Tweeted notes from City Hall meeting

  • Looking for a few good OPML files: http://www.chesnok.com/daily/2010/12/02/looking-for-a-few-good-opml-files/ #
  • many <3s to @osuosl @ramereth @gchaix for help with setting up #pdx11 #
  • What's better than the civil war game? OPEN DATA HACKATHON! This saturday! with @maxogden! http://calagator.org/events/1250459494 #
  • Thanks, Girltalk. Now I want to eat an ice cream sandwich. #
  • #PDX11 It's alive! http://www.chesnok.com/daily/2010/12/02/pdx11-its-alive/ #
  • Heading to City Hall for the software summit #pdx11 (psst: http://pdx11.org) #
  • Look! @MayorSamAdams on the floor #pdx11 #
  • So, @MayorSamAdams says that he picked us for our good taste in fashion AND our strength and future promise as an industry #pdx11 #
  • This is the fourth gathering about economic development strategy for the PDC plan #pdx11 #
  • Scott Adams from the PDC talking about how they have been trying to figure out the software industry #pdx11 #
  • And now, Gerald Baugh is up talking about the key people who helped research the industry here. #pdx11 #
  • Pdx11 crowd at city hall http://flic.kr/p/8XVqnz #
  • PDX economic opportunity areas: Athletic/Outdoor, clean tech, advanced manufacturing and SOFTWARE! #pdx11 #
  • Why target software? Direct & Indirect opportunity – $9 billion dollar effect on the Oregon economy #pdx11 #
  • Average wage in software sector is $87k, almost double the wages of other industries in Oregon #pdx11 #
  • Another goal: design a public/private partnership to support software industry #pdx11 (heck yeah!) #
  • PDC & the City were impressed by participation at CEO, developer and hobbyist #pdx11 #
  • Had a fireside chat with the Mayor with 35 companies, but it wasn't wide enough. So they made a survey & got >800 respondants #pdx11 #
  • Out of those conversations, created the Portland Seed Fund http://portlandseedfund.com/ and Portland10 http://www.portlandten.com/ #pdx11 #
  • The City of Portland put together open source initiatives and hosted Lunch 2.0 #pdx11 #
  • Since December $68 million in risk capital that has come in the last year! (and now we're having those guys stand up) #pdx11 #
  • Some PDX CEOs have turned down capital from other investors that would have had them move to other cities #pdx11 #
  • "Ours is not a normal industry. I truly believe this in my heart." Thompson Morrison #
  • Three key elements in our software industry: community sourcing, agile iteration, open innovation #pdx11 #
  • re: agile iteration – why yes we do have @WardCunningham in the audience! 🙂 #pdx11 #
  • use of #pdxstrat tag is full of lulz /cc @BajillionHits #
  • Haha. Quoting @bradfordcross — "There is No Such Thing as the NExt Silicon Valley." #pdx11 #
  • Suggestion: Let's make the next town hall an @IgniteGov! #pdx11 #
  • What are the most important values in PDX? Quality of Life, Community. #pdx11 #
  • What is the least important value in this survey? Financial Success. (by an embarrassing margin) #pdx11 #
  • Fort Hall is the "fork in the road" between the California and Oregon Trail. #historylesson #themoreyouknow #
  • "Cultivating enduring wealth." That's the takeaway. I guess. #
  • So, how do we turn who we are into competitive advantage? Community is our competitive advantage. #pdx11 #
  • Community is not just for social wealth. It's also for our economic wealth. #pdx11 #
  • Community == agility (not what people would assume…) – enables it through fast connections between people, mashups #pdx11 #
  • Community provides support to help us make the right decisions as we build our businesses. #pdx11 #
  • Why aren't we as connected as folks in the valley? We're cultivators – stick with the same companies and don't move around as much #pdx11 #
  • Do you want to build the knowledge network? Sign up! http://lists.pdx11.org/mailman/listinfo/pdx11-knowledge #pdx11 #
  • Do you want to build the financing group? http://lists.pdx11.org/mailman/listinfo/pdx11-financing #pdx11 #
  • Do you want to build the mentoring group? http://lists.pdx11.org/mailman/listinfo/pdx11-mentoring #pdx11 #
  • Question: Financial success is a low priority, and we're complaining about lack of investment? Why do we complain? #pdx11 #
  • Answer: @MayorSamAdams everyone wants to be financially secure. We're just foremost motivated by how the work we do makes us feel #pdx11 #
  • Observation re VC: You need to have some big wins. 6 years since last company went to public. Bring people in from outside #pdx11 #
  • Observation from @brianfinger: hiring from outside PDX because they want to come here. Need to market PDX tech community better #pdx11 #
  • Sez @MayorSamAdams: part of the problem – we lack a coherent strategy. #pdx11 #
  • Can we have more money? $.5million is chump change. @MayorSamAdams: And I got that without even having a strategy for it! #pdx11 #hellyeah #
  • Excellent classroom control by @MayorSamAdams this evening 😉 #
  • How do we sustain quality of life over time? Hitting $1million – of course biz should. But then what? #pdx11 #
  • Stuart Cohen (of CSI) /cc @mherrick66 supplier to customer mkt. Oregonians don't consume enough products to enable rapid innovation. #pdx11 #
  • Question: Where in this effort are we going to see a plan to achieve financial success? #pdx11 #
  • We haven't created a cycle of successful M&A events. Creates more capital and more experienced management teams. #pdx11 #
  • yay @technojosh is speaking up! We have lots of companies that don't publicize their exits. #pdx11 #
  • Big question: How do we define success and how do we measure it? #pdx11 #
  • Finding space for user groups is currently an issue. Can we use PDC's background in real estate to help with that? #pdx11 #
  • Big thing that Gresham did: Waiving fees if you move from a home-based biz to downtown. @MayorSamAdams: YES! We do that. #pdx11 #
  • Next steps! We need structure. #pdx11 #
  • Scheduled a PROGRESS REPORT event February 2011 #pdx11 (dude. seriously awesome.) #
  • Haha. They're passing buckets around to put your card into buckets to get involved in these groups #pdx11 #
  • Conveners: they're here to ask people to come to a meeting. #pdx11 #
  • Introducing Warren Harrison from PSU: working on the knowledge network to solidify our informal and formal groups #pdx11 #
  • Matt Nees from SAO: working on the mentoring network can we cross breed .NET and open source audiences. (lulz) #pdx11 #
  • PDC guy (missed his name) is leading up the financing group. Help companies find the capital they need #pdx11 #
  • Thanks for bearing with my tweets! All done. 🙂 #
  • At @pdxhackathon! #
  • I'm competing with "coats" in the local trending topics. https://skitch.com/selena/rn9q6/trends-in-portland-united-states-trendsmap #
  • OMG http://hatsproductions.com/organtrail.html #
  • Software summit wrapup! http://www.chesnok.com/daily/2010/12/02/pdx11-the-software-summit-wrapup/ #pdx11 #