At this monthly meeting, we get together, talk about app ideas for one or two industry (such as sporting apparel, commercial building, food, water, etc). These are the local industry that can use some help to identify solutions to reduce carbon footprint and lessen any negative environmental impact to local residents.

Our goal is to brainstorm innovative ideas utilizing information technology by leveraging the mobile and social web.

Of course, creative juice often comes after a glass of nice brew. That's how drink is involved in this. If you not a drinker, the Pub serves good food of you to hack & eat.

We are not really building an app at the meeting (but if you would like to crank out an app in 90 mins, that would be awesome too). And what are we doing with these ideas? You'll have to come to find out.

For those who won't be able to make it in person you can join via G+ Hangout. Please let me know in advance.

Thanks and hope to see you on the 15th!

This hackathon is different than others...it is a two day charrette to bring together developers, designers and innovators building web or mobile apps to solve environmental issues and enjoy a few good company.

Here is the scoop about the hackathon.

Prizes First place: $1500 and three 50% off the admission to the NEXT Startup Weekend Second place: $500 and two 50% off the admission to Tech for Change

Friday, 5/17 (optional but recommended) Kick-Off Party: Good food and beer will be there for you plus some good companies. An opportunity to scout teammates and networking & social

Saturday, 5/18 Commissioner Fish will speak. Bill Weihl, Sustainability Guru at Facebook will make cameo appearance via video conferencing. API, datasets and project ideas will be presented.

Sunday, 5/19 It is your time to shine. The final presentation will start at 3:30 and the prizes will be given out to the top two teams.

Breakfast and lunch are on us. Thanks to Chipotle!

See you all there!

If you haven't already signed up for the Hack tomorrow at PSU, we hope some details included here will entice you. To prepare our participants for a fun and productive day, below are details and resources for the Hack.

Goals: To generate ideas are innovative to solving environmental and sustainability, social equity issues through utilization of software and mobile apps. Don’t forget to have some fun.

Idea Generation: To start, you should ask the following questions: 1) What issues you and your team would like to tackle? (ie. carbon emissions reduction by buildings or vehicles, solar potential identifier, change of personal habits, e-waste tracking, etc.) 2) What do other similar applications exist on the market? Sometimes, building on existing apps can resolve a more refined product. 3) What is the marketability? Is it scalable?

The best project ideas are one that you are passionate about, and have some components of competition and linkage to social media.

Finding Data: While you are brainstorming ideas, you should also consider data availability as well. It is not the end of the world if you don’t have data sets or APIs to mock up a prototype. Simply build your own datasets, even if just a few that are enough for you to test out your product.

See the Cleanweb Hack resource guide for APIs, data sets, sample projects and project ideas. (http://tinyurl.com/m7a744e)

Judging Criteria: At the end of day, your prototype will be scored on these criteria: 1) Impact on resource and sustainability issues 2) Design and usability of prototype 3) Feasibility and marketability 4) Good use of datasets and APIs

Prizes: 1st Place - $500, 2nd Place - $250

Bragging right is priceless.

Our judges are looking forward to your innovations!

Winston Saunders, Director of Data Center Security Initiatives at Intel Chris Harder, Division Manager at the Portland Development Commission (PDC) Skip Newberry, President at the Technology Association of Oregon (TAO)

Questions? Ask us on Twitter (@cleanwebPDX), Facebook or via email [email protected]

There will be food, drink and good companies. Come out to have some fun!

What is Cleanweb? Cleanweb is a meme, a movement, a market that individuals/organizations are leveraging information technologies to address the world's critical resource challenges. This web of technologies can optimize how we use resources across the way we live, work, and play. It creates the biggest impact and economic opportunity of our time.

Level up your skills, network with peers, and learn to deliver better products, services, and solutions with this unique workshop from nuCognitive.

Developing solutions to customer problems is complex balancing act. Some products fail due to a flawed business model while others are neither desirable nor useful. This workshop invites teams to shift their thinking from developing a product or service to delivering a holistic solution that balances business, usage, and technology.

The Three-Circle Model is both a descriptive and a prescriptive approach to develop holistic solutions. It is based on the three fundamental perspectives needed for a balanced and compelling solution; Business, Usage, and Technology. -The Business circle represents the economic viewpoint. A solution must be marketable, profitable, and affordable. -The Usage circle represents the conceptual viewpoint. A solution must be desirable, usable, and useful. -The Technology circle represents the implementation viewpoint. A solution must be manufacturable, functional, and consumable (by the industry and associated ecosystems).

These three circles can be arranged in a Venn diagram with overlaps for Value, Capability, and Ingredients.

The Three-Circle Model forms a cohesive and consistent taxonomy that can be used by organizations as the basis of a shared vocabulary, thereby reducing misinterpretations and wasteful communication churn. The model is also the underlying architecture for a solution life cycle. Unlike other life cycles with phases that are based on activities (e.g. exploration, planning, development), the solution life cycle’s phases are based on the state of the solution itself. This makes the life cycle activity and method agnostic, so it works with Agile, Lean, traditional, and hybrid approaches.

Learning Outcomes: -Describe the three fundamental perspectives of a solutions: Business, Usage, and Technology -Describe the three two-circle overlaps in the model: Value, Capability, and Ingredient -Understand what a balanced solution means -Evaluate a product, service, or solution using the model to locate weaknesses and knowledge gaps -Apply the Three-Circle Model to a solution life cycle -Improve communication among teams using a common vocabulary and taxonomy for solution development -Use the model to diagnose and improve issues in solution development

Who should attend: Product management, product owners, product developers, service designers, architects, product managers, engineers, business development, business strategy, marketing, planners, project managers, software developers

Level up your skills, network with peers, and learn to accelerate stakeholder value delivery with this unique workshop from nuCognitive.

The first Agile principle is "Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software." However, in practice this does not seem to be true nearly as often as it should be. Teams often fail to provide early, frequent delivery of stakeholder value. Instead, they focused on spikes, class libraries, infrastructure, and other inward-focused work, without an understanding of their stakeholders and what they value. As a result, many teams start with what is most familiar, easiest, or most convenient for them rather than what stakeholders value most.

Why do teams often become focused on (or even obsessed with) feature development and maximizing development velocity? Without explicit focus on value, the association between velocity, feature development, and value-delivery is weak - perhaps even non-existent. At best, these projects are conducted sub-optimally. Frequently, they fail when stakeholders remove funding because they perceive a lack of value add.

Value-driven delivery is achieved using the answers to three simple, but not at all easy, questions: 1. Who are your stakeholders? 2. What do they value? 3. What are you doing in the next two weeks or less to provide value to them?

Teams often have many more stakeholders than they first realize. Value-driven Delivery ensures those stakeholders are made explicit, and that the list of stakeholders is kept current throughout the project.

Value-driven delivery captures and maintains stakeholder values in a quantified, verifiable way. This ensures that teams can know the real effects of each stakeholder value delivery, and prevents work based on an outdated understanding of value.

Value-driven Delivery also challenges teams to sequence deliveries so that they deliver the most valuable things first. This can have tremendous benefits, generating early business results and reducing the time required for the team to get into a positive Return on Investment for the project.

Value-driven delivery makes a natural overlay for Scrum, but does not require Scrum's use to be effective. Value-driven delivery does not ignore features and velocity, but it explicitly places value delivery above those things as the top priority.

Two other advantages to Value-driven Delivery worth mentioning: First, it is not limited to software, but applies to all aspects of an organization, including the executive suite, human resources, finance, IT, and product teams. Second, it is not focused on or limited to any particular scale. In fact, it is scale-free, working on small teams and teams of more than 500 engineers in a 100K-person company.

Learning Outcomes: -The definition and nature of value -The principles and practices of Value-driven Delivery -How to use Evolutionary Delivery to manage value-driven work, alone or in concert with Scrum -Fundamentals of several disciplines and models that aid value-driven work, including the Kano Model, elements from Diffusion of Innovations, UX Proof Points, and the HEART Framework -Attendees will gain enough understanding to begin using Value-driven Delivery in their own work if they desire. -Additional sources of information will be provided for continued learning.

Who should attend: Product management, product owners, product developers, service designers, architects, product managers, engineers, business development, business strategy, marketing, planners, project managers, software developers