Dawn Foster UberFeed

Interview: Yaozu (Eddie) Dong, Open Source Virtualization Expert

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:00:41 +0000

Yaozu (Eddie) Dong is a technical lead in the Open Source Technology Center in Shanghai, PRC. He joined Intel in 1998 and had been involved in various embedded system projects from PalmOS to Windows CE to Linux, and several virtualization projects. He received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, PRC.

Dawn: What do you like about working in Intel's Open Source Technology Center?

Eddie: Intel's Open Source Technology Center is a great place where I learned, grew up and contributed. The team here in China is young, open and skillful, and we all are in a very good atmosphere to help each other and work as a team. Each individual contribution is small, but we are proud of the whole team effort. That is the sole reason we received an Intel Achievement Award in 2006.

Dawn: How are you involved in performance tuning work for open source virtualization projects?

Eddie: I started my virtualization life in early 2004, and started working on open source virtualization projects, i.e. Xen, at the end of year. Performance is critical to the success of open source virtualization projects, but it was not that good at that time. I started the work with help from the team, accumulated all the expertise necessary and was able to improve it dramatically both in Xen and KVM.

Dawn: Can you tell us more about your efforts with SR-IOV Networking in the Xen project?

Eddie: SR-IOV, as part of Intel Virtualization Technology for Connectivity, is a significant product to improve I/O virtualization performance. It takes the advantage of Intel Virtualization Technology for directed I/O, i.e. VT-d, to reduce the intervention of hypervisor in I/O sharing. As a team, we implemented the SR-IOV support for open source virtualization and tuned the performance to achieve close to native performance.

Dawn: What do you do for fun when you aren't working at Intel?

Eddie: I like to spend time with my kid, playing chess or having fun together.

Sentiment Analysis: How Do People Feel About You On Twitter?

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:00:28 +0000

Do you know how people feel about you on Twitter? Are the tweets about you or your product mostly positive, negative or neutral? While things like feelings and sentiment can seem fuzzy and “touchy-feely,” there are sentiment analysis tools available for Twitter that attempt to classify tweets into either positive, negative or neutral categories automatically using algorithms and lists of keywords. For example, using words like “sucks,” “sad” and “hate” would be classified as negative, while “awesome,” “great” and “love” would be positive, with a neutral rating given to anything not falling into one of the other two categories.

As you can probably guess, the results from sentiment analysis tools vary widely, with many tweets ending up in the wrong category. Each tool is only as good as the list of keywords and the algorithms it uses, and they are easily confused by imperfect human beings who send mixed signals into their algorithms. For example, this tweet from @PDXrox was classified by one tool as positive and negative by another, based on confusion over using both “dang” and “:(” while also using the word “love:”

“Dang! Both @backfencepdx and @igniteportland have scheduled their events for the same night – Nov 19th. I love them both – wah! :-(“

You have a few options for sentiment analysis. If you are doing work for a company with budget for analysis tools, you should seriously think about purchasing a tool like Techrigy’s SM2, Scout Labs or other social media monitoring packages with sentiment analysis, since they have more robust features than some of the free tools. For those of us doing personal monitoring or working at small companies with limited budgets, there are some free tools that you can use to get at least a rough idea of how people feel about you or your products and services.

twendz

twendz is certainly the best free tool that I used, which isn’t really surprising since it was created by Waggener Edstrom, a large public relations firm with a vested interest in having accurate sentiment analysis for its clients. It handled my complex search query with ease when other tools did not, and it constantly updates in the browser window with new tweets. It also has some really nice features, including sentiment summary per tag and the ability to see exactly which tweets are positive or negative overall or for each tag.

twitrratr

I have some fundamental issues with twitrratr: It doesn’t handle complex searches; it doesn’t pick up new tweets very quickly and it doesn’t have additional analysis by tag or other parameters. However, I like how you can easily see at a glance the tweets that are positive, negative and neutral with words highlighted to show you why the tweet was put in the positive or negative category.

As I mentioned before, these tools aren’t perfect. Any time you are dealing with human beings and our imprecise languages, there will be plenty of opportunities for putting tweets into the wrong categories. However, sentiment analysis does provide a starting point and a rough idea for assessing how you people feel about you or your product.

What have you experienced when using sentiment analysis tools?

Delicious Bookmark: Online Database of Social Media Policies

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:23:36 +0000

Attend Our Online Community Webinar

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:18:04 +0000

I am excited to announce that our first Olliance webinar will be on the topic of Online Communities: The “Secret Sauce” for Today’s Competitive Businesses. On November 17th, I will be leading a discussion about defining your online community strategy, best practices for participation, and effective community content planning.

I am delighted to be joined by Bill Johnston, Chief Community Officer at Forum One, who will be sharing some research data and insights about effective online community metrics and reporting along with extending your community using social media strategies.

Attendance is limited, so please Register Now.

Logistics

Date: Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Time: 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern
Cost: Free

More Details

Learn how top organizations are incorporating community into their strategic and tactical plans. The adoption of social networks, user forums, and message boards has never been higher, and today’s top-performing enterprises are finding ways to leverage this. The webinar will introduce you to many essential concepts:

defining your online community strategy
the right and wrong way to engage and participate in online communities
running an effective beta program with seeded content
effective content planning
identifying and implementing an effective metrics and reporting strategy
extending your community into a social media presence

Delicious Bookmark: Local to Take Lead on Online Ad Spend - eMarketer

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:16:12 +0000

Delicious Bookmark: Young People Tweeting More and More - eMarketer

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:14:51 +0000

Cloud Computing on Ubuntu

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:00:46 +0000

Last week, I talked about Red Hat's and Novell's cloud computing strategies, and now Ubuntu's latest server release is focused on cloud computing.

Canonical announced the availability of Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition, which includes Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) powered by software from Eucalyptus Systems. What makes this particularly interesting is that the technology is based on the Amazon EC2 APIs allowing companies to easily deploy their solution in a private cloud within their internal IT infrastructure or externally on Amazon EC2.

Steve George, Canonical's director of support and services, recently told Computerworld's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols that "People who have been exploring cloud computing have really only be able to use public clouds. UEC allows companies to build a cloud internally first, and then think about how to make use of public clouds like EC2."

They also made a special effort to create an image that works both on KVM (Ubuntu's preferred virtual environment) and Xen (the virtualization solution used on Amazon EC2). In an interview with CNET's Stephen Shankland, Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical Founder and CEO, said: "It's possible to build one machine image which works in both places. We went to a lot of trouble to make a version for 9.10 that works on EC2."

It is nice to see Ubuntu providing a flexible cloud computing solution for their customers. Companies need this kind of flexibility to easily move between internal, private cloud solutions and cloud solutions using heavy duty, scalable architectures like Amazon EC2 based on their changing business needs.

You can learn more about Canonical's cloud computing strategy in this video from the Intel Developer Forum.

Delicious Bookmark: Your Company May Own Your Tweets, Pokes, and YouTube Videos « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:30:10 +0000

Delicious Bookmark: Guest Post by Aspen Baker: Friend or Foe? UC Berkeley Investigates the Legal Landscape of Social Networking - Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:13:22 +0000

Delicious Bookmark: Feeling Lucky? | ::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:48:03 +0000

Delicious Bookmark: Ten steps for building an internal social media team — SocialFish

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:40:59 +0000

Delicious Bookmark: How to deal with bad apples in your online community | Community Building

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:38:55 +0000

Delicious Bookmark: HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:19:33 +0000

Delicious Bookmark: Quicktake: The Impacts Of Google’s Social Search « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:13:32 +0000

Delicious Bookmark: What Social Media Monitoring Won't Get You | Social Media Explorer

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:04:04 +0000

Delicious Bookmark: Going Social Anywhere and Everywhere - eMarketer

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:02:05 +0000

Delicious Bookmark: Consumers Demand Brand Interaction - eMarketer

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:34:04 +0000

Delicious Bookmark: Facebook Grabs Soc Net Share - eMarketer

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:49:04 +0000

Delicious Bookmark: Americans Want Brands that Inform - eMarketer

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:11:38 +0000

Interview: Jeff Campbell from SugarCRM

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:56:50 +0000

People are already converging in Paris, France for the Open Source Think Tank event coming up on October 1 along with the Open World Forum, and we wanted to highlight a few of the interesting companies who have decided to sponsor these invitation-only brainstorming events in the traditional format of the think tank. This interview with Jeff Campbell is the final in a series of Think Tank interviews for this blog. If you missed the previous interviews in this series, you might want to catch up by reading about Nick Halsey from Jaspersoft, Miriam Tuerk from Infobright, Marc Davis from MindTouch and Peter Galli from Microsoft.

Jeff Campbell is Vice President of Sales at SugarCRM where he is responsible for managing and scaling SugarCRM across its partner and direct sales operations. As one of the earliest employees at SugarCRM, Jeff has played an integral role in the company’s growth over the past five years. Prior to his current role, Jeff built and grew SugarCRM’s channel sales organization into a worldwide network of some 150 reseller, consulting and OEM partners.

With close to 20 years of experience in the software industry, Jeff joined SugarCRM from Epiphany where he managed Strategic Accounts and Customer Marketing Programs. Prior to Epiphany, Jeff held roles various marketing and sales roles at Informatica Corporation, Business Objects and Sybase. Jeff holds an undergraduate degree in Business and Entrepreneurship from the University of Southern California.

Dawn: Sugar Community Edition was recently made available on the Microsoft Web Platform and for use in the cloud on Amazon E2. Can you tell us a little more about these changes and why they are important?

Jeff: We are seeing a big change happen in the market. Until recently, ‘cloud computing’ meant accessing a vendor’s proprietary data center for services like CRM, Performance Management or Incentive Compensation. Now, true clouds are emerging from industry leaders such as Amazon and Microsoft. Each of these clouds will have its own purpose. For example, Amazon may be best for really demanding tasks whereas Microsoft might be better if your team is more familiar in developing and using Windows. At SugarCRM, we see our job as providing users options to access SugarCRM from whichever cloud service they prefer, not locking them into one solution. This is quite similar to the run anywhere mantra we used when Sugar took off as an open source application. We think the desire for the same choice applies to cloud computing as well.

Dawn: SugarCRM recently expanded in Europe with the opening of an office in Munich and enhancements to your partner training programs. Why did you expand in Europe and why is Europe an important market for SugarCRM?

Jeff: Europe has been and continues to be an incredible market for SugarCRM and open source solutions. Across many markets in Europe, there is a strong preference for open source applications, which places SugarCRM in most evaluations of CRM projects in EU countries. So we took a look at the demand and how we were aligned in that market and saw that opening an office in Munich and staffing for more employees in Europe was an easy call.

Dawn: Why did you decide to sponsor the Open Source Think Tank in Europe?

Jeff: The Open Source Think Tank is the best event for bring open source leaders and companies together in the United States and Europe. We have participated for many years and see it as an opportunity to reconnect with old friends, validate what we are seeing in the market with other companies, and look ahead at future developments in the world of open source.

Dawn: What activities do you have planned for SugarCRM at the upcoming Open World Forum?

Jeff: Our CEO, Larry Augustin, will be delivering a keynote on Thursday which will distill some of the trends taking place in the world of open source and cloud computing. As mentioned, there are a lot of changes taking place in the market. I think Larry’s presentation will help to answer a lot of questions.

Interview: Peter Galli from Microsoft

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:00:17 +0000

Our next Open Source Think Tank event is coming up this week on October 1 in Paris, France along with the Open World Forum, and we wanted to highlight a few of the interesting companies who have decided to sponsor these invitation-only brainstorming events in the traditional format of the think tank. This interview with Peter Galli is the fourth in a series of Think Tank interviews for this blog. If you missed the previous interviews in this series, you might want to catch up by reading about Nick Halsey from Jaspersoft, Miriam Tuerk from Infobright and Marc Davis from MindTouch.

Peter Galli is the Open Source Community Manager at Microsoft, and the Editor/Blogger-in-Chief for Port 25. He joined Microsoft a year ago after a 20 year career as a Business/IT journalist. His last reporting position before he took this job was at eWeek, where he covered operating systems (Linux, Unix, Windows).

Dawn: Many people don’t think of Microsoft as being involved in open source. Why don’t you start by telling us more about a couple of Microsoft’s key open source activities?

Peter: Microsoft’s open source strategy is to make Windows the platform of choice for customers and developers through enabling open source applications to run better on and with Windows platforms.

This involves working with open source communities to identify valuable opportunities to participate in projects and initiatives, focusing on improved open source application interoperability with our products, and utilizing an open source development approach or open source software if it makes sense for specific products and solutions.

For example Microsoft recently released 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community under the popular General Public License v2. That code includes three Linux device drivers, and has been submitted to the Linux kernel community for inclusion in the Linux tree. The company has also made the source code for the Web Sandbox runtime available under the Apache 2.0 open source license.

We also continue to strive for interoperability between different implementations on various platforms. As such, the Interoperability Technical Strategy Team is, for the first time, participating as a code contributor to an Apache project: the Stonehenge incubator project.

Microsoft’s Powerset team also contributes to HBase an open-source, column-oriented, distributed database written in Java.

Dawn: Could you tell us more about your role as open source community manager at Microsoft and how you arrived in that role after a 20 year journalism career?

Peter: I was a Senior Editor for 8 years at eWeek, a magazine in the Ziff Davis Enterprise stable of publications, where I covered operating systems and Microsoft Corporate. During that time I was fortunate enough to interview many of the company’s top executives and to gain a deep insight into Microsoft.

I was particularly impressed by two of its initiatives: Unlimited Potential designed to bring technology to billions of people across the world who do not yet have access, as well as its Open Source initiative.

I followed closely as its open source strategy took root: from when Bill Hilf started the Open Source Software Lab, to its phenomenal growth under the capable stewardship of Sam Ramji.

After leaving eWeek, Sam and I talked about the Open Source Community Manager role at Microsoft. I am passionate about open source and community, and really wanted to be part of the team driving this across the company.

I was fortunate enough to get the role and the rest, as they say, is history.

Dawn: How has Microsoft’s involvement in open source in Europe changed over the last few years?

Peter: Europe has always been important to Microsoft as a company and is a vital part of our open source strategy to ensure that we meet customer needs. We continue to work with customers, partners and open source communities across Europe on a number of open source initiatives.

So, there has been no change in our open source strategy in Europe, and we continue to see the European countries as vital to all of Microsoft’s efforts.

Dawn: Why did Microsoft decide that it was important to sponsor the Open Source Think Tank in Europe?

Peter: Microsoft has always believed in the importance of an open dialog, and the Think Tank event brings together a range of people across the open source world in an environment that fosters that ongoing dialog.

Dawn: What activities do you have planned for Microsoft at the upcoming Open World Forum?

Peter: We are a sponsor of the Think Tank event, and will be attending Open World Forum to engage with partners, customers and community representatives across the open source industry.

LinuxCon 2009: Kernel Roundtable, Open Source Data, Moblin, and Community

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:26:43 +0000

Andrew and I spent several days this week at LinuxCon, a Linux Foundation event focused on all things Linux and held in lovely Portland, OR. It was an action packed week of sessions, conversations, parties and much more, so while I won’t try to talk about everything I saw at LinuxCon, I do want to talk about a few interesting points.

The Linux Kernel Roundtable was one of the highlights of the week, and the room was packed with people. Those of you who have been in the open source world for a while know that it is very rare for Linus Torvalds to agree to speak at a conference, and I would be willing to bet that this was the first time many in the audience have heard Linus speak in front of an audience. I won’t cover the content in any detail, since you really should just watch the video of the panel.

In Matt Asay’s Panel, The True Cost of Open Source Software, Jeffrey Hammond from Forrester provided a few interesting data points about how companies use open source.

Implementing open source is a top technology priority for companies.
Only 1 in 5 developers have never used open source in their development cycle.
Looking at .NET developers, even in that group 3 out of 5 use open source tools for development / deployment.
Open source teams move faster than proprietary software teams.

I also noticed that Moblin was a hot topic at LinuxCon this year. Keep in mind that Moblin was turned over to the Linux Foundation by Intel in early April, but I still noticed a tremendous amount of conversation about Moblin both in sessions and in informal conversations. Here are a couple of examples (not including the Intel or Linux Foundation presentations):

Mark Shuttleworth mentioned Moblin several times, which isn’t surprising given the announcement from Ubuntu about the Dell Moblin Ubuntu Netbook.
A talk on the future of Desktop Linux led by Greg Kroah-Hartman from Novell was almost entirely focused on Moblin.

There were plenty of fun activities mixed in with the session content. Here were a couple of my fun highlights.

Matt Asay was the winner of the Fake Linus Torvalds contest beating out Dan Lyons (you know, the guy who was also known as FakeSteveJobs).
The Golden Penguin Bowl was hilarious as always with Jeremy Allison as Steve Ballmer, geeky trivia and a final helicopter battle.

I really enjoyed Bdale Garbee’s keynote on The Freedom to Collaborate. Much of what he said is common knowledge for those us who have been doing open source for years, but he put it all together in a way that I found interesting and engaging. He started by talking about how a lot of real innovation comes from amateurs doing something industry doesn’t think they can do (Wright brothers airplanes). Similarly, one major consequence of the collaborative process around open source is that people we don’t even know exist are enabled to invent things that we can’t even imagine. In the future, the really successful companies will be those that best learn to collaborate. Personally, I’ve recently been seeing more online communities spring up internally within companies as a way to collaborate thus treating your company like a community. Jive Software operated in this manner when I worked for them, and they received tremendous collaborative benefits by treating the employees as a community.

The online nature of modern communities have enabled the formation of a new class of communities that did not previously exist: people with common interests or values who may be very broadly distributed. I like to think of this from a medieval village point of view where a person might have been the only blacksmith in the village and information sharing was limited to visits with other blacksmiths in a few neighboring villages. With today’s technology, there would be a global community of blacksmiths who share ideas and best practices with other craftsmen around the world.

Community also leads to freedom of choice with the flexibility to get support from a variety of sources. Any user can become a developer to provide support or pay someone to develop on their behalf, and developers can fork the project if they want to go in a new direction. Pursing this kind of freedom enables innovation. When companies get involved in online communities they have to walk a fine line while balancing tension between companies and communities. Companies often want to exert too much control, which can limit opportunities for contribution and can kill enthusiasm for the project or the community. Individuals within the open source communities really matter. In open source, it’s all about the code, and the individual’s reputation is what matters when in comes to getting contributions accepted by the community.

One of the best things about LinuxCon, like so many tech events, was the sense of community around people with similar interests. You could look around the attendee lounge and hallways to see little geek developer pods. These groups of developers gathered on couches and at tables hovering around laptops hacking on some piece of code while talking to others in the group. Overall, I had a great time at LinuxCon. It was a great place to catch up with friends and old coworkers that I rarely see in person.

September 22 Pubsubhubbub at pdpug

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:18:49 +0000

Pubsubhubbub is “a simple, open, web-hook-based pubsub protocol & open source reference implementation. Parties (servers) speaking the PubSubHubbub protocol can get near-instant notifications (via webhook callbacks) when a topic (feed URL) they’re interested in is updated.”

And it’s really fun to say. Try it three times fast: Pubsubhubbub, Pubsubhubbub, Pubsubhubbub. Marcus Estes has kindly offered to put together a demo for us. I hope to see everyone at the pdpug meeting to learn more about it!

Agenda
6:00 - 6:30: Networking and introductions
6:30 - 7:15: Marcus Estes on Pubsubhubbub
7:15 - 7:30: Wrap up and suggestions for next month’s topic

Logistics
Tuesday September 22, 2009 from 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Oracle 1211 SW 5th Avenue, Suite 800, Portland, Oregon
RSVP on Upcoming

Please use the tag #pdpug for Twitter messages, blog posts, pictures, etc.

About pdpug

The Portland Data Plumbing Group (aka pdpug) gives us a place to talk about RSS feed hacking, Yahoo Pipes, Dapper, and other related technologies. We have monthly meetings on the 4th Tuesday of every month at the Oracle office in downtown Portland from 6pm-7:30pm.

You can also join our discussions about Yahoo Pipes and other plumbing topics on our Google Group.

Recent Changes & the Future of the Legion of Tech Board

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:37:16 +0000

Being on the Legion of Tech board is a big time commitment. We aren’t one of those boards where you can attend board meetings, provide advice and then go away until the next meeting. We’re a working board, and board members are expected to organize events and contribute in other ways to the organization. When life throws a curve ball and personal or work commitments start requiring more time, it can be very hard to continue participating on a working board.

This brings me to the point of this blog post. Over the past month, both Craig Fisk and Chris O’Rourke have resigned from the board to take care of personal and/or business issues that required more attention than they could provide while also maintaining their commitments to Legion of Tech. We wish both of them the best of luck and hope to see them involved as volunteers in future Legion of Tech activities.

The seven remaining board members are:

Josh Bancroft
Adam DuVander
Amy Farrell
Dawn Foster
Todd Kenefsky
Chris Pitzer
Raven Zachary

Our bylaws state that we will have at least 5 board members, but no more than 10 board members, so at this point, we don’t plan to hold any special elections to replace Craig and Chris. In fact, we have been considering reducing the size of the board anyway. The organization that manages the Open Source Bridge conference has only a three person board, and the majority of the event is run by volunteers. While we don’t think we want to reduce the board to three people, we think that having fewer board members would help us be a leaner organization with less overhead while giving other people in our community more opportunities to volunteer for events. Right now, we have so many board members, that most of our event organizing committees are made up of mostly board members.

We’d like to have more opportunities for people in the community who aren’t on the board to step up and help with events like BarCampPortland, Ignite Portland and Startupalooza. We’re excited about finding additional ways to get the Portland tech community more involved in our activities.

What do you think? How can we engage the community to be more involved in our events? How would you like to be involved?

Legion of Tech Board Meeting Minutes

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 23:37:29 +0000

We’ve been a little disorganized about posting the board meeting minutes lately. I wish I had some elaborate excuse like, “the dog ate my blog post”, or something like that. While we were diligently taking notes and sharing them with other board members, I was forgetting to post them here for the rest of you to read. As of now, I am completely caught up on the minutes, and you can find them conveniently organized on a single page by year.

So, feel free to catch up on what we’ve been up to and post any questions, comments, or snide remarks here on this post.

Learn About YQL: July 28th Meeting

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:42:14 +0000

I know that we said you would learn about YQL (Yahoo Query Language), last month, but this time we mean it. For real. Seriously. On July 28th, Nate DiNiro will be giving us an overview of YQL, which is a little like Yahoo Pipes on steroids where you can construct queries that essentially select * from internet source. I’ve seen it used to do screen scraping for web pages without a feed and to pull data easily from various web services. It’s a powerful tool that is worth learning. We also have space for another topic, so let us know if you have something that you want to add to the agenda.

Logistics
Tuesday July 28, 2009 from 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Oracle 1211 SW 5th Avenue, Suite 800
RSVP on Upcoming

Agenda for July
6:00 - 6:15: Introductions
6:15 - 7:00: YQL Overview with Uncle Nate DiNiro
7:00 - 7:30: Another topic??

Please use the tag #pdpug for Twitter messages, blog posts, pictures, etc.

About pdpug

You can also join our discussions about Yahoo Pipes and other plumbing topics on our Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/portland-data-plumbing

Beer Signal iPhone App Integrates with Shizzow

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:56:24 +0000

The Beer Signal iPhone app just hit the iTunes store, so I decided to do a quick interview with the developer, Ken Baer, to learn more about how it uses Shizzow to help you drink beer with friends. I think it’s the first Shizzow integrated application on the iTunes store?

Ken Baer, Taplister’s iPhone App Guru, is a Portland native and long time Tech, Trek, and Beer Geek. He spent about 20 years writing 3D animation software (Hash Inc’s Animation:Master) on the Amiga, Mac, and PC, and worked on OMSI’s Star Trek Federation Science exhibit in the early 90’s. He is actively involved in the local animation scene through ASIFA-Portland, and spent some time doing scuba and fencing. Ken is an active Mac developer, and has jumped into iPhone development with both feet. He is excited about his work on iPhone apps for Taplister, and is committed to making very cool apps for craft beer fans everywhere.

Dawn: Can you start by telling us a little bit about Taplister and Beer Signal?

Ken: Taplister is a web site dedicated to providing up to date information about what craft beers are on tap around Portland. The site has a bot that gathers information via Twitter using our #ontappdx hash tag. So, the data is provided by not only the pubs around town, but also the patrons. Anyone that visits some of the websites for these pubs knows that if they list what beers they have on tap, that information is often out of date. That’s because pubs often don’t have time to update their web sites as often as would like. By getting patrons and beer fans into the act, we can have a database that is a lot more helpful.

So, on Taplister.com, you can search for a beer and see who’s serving it in Portland. You can also see what’s on tap at your favorite bar or pub. Pubs that sign up with us also have the option of having a “PubCam” installed, which shows a live image of their on tap board. It doesn’t get more up to date than that!

Beer Signal is an iPhone app that uses the Taplister engine. The app helps you find a pub, see what they have on tap, and invite your friends to join you. You start by selecting a pub from the Taplister database. You can see their active beer list, the live pubcam (if they have one), and information like their location (with a map), hours, happy hours, and how many taps they have. Then choose what friends you want to invite. You build a list of local, beer drinking friends and enter their Twitter names. The app keeps this list and allows you to select who you want to invite. If you are at the pub now, you can send the invite with Shizzow or Twitter. If you are planning a meetup, you can set the time and date, and send the invites out all once as Twitter direct messages. The app also allows you to tweet what beer you are drinking and if it is off tap. And finally, you have full access to the mobile Taplister site in the app, including searching for a specific beer.

Dawn: How did you get the idea to start this project?

Ken: I met Kerry Finsand at my first Beer and Blog. I literally walked into East Burn (coincidentally our first client), sat down in the last empty chair, introduced myself to the guy next to me, who was Kerry, and started talking about beer and the iPhone. Kerry and Scott Wray had been working on the idea for the web site for a couple months I think. They also hooked up with Kevin Scaldeferri who’s doing the web server and the bot. Scott worked with Joe Mendonca on designing the web site. Ezra Johnson-Greenough a.k.a Samurai Artist has been doing a series of interviews with brewers that’s on the site. And recently, we’ve been working with Derek Arent on logos and branding. All of us are big craft beer fans. This project is all about the beer. I wanted to make an iPhone app for it that really leveraged some of the power of the device. I thought it would be cool to make it easy to invite your friends out for beer.

Dawn: Why did you decide to integrate with Shizzow?

Ken: It was such a natural connection. I’d heard about Shizzow at a Lunch 2.0 I went to early in the year, but didn’t really hear the details of what it was about. So, while I was writing code for Beer Signal, I took a break and did a quick search to satisfy my curiosity about what Shizzow was. It was exactly what I wanted to do. Beer Signal is about finding pubs, discovering great beer, and getting together with friends so you can enjoy it together. We want people to spend more time socializing in person, and not just online. We also want to support our local drinking spots, and bring them the business they need in this tough economy. It seems to me that Shizzow is all about that. It also didn’t hurt meeting the people behind Shizzow and being in the same city. If we can help them succeed in our own little way, all the better.

Dawn: Where can people go to learn more about Taplister and Beer Signal and what plans do you have for future improvements?

Ken: Taplister.com is the place to be for the latest on what’s pouring in Portland. There’s a search right on the front page to search for beers using our exclusive beer search engine. Also, the Taplister.com site will autodetect if are on a mobile device and bring up the mobile version of the site.

You can go to BeerSignal.com to learn more about the app, and read the documentation. Beer Signal is currently available on Apple’s iTunes App Store.

There’s a lot we want to do in the future. This is just phase 1. Down the road we want to incorporate beer descriptions, reviews, and user ratings. We also want to work more with brewers and distributors, and be able to collect valuable information for them about what people are drinking and what kinds of beers people are asking about. We also want to expand to other cities. Portland has an amazing craft beer culture. But, it seems to be spreading to other cities, and we want to be there too. One thing I’m interested in developing is more visual ways brewers and users can define a beer’s flavor profile, and then be able to search on that so users can discover new beers that they would likely enjoy.

But, this all begins with everyone using the #ontappdx hash tag, and helping us maintain the best beer list anywhere!

Mapping Geekery This Weekend in Portland

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:35:22 +0000

I wanted to make sure that everyone knows about this weekend’s mapping party activities brought to you by the OpenStreetMap project. Here’s the cliff notes version:

Mapping party at Multnomah Central Library from 11am - 4pm on Saturday.
Forest park trail mapping from 9am - 2pm on Sunday.

You can find many more details in the Silicon Florist post on the topic. Have fun!

Why Shizzow Doesn’t Automate Your Shouts

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:00:45 +0000

I’m a huge fan of xkcd, and today’s comic does a great job of illustrating why we designed Shizzow to require that you shout your location rather than automating the process.

Brady also has an interesting take on this issue over on the O’Reilly Radar blog.

“I am personally looking forward to these services becoming ubiquitous so that I can track my location and aspects of my life, but as they currently stand these services are not poised for mainstream adoption. They need to do more to prevent people from embarrassing or endangering themselves.”

Quoted from XKCD on the Future Self.

Remember to shout responsibly, people. There are some things that I just don’t want to know about you!

YQL and Gnip: June 23rd Meeting

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:02:17 +0000

In our June 23rd meeting, we will be talking about YQL (Yahoo Query Language), which is a little like Yahoo Pipes on steroids where you can construct queries that essentially select * from internet source. It’s a powerful tool that is worth learning. We will also be learning about Gnip, another powerful tool where you can access data from various web services across the internet and integrate the data together to use in other ways.

Tuesday June 23, 2009 from 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Oracle 1211 SW 5th Avenue, Suite 800
RSVP on Upcoming

Agenda for June

6:00 - 6:15 Introductions
6:15 - 6:40 YQL (Yahoo Pipes on Steroids) by Uncle Nate DiNiro
6:40 - 7:00 Gnip by Ed Borasky
7:00 - 7:30 Other interesting discoveries and future agenda topics (all)
We will also be talking about whether or not we want to skip the July / August meetings and pick back up in September.

Please use the tag #pdpug for Twitter, blog posts, pictures, etc.

About pdpug

You can also join our discussions about Yahoo Pipes and other plumbing topics on our Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/portland-data-plumbing

Donate, Volunteer or Sponsor to Help Make BarCampPortland a Success

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:43:11 +0000

BarCampPortland is right around the corner on May 1 & 2, and we need your help to make it successful!

Donate! We’re a little short on money to feed people at Barcamp. By donating a few bucks, you can help us buy some food for the event.
Sponsor! These events can’t be successful without our sponsors. Contact Todd Kenefsky (kenefsky on gmail) if you would like to sponsor a portion of the event.
Volunteer to help. BarCampPortland is an event run entirely by volunteers. Contact klint at renegadefuturist.com if you can spare a few hours on Friday or Saturday to help.
RSVP. Don’t forget to RSVP for the event on Upcoming.
Follow us on Twitter: Up to the minute breaking updates about the event as @BarCampPortland

You can learn more about the event by visiting the BarCampPortland wiki.

April 28th Meeting: Tarpipe

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:29:59 +0000

Uncle Nate DiNiro has volunteered to give us a demo of Tarpipe in the next Portland Data Plumber’s group. Nate will give us a quick orientation to get productive using Tarpipe’s email capability, show some of the monitoring benefits that it offers, and will briefly touch upon the REST API.

Here are the details about the meeting - don’t forget to RSVP on Upcoming if you plan to attend.

When: Tuesday April 28, 2009 from 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Where: Oracle 1211 SW 5th Avenue, Suite 800

Agenda:

6:00 Introductions
6:15 Tarpipe discussion led by Uncle Nate DiNiro
6:45 Workshop: Have a problem? Want to talk about a specific tool? Break into small groups to help each other

As always, feel free to discuss various RSS feed hacking, Yahoo Pipes, Dapper, and other related technologies on the pdpug Google Group in between meetings.

Community in Review April 19th

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:59:26 +0000

For the week ending April 19th, here are the top Shizzow community members across a variety of categories. For comparison, you can take a look at previous community in review posts.

Top Shouters

stephaniewagner: Stephanie Wagner - Graphics + Web Design + Marketing + Promotions and Music | Event Promoter. design graphic marketing promotions sxsw web
donpdonp: Don Park - biker. hacker. bicycle burrito cafe
gjlutz: G. Lutz
wajiii: Bill Jackson - Meh. ajax apple baconsnob geek java linux mac unix

Top Places

Trailblazers (People who go to new places)

rich: Rich Vigorito
stephaniewagner: Stephanie Wagner - Graphics + Web Design + Marketing + Promotions and Music | Event Promoter. design graphic marketing promotions sxsw web
fred: Fred Sobotka - Another consultant who lurks around SE Portland when he’s not lurking elsewhere. db2 portland sql stumptown

People who tag places (and make Shizzow better)

cedr: coffee croquet scooter secretagent
stephaniewagner: Stephanie Wagner - Graphics + Web Design + Marketing + Promotions and Music | Event Promoter. design graphic marketing promotions sxsw web

Twitter Integration: Import Your Friends and More Tweaks

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:44:15 +0000

We have Twitter integration to post your Shizzow shouts to Twitter, but the big change now is that you can easily import the people you are following on Twitter into Shizzow. Here are a few more details about how it works.

How to use the Twitter friend import:

Go to your preferences page
Click the Twitter link in the sidebar
Activate the service by allowing Shizzow to access your Twitter information
Click the Import your Twitter friends link
For friends who are already on Shizzow, you can choose which ones you want to listen to.
For friends who aren’t on Shizzow, you can invite them, which sends them a Twitter direct message with a request from you to join Shizzow.

What we do or do not do with your Twitter account:

You never need to give us your Twitter password, we use oAuth to give you control over whether we can access your account.
Shizzow will not automatically tweet from your account.
Shizzow will not import all of your Twitter friends; you will need to manually select individual Twitter friends.
For your Twitter friends who do not already have Shizzow accounts, Shizzow will allow you to send a direct message through Twitter to individually selected friends that you would like to invite to join Shizzow.
After the friend import process, your account will be setup to automatically tweet your shouts through Twitter, but you can disable this at anytime by visiting the Twitter Preferences page. If you never want us to post your shouts from Twitter, simply disable your Twitter access after importing your Twitter friends.

We’re hoping this makes it easier for you to find your friends and use Shizzow. We would love to hear more about your experiences using the Twitter import on Get Satisfaction.

We also made a few other cool improvements in this latest release:

Added favorites as a drop down menu on our mobile version (m.shizzow.com) without an extra refresh, and we added the search box to the bottom of the mobile page to make it even easier to shout from your web enabled phone.
We made some other improvements to the signup process for new users to make it easier to get started on Shizzow.

As always, please let us know what improvements you would like to see in Shizzow. Most of our new features and bug reports come from you, so keep posting them to Get Satisfaction!

Community in Review April 12

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:00:44 +0000

For the week ending April 12th, here are the top Shizzow community members across a variety of categories. We’ve even added a couple of new categories to recognize people who are doing nice things (like remembering to tag places). For comparison, you can take a look at last week’s Community in Review.

Top Shouters

easterbunny: The Easter Bunny - Bringing baskets filled with colored eggs, candy and toys to the homes of children on Easter.
b3gl: Jerry
stephaniewagner: Stephanie Wagner - Graphics + Web Design + Marketing + Promotions and Music | Event Promoter

Top Places

Trailblazers (People who go to new places)

fred: Fred Sobotka - Another consultant who lurks around SE Portland when he’s not lurking elsewhere.
rich: Rich Vigorito
stephaniewagner: Stephanie Wagner - Graphics + Web Design + Marketing + Promotions and Music | Event Promoter

People who tag places (and make Shizzow better)

dougie: Doug Coleman - A freak for the web
dswiese: Sean Wiese
sechrest: John Sechrest
hollyblackman: Holly Blackman - getting into as much social networking as possible for work.

Tweaks: Improved Tagging, Add Places via Mobile, and More

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:02:13 +0000

We made a few enhancements and fixes that we think you will like. As always, this is how we prove that we really do read all of the stuff you send us through Get Satisfaction.

New and Improved Tagging

We changed our tagging system for places to show only the most popular tags on the place page, and when you click the link for more, you get a nice tag cloud with big text for the popular tags. This is one way to push obsolete tags down the page. If a place without wifi is tagged with wifi, you can push it down the list by tagging it with something like no-wifi, which would become more popular as more people begin to use the tag.

Add New Places and Edit Places via m.shizzow.com

Quite a few of us were frustrated that m.shizzow.com didn’t have a way to add a new place. We heard you loud and clear, and you can now add places from your mobile device using m.shizzow.com. As a bonus, you can also edit places to update an address or correct other information on the place page.

IM Notification - Now with More Links

We’ve improved the experience for those of us who get our notifications via XMPP instant messaging by adding links to the shout within the message. Gone are the days of wondering exactly which Stumptown my friend just shouted from and having to log into the web interface to find out. Now you can click on the link to go directly to the shout to find out more information.

Support for Mexico, Central America, South America and South Africa

We’re continuing to add support for new countries as time permits. Mexico, Central America, South America and South Africa were the latest additions, but you will continue to see support for more countries trickle out.

We also fixed a few other bugs. Remember, we are not skilled in mind-reading or ESP, so we can’t change things that we don’t know you want, so keep those bug reports and feature requests coming at us by posting them on Get Satisfaction!

Shizzow Developer Meetup April 16

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:10:37 +0000

Join us on April 16th to talk to Shizzow developers and community developers who are working on applications using the Shizzow API. This is a great place to show off your app with a demo, ask questions, learn from other developers, and request new API calls. We hope to see you there!

Thursday April 16, 2009 at 5:00pm
Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub
928 SE 9th Ave, Portland, Oregon

RSVP on Upcoming.

Community in Review

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:00:01 +0000

For the week ending April 5th, here are the top shouters and the most frequently visited places. For comparison, you can take a look at last week’s Community in Review.

Top Shouters

maestrojed: Jed Herzog - Livin in Portland OR. @betheoutlier’s my passionate venture | Most used Skillz: webDev & video prod. | Interests: music/Jazz, the web, art/street art/graffiti.
donpdonp: Don Park - biker. hacker.
mattg: Matthew Gifford - Really needs to add his bio to Shizzow

Top Locations

New App: Put Shizzow in Your Menu Bar

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 19:20:05 +0000

Reid Beels had the first Shizzow application prior to the release of our API using some CSS / Javascript wizardry to create a Fluid application, but it was never packaged up and released for the rest of us to use … until now.

Here’s a little more information from Reid’s blog post:

Soon after the launch of the Portland-based location tracking site, Shizzow, I put together client of sorts using a set of javascripts and CSS styles inside of a Fluid site-specific browser. I recently updated this code to work with the latest design revision of Shizzow and decided to take the opportunity to bundle them up for distribution.

Features

Simplified site layout to work well in a compact window.

Growl notifications for shouts.

Automatically refreshes the homepage every minute, unless you’re typing a message.

Automatically returns you to the homepage after a period of inactivity.

You can learn more and download the packaged version or the source code from Reid’s blog post.

Shizzow Developer Meetup on Thursday, April 2nd

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:47:07 +0000

This is your chance to drop by to ask us questions about the API, request new API features, make suggestions, and discuss uses for the Shizzow API with the Shizzow team and other people who are developing Shizzow apps. We would also love to see demos of your work in progress applications or hear your ideas for new Shizzow apps!

Thursday April 2, 2009 at 5:00pm
Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub
928 SE 9th Ave
RSVP on Upcoming

Killer Content for Your Business Blog

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:42:29 +0000

Many corporate blogs are neglected, dull, and unimaginative while filled with press release content, marketing fluff, and old content. However, it doesn’t have to be this way. Corporate blogs can be interesting and useful with a little focus and time devoted to it. Here are a few tips to help turn your boring corporate blog into something successful.

Content Roadmap

Most companies should create and maintain some type of content roadmap. The content roadmap will usually map out the next 4 weeks of blog posts with an author identified for each post. This helps to ensure that the blog topics are strategically aligned with corporate goals, varied across topics and types of content, and frequent enough to keep the blog active. The person responsible for the blog can work with authors to help identify topics and then make sure that the author has access to everything needed to complete the post (data, technical assistance, etc.)

Spontaneous Posts

Now that you have a content roadmap, you should also diverge from it frequently to allow for serendipitous blogging on hot topics or new ideas that people are passionate enough about to want to talk about them immediately. Monitor popular blogs, news sources, and events in your industry and respond to what others are saying. Join the conversation without waiting for the topic to come up on the content roadmap.

Thought Leadership

The best blogs have content that focuses on thought leadership. Blog about the things in your industry where your employees have expertise that can be shared with the world. Don’t just talk about your products; focus on your entire industry. Get people to discuss a variety of topics and new ideas. Don’t get stuck in a rut where all of your posts have essentially the same or similar content. You are not a thought leader if all of your posts are simply variations on a single idea. Chime in with your thoughts on a variety of topics across your industry.

Conversations

Always monitor and respond to comments on your blog. People get frustrated with blogs where people ask questions or provide feedback in the comments without any response or acknowledgment. Even worse are those companies that moderate every comment and delete anything that they do not agree with. Let people comment and disagree with your ideas. Some of the most interesting conversations happen in the comments of a blog post. You should also monitor what people are saying about you on other blogs, forums, Twitter, etc. and respond where appropriate.

Blogs are Fun

Have fun with your blog, and don’t be so serious all of the time. You can include interesting things that are happening within your company that aren’t necessarily work related (photos from a company ski trip). Admit it; you would rather read a blog post with great content and some humor mixed in, instead of something with great content that drones on and on like an old, boring college lecture. Make the content interesting and fun enough that people will look forward to reading your posts.

Corporate Blogging Tips

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:40:07 +0000

One of my earlier posts focused on why companies should have a blog, so let’s move past the question of should we blog and on to the discussion of how to write more effective corporate blogs.

Guiding Principles

At this point, I suggest reading my Social Media and Social Networking Best Practices for Business post. Specifically, I covered these guiding principles, which apply not just to blogging, but to other forms of social media as well:

Be sincere
Focus on the individuals
Not all about you
Be part of the community
Everyone’s a peer

Each of these 5 guiding principles has already been described in detail in my other post, so I won’t spend much more time on them here, but they are important for corporate bloggers to keep in mind.

Strategy and Vision

Blogs are still just another piece of the corporate communications puzzle (although an increasingly important piece), so spending some quality time thinking about what you want to achieve with your overall communication strategy and how blogging fits into that strategy is a good place for companies to start. You don’t want to use your blog to just pimp your products or talk about press releases. A blog can be used for so much more. Think about the areas where you want to lead the industry and the topics that you want people to think about when they think of your company. Use your blog to become a thought leader in the industry by sharing your expertise on those broad topics that are important and relevant to your company.

Think about who should be blogging on your corporate blog. It is easy to pick your top 5 executives, and give them access to the blog. In some cases, they might be the perfect people, but they aren’t always the best choice when it comes to accomplishing your goals for the blog. Go back to your discussion about your strategy for the blog and the topics that you want people to think about when they think of your company or your products. Who in your company has expertise in those areas? Do you have someone with great ideas? Are there any evangelists or other employees passionate about those topics? If so, recruit those people to contribute to your blogs. Someone passionate and smart, but outside of the senior management ranks probably has more time to spend on the blog and might just come up with some innovative and interesting ideas.

You should also branch out a little into the realm of unofficial / personal blogs. Encourage your employees to have their own blogs where they talk about their areas of expertise. I have blogged on various corporate blogs for companies and non-profit organizations that I am associated with, but I also continue to blog at Fast Wonder on various topics related to social media, online communities, and other technology topics. Having a personal blog has a number of benefits, including giving us an excuse to learn and research new ideas. Quite a few employees have similar blogs, and I like to believe that some people think that we have interesting things to say, and our companies benefit from having smart people discussing their expertise outside of official work channels. There is also a caution to go along with this. You don’t want to create a personal blog that is too focused on your company. If all you talk about is your company and you cover all of the same topics as your official blog, it just looks forced and insincere. You need to branch out and cover additional topics; show that you are a real person and not just a corporate shill.

Making it Happen

After the initial excitement wears off, it is easy for companies to neglect the corporate blog. We just forget to blog, and before long, no one has posted in a month (or two or three …) In some companies this isn’t a problem. If you already have a bunch of prolific bloggers neglect may not be an issue, but for the rest of you, and you know who you are, it really helps to have someone “in charge” of the blog. This person isn’t responsible for writing all of the content, but they can responsible for herding and nagging in addition to making sure that some specific strategic topics are being addressed on the blog. The role is part strategist and part mother hen (it isn’t all that different from managing communities), so you have to find someone who can think strategically about your industry and the right topics while they follow up obsessively to make sure people are actually posting to the blog.

Corporate blogging is a complex topic, and there will never be one magic formula that applies to all companies. Hopefully, these tips will help a few people make their corporate blogs even better. Keep in mind that you will make mistakes along the way. Learn from them, keep writing, and continue to make incremental improvements.

Shizzow Developer Meetup on Feb 26

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:41:04 +0000

Come join us at the next Shizzow Developer Meetup this Thursday!

Thursday February 26, 2009 at 5:30pm
Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub
928 SE 9th Ave, Portland, Oregon 97214
RSVP on Upcoming

These meetups are for people currently developing applications using the Shizzow beta API or for people interested in starting to use the API. This is an opportunity for you to show off your apps, ask questions, get feedback, or just kick back and listen over a beer. We hope you will come out and join us!

BarCampPortland Coming May 1 & 2 - Want to help?

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 06:25:44 +0000

Our 3rd BarCampPortland event is coming on May 1 and 2! We know that May is still really far away, but we wanted to get you thinking about BarCampPortland now. As always, we can use some help with the event, so we are having a volunteer meeting next week! We love to have you join us to learn more about how you can help.

BarCampPortland Volunteer Meeting
Monday February 23, 2009 from 5:30pm - 6:30pm
CubeSpace 622 SE Grand Ave
RSVP on Upcoming if you plan to attend

Volunteering isn’t the only way to help us out:

RSVP for the actual event on May 1 and 2 on Upcoming.
Sponsor! These events can’t be successful without our sponsors. Contact Todd Kenefsky (kenefsky on gmail) if you would like to sponsor a portion of the event.
Join our Mailing List: Sign up for our Google Group to get email announcements about future meetups and events.
Follow us on Twitter: Up to the minute breaking updates about the event as @BarCampPortland
Tell your friends: Don’t forget to use the BarCampPortland tag when blogging, posting pictures, etc.

We hope to see you at our volunteer meeting and at the BarCampPortland event!

Open Source Alternatives & Work Session: pdpug on February 24th

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:18:00 +0000

We’re looking forward to seeing you at the next Portland Data Plumbing User Group Meeting on February 24th! Here’s what you need to know for the meeting.

Portland Data Plumbing User Group (pdpug)
Tuesday February 24, 2009 from 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Oracle 1211 SW 5th Avenue, Suite 800
Please RSVP on Upcoming if you plan to attend

Agenda:

6:00 Intros
6:15 Jerry (aka @b3gl) leading a discussion about open source alternatives to Pipes.
6:50 Work session. Bring your issues with Yahoo Pipes or other RSS feed hackery & we’ll pair up to help each other.

As always, feel free to discuss topics between our meetings on the pdpug Google Group.

Marshall Kirkpatrick on Video

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:56:40 +0000

If you missed last night’s Portland Data Plumbing User Group (like I did), don’t despair. We have something almost as good … video! A huge thank you to Bill Jackson for generously giving us a place to meet, recording the video and running the entire meeting!

Marshall also did a post with more information about his talk on his blog. He was also gracious enough to include a link to the slide show of links that he covered. If you don’t want to watch the video and would prefer a quick intro, he’s written extensively on this topic in this post, this post and this one.

Next Meeting: Jan 27th with Marshall Kirkpatrick

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 03:17:19 +0000

Several of us have read Marshall’s How to: Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet for Any Topic where he integrates data from many different sources and uses various plumbing tools to pull it all together. Marshall is a master of tools like Yahoo Pipes and Dapper, and it will be great to have him presenting at our Jan 27th meeting.

Details:
Jan 27th
6:00pm - 7:30pm
Oracle: 1211 SW 5th Avenue, Suite 800
RSVP on Upcoming

We hope to see you there!

New Officers for Legion of Tech

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 21:06:40 +0000

With the first meeting of the new Legion of Tech board on Thursday, we elected new officers for 2009:

Chair: Todd Kenefsky
Treasurer: Adam DuVander
Secretary: Dawn Foster

Last years officers were Chair: Dawn Foster, Treasurer: Todd Kenefsky, and Secretary: Raven Zachary. A big thank you to Todd and Adam for stepping into new roles, and we’re looking forward to many more events in 2009!

2009 Advisory Committee Announced

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:42:33 +0000

First, thank you to everyone who ran for the Legion of Tech advisory committee! It was a great group of people and a hard choice to make between so many good candidates.

The 2009 Advisory Committee for Legion of Tech (in random order):

Scott Kveton
Jed Herzog
Bram Pitoyo
Amber Case
Jason Mauer
Don Park
Nate Angell
Betsy Richter
Nate DiNiro
Jake Kuramoto
Rick Turoczy
Igal Koshevoy

You’ll notice that there are 12 people, instead of 10. We had a tie for the final seat on the advisory committee, and we decided to expand the committee rather than have a tie-breaker vote.

If you weren’t selected, we would still love to have you volunteer and get involved in the various Legion of Tech events. There are plenty of ways to be involved!

Thank you again to everyone.

Announcing the 2009 Legion of Tech Board

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:19:25 +0000

First of all, thank you to everyone who ran for the Legion of Tech board.

The new Legion of Tech board for 2009 is as follows (in alphabetical order):

Josh Bancroft
Adam DuVander
Amy Farrell
Craig Fisk
Dawn Foster
Todd Kenefsky
Chris O’Rourke
Chris Pitzer
Raven Zachary

For those who ran, but were not elected, thank you again for running. The competition was stiff, and all of the people running were strong candidates. We will move the names of those who were not elected to the board of advisors nomination list. We’ll be voting for advisors in the January board meeting.

Legion of Tech Happy Hour Meetup with Waffles Oct. 23rd

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:17:20 +0000

Todd had the best description of this event on Twitter: “Sweet waffles, savory waffles, beer, wine, art & geeks all converging in a glorious orgy of awesome.”

Thursday October 23, 2008 from 5:30pm - 7:30pm
Jace Gace 2045 SE Belmont

Please RSVP for this event on Upcoming.

These are super informal meetups where we hang out, talk about geeky stuff (wikis, open source, new technologies, openid, …), and wind down with like-minded people over beverages.

Since this is the last meetup of the year (it doesn’t make sense to have a 4th Thursday meetup in Nov/Dev to conflict with the holidays), we wanted to do something a little different …

Thanks to a sponsor who wishes to remain anonymous we will be having the meetup at Jace Gace. Our sponsor will cover the fee to rent the space for the evening, but you will be on your own to pay for drinks / waffles. Have you ever been to Jace Gace? They have the most amazing waffles, art and they have beer / wine! Mmmm, waffles, art, geeky fun, and alcohol. Heaven.