There are a couple of things that have come up recently that I wanted to share with you. I think they’re good, but I’m always open to your opinions.
Oregon Startup Blog
First and foremost, thank you. Truly. Thank you.
I had any number of Portland blogging and Twitter folks—Betsy Richter, Dawn Foster, Todd Kenefsky, and Paul Bingman, to name a few—questioning what was going on with the Oregon Startup Blog.
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.
So I threw my hat in the ring.
Recently, Oregon Startup Blog started syndicating Silicon Florist content and broadcasting it through Twitter. And while the implementation still has a few flaws, rest assured that we’re working through the kinks.
And it’s all on the up and up.
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.
ReadWriteWeb
It’s no secret that I’ve joked about ReadWriteWeb—one of the leading blogs in the world—being a “Portland blog.”
And with good reason.
I mean, while ReadWriteWeb’s founder, Richard MacManus, lives in New Zealand, there are two primary contributors—Marshall Kirkpatrick and Frederic Lardinois—here in the Rose City.
And that gave us more ReadWriteWeb contributors per capita than any city in the world.
Well—as luck would have it—they’ve just added one more writer from the Silicon Forest. So we now have a commanding lead.
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.
And again, thank you ever so much, to all of the Portland folks who have already swung by RWW to comment.
I’m looking forward to see where this goes.