Portland Oregon startups, tech, news, events, jobs, and community
Portland startup and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
The days of spring are quickly transitioning into the days of summer. And that means there’s no better time than now for dragging a new crop of startups—kicking and screaming—through the intensive bootcamp mud in hopes of creating viable, sustainable, and profitable companies for Portland’s future.
The days of spring are quickly transitioning into the days of summer. And that means there’s no better time than now for dragging a new crop of startups—kicking and screaming—through the intensive bootcamp mud in hopes of creating viable, sustainable, and profitable companies for Portland’s future.
Enter Portland Ten, round two. Read More
Last Sunday, a group of folks representing the Portland open source, mobile, and coworking community got the chance to sit down and chat with Portland Mayor Sam Adams. Among those in attendance were Rubyist and Calagator lead Audrey Eschright, CubeSpace’s David Komisky, Software Association of Oregon Interim President Scott Kveton, the Mayor’s Economic Development Policy Advisor Skip Newberry, CubeSpace’s Eva Schweber, General Counsel at Extreme Arts & Sciences J-P Voilleque, and Small Society’s Raven Zachary.
Eva has a great recap of how the meeting played out, including insight on the topics we covered from telecommuting to open source to mobile. [UPDATE] And Skip Newberry from the Mayor’s Office has posted his recap, as well. So I wanted to take a different tact. I wanted to find out how the attendees perceived the meeting and the Mayor’s willingness to engage this group in conversation.
Here’s what they had to say. Read More
A number of us have recently had the opportunity to sit down with Amanda Hess. Amanda is working on a chapter for a larger piece on the Portland entrepreneurial scene, ranging from bikes to beer to restaurants to tech.
During the interviews, she’s been asking folks to describe the Portland tech scene in their own words. When she posed the question to me, I started to stutter through a fumbling response, when I suddenly realized I could do something better.
“Why don’t we ask the community?” I said. Read More
Given that even I have grown weary of bitching about the latest Twitter kerfuffle, I thought I might try and post something positive.
And what could be more positive than giving a local startup a little oomph as it competes with some heavyweights for a prestigious award? Well, nothing of which I can think, at the moment.
And while sales and tax management software startups aren’t the usual ilk of what I cover around here, I do love a good David and Goliath story. So here it goes… Read More
“If I only had more time to do [x].” It’s a phrase the confounds many a startup. And truly, every once in a while, that confounding problem is something terribly technical that requires a specific level of expertise. But most of the time, it’s simply something that needs to get done. Yet something for which it is impossible to find the time. And that makes it all the more aggravating.
All it would take is someone to help you do it. But that—especially for bootstrapped companies and side projects—can make the problem even more insurmountable. The idea of paying someone to do the job? Usually, not an option.
You know what would be perfect for completing these tasks? An intern. Even better? A paid intern. Someone who was getting reimbursed to help you with your project. And someone who had some skin in the game to perform at a level that would help your startup improve. Read More
Every time I’ve mentioned the trip I had planned for this week—“I’m going to Omaha”—I got the same quizzical look and a one answer response: “Why?”
Well, let me tell you. I’m sitting in Nebraska, right now, because there are a couple of guys in Omaha—Jeff Slobotski and Dusty Davidson—who write Silicon Prairie News, which is like the TechCrunch of their region. And they’re helping pull together a ton of events like they’re the Legion of Tech for the region. And they’re talking about opening a creative coworking space like they’re the Citizen Space of Omaha. Read More
It’s no secret that one of the many reasons I started Silicon Florist was to get more people interested in what you’re doing.
Yes you, you silly goose.
You’re inventing incredibly cool stuff. You’re bending Web and mobile technology to your will. You’re taking risks. And you’re trying to build companies that will help Oregon and the Silicon Forest thrive.
Recently, Mike Rogoway of The Oregonian has been working on a piece about the small Web and mobile startups here in town and the community that has grown up around them. The article—entitled “Tech Entrepreneurs Defy the Recession“—has been posted to the Web and should be in the print edition on Saturday.
It’s an expansive piece that manages to bring together views from a number of different folks from the Portland Web startup scene. Among them, David Abramowski, Ward Cunningham, Dave Hersh, Harvey Mathews, Kevin Tate, Raven Zachary, and Josh Bancroft. Read More
I just wanted to drop a short note to let all of you know that the Silicon Florist Moo cards—featuring tons of cool Silicon Forest startups—have arrived. Thank you to everyone who participated! Your logos all look beautiful.
Let’s not stop here. Hopefully, I’ll be handing a bunch of these out to folks, which means I’ll need to reorder cards. And given that Moo just opened its US office, I may just order up some new cards simply out of sheer giddiness.
Would you like to participate? Great! Read More
Every once in a while, I get something stuck in my craw that causes me to get up on my high horse. Sometimes I then convince that high horse to climb up on a soapbox. And then I take on a holier-than-thou stance and pontificate on something which has been irking me.
This would be one such occasion. (And, fair warning, there’s another one coming soon.)
Something has been bugging me. And if you’ve got a sec, I’d like to lay it all out there.
And to be candid, remember I’m only taking the time to bitch about it because I think we could be fixing something that would help the Web and mobile startups in the Silicon Forest get the recognition they so richly deserve.
And it’s really easy to fix. Read More
