Beer and Blog Portland

Well friends, I had the good fortune of running into Richard MacManus, who is the founder of ReadWriteWeb, at Lunch 2.0. He mentioned that he would be attending this Friday, which I asked if I could share on Twitter. To which he said yes.

But!

Then I got an email from the famed Co-Editor of RWW Marshall Kirkpatrick that ReadWriteWeb wanted to also sponsor drinks this Friday! How cool is that?!!

So, come on down and schmooze with the RWW staff and enjoy some cold ones on them. Richard is in town from New Zealand, so it’s a rare treat to have some face time with him.

You can RSVP on Upcoming or Calagator!

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a special treat for everyone this week. Involver is coming to town!

If you don’t know them, Involver is the leading creator of custom tabs and apps on Facebook. No, they don’t make Farmville type stuff. *Other* people use their services to make their own tabs and apps. And, business is booming for them. So much so, that they are expanding their offices and are scouting out Portland as a potential location! I told them we had a seriously under utilized pool of developer talent here and they want to see for themselves. Help us roll out the red carpet for these out of town potential employers so they have no choice but to open up shop somewhere in PDX.

What we need

The first thing we need is for people who would like to work locally for the hottest Facebook app development company to show up in droves. What kind of positions would be available, you ask? Involver is currently hiring Ruby on Rails developers, IT specialists, interface engineers, lead visual designer, MySQL DBA, technical writers, account managers, etc. As you can see, they have cool work available for developers, creatives, and more.

Background

I was on a business trip with Webtrends when I met up with the Involver team. They mentioned their interest in Portland, and I suggested a scouting trip by way of Beer and Blog. I’d like us to make this a successful event so that we not only attract a hot emerging company like Involver, but also that we can use this example to attract more companies that want to reach beyond the Valley.

So, bring it!! RSVP on Upcoming or Calagator

This Friday WebVisions is buying a round for everyone to celebrate their 10th anniversary show. Show organizer Brad Smith and crew will be there to offer a special Beer and Blog discount code for tickets.

About WebVisions

WebVisions is a Portland institution. For the last decade they have been bringing in some of the biggest names in the web world to lil ‘ol P-town. They describe the show as:

WebVisions explores the future of design, content creation, user experience and business strategy to uncover the trends and agents of change that will shatter your assumptions about the Web. Be ready to network, share ideas and be inspired by an all-star lineup of speakers.

This year’s show is May 19 – 21, 2010. They have speakers from Facebook, Twitter, Adaptive Path, and more. As usual, it will be held at the Oregon Convention Center and you can RSVP on Upcoming.

About the drinks

Look for Brad Smith and his team as they will have drink tickets. It’s 1 per person and first come, first serve. Come join us for a toast to 10 years of WebVisions!

Well folks, it’s been BnB as usual for the past month or so. But, the usual gives way to awesome in the month of December! In celebration of the most wonderful time of the year we’ve giving away gifts for 2 weeks in a row, then we’re helping Cami and Rick kick off 30 Hour Day.

What’s in store for the month of December

12/4 – Gift Giveaway

The perennially awesome Verso has acquired several Pokens to giveaway this Friday. What’s a Poken, you say? Only the coolest contact gadget on the planet! People use them at conferences and meet ups to trade contact information by giving each other a high-four with their Pokens. Once you get home, you pull the cute lil hand off and reveal the USB port that you can now use to download the contacts you met. Really cool. I have one and Verso has one, so now we need y’all to have em so we have other people to high-four. The Tokyo Chapter is really into them, naturally.

We’re working on a couple of other gifts to give away, but you’ll just have to wait to hear details about them.

RSVP on Upcoming or Calagator »

12/11 – Festive Drink Bar

We’ll share more details about this one when we get final confirmation, but the idea is that we’re going to have a drink sponsor that will not only provide drinks, but also fun mixers and treats to make our own festive drinks. Each free drink is like a little present for your mouth. Ok, that sounded kinda dirty, but you get the idea

12/18 – 30 Hour Day

As they put it on their site:

“30 hour day is a cockamamie scheme concocted by Cami Kaos of Strange Love Live and Rick Turoczy of Silicon Florist. The concept? Livestream for 30 hours straight in an effort to raise money for charities like Free Geek, Oregon Food Bank, and Toys for Tots.

Join us December 18 and 19 for 30 hours of entertainment, interviews, and interesting goings on—while helping some very worthwhile causes. All from the cozy warmth of your own Web browser.”

We’re helping them kick off the event by holding Beer and Blog on location for 30 Hour Day at PIE. Probably will get a beer sponsor for that one. Hell yeah!

12/25 – Christmas

There will be no official BnB this day, and I suspect not even a Blog and Beer. So we’ll just have to make the jokes about seeing each other next year at the 30 Hour Day event.

Thanks to an introduction by Brian M. Westbrook (aka @BMW), Sprint is giving us a 4G network card and a 6 month data plan to raffle off this Friday! How flippin’ rad is that?!! ♪ Movin’ on up / To the East side. ♫

Win this bad boy at Beer and Blog

The plan is to collect names in a pitcher and then pull a name from it. We’ll choose a name at 6pm and that person will be given the 4G card on the spot with contact details to get the 6 month plan activated. One thing to note, is that we hear this card is not compatible with Macs. Don’t whine, it was a free giveaway and we want to encourage more companies to send us goodies that we can pass on to y’all.

RSVP on Upcoming or get your deets on Calagator

Yep we’re meeting at the Green Dragon. No real plans for this one, so it will be networking and socializing as usual. See you there!

It’s that time again! Time to End Bloglessness!! Yay!!!!!! If you or someone you know has been looking to start a blog, now is the time to get your hand held as we walk through the process.

We’re going to try it a little differently this time. Last time it was a 4 hour workshop helping people install a blog. This time we’re going to help people start a hosted blog and use the time to train them on how to use it.

Saturday, July 18th from 12:00-5:00pm

Format

Each session will be 1 hour: 15 minute presentation and 45 minutes of assisted help. During assisted help, attendees can raise their hands to get help from one of our assistants. Assistants are folks from the Portland tech scene that have done this process before who can help you with your questions.

Agenda

• Session 1 – Sign up for your blog 12:00-1:00pm;
• Session 2 – Dial in the settings for your blog 1:00-2:00pm;
• Session 3 – Intro to posting on your blog 2:00-3:00pm;
• Session 4 – How to promote your blog 3:00-4:00pm;
• 4:00-5:00pm will be an open help time to ask help with anything you’d like.

What to expect

We are focusing on WordPress blogs for this workshop. We chose WordPress so that if your blog is going well enough and you need to graduate to a hosted blog, you’re data and experience will be compatible.

By the time you leave the workshop, you’ll have a blog that is ready to go and some direction on how to connect with other local bloggers. We are expecting people from all skill levels, including the technically challenged. Everyone will be treated with respect and will be encouraged.

We’ll be hosting the event at Webtrends. There are some computers available to use, but we highly recommend bringing your laptop if you have one as there likely won’t be enough computers for everyone.

Help us get the word out!

Most of the people we’re hoping to reach are either to far outside of our social circles or are offline completely. We could use your help in letting people know about this free workshop to get a blog up and running. We don’t care if your motivation to blog is personal, professional, or political; we’ll help you get one up and running.

• Tweet the link to this page http://bit.ly/14OwQU
• Email this page to a friend
• RSVP on Upcoming and Calagator
• Tell someone in real life using your voice. Crazy, huh?

Why is this free?

We’re hoping to make new friends and be good citizens. We don’t want to be an insular group, so we want to enable others to join. And, because we’re Portlanders inspired by other Portlanders to DIY and that Yes We Can.

Help out

If you have experience with installing WordPress, we’d love to have you help answer people’s questions. Please leave us a comment below if you’re interested in helping!

Big thanks to Widmer for sponsoring our After Party by donating two delicious kegs of beer!! They hooked us up with Difter Pale Ale and Widmer Hefeweizen. Give them a big thank you on Twitter @Widmer_Brothers. Also thank you to Betsy Whim for making the connection for the sponsor, Jake for driving to get them, Rick for helping, and Michele for buying lunch.

In addition to this week’s Beer and Doggies with Career Transition, we’re hosting an After Party with Open Source Bridge at the Webtrends office. OSB attendees can head over to Webtrends at 4pm, then the rest of the Beer and Bloggers will head over at 6pm. The After Party will go until 10pm and will have beer, which we’re working on a sponsor. Strange Love Live is also planning to stream a live show from have a camera crew at the After Party.

Merriment and good times will be had by all

RSVP on Upcoming or Calagator

Today

Wow friends! It’s a beautiful day to socialize and network outside on the patio with cool drinks and good people! @xolotl is planning a good game of hideNtweet. @geekygirldawn is talking about an 8pm run for @Whiffles fried pies. I think I’m going to share a laugh with @turoczy on his comment on a Facebook invite for a $25 Happy Hour Workshop on The Holy Triad of Social Media Marketing

From now on

Last week I was working with Nichole installing a blog for her father. She is also an attorney and we discussed someone from her firm doing a talk on IP law as it relates to blogging and social media. That’s when a couple thoughts came into my mind that I realize come up frequently now:

1. It’s too loud to do talks at the Green Dragon these days, and;
2. We could do it somewhere else, but the offsite Beer and Blogs cause confusion.

These are problematic issues because a big part of what Beer and Blog is all about is helping each other for which talks work great. We could change venues, but Green Dragon has been a great home to us. It’s tough to find locations that meet the requirements for a good meet up spot: happy hour, good food, nice selection of drinks, reliable wifi, order at bar when busy (compared to table service only), and a staff that cares we’re there. The location is convenient and parking is easy. Finding all of that *and* a separate room with A/V support for talks is a fantasy land at the moment.

So, let’s do this:

1. Always meet at the Green Dragon every Friday with no exception. (I can see @kenefsky’s and @reidab’s heart breaking for Blog and Beer)
2. We’ll do the talks as offsite events at different times than Friday’s from 4-6pm.

These changes will not only address the two concerns about where we’ll be and ability to hear talks, but it will also begin to build connections with other groups. At our talks, we’ll do two discussions: one lead by us and the other by the group we’re visiting. This gives us a chance to teach and learn with other groups while expanding everyone’s networks. We have an opportunity to expand the spirit of helping each other beyond the tech scene in a way that leaves *us* more well rounded in our knowledge of the world outside of tech. As I write this there is a discussing taking place on Silicon Forest with 3 Oregon Venture Capitalists. They are talking with many of our friends about funding startups. This is an exciting time for all of us and now is our moment to reach out to the larger business community and the even greater Portland community with the offering of tech in our hands and to do so as a group. Beer and Blog can participate in this movement by helping spread the knowledge of blogging and social media. I plan to ask you, the attendees, to lead our talks for the other groups. This is a particularly good opportunity for folks to share baseline information that might otherwise be perceived as too basic for the more advanced tech scene. Let’s talk more about this stuff tonight and on the network.

I also realize that Beer and Blog serves another important function, which is to be one of the groups that brings play and the social into our group. So we’ll continue to do fun field trips, but those too will be outside of our regular meet ups. We need to go to more Twicnics with @donpdonp. Take more magic bus rides with @podcasthotel. Organize outdoor movie nights with suggestions from @pdxflaneur. Participate in more hideNtweets with @xolotl and @yuetsu. Sing more karaoke with @mizd and @rockstarbrother.

I posted this on Upcoming and Calagator even though it’s practically start time.