks in attendance.
So, who killed social media? Like the seemingly unanswerable “how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?” the world may never know. But here’s what folks had to say. Read More
To blog or not to blog? It’s a question with which any number of corporations wrestle. And today at the InnoTech eMarketing Summit, Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb and Josh Bancroft of Intel will answer that question—and likely many more about corporate communications, blogging, and microblogging sites like Twitter. (I’ll be on the panel as well, doing a lot of smiling and nodding.)
Here’s the basis of the discussion:
Whether out of curiosity or under pressure, you’ve likely started a company blog. Maybe you’re even letting employees blog. But making blogging a successful component of your organization’s communications and support programs? That’s another thing, entirely. Join this panel of panel of elite bloggers and microbloggers to learn how you can use blogs to increase transparency with your target market, create deeper and lasting relationships with your existing customers, and improve your company’s visibility on the Web. Attendees are sure to leave with both a renewed motivation to blog and specific steps for improving their organizations’ use of traditional blogs and new microblogging platforms.
The three of us will be providing our insight at 2 PM, today, in Portland Ballroom 256 at the Oregon Convention Center. So if you’re at InnoTech, we’d love to see you. For you Twitter types, the hashtag for the event is #emspdx.
We’ve all been there. There’s that one article that you need to remember to read. You simply don’t have time to read it, right now. And you’re not sure if you’re going to want it after you’re done reading it.
In short, you can’t commit to saving it to your bookmarks because you’re not sure if it’s bookmark material, yet.
Currently, I have a system set up in Evernote that involves a lot of clipping and organizing—and then reading and deleting—to manage my list of “read this later.” Honestly, it takes a bit of effort to simply remind myself to go back and read a particular page. And the Evernote saving process has a couple of steps to it.
I saw I Need to Read This demoed at a recent Portland Web Innovators Demolicious, and I was blown away by how drop dead simple—and incredibly effective—the tool could be.
I Need to Read This is about as simple as you can get. Just register (either with a username and password or with OpenID) and add a I Need to Read This bookmarklet to you Web browser toolbar. That means it works for any browser—unlike a Firefox add-in (and since I generally run Camino, I’m addicted to bookmarklets).
The next time you’re browsing content and you come across a page you need to read? Simply click the bookmarklet and the page will be added to your list things you need to read.
Have a free minute to catch up on your reading? There’s another bookmarklet that will take you to the first item on your list of things to read.
What’s nice about I Need to Read This is that you can use all of its services through bookmarklets instead of having to install anything in your browser. There’s simply “I Need to Read This” and “Read an Article” bookmarklets, which you drag up to your browser’s toolbar, and on any story you want to bookmark you just hit the former bookmarklet to save it. Then, to read what you have saved you click the latter “Read an Article” button, which takes you to the latest story. Clicking it again takes you to the second most recent, and so on.
We love the previously mentioned Read It Later Firefox extension, which offers a simple method for saving bookmarks to read later. The I Need to Read This bookmarklet offers similar functionality without the extension dependence.
It’s Friday. It’s kind of chilly outside. You’re looking for something to do. Why not spend some time by the warm glow of your monitor learning some interesting stuff from some interesting people?
That’s why there’s Strange Love Live, the weekly podcast hosted by Cami Kaos and Dr. Normal. Dare I say, “the best podcast in Portland”? Indeed, I dare.
What’s that? You haven’t seen Strange Love Live? Are you kidding me?
And tonight would be a great night to tune in, because the special guest is none other than Marshall Kirkpatrick, the Emperor of RSS, VP of Content Development at ReadWriteWeb, and just all around nice guy.
With the Portland Twitter types, #afterhours is a bit of a running joke that describes the time where we all wedge in a little extra work while more sane less busy people relax.
Generally, there’s little to publicly show for #afterhours efforts. But that changed today, thanks to ReadWriteWeb‘s Marshall Kirkpatrick, well, marshaling some Portland #afterhours talent to help build out a new, heretofore top-secret property for the popular blog.
Over the past few weeks, Doug Coleman, Nate DiNiro, and Dionne Fox—and of course Marshall himself—have been burning the midnight oil… on both ends… or whatever. Suffice it to say, they’ve been putting in a great deal of time and effort on the site.
And now those efforts are seeing the light of day (Still carrying the imagery through. I’m an English major, you know.) Meet ReadWriteWeb Jobwire.
Through a mystical recipe of technological magic that I don’t even comprehend, the RWW Jobwire will provide the latest and greatest info on who’s going where, who’s hiring whom, and what companies are securing the most promising talent.
At a time when a number of popular tech blogs (Silicon Florist included) are bordering on the second coming of F*cked Company, this will be a welcome and interesting addition to the tech scene. And no doubt a better indicator of what’s actually happening with the best and brightest the Web has to offer.
We’ve been working on it for months, well before the current economic climate unfolded, but we’re hoping that a whole site of good news will serve our readers well in these troubled times. Companies are still hiring, people are still getting cool new jobs, and we’re going to report on it. We invite you to check out the new Jobwire site to meet the Jobwire team, learn about our special guest editors and check out some of the great new jobs people have landed lately!
So, get some good news today! Head on over to see Portland’s handiwork in action at the ReadWriteWeb Jobwire.
Thank you for watching out for me. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.
But it’s all good.
Many months ago, I spoke with the folks who run a bunch of regional startup blogs. And they were thinking about expanding their reach to create a national network of startup blogs.
As you well know, the whole reason I started writing Silicon Florist was to raise the visibility of all of the cool stuff you’ve been doing in Portland and the Silicon Forest. And I thought that this new offering would be a great opportunity to get more national exposure for the cool companies here in our neck of the woods.
Hopefully, this will provide another venue to highlight all of the cool stuff you folks are accomplishing.
If you’re writing about startups in the Silicon Forest and would like to be added to the mix, I’d be more than happy to put you in contact with the folks running the show.
And again, thanks to all of you who pinged me with “Did you know about this?” I can’t tell you how much that meant to me.
This all happened fairly suddenly. And I must admit that I’m both humbled and honored to be asked to write for an accomplished publication like ReadWriteWeb.
I’ll do my best to do you proud, Portland.
And rest assured, I’ll continue doing my best to cover all of the cool stuff happening here in the Silicon Forest. And highlighting all of the amazing things that you’re doing.
Look at it this way: You haven’t lost a blogger, you’ve gained another blog.
Just a reminder that a bunch of local venture capital types, entrepreneurs, and other tech enthusiasts will be gathering at the Intel Jones Farm campus on Friday for the Silicon Forest Forum.
I’ll be in attendance as part of my effort to continue the wacky week of Silicon Florist appearances at events. I had a great time at LivePitch Portland on Tuesday and was honored to moderate a phenomenal panel—Josh Bancroft, Dawn Foster, and Marshall Kirkpatrick—at the OEN PubTalk last night.
So what I am doing at the Silicon Forest Forum? More smiling and nodding, of course.
See? Smiling and nodding indeed. But at least it keeps a consistent theme to the week. That theme being “Great panel, but what is Rick doing up there?”
Sound interesting? I hear that there still a couple of seats left. So if you’d like to attend, swing by the Silicon Forest Forum site to register. And if you’re going to be there, please make sure to grab me and introduce yourself.
Portland-based blogger extraordinaire, Marshall Kirkpatrick, is well-known for his investigative skills, his objective reporting, and his almost Barnum-esque flare for hinting at the “big news” he’s just about to publish.
So when @marshallk sent the following tweet on Thursday night…
Let’s do the business thing first and the personal thing second, because I’ll probably get all gooby and misty by the end of this thing.
Marshall Kirkpatrick joins ReadWriteWeb full-time as Vice President of Content Development
Marshall has served in a part-time role as Lead Writer at ReadWriteWeb for nearly year, helping the publication climb the ranks of the tech blogs—and truly all blogs—to crack the top 10 of “most linked” blogs worldwide and to a near-permanent residence in the top 10 of the Techmeme Leader Board.
Marshall’s effect on ReadWriteWeb has clearly been felt. And, as such, his promotion to Vice President of Content Development is both timely and well deserved. Bringing him on as a full-time employee will only strengthen his ability to contribute to the publication.
So what will this new role entail? And does it mean we’ll see less of Marshall’s posts? Richard MacManus, RWW founder, described Marshall’s new role:
The grand title reflects Marshall’s senior position within ReadWriteWeb, where he will be responsible for driving a lot of our upcoming content developments. These include premium content, publishing system enhancements, and more magic things. Marshall will also continue to be ReadWriteWeb’s Lead Writer, so don’t worry his writing isn’t taking a backseat at all. He will be going full-time at RWW sometime over the next couple of weeks.
There’s no telling what Marshall has up his sleeve. But, before too long, we’re sure to see some of that Kirkpatrick magic beginning to wend its way into regular rotation on RWW:
I am really excited about getting to bring some of my other ideas to fruition with a team of good people and Richard’s support, though…. I think many of you will really like what you see us come up with over at ReadWriteWeb.
In my opinion, this is a shrewd and necessary move for the ReadWriteWeb team. Embracing one of the leading bloggers in the industry and giving him more control over the content on the site will only help RWW continue its ascent in the tech blog world.
That, and I never get tired of hard workers getting just rewards for their efforts.
Tech jobs come and go. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started chasing the next shiny Web 2.0 bauble.
So that’s why it’s I take a distinct pleasure in reporting truly important news like Marshall’s and Mikalina’s engagement.
Marshall puts the announcement in context:
Most important, I’m getting married to my partner Mikalina! Many of my work contacts here on the blog haven’t met Mikalina but many of you have. She’s wonderful and I love her very much.
I’ve been lucky enough to work with Marshall as a consultant, as my blogging mentor, and—yes—even as an entrepreneur on the receiving end of his objective reviews. But for all of that fun, learning, and excitement, I always feel luckiest about the fact that I get to count Marshall among my friends.
And there’s nothing better than seeing friends happy.
(See? I told you I’d get all gooby.)
So congrats to Mr. Kirkpatrick on two very exciting—and life altering—announcements. I can’t wait to see where he goes from here.
And, I can’t tell you how much I love it when this kind of stuff hits Techmeme.
