Introducing the Hack for Portland Schools.

85% of people in central Portland have no children of school age. This means that the majority has no natural connection with the school system. We want to make it easier for that 85% to support Portland’s public schools, and this event is the first stage…by appealing to the developer and design community to lend us their talent for one day to build on some of the ideas. And to invent new ones.

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

With great power comes great responsibility. So why not use your coding power for good? Join the Portland Mayor’s office, Wieden+Kennedy, GOOD, PIE, and your peers on June 2, beginning at 10AM. You’ll get the day to hack something together for the betterment of Portland schools. And then you’ll get to present your creation.

The best ideas may even find life beyond Portland. They’ll be shared with the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City the following week.

For more information, visit Hack for Portland Schools or see the event on Calagator.

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Beer and Blog Portland is no more.

Beer and Blog founder Justin Kistner offered the following:

One thing I learned early on was that I was never really in control of the group anyway. Rather a meager steward of something larger, which was the desire for the Portland tech scene to meet up for happy hour on Friday. As I would cancel events, Blog and Beer emerged and decided to meet up anyway! While I will not be able to continue in official organizing capacities, don’t let that stop all of you from continuing to meet up on Fridays from 4-6 pm

Thank you to everyone who has attended Beer and Blog and made it the special time that it was. It will always be a fond memory for me and I know I take many lifetime friendships on with me. Cheers!

All good things must come to an end. And to be honest, Beer and Blog had admittedly run its course.

Once a gathering that attracted hundreds of people on sunny summer days, the numbers had begun to dwindle as of late. With a group of stalwart attendees continuing to keep it alive and breathing.

And the people who made that happen over the years—from organizers to attendees—should be congratulated for their incredible contribution to our community.

In many ways, we’re exactly where we were a few years back when Beer and Blog started. With similar conditions that motivated Kistner to start the gathering. When it was just a small group of a few of us who got together for a beer while we worked on our blogs. That handful of people soon grew to be the must-attend gathering, every week. And it became clear that Beer and Blog could be—and would become—a place to get to know other people in the Portland startup scene.

I know I had the pleasure of meeting a ton of you there.

Beer and Blog was the foothold. The icebreaker. The way to engage with Portland startups. It was the anchor you used to make sure that out-of-towners and visiting tech types got a feel for the Portland community. And when anyone asked how to get more engaged with the community? The response was always “What are you doing, Friday?”

So Beer and Blog is over. But we could really use a little of that magic, again. For a whole new generation of startups—and all of the awesome new people who are interested in our startup scene.

So on one hand, I’m sad to see it go. On the other hand? I’m excited to see what takes its place.

So here’s to Beer and Blog Portland. Thank you for everything.

(Hat tip @jkuramot)

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But sharing your knowledge with other developers in person can be incredibly powerful. And that’s why we have events like Code Camp Portland. Where you’re going to speak, right?

Show us some wonderful piece of technology that you’ve worked with. Share a great tool that everyone should know about. Demonstrate a cool way that you solved an interesting problem. At Portland Code Camp we like to see more code than slides, show us how it’s put together and how it works.

All languages, all technologies, and all platforms are welcome! As software developers, we share a lot in common regardless of the languages and tools we are using. We love solving problems and finding new ways to bring our software skills to bear on problems. At Portland Code Camp we celebrate our common interests and we get to learn how other people are solving similar problems in different ways. That could be for a server or a smartphone, the browser or the desktop, open source or commercial software, something serious for work or fun for entertainment. It’s all welcome at Portland Code Camp. So tell us about something new, something you find valuable in your work, or that side project that keeps you fresh and learning new things!

It’s the perfect time to get out in front of folks and talk about stuff you love. To submit your talk, visit Portland Code Camp proposals.

But do it quickly. Applications close today.

(Image courtesy Jarkko Laine. Used under Creative Commons.)

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Now? Thanks to Kickstarter, XOXO is fully funded, sold out, and over subscribed.

And the cofounders? A little stunned.

According to project cofounder Andy Baio:

The reaction was explosive and immediate. In fact, I’d fully intended to write about the launch on Tuesday morning, but within 30 seconds of posting the Kickstarter project, my inbox exploded. I knew that Kickstarter’s new social features were powerful, but this was intense. Before I’d even tweeted it myself, 20 people backed the project.

As far as I know, XOXO is also the biggest event ever funded on Kickstarter. When I first started working with Kickstarter in 2008, the idea of funding events came up regularly. Kickstarter was originally inspired by a concert that Perry wanted to throw in New Orleans back in 2001, but didn’t want to deal with the up-front risk. I’ve always thought it was a perfect use for the site, but up until this point, barely anybody’s tried to fund their entire ticket sales on it. I think this really validates Kickstarter as a tool for funding events.

In a little over two days, the Kickstarter community gave Portland an amazing conference. How much luckier could we be?

Stay tuned. The best is yet to come.

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But what about crowdfunding an event? Well, if anyone is going to make that happen it’s a Portlander who knows Kickstarter, inside and out. And if early funding is any indication, the XOXO festival—a celebration of disruptive creativity—is well on track to hit its goal.

Andy Baio has joined forces with Andy McMillan to build an incredible conference—and fringe events—that are going to showcase the people creatively using technology to create new opportunities. They are, that is, if their project gets funded.

Looks like September in Portland has the chance to be incredibly awesome with your help.

Plus, if Andy’s video doesn’t make you fall in love with Portland all over again, I don’t know what will.

For more information or to back this project, visit XOXO on Kickstarter.

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So just how many women are there in the Portland tech startup scene? For such a loaded question, Ruth Brown at Willamette Week has managed to take an objective look at the diversity in the Portland startup scene.

A survey of 11 recent Portland tech startups, ranging from companies with four employees to 80, reveals that their total workforces were typically 70 percent to 80 percent male, while their development and engineering teams—i.e., the people who write the actual code—have even fewer women. In many cases, none.

Females are even scarcer in the open-source software community—people who work on free and open projects like Linux and Firefox—which is particularly active in Portland and which the Portland Development Commission cites as a major “strength” of the local software industry. According to a 2006 study funded by the European Union, about 1.5 percent of open-source contributors are women.

This is why it’s important to have more traditional media interested in what’s happening in the Portland startup scene. Because they have the time to dig into these stories.

Is it perfect? No. Is it inflammatory? Possibly. But long story short, this is a solid piece of journalism. And I’m interested to see the conversations it starts.

I’d encourage you to read the entire article.

[Full disclosure: I am working with Willamette Week on the Portland Digital eXperience event, this September.]

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And today, it became obvious why. The company has just announced a Geoloqi module for Appcelerator Titanium.

If you’re not immersed in the mobile market, that might have come off as a bit of gibberish. What’s Appcelerator? Well, it is the “first mobile platform to combine the flexibility of open source development technologies with the power of cloud services.” Pretty cool right? Well, now it’s even cooler. Because it’s been Geoloqized.

Don’t believe me? Fine. Maybe you’ll believe some of these folks.

VentureBeat: Better location tools for more apps: Geoloqi is now on Appcelerator Titanium

The two companies have been cozied up for a few months already. Now, they’re giving devs a two-month trial to test drive Geoloqi on Appcelerator’s Titanium 2.0 platform. In a word, this means better location tools will be available for more kinds of apps, and they’ll be easier to use for a wider range of developers.

Titanium lets devs work quickly to get apps live on Android and iOS devices natively, as well as on the mobile web. With Geoloqi plugged in, devs will also have a complete location toolkit (including true geofencing), battery management features, and real-time data storage and analytics.

GigaOm: Geoloqi’s location tracking now available to Appcelerator devs

For example, apps with Geoloqi can understand when someone has entered or left a predefined geo-fence — say, a coffee shop — using carrier signals, GPS, Wifi and indoor tracking systems. The apps can track a person’s location and push out messages or trigger actions based on where they are. Geoloqi can also provide app developers with location and dwell-time analytics on users.

Geoloqi made its first iOS and Android SDKs available in February, but the integration with Appcelerator opens up the service to a large existing community of developers who use Titanium to speed up their app development efforts. Appcelerator is giving new Titanium developers a two-month free trial when they register and download the Geoloqi Titanium module before the end of June.

Programmable Web: Geoloqi Adds Powerful Location Module to Appcelerator

The Geoloqi Geotrigger module for Titanium Appcelerator provides a complete toolkit for real-time tracking, messaging, battery management, geofencing and storage. It performs battery management through its algorithms that know how to turn GPS on and off, thereby preserving battery life. It provides a facade over location sources like GPS, Carrier Signals and Wifi to provide you with tracking, coupled with a cloud storage solution to track all the location data. One of the key features here is defining geo fences that can then be configured to push messages to your application, once the target goes in and out of the geo fence.

Digital Trends: Geoloqi and Appcelerator join forces for location app development – minus the battery suck

“Battery life: The other big piece thwarting the mobile location puzzle; namely, how much these apps suck the life out of it. Geoloqi has made battery life an evolving priority. “We don’t take the approach it can be solved — we think it can be improved over time,” says Case. “We use an algorithm that gets more and more complex to help this. It’s all these discrete pieces that when you add them up gets you better battery life. It’s all about intelligently handling the various factors.”

Along with the new partnership, customizable geo-triggered events will now be available from Geoloqi. This means developers can implement push messages to users when they cross a geofence — or a location that triggers an action — as well as a variety of other location-based notification actions.

Inside Mobile Apps: Advanced location-based services come to Titanium 2.0 with Geoloqi partnership

Although Appcelerator already offered some basic location-based services like check-ins through the company’s new Appcelerator Cloud Services, developers using Geoloqi’s API can set up pre-determined location zones called geofences and enable location-triggered events in their Titanium-built apps. This enable apps to perform more sophisticated location-based tasks, such as sending a registered customer a push notification with a coupon attached as soon as they enter a store.

TechCrunch: Appcelerator Partners With Geoloqi To Bring Location Services To Its 1.6 Million Developers

Thanks to the new Geoloqi module, developers can now create geo-triggered events in their applications. This, says Appcelerator, will allow its developers to create apps that make use of geofencing and can, for example, send users a push notification when they cross the border into or out of a geofenced zone. In addition, Geoloqi offers standard location tracking features as well as location analytics. While the company’s partnership with Appcelerator focused on these areas, Titanium developers will also be able to use Geoloqi’s other features, including, for example, its Wikipedia layers.

Appcelerator tells us that it also chose Geoloqi because it can smoothly transition between different location sources like GPS and WiFi triangulation, relatively conservative battery use and also because it features sophisticated privacy controls for users.

Need more details? I’d suggest heading over to hear Geoloqi’s description of the partnership.

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And what better topic than discussing how your smart devices are more sentient than you think?

Ken Westin, founder of GadgetTrak, will be revealing more than you want to know about that robot in your pocket. It’s not quite SKYNET, yet. But it’s getting close.

Every day our smartphones, laptops and other devices transmit invisible bytes of data across networks around the world, leaving a deep and permanent digital footprint. Some of this data we are aware of, such as information we post on social networks, or sharing GPS coordinates with a mapping app to locate the nearest restaurant. However, there is a less visible layer of data that at first may seem innocuous, but once aggregated can provide fragments of data that can be reticulated to unveil information regarding identity, location and other potentially invasive and incriminating evidence. This information can be used to solve crimes, as well as abused. Technology is rapidly increasing the rate at which this data is being used by law enforcement, governments, hackers and advertisers alike, with many surprisingly taking advantage of the hazy gray area where antiquated laws and advanced technology meet.

And if anyone is willing to take their device one step closer to sentient, Ken is looking for volunteers.

As always, the event begins Monday at 6PM and is hosted at Urban Airship.

For more information or to RSVP, visit Mobile Portland.

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Well, three months tends to fly by. And now, VentureBox has graduated its first class.

What’s VentureBox’s focus, you ask?

VentureBox supports our entrepreneurs with a top quality program curriculum based on best practices from the world’s leading startup programs. Fundamental to our vision are the principles of the “Lean Startup Process” originally conceptualized by Steven Blank serial entrepreneur and award winning professor at Stanford University, these principles form the foundation upon which all of the VentureBox’ contributions are built. Working with Luxr Inc in San Francisco, VentureBox has developed a Lean Startup curriculum that helps startups effectively structure, plan, develop and launch their businesses with agility and customer centered design.

So who made it through the gauntlet? Six new companies are now part of the Bend startup scene.

CiviData

CiviData maintains a rapidly expanding collection of local government and publicly regulated enterprise data. Initial data includes various utility rate schedules, and related information of hundreds of utility systems operated by municipalities and special districts throughout the United States.

JettStream

JettStream minimizes asthma attacks and ER visits for children by providing a superior delivery system for nebulized medication. In addition, JettStream provides an educational system for parents and pediatricians treating childhood asthma.

Pocket Bounty

Schools fundraise with low effort. Parents get deals while they fundraise. And businesses get the right type of customers while contributing to local schools.

Finally, a fundraiser for the 21st century.

The Social Business

The Social Business is an organization that helps small businesses adapt to a fundamental change in customer communication that has emerged through the social web. With over 25 years of collective experience in marketing, web design, product strategy and management, we have developed a blueprint for organizations to embrace the new ways customers are engaging with their business and a set of tools and techniques to ensure growth and success.

Vizme

At Vizme we focus on engagement. It’s too easy to make bad websites, blog, and social media pages and too difficult to make great ones. We’ve set out to change that by creating the Vizme platform, which anyone can use to enhance their websites, blogs, social media pages, and soon mobile apps as well. Whomever your audience, Vizme will help you create the kind of engaging digital experiences that get you noticed.

ZiPede

ziPede helps moms, dads and doctors take care of kids, better. A new web based communication tool. Better visits = Better care.

For more information, visit VentureBox.

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Well, Oregon Angel Fund could be just the thing your startup needs. And they just so happen to be taking applications.

The online application draws from an executive summary to highlight the most important details about the business in a straightforward manner. Entrepreneurs post additional supporting documents; an executive summary or short business plan is required. They may revise and add documents at any time during the review and due diligence process. Useful documents include, but are not limited to: the full business plan, a financial plan, investor and customer presentations, term sheets, investment subscription docs, company updates, customer letters, and anything else that may aid OAF members in their due diligence.

Who has benefitted from OAF? Well, local startup favorites Meridian and CrowdCompass are among the most recent companies to received investment from OAF.

Your company could be next. But you can begin the process if you don’t apply. And you better hurry. You’ve only got a few days left. Applications are due by May 22.

For more information or to apply for the next round, visit the Oregon Angel Fund.

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