Hi friends! Rick Turoczy asked me if he and the Open Source Bridge crew could lead some discussion tomorrow @beerandblog. I think what they are up to is valuable to the Portland community and her tech scene, so I said yes. If you’re not yet familiar with Open Source Bridge, they are a group of local techies that want to continue OSCON now that they are not coming back to Portland. But, they’re growing into much more than that. Here’s what they say on their about page:

We are advocates, developers, and Portlanders making the world better with open source technology.

Open Source Bridge will bring together the diverse tech communities of the greater Portland area and showcase our unique and thriving open source environment. We will show how well Portland does open source and share our best practices for development, community and connectedness with the rest of the world.

We’re setting out to change the structure of conference planning: asking interested people to come together at a Town Hall meeting, and share their collective experience and wisdom. Following the lead of the Linux Plumbers Conference, we’re enlisting curators for our conference sessions, planning mini-confs for critical topics and including unconference sessions. The focus will always be on increasing interaction between participants and engaging everyone in the content. 

Once upon a time on the Magic Animal Farm in a sparse corner of Colorado there was a boy who was raised by wolves, who grew up to be an accidental open-source evangelist and now lives in Portland, Oregon. I call him Dante Vatican. (That's his Ron Mexico name. Suiting, isn't it?) Everyone else knows him as that unpronounceable twitter handle @xolotl or the otherwise normal-sounding Nate Angell.

Me, I like ALL of his personalities.

Nate has worked with a lot of open source platforms over the years, right now working as Client Evangelist at The rSmart Group, which focuses on the education industry. He has an unhealthy love for Drupal, which is why the story of the boy raised by wolves now concerns you, my fellow Beer and Bloggies.

This Friday, starting at 4pm at the Green Dragon, Nate will be extolling the virtues of Drupal. I like to call it Drupal Magic Animal Farm because it makes me giggle. Specifically (but of course subject to change, such a life and underwear) Dante, darnitImean, Nate will be covering:

• Why one might choose Drupal as a blogging platform over other alternatives such as WordPress
• Installing Drupal
• Drupal look and feel using themes
• Using OpenID with Drupal
• Extending Drupal to add additional functionality to your blog, including
  • Aggregating content from other sources such as feeds
  • Custom content types and views in Drupal

Wow! That's a lot of Drupal knowledge to dispense!

If you can't make the Drupal Magic Animal Farm, that's okay. All your friends will be along shortly. The beer will flow, the laughter will bubble, and maybe you'll have some conversations about blogging.

We're moving back to Wednesdays and going to McMenamins on Monroe for the first time. We had a few requests to give them a try so we're doing it! Unfortunately they don't technically take reservations, but they know we're coming. They recently changed the table arrangement upstairs so it may actually work better for us! We plan on being upstairs to the right.

We haven't had a talk in a while, so lets have one! I'll announce what we'll talk about early next week, but let me know your ideas!

See you there!

-Lance

Teaming with @beerandblog. We will eat. We will Play rock band. We will sing like we are #notatsxsw. Thanks to #iterasi for hosting.

Join your fellow beer-and-bloggers at CubeSpace this Friday where KJs @MizD and @Chefchopper will spin (is that even the right word? I'm exposing my lame-ness here, aren't I) any one of their thousands of digital karaoke songs for your crooning pleasure. Lyrics will be projected big and tall for those spontaneous sing-along moments that always happen when someone sings pretty much anything by Pat Benatar. (At the very least, there is involuntary toe tapping. Think about it.)

We'll also have more Beer and Blog buttons to pass out. They're beeutiful.

First of all, thanks to all of you for enduring my cleverly-worded, extremely cheesy headlines. They give me such pleasure to think up, you see. So...thanks.

Next of all, it's time for Beer and Blog again! Whoo-hoo!

This time around Jason Harris (of techcraver.com fame, a most excellent tech blog) will be demoing Taptu a "super-fast entertainment search engine for your mobile."

(This is the part where you get my "tap" headline pun, shake your head, and chuckle "that silly, silly @mediaChick." It's okay, I'm used to it.)

Jason is the US Community Manager for Taptu, which enables media searching on your cell phone and SMS media link sharing with your friends. Intriguing, no? He'll be showing off his mobile search-and-share engine starting at 4pm, so all you mobile software rock stars should make plans accordingly.

Also, in case you haven't heard...Justin and Christine are outta town. In Vegas, again. Yep, left me with the keys to the castle, at the helm of the ship. Funny thing, though. All I can think about is who's going to buy me a beer at Beer and Blog. ;)

See you there, beer-and-bloggers!

I'm TOTALLY excited about the fun in store for the Beer and Blog community this Friday, July 10. Back by popular demand is What the Shit, that Twitter dramatic reading event we all enjoyed back in May. Far too long ago, and now the wait is over.

What the Shit, the dramatic over-acting of Twitter tweets, was invented by @melissalion during a moment of undoubtedly utmost genius. The reading encourages you to invite your inner cheese ball out to play and read any tweet in your very best over-the-top oratory form. Also, emoticons are spelled out and there are RULES to follow. Helpful rules as this:

If one of your tweets is read, this is a compliment. Remember, there's no crying in Twitter dramatic readings. Chest beating and keening are okay.

Yeah, I've got me a nice little collection of tweets in consideration for my reading. Done in my best poetry voice, I hope to make my high school theatre teacher Mr. McDonald proud this Friday. The bummer is, the limit is 6 tweets. Who am I going to cut? Soooo difficult.

What the Shit starts at 5:45pm, and sign-ups start at 5:30. Go see @melissalion's Upcoming.org event page for more information and the rules of the game.

One more thing: Don't forget to spread the word on End Bloglessness, scheduled for July 18th. We all know someone who's been talking about starting a blog, but might not be Internet savvy or involved in social networking and wouldn't ordinarily hear about End Bloglessness. Tell them about it. We'll set them up with a platform in one afternoon.

By that way, that's MizD's birthday. I will be making something chocolate-y to celebrate for all to share. You don't mind, do you? =)AYE

Very soon — this Saturday and Sunday, to be exact — a mass of bloggers will pack the conference rooms of Webtrends for the 2009 WordCamp Portland. This is a fun and informative couple of days stuffed with opportunities to learn tasty tidbits about the popular open source web site software WordPress. Perhaps you've heard of this WordPress thing? It's a free and mighty powerful content management system that makes hosting your own blog a snap. And with two solid days of learning such things as how to be your podcast’s dom and not its sub, how to build (and how NOT to build) a WP plugin, and how to make your blog load efficiently, you know it's going to be where all the cool kids are.

Tickets have been sold out for weeks (great job Aaron, Betsy and Dale!!) but if you were lucky enough to get your name on the attendees list I congratulate you on your good fortune! Last year I didn't get around to buying my WordCamp ticket before it was too late, and it was torturous seeing my twitter stream inundated with remarks of camp joviality, WordPress "Ah-ha!" moments, and links to flickr images of the smiling faces of my fellow bloggers. (OK, fine. I'll admit it. I simmered in silent resentment at some of the more active tweeters at last year's WordCamp Portland. But all is forgiven now. Mostly.)

Whether or not you've got yourself a ticket, please join Beer and Blog in extending a warm welcome to several WordPress speakers (and many attendees) for beers and conversation the day before the camp starting bell rings. We'll be at the Green Dragon. I'll be there, too, trying not to rub salt in the wounds of the ticketless. I feel your pain...and I'll be thinking about the pain Ill be inflicting while I drown my twitter stream in bragging, gleefull tweets with the excessive use of the #wcpdx tag.

You're welcome.

The final Friday of our 2nd anniversary celebration is here. So far this month we've given away lots of free booze and cool stuff (courtesy of @AlaskaAir, @SexyNurd, and @DarkHorseComics) to record-breaking numbers of Beer and Bloggers. Even the staff @LaughingSquid stopped by to join in on the hoopla. Sweet!

Have you been enjoying yourself so far? We hope so!

And now, for our final Friday celebration, we've managed to work our way into the schedule of a very special guest who's heard good things about Beer and Blog and wants to come and celebrated with us: Portland's own Mayor Sam Adams!

We're honored by a visit from the Mayor of the city we love so much. We believe it's the spirit of community that Portland, Oregon is known for that has kept Beer and Blog humming along, growing steady and strong like we have the past two years. Portland is Weird, it's awesomesauce, and a visit from Sam Adams is pretty much a Seal of Portland Approval in my eyes.

Please join your fellow Beer and Bloggers this Friday at the Green Dragon for the final round of cheers in celebration of our 2nd year. We'll start gathering at 4pm as usual, and expect the Mayor around 5:30pm.

A very special W00t! to long-time Beer and Blog supporter @faddah for coordinating the introduction to Mayor's Office :)

RSVP on Upcoming or get you 411 on Calagator

Have beer with geeks. Well-mannered dogs welcomed on patio.

Please RSVP on our Beer and Blog Reunion Roll Call!

The erstwhile Beer and Blog community is getting together for a "reunion" and to welcome anyone else who wants to connect with such folks at our old haunt, the place formerly known as Green Dragon. If you can't make it on this date, try 24 January 2020 instead. We will also try to have a virtual connection for folks that can't make it FTF if the tech gods be willing...stay tuned to @beerandblog on Twitter for details.

Please RSVP on our Beer and Blog Reunion Roll Call!

The erstwhile Beer and Blog community is getting together for a "reunion" and to welcome anyone else who wants to connect with such folks at our old haunt, the place formerly known as Green Dragon. If you can't make it on this date, try 17 January 2020 instead. We will also try to have a virtual connection for folks that can't make it FTF if the tech gods be willing...stay tuned to @beerandblog on Twitter for details.