Techpaulogy

Want to Get More Involved in the PDX Tech Community? Get Elected!

Interested in getting more deeply involved in Portland's tech community? Now's your chance: the Legion of Tech elections were just announced. There are 2 different LoT positions up for grabs, involving differing levels of responsibility:

• Legion of Tech Board of Directors - nominations are due November 1st.
• Legion of Tech Advisory Committee - nominations are due December 1st.

See the LoT blog post for details on the positions' day-to-day expectations and activities.

If you are interested in running for the Board or the Advisory Committee, please contact one of the current Legion of Tech Board members (e.g. me!) and express your interest in a nomination.

Starting my New Job with Jive Software

Last week was my final run with Anvil Media -- I had a great time there. They have an amazing PPC/SEO/Web Analytics team, who I will miss tremendously (but luckily will be working with, and playing with, still).  Anvil has a track record to prove its success, with a client base that includes enterprise software companies, global technology publishers, universities, brand name e-commerce sites, financial services providers, travel & tourism sites, etc. Plus, this year we won a Marketing Award of Excellence (MAX) for Best Return on Investment (ROI) from the American Marketing Association (AMA) of Oregon (for our work with SmartWool's PPC campaigns.

While all this was very exciting, I've been feeling a little antsy recently, working for client service firms. A good chunck of my professional career has been spent in the worlds of management consulting and advertising agencies. More and more, I've been wanting to trade breadth for depth. Working in client services provides an amazing opportunity to experience a wide variety of businesses, challenges, and opportunities, as well as develop an arsenal of skill sets -- I used to call my days with Deloitte Consulting a "business boot camp for liberal arts students." These days though, I want to focus, go deeper, have more ownership in the process, and ultimately leave no stone unturned as can sometimes happen within the constraints of multiple clients, budgets, billable hours, and the intricacies of client-vendor relationships.

So, timing of the opportunities at Jive Software couldn't have been better. I'd already met the team through various events (Portland Web Innovators, BarCamp Portland, etc.), and had done a good amount of my client work in the enterprise software space (e.g. Deloitte, Attensa, ColumbiaSoft, and PolyServe). Plus, I am a rabid consumer of online collaboration tools, so its enterprise collaboration software called Clearspace was right down my alley. Jive also develops a real-time, business-class instant messaging server called Openfire,  and an online community portal called Clearspace X that brings all the bells and whistles of Clearspace to an externally-facing platform that offers customer support and user collaboration (the next generation of the wildly popular forum software). I'm coming on board as the Online Marketing Manager, to help coordinate Web efforts to market Jive's suite of products, as well as generally promote the benefits of collaboration software to bust information silos that have been built in a world of emails and redundant conversations. It's going to be lots of fun!

See You at Ignite Portland on Oct. 25th

I just got pinged by the BarCampPortland distro list -- which reminded me to let everyone know to get on down to Ignite Portland this Thursday (Oct. 25th). This event is going to be awesome! Thanks thanks thanks again to the organizers: Dawn, Josh, Raven, and Todd.

5:30 Doors Open
6:00 Registration & Networking
6:20 Welcome and Introductions
6:30 Presentations Wave 1

• Renny Gleeson: What is Ignite?
• Steve Morris: How to put together an investor presentation
• Urban Scout: Rewilding. The process of undoing domestication
• Adam Duvander: Simplicity, create killer products and live a saner life
• Audrey Eschright: Why knitting is a good hobby for geeks
• Kevin Tate: Emergence In Business
• Scott Huber: I know more about Russell Davies than I do about my boss sitting across from me.
• Crystal Beasley: How to make a proper southern meal
• Scott Kveton: Free beef and clean bathrooms: the irrelevance of Web 2.0

7:20 Break and Networking
7:35 Door Prize
7:40 Presentations Wave 2

• MJ: Unicycling for a wicked-good time
• Selena Deckelmann: Are surveys useful?
• Bill DeRouchey: The History of the Button.
• Keith Gerr: Identity and brand development strategies for a wired world
• Sarah Gilbert: How keeping chickens will save your life
• MarcoPolo: You Give Good TXT: How to Talk to Someone Romantically Online
• Justin Kistner: Decentralized social network standards
• Hideshi Hamaguchi: How to live like Japanese in Portland
• Douglas Wolk: The Complete and Utter History of the Numa Numa Dance

8:30 Networking

 

pdxMindShare + Anvil Media Coverage on Seth Godin's Blog

Kent Lewis, president here at Anvil Media, just got off the phone with Seth Godin (the best-selling author of more than seven books on marketing, the spread of ideas, -- e.g. Purple Cow!). Seth gave a brief write-up of the conversation on his blog:

"The most important part of the story is this: he doesn't do the community work for that reason [a profit motive]. He does it for the right reason--because it feels good to help his community. The magic of the zero-marginal-cost scalable nature of the web is that your volunteer effort goes a long way and generosity almost always pays off."

Seth is referring to pdxMindShare, an invaluable resource for numerous people here in Portland's business community.

Portland Web Innovators Meeting

I just got back from my first Portland Web Innovators meeting -- met a great crew of people. The main topic was a free-form discussion lead by Jason and Matt about their experience working on a side project (Unthirsty, a sweet happy hour finder) that they essentially used instead of a resume to help land their current gigs at Instrument.

Here are some of the people I met:

• Jason Glaspey,  Unthirsty co-conspirator
• Matt King, Unthirsty co-conspirator
• Justin Lewis, Interactive Director at Instrument
• Adam DuVander, creator of wifiPDX
• Justin Kistner, Interactive Manager at Nemo Design (& wrote a full summary of the meeting)
• Kevin Scaldeferril, programmer at Yahoo
• Sean R., a Geek With a Laptop