Portland’s role in iPhone development is pretty epic. Due to recent interest (like 5 people asking if I knew any iPhone developers in the last week alone), I’ve compiled a working list of iPhone developers near or in the Portland area. Please spread this list to anyone you feel it may service.

First off, if you haven’t already, sign up for the Mobile Portland mailing list or join the Mobile Portland Google Group. Many more iPhone developers can be reached through the list. Finally, please add yourself to the list through comments, and I’ll add you to this list. Eventually, this list will be stored both on Oakhazelnut and the AboutUs.org Wiki as part of PortlandTech.

—–

Raven Zachary

Raven Zachary helps people create, develop, and launch iPhone products and services. He works with dynamic, creative, market-driven organizations on iPhone strategy and product development.

Silicon Florist wrote that, “Raven is the creator of iPhoneDevCamp, chair of the upcoming iPhoneLive conference , and consultant to a number of iPhone developers in town and around the nation”.

Raven says that, “If you’re in the area and are going to Macworld, there’s a iPhone Intelligence party on Tuesday 1/6/09″. You can RSVP here.

About: http://raven.me/ravenzachary/
Projects: http://raven.me/projects/

———-

PheedYou

Founded in September 2008 by three geeks and a business guy, PheedYou is dedicated to producing iPhone applications which deliver rich content at the touch of a button.

Alexander Mace, CEO, Chadwick Marcus, President, Brett Carter, Engineer and Preston Hunt, Engineer, build products that facilitate mobile interaction between users and existing content providers.

They recently built a Craigslist application for iPhone or iPod Touch.

Twitter:@sashamace
Site: http://www.pheedyou.com/about/
Applications: http://www.pheedyou.com/

———-

Subatomic Studios

Subatomic studios is a small Portland firm specializing exclusively in iPhone app development.

Fieldrunners, the studio’s first App for the iPhone and Apple, was nominated in five categories: Best App Ever, Best Productivity Killer, Best Original Game, Best Long-Play Game, and Best Strategy Game.

More Information: http://www.subatomicstudios.com/
Contact: Sergei Gourski

——–

Avatron Software (Vancouver, WA)

Avatron was founded in April 2008 by Dave Howell, a six-year veteran Apple engineering manager, Avatron is a leading developer of popular applications for the iPhone and iPod touch. Avatron’s Air Sharing application, downloaded by nearly one million users in its first week, has raised the bar for iPhone application design and software quality.”

See Avatron’s first commercial application for the iPhone, Air Sharing (more than 700,000 downloads in one week).

More information: http://avatron.com/

——–

Cloud Four (Portland, OR)

In his post onObama for iPhone, Rick Turoczy summed up Cloud Four’s foray into the iPhone dev world, “The folks at Cloud Four have really come into their own in the world of consulting on mobile apps—especially when it comes to things like usability. (What? You actually want people to be able to use the app?) They’ve put in some impressive (volunteer) work on the Obama for iPhone app and equally impressive (paid) work on the interface design for the Mobile Wall Street Journal app“.

“Cloud Four is proudly based in Portland, Ore.,” they sad, “but we serve customers worldwide.”

More Information: http://cloudfour.com/

——–

Spotlight Mobile

Spotlight Mobile is a Portland, Oregon software development firm specializing in mobile devices and web applications. It was founded by Cornell University graduates Kiyo Kubo and Nick Farina, and based on research from the Cornell Human-Computer Interaction Lab. They got their start bringing new uses for location-awareness technology to market.

Spotlight Mobile in the Pearl has been doing mobile development for years: location-based apps for the Smithsonian, Portland Art Museum, and parks, as well as iPhone apps like this one for Vogue:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/28/fashion/28ROW.html?ref=style

Here’s another NYT piece about Spotlight’s Cornell Univ. admissions tour work:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/14/technology/circuits/14gpss.html

More information: http://www.spotlightmobile.com/about/
Full client list: http://www.spotlightmobile.com/clients/
Contact: Kiyo Kubo or Nick Farina http://www.spotlightmobile.com/contact/

——–

Eric Eaglstun

Although he won’t actually be living in Portland for another two weeks, he’d like to added to this list.
Most of Eric’s has been in web development, and he’s worked on web user interfaces specific to the iPhone (iUI, javascript etc) but he is on track to have his first App in the iTunes store by early February.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ericeaglstun
——–

Makerlab

Makerlab is a small Portland-based thinktank with ties to Silicon Valley. It lies at the intersection of art and technology, and is comprised of a variety of seasoned programmers, researchers, and artists.

Contact: @anselm, @paigedestroy or @caseorganic.
Site: http://makerlab.org/

——–

Andrew Pouliot

Another new mobile developer in Portland, aka Darknoon/, is doing native iPhone app development. He’s originally from Silicon Valley, but thinks the scene here is vibrant enough to make a good living (plus working with people elsewhere).

“The Cocoa scene is only getting hotter,” says Pouliot, “and some people are moving to Portland to do this sort of stuff”.

Services and contact: http://darknoon.com/services

——–

Clifton Burt

iPhone Developer

Site: http://cliftonburt.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/cliftonburt.

——–

P. Mark Anderson

A Portland based programmer (Ruby, iPhone) and painter developing useful web services that blend code and art.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/pmark
Site: http://bordertownlabs.com

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MorganPdx

@morganpdx is an aspiring iPhone developer, but needs a Macbook.

Site: http://www.morganpdx.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/morganpdx.

——–

Jonathan Leto

iPhone developer.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/dukeleto
Site: http://leto.net/.

——–

Jonathan Wight (Rural South Carolina)

Even though Jonathan Wight lives, as he puts it, “as not Portland as you can get”, he writes iPhone and Mac OS Software and seems like a pretty cool guy. Besides, in a world of online collaboration and shrinking space between people and ideas, he might be fun to work with on some new ideas.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/schwa
Site: http://toxicsoftware.com/iphoneswpro/

——–

Good luck and have a great time with your project development!

Sincerely,
Amber Case
Cyborg Anthropologist
http://www.twitter.com/caseorganic

What an epic month it has been! There was  the WordPress 2.7 Release party, the Cubespace Holiday party, a couple of Beer and Blogs and a lot of snow. Also, CyborgCamp ran smoothly (the keynote videos are up if you haven’t seen them yet).

This next week looks pretty awesome, too. If you haven’t been before, you should really attend Dorkbot. A lot of amazing people and devices usually show up, and it’s kind of like going to a museum of electronics.

Next month, be sure to check out the SOUK holiday party, as you can work there for free the entire day. And January 14th continues the epic Lunch 2.0 saga at the OTBC headquarters. If you’re heading out there on the Max, make sure not to miss the Lunch 2.0 Party Train for some on-the-go networking.

If you’re a creative type, come to Drinking and Drawing on Jan 14th at 6:00Pm, where two types of fun will undoubtedly collide in new and unexpected ways.

Finally, on Februrary 20th, don’t miss out on RecentChangesCamp. If you’re at all interested in wikis, this place will be heaven for you. It is the only event of its kind in the world.

See below for a sequential list of all of the events happening this month, with details and ticket/RSVP information.

———————–

Monday, December 22, 2008 from 7–11pm

DorkbotPDX Meeting

Lucky Labrador Beer Hall
1945 NW Quimby
Portland OR 97209
US

Website
http://dorkbotpdx.org/

Description
Come join us for an evening of socializing, talking about odd hacks and poking around with other people toys. Bring things for show and tell if you like, or just bring a willingness to share your interests. We’ll be the kids with all the coolest stuff on the table. Hope to see you there.

See original posting on Calagator

Sunday, December 28, 2008 from 1–5pm

DorkbotPDX Open Lab

Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) Room 205
1241 NW Johnson Street
Portland Oregon 97209
US
(map)

Website
http://dorkbotpdx.org/

RSVP on Upcoming

Friday January 2, 2009

Beer and Blog (weekly, every Friday from 4-6Pm)

Green Dragon
928 SE 9th Ave
Portland, Oregon 97214
Category: Social
Website: http://portland.beerandblog.com/

We’ll still find a way to hang out and warm our bellies with Holiday ale! After all, even if I said we weren’t meeting, people still would show up. I love you guys for that. So, this Friday we’ll get together and toast to 2008 as we enjoy the last official Beer and Blog of the year (although people may still show up on the 26th).

January will be Beer and Blog’s 1 year anniversary and we have some cool plans in the works. We’re pulling together the best of what we learned in 2008 and turning it into a full or half day workshop for all those who want to start a blog or improve one. We’re also going to do a mini Job Fair.

Monday January 5, 2009

souk’s Birthday

souk
322 NW 6th Avenue, suite 200
Portland, Oregon 97214
Category: Social

Website: http://www.soukllc.com

Celebration of a local small business serving the creative class - we’re 2 years old! Work for free today, or just stop by to enjoy cupcakes, cheer, Blazer tix drawing and more.

RSVP on Upcoming

Monday January 12, 2009 from 6:00pm - 7:00pm

Mobile Love, Android Style #8

Lucky Lab Brew Pub
915 SE Hawthorne Blvd
Portland, Oregon
Category: Social
2nd monday of the month is android day. Android is the mobile phone operating system from Google. meet with local area developers.

RSVP on Upcoming

Wednesday January 14, 2009 from 12:00pm - 2:00pm

Lunch 2.0 at the New OTBC Office

OTBC in the Beaverton Round
12725 SW Millikan Way
Beaverton, Oregon 97005
Category: Social
For the first time, Portland Lunch 2.0 will happen in the ‘burbs, Beaverton to be precise.

The OTBC is moving into new space and partnering with the Beaverton Round Executive Suites.

So, to showcase their new digs and introduce Lunch 2.0 to the suburbs, the OTBC will be hosting Lunch 2.0 on January 14, 2009.

The Beaverton Round is right on the MAX line about 20 minutes from Portland. Just jump off the Blue Line at the Beaverton Central stop, and you’re 90 feet from the new OTBC office.

Lunch 2.0 is a Valley phenomenon that you can read about at lunch20.com, and we’re putting a PDX stamp on it.

You can follow all things Portland Lunch 2.0 at Silicon Florist.

Are you vegan or vegetarian? Please leave a comment so we can plan food accordingly. Thanks.

RSVP on Upcoming

Wednesday January 14, 2009 at 11:00am

Lunch 2.0 Party Train to OTBC

Pioneer Courthouse Square
701 Sw 6th Ave
Portland, Oregon 97204
Category: Social
All Aboard! We’re going to par-tay all the way down to the OTBC for Lunch 2.0.

Here’s the scoop: Meet up at Pioneer Square MAX stop and catch the Blue Line MAX at 11:27. It will arrive just a few feet from the OTBC at 11:50. We’ll all be in the rear MAX car cuz that’s how we roll.

Don’t forget to RSVP for Lunch 2.0 http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1148458/

Chuga Chuga Choo! Choo!

RSVP on Upcoming

Saturday January 17, 2009 from 1:00pm - 5:00pm

Masterbacon: A day for bacon lovers

Kveton’s
2822 SW Boundary St
Portland, 97239
Category: Social

Website: http://bacongeek.com/masterbacon

Have you ever wanted to get together with a bunch of other bacon geeks and just geek out about bacon? What if there was an event specifically catered to bacon geeks to be able to share their favorite bacon treats with the world? Wouldn’t it make sense to make it a competition complete with trophy and prizes? Of course it would.

Masterbacon is just such an event.

RSVP on Upcoming (63 people have saved this event at the time of posting).

Tuesday January 13, 2009 at 7:30pm

Portland Arts and Lectures: Michael Pollan

Portland Center for the Performing Arts - Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

1037 Sw Broadway
Portland, Oregon 97205
Category: Education

Buy Tickets

Wednesday January 14, 2009 at 6:00pm

Drinking and Drawing

The Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave.
Portland, Oregon 97209
Category: Media
Website: http://www.drinkinganddrawing.org

Drinking and Drawing is an evening of collaborative animation. Artists, animators, spectators- everyone is welcome, and anyone can participate!

The event is free to Cascade SIGGRAPH and ASIFA members- all others pay $5 at the door, and everyone must be 21+.

Visit www.drinkinganddrawing.org for more information about the event and how it works, and follow @DrinknDrawPDX on Twitter for updates.

Ticket Info: $5

RSVP on Upcoming

Monday January 26, 2009 from 7:00pm - 9:00pm

PDXCritique

CubeSpace
622 SE Grand Ave
Portland, Oregon 97214
Category: Social
Website: http://pdxcritique.com
The mission of PDX Critique is to provide a monthly forum for designers of any stripe (graphic, web, whatever) to crawl out of their work void to share information and constructive criticism.

Have something you want critiqued? Contact us via the google group or on the blog.

RSVP on Upcoming

Thursday February 19, 2009 at 7:00pm

Ignite Portland 5

Bagdad Theater and Pub
3702 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd
Portland, Oregon 97214
Category: Social
Website: http://www.igniteportland.com

Save the date! Ignite Portland 5 will happen on Thursday, February 19, 2009, at the Bagdad Theater. Stay tuned to http://www.igniteportland.com/ for more details, and submit YOUR talk idea now!

RSVP on Upcoming

Friday February 20, 2009 - Sunday February 22, 2009

RecentChangesCamp 2009

University Place Hotel
310 SW Lincoln Street
Portland, Oregon 97201
Category: Other
Website: http://2009rcc.org/

RecentChangesCamp (RCC) is the unconference for the Wiki community. Born of the intersection of wiki and Open Space (an unconference facilitation method), it is named after the “recent changes” page found on many wikis.

RCC is 100% free to attendees, and is open to everyone: from hardcore wikiholics to the mildly curious. No pre-registration is required, but it would be helpful if you could add yourself to our list of attendees on our planning wiki. You can also follow our updates at http://twitter.com/RCCamp.

RCC is held over the course of three days, with participants welcome to come and go as they please. Exact times have not yet been nailed down, but it generally starts Friday morning, continues all day on Saturday, and closes late Sunday afternoon.

RSVP on Upcoming

Tuesday February 24, 2009 - Thursday February 26, 2009

“Secrets of Agile Teamwork: Beyond Technical Skills” Workshop

McMenamins | Kennedy School
5736 NE 33rd Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97211
Category: Education

Website: http://www.agileuniversity.org/course_details.jsp?courseid=1…

Beyond technical skills, Agile success depends on productive self-organizing teams. How do you develop, grow, and maintain a functioning self-organizing team? It’s not magic, but it doesn’t just happen either. Effective self-organizing teams rely on personal and interpersonal effectiveness.

In this hands-on workshop, we’ll discover the secrets to developing the skills you need to succeed and lead on a self-organizing team.

Ticket Info: $1500
Buy Tickets

RSVP on Upcoming

————-

Amber Case can be followed on Twitter @caseorganic. She is available for new media and online productivity consulting, data aggregation, and training in blogging and Internet marketing. E-mail caseorganic at gmail dot com for inquiries.

Portland Web Innovators occurred at CubeSpace on Wednesday December 3, 2008 at 7:00pm.

Rick Turoczy (Silicon Florist) lead a discussion about the Portland tech scene heading into 2009. Where are we now, how did we get here and where do we want to go?

Bram Pitoyo live-streamed the session, which I’ve embedded here in case you couldn’t make it.

Free Videos by Ustream.TV

Event Recap

We need more resources for outsiders who don’t know the Portland tech community exists.

Calagator did not exist a year ago. We’ve been building a lot more tools to make people capable of communicating with each other and sharing information.

Traditionally, one might say, “look how much we’ve accomplished without marketing”. But we have done a bunch of marketing — we just haven’t done a lot of traditional marking. We market all of the time — but our marketing channels are each other. If you’re not within the bubble it becomes difficult for you to understand that the bubble is in existence.

There’s something magical about this being this little home brew community that has a bunch of people who do what they love to do because they love it.

Aaron Hockley: Maybe there needs to be a “how to get clued into the Portland tech scene” presentation. Short, like the Common Craft show’s “Twitter in 5 minutes”.

We just know all of this stuff is happening because it shows up in all of the tools we’re using. So what are the tools I can use to get clued in that aren’t Twitter?

There are a lot of things people need to be able to have access to.

David Kominsky: While accessibility is a great ideal to strive for, community is, to some degree, defined by exclusivity. One of the strengths of the Portland tech community is the degree to which we all see each other on Twitter, at Beer and Blog, at Backspace…ect.

SAO vs. Inner Portland Tech (Portland Tech Twitter)

With SAO, a quick Google Search brings you right into the heart of the community. We create a lot of data that is spread all over many different sites, so there no one consolidated resource

Personally, I believe communities are based on interest.

By definition, communities have boundaries. Interests create those boundaries. Additionally, Portland, more than almost any other place I’e been — does everything by word of mouth.

There’s a downside to that — there is a sort of hump to get over — in learning how to interact with the tech community.

SAO seems to have much stronger delineated boundaries that the general Portland tech community does.

Do we need a community aggregator for the Portland Tech community so that many different spokes of the wheel can join together in one viewable place?

One of the great things about Portland is that if you see something there — you can act on it. Those connections will form over time.

The weather is terrible. I feel like we should keep people out.

Steven Walling: What we need is not to build a new tool — but to use the tools we have and the community we have to reach out to these people and bring them in.

I don’t think we need to build something and expect them to come. I think we need to reach out and bring them in.

Bad news for everyone in the room: you are the most social skilled people in Portland (in tech). The reason

Or they’re not interested. they have no idea what is going on outside their walls. no idea what is going on outside of you.

Geeks in Portland don’t necessarily know what to do with money. if they even had it. - Carolyn Duncan.

Great things can happen to a community without destroying it — with the addition of money which can provide a living to you and your friends.

Funding

We need a clear infrastructure — where the types of funding are, and how it works.

VC’s really invest in companies, and for a lot of us who do this sort of freelance sort of stuff, it is not as good.

The real problem is the cultural differences.

It is really easy to change software — it is very difficult to change hardware. Paying for things in real life is justifiable, but software has a different model. It is less justifiable to have to pay for software than tangible hardware and physical spaces.

Conclusions

A lot was said, and a lot was brought to mind. One thing was certain — we’re very happy with our community. It is only to get stronger from here.

Want to attend more Web Innovators events? Have a look at the Web Innovators website.

We’ve done a lot of things in Portland, but there is one type of event that’s been missed by many people. This camp ignores a significant chunk of the Portland Tech community. In other words…

We need a kids tech camp.

• Kids need to have a great place to meet each other and experience technology.
• Parents with kids should be able to bring their children to a networking event and get to know each other.
• The venue should be fun and educational. It should allow participation and activities for kids, so that parents can have an enjoyable time alongside them, or amongst themselves.

Twitter Responses:

• Irene_S: @caseorganic That’d be great! Having kids does cut into one’s networking time.
• harrisja: @caseorganic I completely agree! more kid friendly tech events FTW!
• smb: @caseorganic kids networking tech event would be awesome. What age ranges are you contemplating?
• petsaretalking: @caseorganic What an awesome idea!
• anitacochran: @caseorganic That sounds like fun, get any nibbles?
• LeStew: @caseorganic re: #childtech YES YES YES!!!!
• snelson: @caseorganic I’m in for planning… especially if at least some of program could be targeted at GIRLS and technology
• brampitoyo: @snelson @caseorganic I know that some robotic club are connected to DorkbotPDX, and they’re open for both girls and boys.
• neophiliac: @caseorganic sounds cool. I’ve been looking for an excuse to learn (Ruby) Shoes; it’s great for kids.
• MatthewStadler: @caseorganic Yes on all-ages tech event. Key is all-ages, not just “kids,”i.e., adults drink, swear, etc., alongside kids. Venue more Backspace than OMSI
• oleoptene: @caseorganic But kids tech event awesome idea we would totally get behind. Suggest kids take part in planning of it.
• oleoptene: @caseorganic Besides bringing older offspring to Ignite (they loved cyborg anthropology) we’ve talked kidcamp @ barcamp, facility a problem.
• kmcdade: @caseorganic I’m very interested in helping plan a kids event. Also, @kidtech seems like the name of someone’s account, so #childtech might work better.

Venue:

I agree with MatthewStadler that a venue more like Backspace than OMSI is needed. Also, Oleoptene’s dea of letting kids plan the event seems really fun. All ages seems nice — but probably not too young. The cut-off age could be 6, for instance.

Conclusion:

Seems like we have enough interest to proceeed. The question is of “how”. A date would be nice. Some time in Feburary would give us ample time to plan a half day of activities and little workshops, as well as secure a venue and funding (if needed), and to gather momentum. The only question I have is whether the event should be large or small.

Yep. So we need one of these events. Reply or contact me in some way (I’m @caseorganic on Twitter) if you’re interested in helping out. We can probably get a Wiki started and get the show on the road!

There are some amazing events happening this week in Portland Tech.

I’m telling you about these events because I won’t be there to experience them. Tomorrow, I’ll be flying somewhere and won’t be able to hang out with the Portland Tech community. I’m relying on everyone to document these events so that their awesomeness is remembered for a really long time.

Here are the events you might consider attending, starting with:

Wednesday Nov 19, 2008

PDX 501 Tech Club/Net Tuesday: Nonprofit Tech Extravaganza

5:30–7:30pm
Lucky Labrador Beer Hall
1945 NW Quimby
Portland OR 97209
Map

Description

Join us to talk nonprofit technology and how 2 organizations working for your better good want to collaborate to create more useful events for you in 2009.

The idea is to provide a fuller, more in-depth series of events. Our main goal is to provide a two monthly meetups that directly relate to each other, providing introductory information and hands-on engagement. But we want to see if that aligns with your goals!

We’re going to dedicate our November meetup to a party of sorts to help us determine what it is you would like to know and learn… and how much you’re willing to learn.

Come for this pre-holiday party with food, fun, good folks and conversation!

Email questions to Anna at anna@nten.org.

CONNECT ONLINE

Portland Net Tuesday at http://netsquared.meetup.com/13/

Net Squared, a product of Tech Soup, works to spur responsible adoption of social web tools by social benefit organizations. There’s a whole new generation of online tools available ? tools that make it easier than ever before to collaborate, share information and mobilize support. These tools include blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, podcasting, and more. Some people describe them as “Web 2.0″; we call them the social web, because their power comes from the relationships they enable.

Portland 501 Tech Club - http://groups.nten.org/group.htm?mode=gvb&igid=5273

The 501 Tech Club is a monthly gathering of people working on or interested in nonprofit technology in the Portland, OR Area. Our meetings are opportunities for anyone interested in helping nonprofits use technology to get together and talk shop in a fun, informal setting, and our name refers to the fact that most of us work primarily with and for 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations.

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Thursday Nov 20, 2008

The Showdown in Stumptown: 2008 PAF Rosey Awards

5:30–10pm
Antoinette Hatfield Hall (formerly the Newmark Theatre Building)
1111 SW Broadway
Portland Oregon 97205
(map)

Website

http://portlandadfed.com/events/details.php?id=33

Note: If you’re going to this event, be sure to say hello to Bram Pitoyo, who will be volunteering/live blogging it.

Step into the ring, touch gloves and cue the Rocky theme song (or Eye of the Tiger, your choice), it’s time for the 51st annual PAF Rosey Awards. You’ll see who duked it out for this years winner’s circle. Honors include awards of Merit and Excellence, and of course, Rosey. Join us to see how each contender stacked up to the competition.

Reception/Entries on display: 5:30-7:30pm

Show: 7:30pm

Members: $91./Non Members $106.

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Thursday Nov 20, 2008

WordIgniteBarCampCampCampCampPalooza… PDX

6–8pm
CubeSpace
622 SE Grand Ave.
Portland Oregon 97214
(map)

RSVP

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1320316

Details to be given for WordIgniteBarCampCampCampCampPalooza… PDX at IGNITE PORTLAND 4 on November 13th (there may be Cupcakes).

That’s all we can say for now, but… you do not want to miss this.

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Thursday Nov 20, 2008

Non-Profit Networking

6–8pm
CubeSpace
622 SE Grand Ave.
Portland Oregon 97214
(map)

Website

http://www.cnrg-portland.org

Are you a non-profit or someone who works with them? A volunteer looking an organization eager for your time? A non-profit wanting to partner on a project?A non-profit looking for affordable consultants or vendors? If so, then non-profit networking is for you. Come meet others who work and volunteer in Portland’s non-profit sector. Swap resources, share ideas, devise solutions and just hang out with community-minded people like yourself. Bring your brains and your rolodex; we provide snacks and drinks.

*This is a regular event that happens every third Thursday of the month.

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Thursday Nov 20, 2008

SAO: Life Inside an Iteration

6–9pm
Governor Hotel
614 SW 11th Avenue
Portland OR 97205
(map)

Cost: $10 for members $30 for non members
Registration Deadline: 11/18/2008
Topic: Life Inside an Iteration

Buffet Dinner is included.

Agile software development processes such as Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum, and Lean Software Development have become mainstream in many organizations, but what is “Life Inside an Iteration” really like? Find out as our panelists talk about what activities help let QA and Development work in sync, what the hand offs are and how they happen, how they have managed the inevitable change within the iteration. Our panelists include developers, testers, customers and consultants to bring a broad perspective of best practices to these issues.

Panelists

Brian Jamison, Founder and CEO, OpenSourcery
Brian is a seasoned entrepreneur with many technology-related companies to his credit. He has worked with Linux, open source, and the Internet professionally since 1995. Brian serves as President for the Portland Open Source Software Entrepreneurs (POSSE) and as advisor, mentor, or board member for numerous startups. He actively promotes safe, renewable biodiesel as a locally-produced fuel source.

Chris Jones, Engineer, Yesmail
Chris has led the adoption of agile practices on several projects and teams ranging from ‘by the book’ XP to a blend of XP and RUP. Chris is well versed in adapting agile processes to a diverse set of development organizations. He is currently contributing to the google web toolkit.

Wayne Allen, VP of Software Engineering, Integrated Services, Inc.
Wayne is the leading supplier of point of sales solutions for the Quick Lube and Car Wash industry. Wayne has a passion for the craft of software engineering that he has developed in his 20 years as a programmer, consultant, manager, executive and small business owner. This passion has led him to the new crop of “agile” software development processes such as XP and Scrum. Wayne is a regular speaker both nationally and internationally on the topic of agile software development. You can read about Wayne’s thoughts on software development at blogs.consultantsguild.com.

Sumant Vashisth, Senior QA Manager, McAfee, Inc.
Sumant had more than 10 years of experience in software development and testing having worked at IBM and Ford prior to joining McAfee. He has successfully driven testing on multiple product releases at McAfee, including one of the first large scale project at the company to adopt and follow the Agile software development process. The current agile development project for which he is managing the QA team, requires integration and testing with multiple cross site engineering product development groups. Sumant also developed the software and is co-author of the book “Software For Emission Rate Modeling Of Accidental Toxic Releases”.

Todd Whitaker
Todd has nearly 14 years experience working with teams and organizations to develop software products ranging from web and enterprise applications to desktop software. He has held positions in Product and Program Management with a number of software companies including Inspiration Software, Serena Software, Extensis, Concentrex, and Group 3 Consultants. Todd is an advocate for simple and excellent user experience, highly collaborative and adaptive product development processes, and Agile methodologies. He is a graduate of Oregon Institute of Technology, and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Management with an Electronics Engineering emphasis.

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Monday Nov 24, 2008

MIT Enterprise Forum: The Future of Wireless Communication

4–6pm
OTBC (The Round)
12725 Sw Millikan Way
Beaverton OR 97005
(map

Entrepreneur Meetups > The OTBC Meetup Group

Moderated by Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal

Smart phones, but dumb approach? When will users have more control over key elements of buying and using their mobile phone? Join moderator Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal, cellular thought leaders and rabble rousers as we look into the future of mobile telephony, asking questions such as:

Where is mobility really going?
Is it a phone or a TV set?
What are the limitations of our mobile devices?
When will we have more control over the phone/carrier combination?
What opportunities still exist for entrepreneurs?

Complete details may be found at http://www.mitenterpriseforum.org.

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Monday Nov 24, 2008

DorkbotPDX Meeting

7–10pm
Lucky Labrador Beer Hall
1945 NW Quimby
Portland OR 97209
(map)

Come join us for an evening of socializing, talking about odd hacks and poking around with other people toys. Bring things for show and tell if you like, or just bring a willingness to share your interests. We’ll be the kids with all the coolest stuff on the table. Hope to see you there.

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That is a lot of events! I’ll probably be attending Dorkbot this week, which rocks and you shouldn’t miss it if you’re into electronics. Have a great week!

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Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist and Tech Journalist from Portland, Oregon. You can follow her on Twitter @caseorganic.

During my last semester of college, I became obsessed with the idea that I would be able to somehow put my degree in sociology/anthropology to work in the real world. When I stumbled upon search engine optimization, I was elated. When I learned that Cyborg Anthropology applied there as well, I was even more excited. And when Todd Mintz encouraged me to write my first blog post ever on the SEM PDX blog, I was so nervous that I didn’t leave my friends house for 4 hours while I composed it.

Perfectionism was a difficult thing to get over. I gradually realized that I had to allow myself to suck in order to get anywhere. At Weiden+Kennedy, there’s a massive art piece on the wall that says “Fail Harder”. I knew I had to fail harder than ever before. Oakhazelnut.com was the silliest name for a website I could think of, and the early WordPress template I used was ugly, heavy and clunky. But I kept on it.

I also realized that I wasn’t going to have a community anymore when I graduated from college, so I searched hard for one in Portland. I attended meetups relating to pretty much everything until I found Legion of Tech and Beer and Blog. Some of the first people I ever met were Reid Beals, Bram Pitoyo, Dawn Foster and Rick Turoczy. It was the beginning of an exciting and busy journey into the heart of the tech scene. But it didn’t take long to get oriented. Everyone was filled with zest for their ideas, and it spread quickly to me. I began to take small risks and write more.

Up until now, I’ve been putting in 110 hour weeks trying to do anthropological studies, blogging (which as anyone who blogs knows — is much more difficult than it looks), attending events, and learning more about seo and Yahoo! Pipes. My learning curve is strange, so it has been a long process. I’ve been given great support from people who really know what they are doing. Focused, brilliant, fascinating people.

Now that I am blogging, writing and consulting full-time, I feel like I’ve been thrown directly into the open arms of the tech community. There’s more time for coffeeshops, events, and research now. I’m excited to be able to see more faces.

It was great to be able to walk into the local Backspace coffeeshop and get high fives from all of the great people there. Bram Pitoyo said, “welcome to the life of a Freelancer”. I wholeheartedly embrace it.

My last job was excellent, and I took it after graduating from college in May so that I would be able to learn a bunch of new skills. I learned so many new things I was ready to explode. Drupal was fun, E-mail marketing was great, and new seo tools were awesome. I look forward to how that company does in the future. It’s doing very well and has an excellent business model I was excited to learn more about.

Now I have time for CyborgCamp, MIT’s Futures of Entertainment Conference, Makerlab, Ignite Portland, Refresh Portland, blogging for the Discovery Channel at Nerdabout, AboutUs.org, Dorkbot, search engine optimization, Beer and Blog and of course, Cyborg Anthropology.

Thanks to Marshall Kirkpatrick for the Discovery Channel write-up on Read Write Web. Marshall has been a tremendous help to me. In addition to showing me things like Skitch, he’s lent advice and support to me on numerous occasions.

I want to thank everyone in the Portland Tech community, but there are infinite people to thank. Perhaps I can thank an entire directory of great Tweeple at once (via AboutUs.org Portland Tech Twitter).

I think that’s about it. I am a little speechless at the support I’ve been given, and I can’t wait to share it with a wider audience.

Sincerely,

@caseorganic

I was talking with Julian Chadwick of PDXPipeline this Monday about the tools he uses for search engine optimization. We recorded a podcast that will be posted Monday night on Hazelnut Tech Talk. However I wanted to pass on some of the information he gave me regarding the SEO plugins he uses for Firefox. I’d like to review the SEO Quake, as it has been very useful to me.

Basic Information

There are a few baseline pieces of baseline information that any SEO beginner. One of these is Page Rank, or Google’s consideration of what a given page is worth. Page rank varies from site to site, and there are a number of factors that contribute to pagerank. One of them is the amount of websites linking to a given website. This is called ‘inlinks’. One can find out this information by going to Google and entering the string “link:http://www.yoursite.com”.

The amount of links from a site to you website show up differently in Yahoo! Search vs. Google search vs. MSN. Obtaining this data takes a while without a good tool to help you find it. There are additional metrics one can find about a site, such as the page rank, sitemap, alexa rank, and whether the site has been indexed in search engines or not. Site indexing is different from checking inlinks.

If the pages of your site are not indexed by search engines, it is difficult for searchers to find them. Making sure your website has a sitemap and submitting it to Google Webmaster tools is an essential baseline step in the SEO process. You can generate an .xml sitemap for free by using the free tool provided at XML-Sitemaps.com.

SEO Quake for Firefox

SEO Quake is a plugin that adds another layer of information on top of your brower’s basic information. Instead of having to search for inlinks, the inlinks are displayed right on top of the site for you. You can also choose what information you want displayed about the site. There are plenty of options (accessible from preferences) that allow you to view any information you want about the page you’re on. There are Yahoo! inlinks, links to domain, Alexa rank, Page Rank, inlinks from MSN, compete rank, sitemap, and the robots.txt file, just to name a few.

Using SEO Quake rocks. It’s super-customizable and generates a ton of rich information without the need to click. Plus, you can click on the information and download into a spreadsheet or text document for later use or data analysis. Highly recommended.

Download

This is a link to the download site for SEO Quake. Again, it is only available for Firefox browsers, so if you aren’t using Firefox (which you most undoubtedly should), then you’ll be missing out.

Resources

Thanks to Julian Chadwick for mentioning this plugin. You can check out Julian’s site at PDXPipeline or follow him on Twitter @pdxpipeline.

For more information on SEO, Julian and I both recommend SEOMoz.org, a Seattle-based company providing an extremely comprehensive database of resources and tools for beginner, intermediate, and advanced SEO specialists. Try the free Trifecta tool on your site for starters.

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Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist from Portland, Oregon. You can follow her online @caseorganic.

I organized a session at this weekend’s WhereCamp Portland called ‘Geolocal AutoScribing RSS Feeds’, and began the session by drawing a big grid of Portland’s quadrants on the white board. I labeled them NW NE SW SE, and then began drawing circles all over the place. The circles represented ranges of ‘hearing’ that a mobile device might have to RSS feeds. I pointed out that as one progresses from street to street, quadrant to quadrant, one’s phone should understand this and automatically subscribe the user to the geolocal RSS feed for that area. That way, data can be very relevant and contextual to the area.

I explained this in the concept of a video game. In order to optimize load time, the content of a video game loads relative to the user. Data streams load from nearby places into the user’s dashboard and notification bar, or ‘feed reader’. There are two types of feeds — the global, overarching data streams of the game, and the feeds that deal with timely events. James Whitley of GoLifeMobile described

While I don’t have the time to transcribe the entirety of the session right now, I will say that we talked about a number of things. We discussed some of the apps that currently exist for Geolocal RSS, namely:

1. Geourl
2. Everyblock
3. Fireeagle
4. Icecondor
6. Britekite
7. Twitter
8. Palatial
9. Shizzow
10. Meta Carta
11. Carrot 2

People, Places, Things

Paige Saez pointed out some of the philosophical ramifications of place, and how the concept of place is constructed. I pointed out that a person can be a place, or an event can be a place. This moved into a discussion of the shift from responding to place (as traditional place is often immobile and very contextual) — to making a place (due to the light modernity and the ease with which place can be arranged) — to people as place (people as an experience, place as an experience, people making place).

We all discussed various use cases of why/where/when/how Geolocal AutoSubscribing RSS Feeds might come in handy. I noticed that the use cases presented by the group members were strongly tied to cultural, beliefs and experience. I think a point was made concerning the structure of systems. I pointed out that a Go board is empty when starting a game, and as the game is played, the Go board allows some structure while allowing many permutations of forms and ecosystems.

Twitter functions in a similar manner. The system allows short turns, similar to Go, and each of these turns contributes to the overall shape of the game. Twitter allows people to be treated as place, and allows people to visit segments of a place, or turn off that place from entering into the environment of experience.

Use Cases

“I’m new to this city/here on business, and I have three hours to do something cool — what is around me that is useful/interesting? What people share my interests?”

“I don’t know this area and need good food.”

People become a location when they’re tied to experience.

Whether you don’t know the area or you do, it can be useful to be able to quickly understand the social/placial cartography of the area.

I forgot who it was, but the system was joking labeled, “a gateway drug that gets you to engage with your neighborhood. That gets you to the people who can make the best recommendations”.

Theses are Geographical conversations. They’re also technosocial conversations, because it’s not the website that has the data, it is the people in the area. But to get to those people easily in a short period of time can often be helped along by technology, RSS, geolocal decides. So, in a way, content is people and people are content.

Community Custodians

Then the discussion went back to video games such as ‘Ultima Online’. We discussed the roles of ‘Gatekeepers’, or ‘Custodians’ that help people into a foreign online territory. Custodians continue to preform these orientation tasks is because it gives them a tremendous sense of use value.

Robots have been programmed to act as gatekeepers to new techniques and experiences, but many have failed (See Microsoft’s “Looks like you’re writing an E-mail - can I help you?” Wizard). It can be noted that humans are matchmakers, not machines. However, a machine can help one human reach another by breaking the boundaries of the distance and time that it takes for those two humans to travel to see each other in the real world. For instance, there is Yahoo! Answers that uses real people to connect Answers to Questions, and Wikipedia for collaborative knowledge creation. Places facilitate conversation, but they must be inhabited by meaning first.

We talked about the semantic web next, and ubiquitous technologies that ID markers and tags might bring. We talked about subscribing to tags instead of feeds (some blogs do this already as a more dynamic/fluid replacement for categories).

Planned Serendipity

We talked about a new kind of serendipity, in which fortuitious and existing social connections and meetup in locations that were predefined as as “excellent” could happen, without all of the hassle of being introduced to a new location. But some objected to this new kind of social relationship. Paige pointed out that it this new kind of serendipity would reduce the organic excitement that unplanned serendipity provides.

To which I pointed out that the modern person is disassociated from a peer group or community, and generally cannot talk to one another on the street. In this way, technology could recolonize the public space with actual social connections instead of shells. Paige, of course, had an excellent point. It is very exciting to come into serendipitous contact with others, but how can one tell if that serendipitous contact will be enjoyable? It is often difficult for a person to walk up to another and ask to hang out. It is sometimes easier with the computer as an icebreaker. When personal music devices isolate people from each other on the street, and laptops isolate one from another at coffee shops, and people cannot look in each other’s eyes on the street, or give another a high five, perhaps it is a clue that we have become afraid of the company of one another, or shy, or disassociated.

Every day we walk down the street or ride bikes or drive cars, and though we are doing the same thing, we cannot speak to each other while doing this. Twitter has allowed a certain type of backchannel to traditional modes of communication that allows for many to communicate with each other on a backchannel while doing the same thing at the same time.

Four Dimensional Search Methods

We talked about fourth dimensional search as a form of data on top of the traditional data flow of real life. Technically, geolocal autosubscribing RSS feeds could be considered forth dimensional data.

Geolocal feeds would allow one to gain information, getting an accumulation of information. doesn’t eclipse the actual experience of getting that information.

Someone blurted out the title of a “New Tech, New Ties”. How cell phone information is affecting us.
The landscape has scaled but we haven’t. Suburbia is so decompressed that huge amount of non-space connect it. These non-spaces take the form of highways and airports and airplanes and bus stops. The inner city — the walking spaces — have many landscapes to them. Stores have microlandscapes everywhere. Food courts compress low-resolution versions of the experiences of other countries into their culinary offerings. Already we have a surplus of landscapes - we have so many that we can’t pay attention to them.

So these landscapes must be filtered. Anselm pointed out a term he invented: “Hygradeing — we filter for the best of the best and leave the rest.” He gave the example of a bag of trail mix being passed around a campfire. All of the good things get taken by the first few people that have access to the bag, so that the rest of the campers have less access to variety.  Naturally humans are able to weed out what is good or not good and unsubscribe from the rest. Geolocal feeds can only work if they have high enough quality. Twitter allows one to block feeds that are not interesting or relevant by simply ‘unfollowing’.

We’re Urban Nomads on limited time scales. We have a limited time to access and filter relevant information. Like actions must be compressed together. We’re changing — growing our own gardens and becoming different people, and

Technosocial synchronicity by topic, location, and person can result in synergy. I’m using the Masuda’s 1979 definition of the word synergy, which is used to describe individuals with similar interests pooling towards a common goal.

Silo Sites

It was O’Reilly that said that Internet is becoming one large database.

The hub sites have been created now. Data has been submitted and receptacles have been created for most data types. One does not have to build a silo but a thing that collects and reechoes. Let people subscribe to a geography and re-echo it back to them.

We’re all living here — there is just too much data in the way to be able to hear each other. This is the period of trilobites. Filter feeders. API’s. Mashups. Yahoo! Pipes. Combined RSS feeds. Dynamic content. Relevancy and efficiency means integrating people instantly into a community of relevant data.

One of the more accessible practical applications of these ideologies could be a simple wake-up device. If you’re on a train and you fall asleep, your phone knows where you are and rings right before your stop to wake you up.

WhereCamp Portland was an excellent and invigorating event. Perhaps some of these discussions will

WhereCamp Resources:

From Hazelnut Tech Talk:
WhereCamp PDX Resources | A Combined Yahoo! Pipe for Pictures, Tweets, and Session Notes.
Wherecamp PDX | Paul Bissett on Illuminating the Dark Geoweb.

From the Portland Tech Community:
WhereCamp PDX Roundup
WhereCamp PDX Takes on PacManhattan (Includes an excellent video by Adam Duvander.
NowWhatPDX. A community about social change developed almost entirely at WhereCamp Portland.
Rules for PacManhatten.
Drop.io WhereCamp Portland Resource Drop.

Relating to Geolocation Studies:
DorkBotPDX.
MakerLab.
CyborgCamp (Dec. 6th, 2008).

Blogs about Online Communities:
Dawn Foster writes high-quality posts about the care and feeding of Online Communities on a regular basis.

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Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist and Social Media Consultant from Portland, Oregon. You can follow her online @caseorganic.

The Ignite Portland 4 lineup is in.

As Josh Bancroft said, “Man, that was TOUGH. We received over 50 talk ideas for Ignite Portland 4. The vast majority of them were really, really good. But we only have room for 13 talks on stage at the Bagdad (plus the traditional “What is Ignite?” talk)”.

Josh also wanted to give a HUGE “Thank You!” to everyone who submitted a talk that wasn’t chosen, pointing out that, “Your talk ideas made the competition fierce, and that competition means that the talks that were chosen are the cream of the crop. Even if you didn’t get picked, submit your talk idea next time - don’t lose heart! :-)”

Here are the 14 talks that will make up Ignite Portland 4. Follow the links to read the speaker’s description of their talk:

• What is Ignite? - Josh Bancroft
• Five Things Portland Can Learn From Kentucky in Five Minutes - Jeff Hardison
• A Short Introduction to Cyborg Anthropology - Amber Case
• Spirituality in Community: It’s not just for religion anymore - David Kominsky
• How to Bluff Your Way Through Life or a 5 Minute Presentation - Cami Kaos
• Cooking with the Seasons: The Garanimals Method - Katherine Gray
• Dating Rules for the Actual World - Alexis Rehrmann
• Story as Bloodsport: Battling to craft narrative - Melissa Lion
• How To Make People Think You’re a Portlander - Without Actually Living in the State of Oregon - Carolynn Duncan
• 7 One-Night Stands with a Baseball Fan - Nova Newcomer
• Divided We Win: 5 Reasons Why FOX News is Saving Our Media and Democracy - Abraham Hyatt
• Juice Up any Conversation or Presentation with 5 Impressive-Sounding Theories that Apply to EVERYTHING - Eric Anderson
• How to get people to do what you want them to do… - Betsy Richter
• 10 Karaoke Commandments - Alex Williams

The talks that are going to light up the stage at the Bagdad Theater on Thursday, November 13. Speakers, get working on your talks (the deadline to turn in your slides should have been in the acceptance email you received). Everyone else, stay tuned for information on tickets to come to Ignite Portland 4 - they’ll be free, as always - and get ready to be blown away at IP4!

In the analog state of PR, people would have to manually check out how many times a brand was mentioned in newspapers by hiring a bunch of people to clip out the actual articles from the newspapers. If one’s clippings were really great that week, they’d have a big stack of paper.

Clipping New Media:

Some of the first industries to capture digital data real-time were hedge funds and other financial firms. They used something that resembled an intelligence dashboard — where different streams of data were needed to make complex decisions. The dashboard allowed users to see many different stocks at once, and companies were able to create a sort of proto-feed that showed many different ecosystems of data at once.

Intelligence Feeds Today:

Now, services like Netvibes and Yahoo! pipes can be mixed together to offer companies real-time intelligence feeds that show what their competitors are posting on their blogs, what people are saying about them on Twitter, and their overall online presence — all in one place.

Making these intelligence dashboards takes time and research, but the value added (not to mention the time saved) by the implementation of a centralized data source is immense. Also, it’s powerful enough for agencies that manage multiple clients, because the entire system fits into one browser window with a series of custom, labeled tabs.

Currently:

All brands have an analog version of this, and some have a digital one — but all brands need it. Google Alerts is a temporary solution that is gritty and granular. It does not have the customization capabilities that Yahoo! Pipes and Dapper have. Intelligence dashboards are capable of handling the data generated by global and local brands as well. They can monitor Flickr photos, news items, blog posts, ect. Basically, any piece of dynamic content that moves online.

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Resources

One of the best brand managers out there is Portland’s Dawn Foster. She has a collection of excellent resources (like Yahoo Pipes and RSS Hacks) on her blog, Fast Wonder. She’s actually the first person who introduced me to Yahoo! Pipes.