PIE: Portland Incubator Experiment

Join us at the Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE) office, located at 12th and NW Davis.

Stefan and Anthony will be discussing some new alternatives to POD that they've both been working on. Stefan has been working on parsing Markdown formatted documentation out of Perl source. Anthony has been working on an extension to the Sphinx documentation engine to support writing rST formatted documentation in Perl source. Both attempts are in their infancy, so be sure to give feedback and suggestions.

If anyone else would like to join in, or if someone wants to defend lowly ol’ POD, you’re welcome to join in as well.

Full synopsis

NOTE: Change of Venue!

We're going to change things up this month and will be hosting our first meeting of the year downtown. Join us at the Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE) office, located at 12th and NW Davis.

Dana Jacobsen will give a talk on his number theory module. This is an early version of the talk for FOSDEM.

This talk describes the history, design, and implementation details of a number theory module for Perl. With implementations for most functions in C, C+GMP, and Perl this offers speed on most platforms as well as portability. Comparisons will be made with tools such as Pari/GP, SymPy, SAGE, Primo, OpenPFGW, and others.

Full synopsis here

We'll migrate to Life of Riley or another nearby venue after the meeting for drinks and food.

The Portland Python community needs you!

Do you have ideas for how PDX Python could be even better? Can you spare an hour a week? Join me to learn more about what goes into organizing PDX Python and how you can be involved!

Come practice your three-minute pitch and get feedback from experts.

No Powerpoints. No looky-loos. No mercy.

THE CHALLENGE Teams will have ten hours to concept and create a prototype that addresses the challenge. Successful ideas will connect Portland citizens to their public schools, and/or engage them in the five ways schools have said would be most useful - a coat, a can, a book, an hour, or a grand. The hack day will conclude with five-minute demos of each team's projects.

BACKGROUND On June 2nd, in collaboration with the Mayor’s Office and GOOD Magazine, we’re holding a Hack Day to explore how technology can be used to connect Portland’s public schools with neighborhoods and business. This project emerged from a GOOD Ideas for Cities event that took place earlier this year. You can see the presentation on GOOD's site. http://www.good.is/post/supporting-neighborhood-schools-a-good-idea-for-portland/

THE PROBLEM 85% of people in central Portland have no children of school age. This means that the majority has no natural connection with the school system. We want to make it easier for that 85% to support Portland’s public schools.

Our research with schools and supporting organizations showed that a few simple things – books, food, clothing and people's time – could make a big difference to students. We also learnt that there are many organizations in Portland that are set up to support schools in these ways. We want to build a tool that makes it easy to find these organizations, and to give resources to them.

HACK DAY RESOURCES To help us solve this, we’ll have representatives from Portland’s public schools and from some of the main organizations who are already supporting these schools. The Software Association of Oregon, which has built CitySync will be joining us as well. Designers and our partners will be available on the day for further conversations about promotion of the tools that we create. We are also connecting with the Personal Democracy Forum taking place in NYC the following week, and hope to feed the best ideas into that event.

Extra info: [email protected]

Come practice your three-minute startup pitch and get feedback from experts.

No Powerpoints. No looky-loos. No mercy.

Nike MSI is one of many approaches to evaluate the environmental sustainability of materials and the suppliers that produce them. We have created this forum to capture feedback and new ideas from users and reviewers.

We hope that releasing this framework and data will jumpstart a rich conversation within the footwear and apparel industry. Please participate with questions and comments regarding the value of our approach, ways to improve and build upon Nike MSI, data to populate new materials and a wider variety of supply chains, and the development of a centrally managed, open-source center of excellence that provides access to all.

Nike Materials Sustainability Index

Come practice your three-minute pitch and get feedback from experts.

No Powerpoints. No looky-loos. No mercy.

Come learn to work with wikis!

Pete Forsyth and Selena Deckelmann will show you the ropes. We'll have some topics to suggest, mainly on women and technology, and Portland, and Oregon. But please bring your own ideas, too!

Come practice your three-minute pitch and get feedback from people who've done it before.

No Powerpoints. No looky-loos. No mercy.

Want to practice your startup pitch in front of people who've done it before? Crave the harsh criticism of your peers? Need the validation of seeing what works and what doesn't in other pitches?

Bring your 3 minute pitch. Put your name in a hat and if it gets picked, you're on. Leave your Powerpoint at home - just pitch. Then, answer questions and listen to painfully honest feedback from a panel of so-called experts.

The first rule of Pitch Club is you have to be ready to pitch. No teams, no moral support, no looky-loos.

More rules as we think of them.

FAQ:

Q: Who are these so-called experts and what are they going to do to me? A: Your pitch will be evaluated by tech entrepreneurs who have pitched and gotten funded. They are your superiors.

Q: What about NDAs? Someone's going to steal my idea! A: There are no NDAs - use your best judgment about what to talk about and what not to. Also, remember the first rule of fight club - don't talk about fight club. We're all on the honor system here.

Q: My pitch is more than 3 minutes - can I have more time? A: No.

Q: Will it be catered? A: Hell no. You know what's in the lobster bisque.

Q: Can anyone critique a pitch? A: No, only the panel.

I'm teaming up with the Portland Lean Startup Circle and the Portland Incubator Experiment! Please go RSVP on the Meetup page here for a chance to win a book: http://www.meetup.com/PDX-Lean-Startup-Circle/events/39610192/

After a long summer break, I'm pleased to announce Update Portland will be returning October 27th with stories of disasters and near misses from PHP Fog, Puppet, and Urban Airship.

The meeting will begin at 6pm at PIE, and beer will be provided.

Please RSVP! Looking forward to seeing you there!

Interested in working with Ward Cunningham on his new wiki project? You can on Thursday, October 13th, 2011 at the Portland Incubator Experiment. Wiki-founder Ward Cunningham shared his idea of a Smallest Federated Wiki SFW during IndieWebCamp this June. In a few short weeks, he brought his idea to life and is inviting others to work with him on it. This is the second worksession for people interested in contributing to the project.

What is SFW?

The Smallest Federated Wiki project wants to be small in the “easy to learn powerful ideas” version of small. It wants to be a wiki so that strangers can meet and create works of value together. And it wants to be federated so that the burden of maintaining long-lasting content is shared among those who care.

As Ward says,

Our new wiki innovates three ways:

It shares through federation, composes by refactoring and wraps data with visualization. Resources

If you’re not yet familiar with Ward’s new wiki, check out the following resources

http://wardcunningham.github.com/ — Video Demos (very popular) http://videos.mozilla.org/serv/air_mozilla/10052011_brownbag.ogg — Ward explaining SFW to Mozilla https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki — Source Code https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki/wiki — Project Roadmap

After the unconference sessions, join us for pizza and hacking on geo-technology projects.

Want to practice your startup pitch in front of people who've done it before? Crave the harsh criticism of your peers? Need the validation of seeing what works and what doesn't in other pitches?

Bring your 3 minute pitch. Put your name in a hat and if it gets picked, you're on. Leave your Powerpoint at home - just pitch. Then, answer questions and listen to painfully honest feedback from a panel of so-called experts.

The first rule of Pitch Club is you have to be ready to pitch. No teams, no moral support, no looky-loos.

More rules as we think of them.

FAQ:

Q: Who are these so-called experts and what are they going to do to me? A: Your pitch will be evaluated by tech entrepreneurs who have pitched and gotten funded. They are your superiors.

Q: What about NDAs? Someone's going to steal my idea! A: There are no NDAs - use your best judgment about what to talk about and what not to. Also, remember the first rule of fight club - don't talk about fight club. We're all on the honor system here.

Q: My pitch is more than 3 minutes - can I have more time? A: No.

Q: Will it be catered? A: Hell no. You know what's in the lobster bisque.

Q: Can anyone critique a pitch? A: No, only the panel.

Join us in celebrating the ribbon-cutting ceremony and launch of the Portland Incubator Experiment with Mayor Sam Adams, at our First Thursday Block Party.

We'll be welcoming the new class of start-ups and the esteemed mentor group with drinks, entertainment, and of course... PIE.

A global day of Rubinius performance testing, bug reporting, community strengthening and super awesome fun times!

Come join Geoloqi at the Portland Incubator Experiment and spend a day testing your ruby code with Rubinius! We will have tools to benchmark and load test your ruby web applications, which you can use to determine how well your app runs on Rubinius (or any other ruby interpreter). We will be providing any bug reports and results to the Rubinius team, which will go towards helping their development efforts.

There are also plans to document an extensive suite of benchmarks and load tests for all the major ruby web servers (Webrick, Mongrel, Thin, Rainbows, etc), with a focus on testing concurrency and determining which servers work best on Rubinius.

There will be food and good beer provided! Feel free to bring snacks.

Wiki-founder Ward Cunningham shared his idea of a Smallest Federated Wiki SFW during IndieWebCamp this June. In a few short weeks, he brought his idea to life and is inviting others to work with him on it! Come to PIE for a short hack session on "smallest federated wikis". Max Ogden will also be joining us from San Francisco!

What is SFW? The Smallest Federated Wiki project wants to be small in the "easy to learn powerful ideas" version of small. It wants to be a wiki so that strangers can meet and create works of value together. And it wants to be federated so that the burden of maintaining long-lasting content is shared among those who care.

Project Overview https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki/wiki --

Source https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki --

Roadmap http://home.c2.com:8087/ -- Instance (New Simplest Federated Wiki Install) http://home.c2.com:8087/air-temperature -- Live data (try dragging around the sections to re-order them) http://home.c2.com:8087/view/air-temperature -- Live data rendered from JSON in JavaScript

Want to practice your startup pitch in front of people who've done it before? Crave the harsh criticism of your peers? Need the validation of seeing what works and what doesn't in other pitches?

Bring your 3 minute pitch. Put your name in a hat and if it gets picked, you're on. Powerpoints discouraged - just pitch. Then, answer questions and listen to painfully honest feedback from a panel of so-called experts.

The first rule of Pitch Club is you HAVE TO PITCH.

The second rule of Pitch Club is you HAVE TO PITCH. It doesn't have to be your startup - pitch your blog, your ideas for turning cat feces into gold, or your plan for world domination.

More rules as we think of them.

FAQ: Q: Who are these so-called experts and what are they going to do to me? A: Your pitch will be evaluated by entrepreneurs and people who pitch for a living. They are your superiors.

Q: What about NDAs? Someone's going to steal my idea! A: There are no NDAs - use your best judgment about what to talk about and what not to. Also, remember the first rule of fight club - don't talk about fight club. We're all on the honor system here.

Q: My pitch is more than 3 minutes - can I have more time? A: No.

Q: Will it be catered? A: Hell no. You know what's in the lobster bisque.

Q: Can anyone critique a pitch? A: No, only the panel.

The Freelance Software Developer's workshop is for people who are new to freelancing, thinking about making the jump, or simply "freelance curious." In any case, if you're interested in going into business for yourself as a freelance software developer, this is for you!

This workshop is by geeks, for geeks — it's a full afternoon (and evening) of learning and activities covering:

• Learn about the different types of freelancing, and figure out what makes the most sense for meeting your goals.

• Calculate what your rates should be, and what your clients might be expecting to pay.

• Step through the process of finding clients, learn geek friendly sales techniques, and find out how much a cup of coffee could be worth to you.

• How to spend more time coding, and less time shuffling paper.

Aside from presentations, activities, networking, and one-on-one time, this package also includes:

• A 30+ page handbook for freelance software developers, covering everything in the workshop and more.

• Significant discounts on legal and business services from local companies in Portland.

• Food and drinks (including free beer on tap).

Register today to secure one of the 30 seats!

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1637266107

Want to practice your startup pitch in front of people who've done it before? Crave the harsh criticism of your peers? Need the validation of seeing what works and what doesn't in other pitches?

Bring your 3 minute pitch. Put your name in a hat and if it gets picked, you're on. Powerpoints discouraged - just pitch. Then, answer questions and listen to painfully honest feedback from a panel of so-called experts.

The first rule of Pitch Club is you HAVE TO PITCH.

The second rule of Pitch Club is you HAVE TO PITCH. It doesn't have to be your startup - pitch your blog, your ideas for turning cat feces into gold, or your plan for world domination.

More rules as we think of them.

FAQ: Q: Who are these so-called experts and what are they going to do to me? A: Your pitch will be evaluated by tech entrepreneurs and people who pitch for a living. They are your superiors.

Q: What about NDAs? Someone's going to steal my idea! A: There are no NDAs - use your best judgment about what to talk about and what not to. Also, remember the first rule of fight club - don't talk about fight club. We're all on the honor system here.

Q: My pitch is more than 3 minutes - can I have more time? A: No.

Q: Will it be catered? A: Hell no. You know what's in the lobster bisque.

Q: Can anyone critique a pitch? A: No, only the panel.

The initial reaction to 52 Mobile Apps has been really good, so we're going to start mapping out our next steps. Meet us at PIE to help figure out what it'll take to get things started.

We'll go over what's been discussed so far, and start to plan the roadmap for what should be tackled next, and start drumming up excitement for the project.

Categories we should hit first:

• The website. It's ready, sort of.

• Tutorials. First one should go live July 4th, so we have some time, but not tons.

• The criteria for distributing and submitting app ideas, and the committee that will be voting on them.

See you there!

Come build apps for education with us! In partnership with the City of Portland and the Mayor’s Office, we’re honored to announce a CivicApps Hackathon dedicated exclusively to making mobile applications for education. There will be time in the morning for ideas and presentations from educators involved with the city, and brainstorming sessions and hacking in the afternoon.

Register for the event here: http://loqi.me/2T0

Come build apps for education with us!

In partnership with the City of Portland and the Mayor’s Office, we’re honored to announce a CivicApps Hackathon dedicated exclusively to making mobile applications for education. There will be time in the morning for ideas and presentations from educators involved with the city, and brainstorming sessions and hacking in the afternoon.

Presenters and Judges

*Skip Newberry, Economic Development Policy Advisor to Portland Mayor Sam Adams

*Kali Ladd, Education Strategies Director for Portland Mayor Sam Adams

*Sarah Singer,Project Director, High School System Design Initiative, Portland Public Schools

*Karen Gray, Parkrose School District Superintendent

*Matt Kinshella, Communications Director for @211info

Who should come?

Anyone with an interest in changing education through technology. This includes educators, concerned citizens, mobile developers, graphic and UX designers, and students. Teams will have a chance to present their projects at 6:30pm and will be judged by members of the City of Portland, Education District and local tech leaders. The three top projects will be automatically entered into the Webvisionary Awards in the Mobile Category.

CivicApps will be kindly sponsoring lunch, and we are looking for sponsors for breakfast and refreshments. Please contact @caseorganic or @wv2011 to find out how you can support the event!

Schedule

10:00-10:30Am – Doors Open, Breakfast, Coffee and Networking

10:30-11:15Am – Presentations from the city and education department on the current state of education, education technology, and what’s missing from education today.

11:15-11:30Am – Presentation of project ideas from attendees.

11:30-12:15Pm – Breakout discussion groups on project ideas and education topics.

12:15-1:15PM – Lunch, discussion and networking

1:15-6:00Pm – Project work and development begins in teams or as individuals.

6:00Pm – Project wrap-up and presentation preparation. Judges and audience arrives for judging and presentations. Beer is served.

6:30-7:30Pm – 5 minute presentations and judging.

7:30Pm – Event wrap-up, feedback and cleanup.

CivicApps will be kindly sponsoring lunch, and we are looking for sponsors for breakfast and refreshments. Please contact @caseorganic or @wv2011 to find out how you can support the event!

Don't forget to register so we can provide food! http://loqi.me/2T0

52 Mobile Apps is a year-long, week-by-week mobile app marathon which will take place throughout 2012.

This presentation will give an overview of our dream for the project, address questions and concerns for something so ambitious, and call for for your help with the project.

And how can you help with this project? There are about four things we need:

1. Participants! Always wanted to work on an app, but you've been waiting for someone to impose a deadline? Now's your chance!

2. Committee members and web presence types! We're a handful of people right now, and our website isn't even ready. We need people to help get the word out, vote on app proposals and keep others interested from now through December 2012.

3. Article writers! Are you knowledgeable in mobile strategy, mobile culture, interaction design, prototyping, Java, Javascript, Objective C, XCode, PhoneGap, Titanium, or have any experience at all in the mobile development process? We definitely want to talk to you.

4. Sponsorship! 52 Mobile Apps is going to be a giant, giant project, and we'd love to have a little backing, in any form. Let's talk about how you can help us help you help us.

Some of the GeoIQ Engineering Team is in town for JSConf. We've just recently revamped our API docs and added some new features. We thought it would be fun to show off what you can do with our JavaScript API and what we've been doing with Node.js and Raphael. Come join Chris, Derek and Kate at PIE and check it out at PIE. We'll be providing food.

I'm putting on a workshop for freelance software developers.

The workshop is non-technical -- instead of languages and frameworks, we're focusing on helping freelancers find more opportunities, write better proposals, improve client relationships, and dispelling the FUD of going out on one's own. We'll have a couple of good panel discussions, and I'll be sticking around late into the evening to work with people one-on-one. Food and drinks will be provided (including free beer), and you'll also receive over $300 in discounts on services for freelancers.

Interested? Head over to http://i26r.com/ to register, or learn more about what we're doing.

Please note new start time of 6pm - Show up by 6 so we can get this shit kicked off. Hard stop at 8pm; networkers/heavy drinkers/people who don't want to go home can take it to the bar after that.

Want to practice your startup pitch in front of people who've done it before? Crave the harsh criticism of your peers? Need the validation of seeing what works and what doesn't in other pitches?

Bring your 3 minute pitch. Put your name in a hat and if it gets picked, you're on. Powerpoints discouraged - just pitch. Then, answer questions and listen to painfully honest feedback from a panel of so-called experts.

The first rule of Pitch Club is you HAVE TO PITCH.

The second rule of Pitch Club is you HAVE TO PITCH. It doesn't have to be your startup - pitch your blog, your ideas for turning cat feces into gold, or your plan for world domination.

More rules as we think of them.

FAQ: Q: Who are these so-called experts and what are they going to do to me? A: Your pitch will be evaluated by tech entrepreneurs and people who pitch for a living. They are your superiors.

Q: What about NDAs? Someone's going to steal my idea! A: There are no NDAs - use your best judgment about what to talk about and what not to. Also, remember the first rule of fight club - don't talk about fight club. We're all on the honor system here.

Q: My pitch is more than 3 minutes - can I have more time? A: No.

Q: Will it be catered? A: Hell no. You know what's in the lobster bisque.

Q: Can anyone critique a pitch? A: No, only the panel.

Please RSVP on the Meetup site if you plan to attend.

Please join us on Monday April 4th for a very special UpdatePDX session at PIE, with guest speakers from down the block, up the coast & around the world. This evening will try to take a step back to talk about the recent changes in the data & distributed systems worlds. The program is as follows.

Guests:

Sarah Novotny, Blue Gecko
Alex Payne, BankSimple
Bradford Stephens, Drawn to Scale
Tim Anglade, Cloudant

Act 1: Failing

Our guests share their shame, as they tell the tale an IT failure they were personally involved in.

Act 2: Making Sense

Tim Anglade recaps the state, level & tenor of the database discussion, drawing from the fourty interviews he conducted with vendors, deployers & cool dudes for the NOSQL Tapes. He'll cover the disjointed but slowly converging technical efforts, the confusing marketing talk, the ill-advised attempts and emerging lessons from NOSQL & beyond.

Act 3: Building

Our guests put on the ascott, dust off their snifters, grab a leather chair and join Tim for a fireside chat about what it means to use & build complex data systems today. From the pitfalls to avoid, to the rules you can live by, all drawn from their current experiences building & maintaining large data systems.

Want to practice your startup pitch in front of people who've done it before? Crave the harsh criticism of your peers? Need the validation of seeing what works and what doesn't in other pitches?

Bring your 3 minute pitch. Put your name in a hat and if it gets picked, you're on. Powerpoints discouraged - just pitch. Then, answer questions and listen to painfully honest feedback from a panel of so-called experts.

The first rule of Pitch Club is you HAVE TO PITCH.

The second rule of Pitch Club is you HAVE TO PITCH. It doesn't have to be your startup - pitch your blog, your ideas for turning cat feces into gold, or your plan for world domination.

More rules as we think of them.

FAQ: Q: Who are these so-called experts and what are they going to do to me? A: Your pitch will be evaluated by tech entrepreneurs and people who pitch for a living. They are your superiors.

Q: What about NDAs? Someone's going to steal my idea! A: There are no NDAs - use your best judgment about what to talk about and what not to. Also, remember the first rule of fight club - don't talk about fight club. We're all on the honor system here.

Q: My pitch is more than 3 minutes - can I have more time? A: No.

Q: Will it be catered? A: Hell no. You know what's in the lobster bisque.

Q: Can anyone critique a pitch? A: No, only the panel.

I'm a migrant founder that left Portland to find opportunities in Seattle & San Francisco," said Darius. "We just closed a venture backed seed round and we're bringing the company HQ back to PDX. I have no formal presentation, but rather would love to have a conversation about lessons we learned and answer any questions you all might have about startups, YCombinator, Fundraising, Etc.

Design, hack and field test locally focused civic geo mobile applications! Anyone at any skill level can come learn how to make mobile apps. We will design and code all night and then go out in the morning and field test the apps.

Examples of what will be built/improved:

• CatMapper - geolocate cats: code, screenshot, video blog. You can learn how to fork CatMapper and repurpose it for other awesome use cases.
• Geoloqi - build GPS enabled non-visual augmented reality apps! Have restaurants text message you their health inspection as you walk by them, leave geo-notes for your friends, or create GPS feeds for cats by giving them iPhones!
• Walking Papers - Use paper and pencil to map your community! We could fork this project to work for other types of data collection

@maxogden will be in town for two days only. Come hack on crazy stuff with him!

Please RSVP via EventBrite</a so we can get an idea of how many people will be there. Food/drinks will be provided in some form or another!

Want to practice your startup pitch in front of people who've done it before? Crave the harsh criticism of your peers? Need the validation of seeing what works and what doesn't in other pitches?

Bring your 3 minute pitch. Put your name in a hat and if it gets picked, you're on. Powerpoints discouraged - just pitch. Then, answer questions and listen to painfully honest feedback from a panel of so-called experts.

The first rule of Pitch Club is you HAVE TO PITCH.

The second rule of Pitch Club is you HAVE TO PITCH. It doesn't have to be your startup - pitch your blog, your Star Wars-related pet theory, or your plan for world domination.

More rules as we think of them.

FAQ: Q: Who are these so-called experts and what are they going to do to me? A: Your pitch will be evaluated by tech entrepreneurs and people who pitch for a living. They are your superiors.

Q: What about NDAs? Someone's going to steal my idea! A: There are no NDAs - use your best judgment about what to talk about and what not to. Also, remember the first rule of fight club - don't talk about fight club. We're all on the honor system here.

Q: My pitch is more than 3 minutes - can I have more time? A: No.

Q: Will it be catered? A: Hell no. You know what's in the lobster bisque.

Q: Can anyone critique a pitch? A: No, only the panel.

In January 2009 at the height of the recession, Nat Sims talked to Mobile Portland about how his company was undertaking a radical transformation from developing kiosks and exhibit media for museums to becoming an iPhone app development company.

The presentation from Night & Day Studios was one of the most popular Mobile Portland sessions we've had. Nat and his team talked about their successes and failures in the App Store. They shared real numbers. They talked about the benchmarks they needed to meet to be successful.

Two years later, a lot has changed. The composition of the company and how teams are formed is different now than it was then. The retired fire house where they worked flooded causing them to wade through muck to save what hardware they could. The company grew smaller and at the same time worked with more people.

And despite all of the challenges, Night & Day Studios is still around. They have nearly 30 apps in the App Store. They've begun licensing properties as a way to ensure hit products.

Their latest product, My Very First App, is based on Eric Carle’s best-selling My Very First Books and is currently the top-selling education app for iPhone. They have another hit on their hands.

Nat will give us a progress update on their transition to an iPhone company. What assumptions did they make that were correct. What didn't work. And detailed insight into how their business has been able to survive and thrive.

About Nat Sims

Nat Sims is the founder, president, and Creative Director for Night & Day Studios. He has been a content developer and media designer for 20 years, creating educational software, interpretive plans, books, exhibits, websites, videos, electronic music, and games. Much of his career was spent in developing media for museums; Night & Day developed a multimillion-dollar visitor experience for the City of Tucson, and Nat worked with Threshold studio for over 10 years on exhibits such as The Life & Times of Woody Guthrie for the Smithsonian Institution. Nat was the CFO and Lead Designer for the Behemoth Corporation, a roleplaying and strategy game company, from 2004-2009.

Nat's background includes game development and graphic design. After completing a B.A. in interface design at Hampshire College, he earned his master's degree in Communication at the University of California San Diego, studying computer games in the context of cultural cognition. His daughter Hazel is almost three and has been a tastemaker for Night & Day since Peekaboo Barn.

Windows Phone 7 comes out this fall and this is your first opportunity to see a device in person. We should have a least one Windows Phone 7 development device available.

Microsoft has a history of colossal successes and failures. As the Windows Phone 7 release approaches, it's sure to be big (reports say the marketing alone will be a $400 million affair), but will it be a success? Early reviews are positive, but can a company miss the mobile boat by 3+ years and still make a competitive product?

And it's not just the marketing effort and the Windows brand that make this phone interesting. Windows Phone 7 makes a statement. It isn't another "me too" copy of the iPhone. Windows Phone 7 has a very unique user interface with similar information grouped into hubs.

Join local Silverlight expert Erik Mork as talks about what Windows Phone 7 is and what it means for developers and consumers. We'll discuss its phenomenal strengths and shocking weaknesses. We dive into the new user interface paradigms the phone uses. We'll also look into a comparison of developing on Windows Phone 7 versus iOS. But most of all, we'll examine one company's view of what the future holds for Mobile.

About Erik Mork

Erik is a Microsoft Silverlight MVP and Microsoft Silverlight Insider. His consulting company does premiere design and development for desktop and (increasingly) mobile platforms. He and his team are dedicated to crafting fantastic user experiences on a variety of platforms.

Come hang out at PIE and work on software using Portland open data!

Mobile phones in our schools are already controversial. Many fear
distracted teenagers texting their friends instead of paying attention to their teachers.

Others educators are looking at mobile devices differently. George Fox University has offered incoming students the option of a traditional laptop or an iPad. Canby School district is currently implementing a 1:1 iPod touch mobility program for all Canby 3rd Grade students.

At Mobile Portland this month we're pleased to have a prestigious panel of educators who are on the cutting edge of using mobile technology in the classroom. The panelists will cover topics like:

• What role do mobile devices have in the classroom?
• When are mobile phones useful and when are they distracting?
• Do mobile devices need to be issued by the school or are there ways to take advantage of devices that students own?
• What are the challenges to effectively using mobile devices in education?

Join us for a spirited and engaging conversation on how mobile technology is changing curriculum and classrooms.

About the Panelists

Russ DeVore, George Fox University [http://www.georgefox.edu/offices/inst_technology/about_it/about_rdevore.html] [http://www.georgefox.edu/]

Russ works as the Director of Academic Computing at George Fox University. He leads a team of seven full-time employees and around 35 part-time student employees in the I.T. Department. Russ has led several programs promoting technology use in higher education. One very successful program is Computers Across the Curriculum. This program's goal is to place a laptop computer into the hands of every new undergraduate student coming to George Fox University.

George Fox University was the first university to offer incoming students the choice of an iPad instead of a more traditional laptop for this coming school year.

Trina Marmarelli, Reed College [http://www.reed.edu/cis/about/staff/marmarelli.html] [http://www.reed.edu/]

Trina Marmarelli is an instructional technologist at Reed College . She worked closely with students and faculty to evaluate the academic potential of the Kindle DX last fall and is currently gearing up for an iPad pilot. Trina's background is in literary studies, so she spends a lot of time thinking about how mobile devices--and electronic texts in general--affect our interactions with and expectations of the printed word. She also enjoys running, tiling, and bringing her dog to work.

Joe Morelock, Canby School District [http://blogs.canby.k12.or.us/morelocj] [http://www.canby.k12.or.us/]

Joe Morelock is the Director of Technology and Innovation for the Canby School District, serving approximately 5,000 K-12 students . He is a former high school Spanish teacher, Librarian and assessment coordinator. Joe currently leads the district’s innovative technology projects.

Joe is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and has developed and delivered mobile content and training on the use of the iPod for Argentina’s Ministry of Education. He regularly consults with state departments of education, as well as local school districts in the U.S. and Canada, and has presented to and worked with educators at conferences and events on three continents. He also co-authored reading and language acquisition , iPod touch, and podcasting professional development courses for Apple, Inc. Joe is currently implementing a 1:1 iPod touch mobility program for all Canby 3rd Grade students.

Corey Pressmen, Exprima Media [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/corey-pressman/4/260/ba0] [http://www.exprimamedia.com/]

Corey taught Anthropology for 12 years before deciding to enter the software universe. As a professional educator, Corey was always interested in, yet disappointed with, the educational technology that textbook publisher sales reps were peddling. Convinced that more could be done to create effective computer -based educational experiences, Corey started Exprima Media, a software company dedicated to creating robust and engaging educational experiences for the web and native mobile platforms. Exprima is currently working with Pearson Education, W.W. Norton , John Wiley & Sons, and McGraw Hill to build the future of educational media.

Thor Pritchard, Clarity Innovations — Panel Moderator [http://twitter.com/thorprichard] [http://clarity-innovations.com]

Thor Prichard is President & CEO of Clarity Innovations, a professional services firm that specializes in helping corporations and learning organizations improve the practice and process of teaching and learning with technology. Recent clients include Intel Education, Math Learning Center, Bellingham Schools, ScholarCentric, and Learning.com.

Thor’s focus is on finding promising technologies that match the needs of the education industry 3-5 years from now. Over the last two decades, he’s worn many hats on both sides of the equation, including as executive director of a regional consortium in charge of software licensing for schools. Thor holds a BA in cognitive psychology from Reed College in Oregon.

With HP's recent purchase of Palm, not only has Palm been revitalized, but the Pacific Northwest has gained new connections to Palm. HP has campus in Vancouver, WA. And one of Palm's own developer advocates, Joshua Marinacci, lives in Eugene.

Joshua is in town to attend OSCON and will be joining us to talk about Palm's webOS and mobile web technology. Here is a brief description of what Joshua will be talking about:

The core of the great smartphones by Palm Inc. is a brand new operating system called webOS. Built from pieces of the web, webOS is designed with the core features of the web in mind: sharing, linking, and easily developing applications with open standards like HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. In this session you'll learn an overview of webOS, the devices which run it, and an introduction to quickly programming webOS apps with web standards. In addition, Joshua will touch on where Palm is headed and what opportunities there are for applications and services on webOS devices.

About Joshua Marinacci

Josh Marinacci is a blogger and co-author of Swing Hacks for O’Reilly. He is currently a Developer Advocate for the webOS at Palm, Inc. He previously worked on JavaFX, Swing, NetBeans, and client lead for the Java Store at Sun Microsystems.

Josh lives in Eugene, Oregon and is passionate about open source technology & great user interfaces. He uses a Palm Pre, MacBook Pro, and Nikon D50 SLR to spread understanding of great design in software.

John Battelle recently wrote, "Mobile. It's on everyone's lips, but no one knows what the hell to do about it." You don't have to look very far to find examples that prove his point.

Over the last year, Jason Grigsby has been collecting examples of where companies are making mistakes when it comes to their mobile strategies and desperately seeking examples of those who get it.

In this presentation, Jason will talk about the DOs and DONTs of mobile strategy.

Learn from both the outstanding success and cringe-worthy failures of others as you begin to formulate your plans for navigating the mobile landscape.

Finally, we’ll look at methods for evaluating mobile strategies based on demographics, mobile context, and the unique characteristics of mobile devices.

About Jason

Jason Grigsby was one of the project leads on the Obama iPhone Application and helped design the user inferface for the Wall Street Journal’s Blackberry application. He founded and organizes Mobile Portland, a local mobile group.

Jason is a co-founder of Cloud Four, a small start-up focused on mobile and web development. He blogs at http://CloudFour.com/blog and provides a frequent updates about mobile as @grigs on Twitter.

TypeKit, FontSquirrel and Kernest are all great solutions to have webfonts in your sites, but wouldn’t you like to know what these services actually do in the underbellies, for once? And do you know that making fonts load faster often means also making it more secure?

Kill two glyphs with one stone by subseting, embedding and randomizing your own webfonts. See actual performance benchmarks (for once), and learn some hacks that would drive every would be type-pirate crazy (really).

“CSS3 is great, but I can’t use it on my sites because it’s not supported by IE.”

We may have heard this or been caught saying it in the past, but there are ways to enrich our user experiences today using CSS3 effects and animations - even on sites which still have high IE traffic. In this quick and dirty on CSS3 we’ll take a look at how to wield the power of CSS3 today, discuss appropriate implementation of things like effects and animations, and address the issues of browser compatibility (otherwise known as the “Plague of Redmond"). We’ll wrap it all up by diving into custom CSS3 animations to make your users in webkit browsers shout for joy.

Josh Clark is a Eugene, OR based designer and developer who, for the past 3 years, has been freelancing as Origen Creatives. Recently, he’s taken an in-house position as Senior Web Designer for Palo Alto Software.

We all know Flash isn't going to be allowed on the iPhone. Adobe has moved on and still has big plans for Flash and AIR on mobile devices starting with Android.

The next version of Android will ship with Flash support and early previews of the technology look great. Adobe AIR is also ready to go as a platform for Android development.

Come hear, and see demos, about the latest technology Adobe's provides for developing your applications targeted for devices.

The upcoming Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0 runtime releases provide new features geared specifically for non-PC devices. Adobe's technologies provide adaptable code development for ease of deploying your application to various devices.

Speaker Bio

Renaun Erickson is a Flash Platform Evangelist at Adobe Systems. Renaun has a wide range of experience with the Flash Platform. Renaun has worked on projects using technologies including ActionScript, Flex, AIR, PHP, ColdFusion, video, audio, logging, SIP/VoIP, casual games, and mobile.

Renaun can be found at his blog http://renaun.com/blog and at twitter @renaun. When he's not programming, Renaun enjoys playing games, the outdoors, archeology, driving a Jeep, and spending time with his family.

Our next meeting is Wednesday, May 19th, at the usual place & time: 7pm at PIE (1227 NW Davis St). This week we'll hear from Lennon Day-Reynolds about his in-house model migration library, and from Jeff "rozwell" Kistler about fromagerie [1], his private package index reusable app. In addition, we're putting together a few lightning talks covering some of the things new in Django 1.2 [2].

So far we've got Chris McDonald on what's new in the feed class, myself on the new CSRF protection system, and Dermot Maty on Multi-DB. We've got room for a couple more, so why not add your name to the list?

Adam

[1] http://bitbucket.org/jeffkistler/fromagerie/ [2] http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/releases/1.2/

Before the iPad launched, we convened a panel of experts to help examine what the iPad would mean for businesses, entrepreneurs and developers. The panel was a hit and the conversation continued into the evening.

By popular demand, we're bringing James Keller, one of the panelists, back to talk about what we got right and what we got wrong when it comes to the iPad. Accompanying James will be Darin Richardson from Refresh Media.

Together, they will focus on the most compelling and interesting aspect of the iPad: the way we interact with the device.

We'll examine how the iPad's user interface design works, what we've learned from Apple's own applications, and how other applications are taking advantage of the form factor.

About James and Darin

James Keller is a digital communications strategist and user experience evangelist at Small Society, a small agency based in Portland with a passion for the iPhone™ platform, dedicated to helping organizations bring great ideas to life. Before joining the Small Society team, James was at Wieden+Kennedy helping the Portland office align client business goals and brand experiences with emerging technologies.

Leveraging her extensive knowledge of interaction design, business analysis, campaign analytics, and integrated marketing communications, she has led multiple teams in creating efficient and effective online strategies for top brands such as Coca-Cola, NIKE, Procter & Gamble, Levi’s, LAIKA Studio, Zipcar, and the MTV Networks.

She can frequently be seen at conferences speaking on topics such as information architecture, social media, and convergent culture.

Darin Richardson, Refresh Media

Darin Richardson is a partner in Refresh Media, a small studio that focuses marrying beautiful interface design with smart technology. He concentrates on information architecture, interaction design, and front-end coding to make his clients' projects shine. Before Refresh, Darin earned his chops at software and design firms in California.

Darin is obsessive about the details, refrains from talking endlessly about CSS 3 properties (unless you ask), and always enjoys a good hike in the Cascades armed with his trusty Nikon D90.

Most Google Maps are boring, but yours doesn’t have to be. There are simple, off-the-shelf tools that, along with your design talent, can make your maps stand out from the rest. You can decide where they go, how they look and how they act.

Location on the web is more important than ever before. The data may originate from a phone or a check-in service, but chances are it ends up on a map. Learn how to customize markers, react to map events and layer images on top. You don’t even have to settle for the same old colors: make the maps conform to your design. Once you see how simple the tools are, you’ll want to get started right away on a mapping project of your own.

Portland's own Urban Airship recently celebrated some rather big milestones for a company that was started less than a year ago:

• Announced that they have delivered over 100 million push notifications
• Expanded support for push notifications to Android and Blackberry
• Secured $1.1 million in venture capital funding
• Released a new, innovative product, AirMail, at CTIA

Co-founder Scott Kveton will come to Mobile Portland to talk about what Urban Airship is doing and the challenges they've faced. In particular, Scott will talk about:

• Building a company selling pickaxes during a gold rush.
• The challenges of building a cross platform service for mobile.
• How Urban Airship customers are using push notification and in app purchases to increase app loyalty and revenue.
• Why Urban Airship built AirMail, how they hope it helps customers, and what they hope to learn about the app usage as their customers start using the product.

About Scott

Scott brings 12 years of experience building technology, developing business strategy and leading engineering teams with companies like Amazon.com, Rulespace, JanRain and now Urban Airship. Urban Airship builds messaging and content delivery solutions for mobile publishers. Scott was the co-founder of the Open Source Lab helping open source projects like Mozilla, Linux, Apache, Drupal grow into mainstream usage. Scott was an active supporter of open web standards having co-founded the OpenID and Open Web Foundations.

Take a deep-dive into the intersection of viral culture, mass marketing, design and technology. By studying issues like privacy protection, sustainable design, social media and virtual reality - a new consumer persona is taking shape. Sovereign Consumers are technology enabled, privacy disabled and very much aware of their value to marketers. They expect brands to deliver value and stay in-step with their values. This presentation provides practical advice for marketers on approaching the Sovereign Consumer.

March's PDX Django meeting will be a bit informal.

Adam Lowry will show a little bit of Celery, the distributed task processor, which is used to easily write and run offline tasks to be run outside the web request.

In addition there will surely be discussion and beverage.

dMob is gettin’ dLux! This month we have an extraordinary installment of dMob for you and we are bringing together not only the design community but also the tech community. Our friends at PIE are graciously opening up their space to a fantastic night of mingling and creative activities (not to mention complimentary hors d’oeuvres, beer, and wine). BYOM (Bring Your Own Mug)

So bring your fellow designers, techie neighbors, and witty repartee. Maybe we’re not so different after all?

PIE is throwing a party! It's been a great first part of the year, and we want to celebrate with our local tech friends. We'll have snacks and drinks.

Welcome to the 2010 Refresh Portland season! To open up the year, we have Callie B. Carroll, a user experience, usability and accessibility specialist, and humanitarian technologist who speaks both computer and human.

Callie will talk about the tricky art of planning for accessibility, where assumptions must be made about users, and these assumptions can create design that is either inclusive or exclusive, with narrow or broad usability.

The big question she will address: can you think about users in ways that will help designers and developers create technology that works for everyone, rather than technology that just supports what some see as the disparate groups of “normal” users and “those with disabilities”.

Her thesis: When the accessibility of technology (hardware, software, web, and mobile) is considered throughout design, development, and testing, the rewards are systems that provide equal access to functionality, services, and information for their entire range of users.

Despite missing December and January, February's PDX Django meeting looks like a great one. We have one short and one medium talk scheduled -- if you'd like to do a 5 minute or so talk on a tool, problem, or feature, why not let us know?

It's also the day before PyCon starts, so we might just chat about what looks interesting there.

The talks:

• Dermot Maty on a problem he had with Proxy Models, and how he solved it

• Michael Richardson will be previewing a talk he's giving at DjangoSki. Here's the summary from their talks page:

"Michael is a cofounder at Urban Airship where he spends his day working on a RESTful API to deliver notifications and in-app content to mobile devices. His talk, "RESTful APIs with Django and Piston," pulls from Urban Airship's experience and goes through creating an API in Django with Piston along with pitfalls you may experience along the way.

Michael was also the developer behind the massive Django-powered meat conglomerate bacn.com until it was sold earlier this year. Bac'n did not, sadly, have an API."

The meeting will be at 7pm at PIE, 1227 NW Davis St (directly opposite the North Face store -- look for the big brown armchairs in the window.

ReadWriteWeb blogger Marshall Kirkpatrick will share his approach to streams of information. A non-programmer, he uses off-the-shelf tools to find news stories among thousands of RSS feeds and in his crowded Twitter stream.

Sledgehammer: When does a startup need to call a lawyer?

And when can a startup get by without one? The members of PIE invite you to join them for a great session on understanding better when and when you don't need a lawyer.

We have invited one of the tech startup industry's best law firms to come and talk to the entreprenuers in Portland's startup scene. Neil Nathanson from the Portland office of the leading startup law firm Perkins Coie, will talk about the critical points in a startup's lifecycle where having your own legal sledgehammer is essential. Also joining him will be Jeff Bock, addressing licensing and intellectual property issues and Neil addressing corporate and finance issues. He will also cover what sort of services and counsel you can expect from a law firm and then be open for a Q&A session.

The event will start at 6pm, but the doors will open around 5:30 with pizza available.

There is no fee to attend - but please only register if you intend to come so we can have enough food.

Website: http://piepdx.com/2010/01/startup-law-101-when-does-a-startu...

Come see the great stuff your fellow Portlanders have been working on. There will be several ten minute demos of new products and side projects.

Confirmed lineup: * OMG Friends - Discover Twitter friends/followers in common (Mickey Slater) * Kayak - Lightweight C# HTTP server+framework (Benjamin van der Veen) * Gadget Trak - Theft Recovery Software (Ken Westin) * PaleoPlan - Membership diet website built on WordPress (Jason Glaspey)

Show off your project at this, or a future, Demolicious: http://pdxwi.com/demolicious

30 hour day is a cockamamie scheme concocted by Cami Kaos of Strange Love Live and Rick Turoczy of Silicon Florist. The concept? Livestream for 30 hours straight in an effort to raise money for charities like Free Geek, Oregon Food Bank, and Toys for Tots.

What's more, you can use our Creative Commons licensed content for a little charitable fundraising of your own. Just grab the stream and build an event around it, large or small.

Join us December 18 and 19 for 30 hours of entertainment, interviews, and interesting goings on—while helping some very worthwhile causes. All from the cozy warmth of your own Web browser.

PDX Django (a user group devoted to Django, the Python web framework) is having another meeting.

This month Joshua Drake will walk us through 10 things you can do to tune PostgreSQL for your web app. Here's his description:

• I am a Django Developer
• I know exactly snot about being a DBA
• What are the 10 best bang for the buck parameters I can change to make PostgreSQL go zip and how do I decide what to change those parameters to?

Adam Lowry will warm up with a report about an experiment Brett Carter and I did using SQLAlchemy's connection pool with Django, and how it affects per-request latency.

Come listen to Steve Babcock and Craig Vagt talk about finances, taxes, and money for startups and small businesses. There will be a 30 minute talk, followed by an open Q&A. All are welcome.

The details:

When: 6pm, October 29th, 2009

Where: PIE (1227 NW Davis)

Who: Anyone who wants to know more about small business finances, taxes, and startups.

RSVP at Upcoming

Bios:

Steve Babcock

Steve has more than twenty years experience providing financial management and consulting services to privately held companies and an additional eleven years as a CPA and senior audit manager with KPMG and predecessor firms.

Steve has served as a consultant to small and medium size businesses since 2001. In so doing he has assisted several start-ups in software and traditional business. He has assisted Fisher Farms, prominent in Oregon’s wholesale nursery industry, in planning and forecasting, resolving an earn-out with the prior owner, an acquisition and several financing and real estate transactions.

Steve was the CFO for Papa Murphy’s, a 20-plus state privately held pizza concept, from 1995-2000. He functioned as CFO of Springtime Inc. and Oregon Garden Products for five years and for two years as Vice President and Regional Controller for a cable television company in Portland.

Steve is currently serving as Past President and Board Member of the Portland Chapter of Financial Executives International (FEI) and as Treasurer and Board member of the Oregon International Air Show.

Steve has a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science from the University of Oregon and did post-baccalaureate study in accounting and finance at Portland State University.

Craig D. Vagt, CPA Partner

Craig joined Talbot, Korvola & Warwick LLP as a partner in 2001 when he merged his practice with Talbot Korvola and Warwick LLP. He is currently the managing partner at TKW. Craig began his career in the San Francisco Bay area and eventually was a partner with an international accounting firm. Returning to his hometown of Portland in 1991, Craig joined a local accounting firm as a partner. Over his years in public accounting, he has worked with a wide variety of clients in an equally wide variety of industries… Craig brings his experience in many areas of tax including ownership structures, multi-state and international planning, as well as general tax matters to his clients. His current practice has a major focus on the tax issues and opportunities affecting closely held companies, primarily pass through entities, and their owners.

A graduate of the University of Oregon with a degree in finance, he also has a law degree and a Masters in Taxation from Golden Gate University, where he also taught in the Masters in Tax program.

PDX Django (a user group devoted to Django, the Python web framework) is having it's second meeting. The content is still evolving; check the mailing list for updates.

Come see the great stuff your fellow Portlanders have been working on. There will be several ten minute demos of new products and side projects.

  Confirmed lineup:
  * Lucidium - A Platform for Enterprise Application Development (Rob Neild)
  * Tweeybot - Phone calls from Twitter (Travis Spencer)
  * Dashrep - A new descriptive programming language (Richard Fobes)
  * Simler - Online conversations around topics (Dane Hesseldahl)
  * OMGFriends - Twitter thing to see mutual followers/friends (Mickey Slater)

  Find out more about showing off *your* project at a future Demolicious:
  http://www.pdxwi.com/demolicious

IMPORTANT: You must RSVP and pay for the Saturday dinner if you want to eat, but you're welcomed to hack with us even if you don't buy dinner.

WhereCampPDX is a free unconference focusing on all things geographical. This informal meeting of minds welcomes all geo-locative enthusiasts, anyone who asks "where am I" or feels the need to "know their place".

Bring your laptop and a project to work on if you have one, or come and see what other people are doing. Hint: Friday and Saturday both have ample opportunities to scout out hacking ideas.

Luke Kanies from Reductive Labs will tell about his experience starting an Open Source Project (Puppet), building a company around it and raising venture capital.

  Some questions Luke will answer:
  * How do you make money when anyone can download your source code?
  * Is venture capital necessary?
  * Why did he choose to move his company to Portland?

  Of course, if you come, Luke will answer your questions, too.

PDX Django (a user group devoted to Django, the Python web framework) is having their first event that doesn't entirely revolve around beer or lunch. We'll have a few presentations and discussions.

Demo of new product to make In-App purchases easier.