So, you went to Ignite Portland 5, saw the presentations and thought, “Wow, those were great, I need to submit something for IP6!” When you realized the next Ignite wouldn’t occur until July, you thought, “Eh, I’ve got plenty of time to submit something. Time for more beer!”

Well, guess what? The deadline for submitting a proposal for IP6 is Sunday, May 17. Consider this a friendly reminder that you have just over a week to think up something you’d like to present to a crowd on July 16 at the Bagdad Theatre through 20 auto-forwarded slides.

Also, there will be a public town hall meeting held Monday, May 18 to discuss the proposals submitted and allow the community to voice their opinions on who should be part of IP6. The details on the town hall meeting are still TBD, but be sure to check out Upcoming as more information is made available.

Who knows, you may be selected and join the select crowd of past IP presenters. Shockingly, I belong to that club as do a few other Our PDX authors, including Aaron, Abraham, Betsy, and Cami.

What are you waiting for? Get those thinking caps on and submit your topic!

Related Posts

• November 18, 2009 -- When Storytellers Go Wild (5)
• April 28, 2009 -- OurPDX shared links for April 28th (1)
• April 23, 2009 -- Give Some Love to BarCamp Portland (1)
• February 19, 2009 -- Light It Up (2)
• November 16, 2008 -- SLL: Bancroft, Josh Bancroft (0)

Here’s what we’ve found as we’ve traveled the local PDX web (complete with our comments) for April 28th. The theme? Gotta love the straight talking going on around these parts! (Although one might say that Dwight and Steve rarely pull their punches):

• The last Trail Blazer game of the season? | Dwight Jaynes – Dwight adds his own two cents here: "You know what, folks — even if this team was positively getting screwed by the officiating every night in the series, it does players and coaches no good to be preoccupied with it. You have to just play. And certainly when you lose a game by a point, every player in the lineup can look at something he did that could have made up that single point — which has nothing to do with officiating."
• Wounded Mayor Defeated By Nerds | More Hockey Less War – Steve provides the smackdown here: "Perhaps his (Adams) quixotic attempt to shovel city-backed loans to one of the richest guys on the planet will be his undoing. Having been defeated by a handful of modernist architecture lovers (with support from pissed off veterans and a few nostalgic hockey fans), he’s gone back to the drawing board to find another piece of city-owned land to hand over to Paulson.

  Let’s see if he can get things done after all."

• Why I spent $4000 to attend free events last year | Silicon Florist – Rick writes another rant, hooray! Please go over and read it. PLEASE.

  Here's a snippet:

  First, I support the Legion of Tech because it’s the right thing to do. The Portland Web and mobile startup community is in its formative stages, its infancy. We need events like Ignite Portland and BarCamp Portland to help us congeal as a community. This is, as they say, where the magic happens.

  And it’s not just Legion of Tech. It’s events like Open Source Bridge. And WordCamp Portland. And any number of other events where this community just sort of comes together—and works really, really well."

  Then? Figure out how you can help. Because you CAN. I know you can!

Related Posts

• November 19, 2009 -- OurPDX shared links for November 19th (1)
• October 6, 2009 -- OurPDX Shared Links for October 6th (0)
• April 15, 2009 -- OurPDX shared links for April 15th (0)
• April 10, 2009 -- OurPDX shared links for April 10th (the ‘Beat LA!’ edition) (0)
• September 6, 2008 -- OurPDX shared bookmarks (0)

Sometimes, you get what you pay for.

And sometimes, you get far far more.

You get a job. A great new employee. An important contact. New business. The tip that helps you solve that problem that’s been keeping you up at night. New friends. Connections. An answer to a question. Or the confirmation that the problem’s bigger than we all might have realized (which, amazingly enough, helps you sleep better at night knowing you’re not out there alone in the wilderness by yourself.)

All this plus breakfast. Plus lunch. Plus snacks (cookies, even, if you’re really lucky.) And that all-important social lubricant: beer.

All this for the bargain basement price of: free. Free? Really?

Yes, really. You see, the Legion of Tech (the non-profit, all-volunteer group behind events like Ignite, BarCamp, WhereCamp and more) doesn’t charge to attend their events. Instead, they want to make sure they’re accessible, so events are always free. Instead, LoT pays for the food and the beverages and the cookies and the rental space by getting sponsors to subsidize the cost. (Then, there’s putting the events together — also done by an all-volunteer team with lives and jobs and families and loved ones.)

This year, though — while there are always people ready to whip out their checkbooks to help sponsor LoT events (and bless them for that!) — well, this upcoming BarCamp (scheduled for May 1-2 at CubeSpace) could use some love. (What is BarCamp, you wonder? See this Wikipedia page for a better explanation than I can give here…)

So if you’ve ever attended (or spoken at) Ignite Portland and had an amazing time? Pay it forward. Found a job (or a gig, or a new client) at last year’s BarCamp? Volunteer at this year’s event. Can’t be there, but have a connection to a sponsor, or someone who can donate food or snacks? Let Legion of Tech know.

This post gives you all the details: Donate, Volunteer or Sponsor to Help Make BarCampPortland a Success.

(Full disclosure ahead)

Yes, I’m on the Legion of Tech Advisory Board (so much for the notion that they just wanted my ‘advice’, no?) And yes, I’ll be going to BarCamp myself. But I’ll be volunteering at BarCamp as well. And I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is and kick in a hundred bucks on behalf of OurPDX (massively cashflow-negative operation that it is, heh) to help support BarCamp.

Can you help, too?

Related Posts

• May 6, 2009 -- Time is Running Out: Submit your Ignite Portland 6 Proposal! (2)
• May 4, 2009 -- OurPDX shared links for May 4th: The ‘future of journalism’ edition (0)
• May 1, 2009 -- Merging ‘old’ media & ‘new’ media, right here in PDX (0)
• April 28, 2009 -- OurPDX shared links for April 28th (1)
• October 21, 2008 -- Two Cool Mid-Week Events I Won’t Be At… (1)

…but there’s no reason why that should stop you from being there, right?

Normally, I’d be at both events, as I love what the BackFence Babes do, plus can always manage to handle a happy hour. But life has other plans for me this week.

Wednesday, October 22nd:

BackFencePDX
The October event—Just Can’t Get Enough:
Getting Stuffed and Being Stuffed—doors open at 7 pm; show starts at 8 pm.

Where: Urban Grind East
2214 NE Oregon St.

Get advance tickets here. (They’re suggesting that you buy them NOW if you want to attend, as Urban Grind will only hold 160 people and there’s already buzz for the event. Also, cash only at the door…)

Thursday October 23rd:

The last meetup of the year for Legion of Tech’s Happy Hour event (this one with waffles!)

Where: Jace Gace
2045 SE Belmont
5:30pm – 7:30pm

While Todd’s description has me salivating—”Sweet waffles, savory waffles, beer, wine, art & geeks all converging in a glorious orgy of awesome”—I have to do the responsible parenting thing and, well, parent that night. But you shouldn’t miss it! RSVP on Upcoming here.

Related Posts

• November 18, 2009 -- When Storytellers Go Wild (5)
• September 22, 2009 -- Get Temporarily Insane for Only 10 Bucks at Back Fence PDX (1)
• May 7, 2009 -- Word to Your Mother (4)
• May 6, 2009 -- Time is Running Out: Submit your Ignite Portland 6 Proposal! (2)
• April 28, 2009 -- OurPDX shared links for April 28th (1)

You have less than a week to submit your presentation idea for Ignite Portland 4! (Submissions are closing at midnight on 10/14; presenters will be announced on 10/20.) The latest in a string of excellent Portland events will take place on Thursday, November 13th, starting at 7 pm at the Bagdad Theatre (Upcoming link).

What is Ignite about, anyway? It’s your chance to tell a story. Inspire a crowd (and yep, there’ll definitely be a crowd on hand.) Your only accompaniment? Your prepped slide presentation – no more than 20 slides. This presentation will show up as you speak, automatically timed to show the slide for 15 seconds before moving along to the next one. Total time? Five minutes.

Are you up for the challenge? (I think I am—have already tossed my hat into the ring, in fact…)

And while you’re at it? Check out this video valentine from the Legion of Tech folks, and help them find some sponsors to help subsidize this free event, put on with 100% volunteer labor.

Related Posts

• September 29, 2008 -- OurPDX shared bookmarks for September 29th (0)
• May 6, 2009 -- Time is Running Out: Submit your Ignite Portland 6 Proposal! (2)
• April 28, 2009 -- OurPDX shared links for April 28th (1)
• April 23, 2009 -- Give Some Love to BarCamp Portland (1)
• November 14, 2008 -- Who Knew I Was a Hipster? (6)

Here’s what we’ve found as we’ve traveled the local PDX web (complete with our comments) for September 29th

• WordCamp Portland (#wordcampdx) 2008: Ironically, words escape me » Silicon Florist – Rick's left speechless; while the rest of us aren't!
• Like WordPress and OpenID? wp-openid 3.0 to launch at Demolicious » Silicon Florist – Mark your calendars and show up on 10/1 at Nemo Design to see what Will Norris has cooked up for the next iteration of the WordPress openID plugin!
• Ignite Portland 4 Submission Opens! at Ignite Portland – Deadline's October 14th; will need to huddle with 10 year old to figure out how best to bring the bling…!

Note: you can share bookmarks back to our site if you have a Mag.nolia account – just join our group and then send relevant links to that group when you mark a site, article, or post!

Related Posts

• October 7, 2008 -- Tell a Story in Five Minutes or Less… (2)
• September 21, 2009 -- SLL: Martini Lesson for Matt Mullenweg (2)
• August 17, 2009 -- SLL: WordcampPdx 2009, Urban Airship and PIE (0)
• June 23, 2009 -- What’s Your $$$ Situation? (4)
• June 12, 2009 -- PDX in Your Pictures: Tickets to Ride (0)

Here’s what we’ve found as we’ve traveled the local PDX web (complete with our comments) for September 10th:

• Take your Side Project to a Startup on September 12-13 at Legion of Tech – Are you going? Have you RSVP-ed yet? If not, get your butt over there NOW!
• Talking with Paul Bausch about ORBlogs | Positively Glorious! – Mettadore says: Every once in a while, you talk to someone, hear their cadence and the silences between sentences, and after about 2 minutes you think to yourself Wow, this person is just really, really smart? That's the feeling I got after talking with Paul Bausch about ORBlogs.

  (Yeah, I know this isn't strictly PDX – but we all care, right?)

• Experimenting with Silicon Florist reddit: A reddit for the rest of us » Silicon Florist – Rick kicks off a new experiment to replace The O's Reddit implementation: Silicon Florist reddit. He's even got buttons and bookmarklets and dreams of a widget, oh my!

Note: you can share bookmarks back to our site if you have a Mag.nolia account – just join our group and then send relevant links to that group when you mark a site, article, or post!

Related Posts

• May 6, 2009 -- Time is Running Out: Submit your Ignite Portland 6 Proposal! (2)
• April 28, 2009 -- OurPDX shared links for April 28th (1)
• April 23, 2009 -- Give Some Love to BarCamp Portland (1)
• February 1, 2009 -- SLL: ORblogs Community (0)
• October 21, 2008 -- Two Cool Mid-Week Events I Won’t Be At… (1)

Here’s what we’ve found as we’ve traveled the local PDX web (complete with our comments):

• Pull your pants back up, Blazer fans | On the Vig – Chris Snethen gives us four reasons why that 'guaranteed championship' isn't quite in the bag yet…
• Should the baby elephant’s name be ‘Amul’ or ‘Duc’? | The Portland Tribune – You have until this Thursday to vote for one of five suggested names for Rose-Tu's new baby; get details here…
• From Side Project to Startup – This free conference (sponsored by Legion of Tech & others) happens next Friday and Saturday, 9/12 & 9/13 at CubeSpace. Learn from other potential entrepreneurs and/or share your own wisdom!

Note: you can share bookmarks back to our site if you have a Mag.nolia account – just join our group and then send relevant links to that group when you mark a site, article, or post!

Related Posts

• December 4, 2009 -- What is the Sound of One Man Clapping? (7)
• November 8, 2009 -- Blazer Fever – Don’t Catch It (0)
• April 28, 2009 -- OurPDX shared links for April 28th (1)
• April 16, 2009 -- Trail Blazers Find their Rhythm At Just the Right Time (0)
• April 11, 2009 -- Blazer Rally downtown in Pioneer Place next Thursday 4/16 (1)

I was lucky enough to catch Gary Vaynerchuk’s talk last night at Wieden and Kennedy – he was the effusive speaker kicking off Legion of Tech’s inaugural Legion of Talk series. Although if you’ve ever caught Gary before – maybe you follow him on Twitter, (@garyvee to his devoted following), or you tune in daily for Wine Library TV – describing what he does as a ‘talk’ seems to be too staid. Lecture? Um, no. Dissertation? Not hardly. More like an old-time ‘come to Jesus’ stomp your feet and belieeeeve! prayer revival session – only peppered with blasphemies and exhortations of the most-definitely-not religious type, especially to the tech and/or marketing types in the crowd. (Email dying? Content will all be free? Marketing yourself as your own personal brand? Oh, the horrors…!)

I can’t describe it in anything but vague terms – yet I was one of the people crowded around the doors at W+K hanging on his every word afterwards (I left at 10ish; lord only knows when Gary finally got to escape!) Luckily, Dawn Foster has detailed sermon notes on her blog. And if you want to meet Gary yourself, head on over to Powell’s in Beaverton @ 7 pm tonight where he’ll be reading from his book: Gary Vaynerchuk’s 101 Wines: Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World.

All I can say is this: I believe, Brother Gary. Hallelujah, I beeliiiieeeveeee!

Related Posts

• May 6, 2009 -- Time is Running Out: Submit your Ignite Portland 6 Proposal! (2)
• April 28, 2009 -- OurPDX shared links for April 28th (1)
• April 23, 2009 -- Give Some Love to BarCamp Portland (1)
• October 21, 2008 -- Two Cool Mid-Week Events I Won’t Be At… (1)
• October 7, 2008 -- Tell a Story in Five Minutes or Less… (2)