Software developer, photographer, and entrepreneur

Justin Miller is a software developer, photographer, and entrepreneur. He’s currently involved in his seventh successful startup and likes to balance lots of coding with traveling and getting outdoors, meeting new people, and keeping up on non-technical pursuits as well.

By day, Justin works remotely for Washington, DC-based Development Seed on the MapBox suite of custom mapping tools, mostly as an iOS developer. MapBox’s tools and services are in use by organizations such as TriMet, Intertwine, Foursquare, Flickr, and Craigslist.

Justin’s relatively new to the mapping world — before that, he ran a one-person consultancy for about five years doing web, mobile, and systems freelance work for clients both local and around the world, including Small Society (working on Starbucks and Zipcar, to name a few), Environmental Working Group, Kiplinger, and many others. During this time, he also made the popular Mac apps Pukka and Meerkat.

Before that, Justin was a systems administrator and web developer, from helping start web hosting companies to working in the political and non-profit realms in Washington, DC. Past projects include the United Nations World Food Programme, Barack Obama for Senate, World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, Rock The Vote, Rosie’s O’Donnell’s charities, Greenpeace, ACLU, MoveOn.org, Clinton Global Initiative, and numerous high-level political campaigns.

Justin loves combining technical, code-level stuff with a humane approach, putting in some DIY ingenuity to get things done a shoestring when necessary, and helping others in their pursuits, be it with code or just some encouragement.

What are you up to?

In my MapBox work, I’m building open source tools to help developers use open data, including OpenStreetMap, in their apps and websites. All day, I code on open source projects on GitHub, so my work is always public by default. That’s a pretty interesting way to work, and I’m continually amazed how cool the open source movement is.

http://mapbox.com/mobile

My biggest side project lately is nature and event photography. I work mostly in wildlife of the Pacific Northwest, and you’ll frequently find me (if you are an early bird) down in Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge, before dawn, up to my knees in water, in the rain, carrying a lot of gear and doing close-up work. I also have started photographing local events, usually in the tech realm, since I know it best.

http://500px.com/incanus/sets
http://mallornimagery.com/sotmpdx

I also love to travel. I’m in DC every other month or so to work out of the home office, but in my personal life, I’ve been to about 40 states and a dozen countries. I can’t get enough and am always looking for an excuse to travel.

Other than that, my wife Michelle and I like to do generally fun stuff, be it having backyard projected movies, having homemade cider pressing parties, or leading delegations of adventurers into the unknown.

You can usually find me working either from home in Sellwood/Westmoreland or from one of many coffee shops and cafes all over Southeast Portland.

Why Portland?

Portland is awesome. It’s the first place I’ve really felt home as an adult. I grew up in very rural settings in southwest PA and upstate NY, then lived in DC for a while, but was ready to travel the world as a nomad when we ended up in Portland early on, bought a house, and settled down. I feel like we are well-connected to the rest of the world through an excellent airport, but I don’t feel the need to keep roaming to find a home anymore.

I love the food scene here, the relaxed vibe, the interesting and friendly people, and easy access to the outdoors. I love that I can move from hosting folks at the house for a party to taking a beautiful neighborhood walk to eating at top-notch restaurants to observing many species of wildlife, all within walking distance.

I love that grown adults wear costumes even when it’s not Halloween, that a stranger is always willing to help you out, that the tech scene is largely cooperative and non-competitive, and that there is a large DIY undercurrent to everything. I love that I’m just as likely to find a someone who builds robots as someone who does woodworking or runs a drive-thru dessert shop (I made that last one up, but if you know of one, get in touch).

In short, Portland people feel real, and the scenery’s gorgeous to boot. And how about that liquid sunshine!

Connect

• Vizify
• Twitter
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• 500px
• Flickr
• App.net
• Mapbox

Tags: #developer #photographer #entrepreneur #travel

Now that you’ve met Justin, it would be great to have Portland meet you.

Writer. Inspirator. Runner. Knows the words to Baby Got Back.

I’m a freelance writer, event planner, runner and guy who wants to live a more walkable, bikeable, car-less life.

Also, a bit outspoken.

Is this where I say October 26, 2012 is Katie and Tyler Hurst Day in Chandler, AZ?

What are you up to?

Current tasks include finishing my first book, getting to know the people that make Portland so damn weird and discovering our new home while my wife kicks butt at her 9-5.

Why Portland?

Seattle is where I grew up. Metro Phoenix is where I came of age. Portland is where I’m going to make my dreams come true.

Connect

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Blog

Tags: #inspirator #runreal #writer

Now that we’ve met TD, we’d love to meet you.

Entrepreneur, thought leader, seasoned speaker, charitable advocate, math geek

Kate Ertmann is a businesswoman, seasoned speaker, thought leader and a charitable advocate. A child actor for kid’s television programming and commercials, she renounced her Hollywood hopes in favor of a telecommunications degree from Ohio University.

In the course of her career, she produced the independent feature film “Pop,” is one of the founders of the Portland chapter of Women in Animation, and is an active member of many industry organizations. She is a board member of the Portland Rotary Club and also serves on the board of Bradley Angle, the oldest domestic violence services organization on the west coast. Kate became a partner at Animation Dynamics in 2000, and in 2008, became the sole owner, leading the company to produce innovative animation for national clients for business, marketing and branding needs.

Her energetic leadership style can best be defined by the tattoo that runs the length of one arm: a series of mathematical equations, or morphisms, that represent movement, followed by the word “GO!”

Kate’s favorite food is buttered popcorn.

What are you up to?

Running a creative agency, sharpening my speaking skills in front of global audiences, donating time and resources for the benefit of others and thinking of new ways to push the definition of animation.

Why Portland?

Portland is coming into its own identity and it’s exciting to contribute to the process and help it grow. It’s safe, comfortable and clean and culturally engaging.

Connect

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Personal blog
• Animation Dynamics (ADi)

Tags: #seasonedspeaker #femaleentrepreneur #animationexpert #creativetechmaven

Now that we’ve met Kate, Portland would love to meet you.

I make web businesses that make money.

Nathan Taggart started his first web-based business at 18 and has been building digital products and companies ever since. His expertise is in bootstrapping and building products that are quick to profitability and are self-sustaining.

Nathan got his start in technology as a marketer, managing over $10MM in online advertising spend and building custom bidding algorithms which dominated on Google — taking his last company from $3,000/mo in revenue to $40,000/day.

Nathan worked in Silicon Valley as interim CEO for a nationwide pre-employment screening company with clients among the Fortune 100. Additionally, Nathan has executive experience as an outside CTO, building and leading IT teams across several industries.

Currently, Nathan serves as CEO to LaunchSide, a company he founded with his longtime business partner, Chris Chong. Nathan co-founded LaunchSide in May 2011 and with a small seed round raised through the Portland Seed Fund, Nathan now leads a team of 8 working on some of the most interesting digital projects in Portland. LaunchSide offers digital product development and go-to-market expertise in exchange for equity and/or participation in the projects’ successes.

Outside of work, Nathan shares a passion for wine with his wife, Meredith Taggart. Together, they started a boutique wine label in 2011, meredithwines.com. Nathan and Meredith have no children of their own, but they provide therapeutic foster care for children through Albertina Kerr.

What are you up to?

The nature of my company, LaunchSide, is that we get to work on a wide variety of interesting projects across a range of industries.

While many of our projects aren’t public yet, some of the things we’re working on are:

• Creating a marketplace for investors in tax lien certificates. (www.aztaxsales.com)
• Creating a tool for website owners to receive text message alerts for important website events (like sales, contact form submissions, 500 errors, etc)
• Creating an end-to-end invoicing solution for a major, top-tier car manufacturer.
• Creating an online billing solution for the clients of Oregon’s largest mailhouse.
• Helping non-profits identify their key, un-tapped (or under-tapped) donors with a machine-learning, big-data SaaS product.
• Working on a medical document management solution for the worker’s comp space.
• Consulting for companies in the Portland Seed Fund and UpStart Labs. If I ever get invited to PIE, I’ll complete the trifecta
• Looking for more projects all the time!

If you have a project or digital product idea that you’re trying to develop, please reach out. Our client-partners find that our participatory approach helps them reduce the risk of working with an outside team to develop new parts of their businesses.

Outside of work, I’m a frequent participant and supporter of Portland Startup Weekend, having served as a mentor for four events and counting.

Why Portland?

I love Portland! After living in half a dozen cities across the US (and even a year as an expat), I can confidently say that I belong in Portland. I love being a tourist in my own city — I spend an embarrassing amount of time in Powell’s. I’m trying to eat at every notable restaurant and foodcart in town. My favorite’s are Le Pigeon and Whiffie’s Fried Pies, respectively (although Brunch Box deserves an honorable mention).

Outside of the city, I can frequently be found in the Willamette Valley, where I enjoy the elegance of Oregon wines. My wife and I came to Oregon from Napa for the wine, and we’ll never go back.

Connect

• Vizify
• Audioname
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Google+
• LaunchSide

Tags: #bootstrapper #ceo #explorer #seedster #psf

Now that Portland has met Nathan, they’d love to meet you.

Corey taught anthropology for 12 years before founding Exprima Media, a software design and development company that partners with content providers to envision, design, and develop compelling and effective interactive experiences. Corey consults and delivers presentations on a variety of topics including the future of publishing, interaction design, and what he terms ‘armchair apps’.

Corey Pressman is an elder among the world’s first generation of ‘digital natives’. Some of his fondest childhood memories are of playing ‘Pong’ on a wood-grain-clad Atari 2600 console in 1978. These early experiences with novel forms of human social connectivity sparked Corey’s later interests in Cultural Anthropology. Pressman received a BA in Anthropology from SUNY Oneonta and an MA in Anthropology from Washington State University in 1991. He remembers being among the only people in graduate school to use email or even have a computer, for that matter (an Apple IIe).

Corey went on to teach Anthropology at Mt. Hood Community College for ten years, serving three of those as Social Science Department Chair. As a professional educator, Pressman was disappointed with the cumbersome design of emerging educational technology. Convinced that more could be done to create effective computer-based educational tools, Corey contracted with Allyn & Bacon (now Pearson Education) to produce their Anthropology Experience website. This 2001 web site represented an early successful integration of textbook content, web video, and interactive activities. Soon after, he produced the Prentice Hall Digital Art Library Art History – a suite of impressive Art History instructional DVDROMs.

Fueled by a belief that well-made educational technology can realign and empower the teaching and learning process for today’s student body, Corey left academics to start Exprima Media – a software company dedicated to creating fun and engaging learning opportunities for the web and mobile platforms like the iPad. Most recently, he was instrumental in launching Anatomy & Physiology REVEALED in conjunction with McGraw Hill Higher Education and the University and Toledo, which is the first of a genre of ‘armchair apps’ designed to foster the improvement of our collective intelligence. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and two daughters. Portland offers the range of technical and creative specialists required to complete projects on time and within budget, not to mention the coffee.

What are you up to?

Currently, I’m working with publishers to channel existing content to new markets and publicly presenting observations and best practices in immersive UX, accessible tech and content development.

Why Portland?

Pure and simple – the quality of talent. The entire near east side industrial district is so conducive to collaboration, productivity and community that I really can’t imagine living anywhere else.

Connect

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Blog
• Anatomy and Physiology Revealed
• Exprima Media

Tags: #informationphilanthropist #keynotematerial #immersiveuxdesigner #pdxentrepreneur

Now that Portland has met Corey, they would like to meet you.

Communicator, PDX believer, Mid-west transplant, amateur cyclist & golfer

Kent Hollenbeck was raised on the plains of Iowa and South Dakota (the one with Mt. Rushmore) and all he knew of the Pacific Northwest was that there was a football team named after an odd bird (Seahawks?) located somewhere in the area.

After starting his career in public relations at Gateway Inc., and declining the opportunity to move with the corporate headquarters relocation to sunny La Jolla, California – Kent found himself in Portland, Oregon quite by chance.

He continued his career as a communicator at one of the largest independent PR firms in the world for nearly 13 years, working with brands large and not as large while expanding his experience across product PR, financial and crisis communications, executive messaging & thought leadership and marketing.

After several years of leading teams that showed great creativity in garnering attention (e.g. http://tweet-a-beer.com) he launched a new initiative at his former employer to provide high quality communications support to brands that were just getting started. Specifically the start-up market in Portland and Seattle.

The work with these brands was invigorating, fun and, in part, became the motivation behind the launch of his own agency, The Hollenbeck Group, in August of 2012.

Since launching Kent’s company has secured one major brand, HTC, and has begun project work for other companies – with a core focus on having a select number of ‘large’ clients and a strong base of Portland and Northwest based companies that are getting started but have great promise.

In his spare time he enjoys golf, bicycling and running. The last one far less than the others.

What are you up to?

Learning how to be an entrepreneur each day with the launch of my own business. People have regularly asked me what it’s like and I say the same thing – “It’s thrilling and terrifying, occasionally at the same time.”

When I was working at large companies, the work often became about managing expections, reports and general ‘management’ more so than helping a client actually do something special. That changed when I started talking more with people who were starting their own companies.

They were passionate about what they were doing. It was not just a job, it meant something and helping them succeed felt like it was accruing to something real and tangible. It fed my professional soul and I wanted more of it.

I also learned the beneift of taking the strengths of the startup environment – nimbleness, optimism, willingness to take chances…and applying those to my larger clients needs and the business of ‘PR’ and communications overall. Plus the benefits of connecting large brands to those that are just emerging is a unique value-add that I enjoy helping foster whenever possible.

In short, I’m continuing to be thrilled and terrified daily and I have no interest in having it any other way.

Why Portland?

I grew up on a farm, and the nearest town was about 1000 people. My wife grew up in LA.

Portland is that perfect sweet spot of large and small for both of us. There is also a real sense of community that can only come from naked bicycle rides, more amazing restaurants per capita than anywhere else in the U.S. and beer. Oh boy, the beer.

It’s an amazingly cool town that knows it, but doesn’t necessarily like to advertise it and I hope to stay here for the rest of my life.

Connect

• Vizify
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Blog
• Hollenbeck Group

Tags: #publicrelations #entrepreneur #athlete #passionate

Now that we’ve met Kent, we’d love to meet you.

Jesu swept.

Frank is an experienced listener, thinker, and doer. He likes motivating self-organizing teams, eliminating wasteful practices, and delivering digital solutions that are designed to be flexible and that are developed in a sustainable way. He believes in engaging clients as partners, demonstrating the value of iterative delivery, and bringing award-winning products and services to the marketplace. He is an Agile instigator and relentless self-critic as well as a process improvement specialist. He enjoys muddy coffee and bookstores.

What are you up to?

Tater Tot Designs, baby!

Why Portland?

best. city. in. oregon.

Connect

• Vizify
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Blog
• Plurk
• Tater Tot Designs

Tags: #Agile #Schmagile #AbeVigoda #haikuInferno #deathmetal

Now, that we’ve met Frank, we’d like to meet you.

In it to win it.

Daniel Clancey is the Founder and Creative Director of Homeschool Snowboarding. Homeschool is a technical apparel brand Focused on creating the most highly durable, functional and breathable outerwear and baselayer available.

Daniel as a degree in Advertising and Marketing from the University of Colorado at boulder and an Advanced degree in Apparel design from the Art Institute of Seattle. He has worked for companies like Ride and Columbia Sportswear where he spent years learning the ropes and designing product. Daniel was born and raised in Kailua Hawaii.

What are you up to?

I started Homeschool Snowboarding 3 years ago to fill the void in the core snowboard market. The idea being to create product that was function over fashion, highly technical with an understated NW style with a revolutionary new technology that increases breathability 40-60%. Homeschool snowboarding is a small company and each of us does the work of a small army. We are rocking and rolling and have been fortunate enough to get some great penetration into some of the best shops in the west and Canada.

When I have a second I love playing music, art, working on old cars and motorcycles.

Why Portland?

“If it works here it works anywhere is what we say about our product and Portland is the perfect place for a brand like us, lots of creative people and access to some great mountains and really gnarly weather. A perfect testing ground for the product we make” Portland also has a great entrepreneurial scene and a whole lot of really great people.

Connect

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Blog
• Homeschool Snowboarding

Tags: #hmschl #snow

What an awesome bio. Now, let’s show Portland yours.

Software design and support guy currently between engagements.

Born/raised on the east coast (NJ/PA). Stints in the south and mid-west (Huntsville, AL/Detroit, MI). Moved to Portland in 2002. Early career in mechanical machinery design and automation project engineering. Transitioned to robotic automation and off-line robotic programming and simulation with CAD s/w. This lead to more general marketing support for mechanical CAD systems (h/w and s/w) for Intergraph. Pitched a PC-based CAD product to Intergraph management and ultimately was responsible for the subsequent UX/UI design of 1/3rd of the product that became Solid Edge. Left Intergraph and did the same at Autodesk for the product that became Inventor (now AutoCAD Inventor). After 11 years with Autodesk, Inventor was doing quite well with all of the added personnel and there is a difference between what it takes to start a product from scratch and what it takes to sustain one of many products within a billion dollar firm.

Outside interests have include: art, music, reading, travel and caving.

What are you up to?

Currently seeking a full-time opportunity in Portland that will allow me to leverage my combination of: analytical, design and project management skills within a vibrant s/w team.

Why Portland?

Portland was the center of the universe for the s/w product Gary was designing and supporting for Autodesk. Although Gary started with ADSK in the metro-Detroit area, he moved here in 2002 (initially to Tualatin and later to Gresham). Gary re-married a wonderful woman who was born and raised in Gresham and who has strong family ties to the area (so he’s here to stay). Easy access to the coast, the Gorge and Mt.Hood make PDX a great place to live! Who can argue with a town that has great coffee available on every corner?

Connect

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Portfolio
• Online portfolio
• iPad app wireframe #1
• UX book review of: Designing w/the Mind in Mind
• UX book review of: Information Flow and Knowledge Sharing
• Book review of: The Myths of Innovation
• UX book review of: Gamestorming
• Nowhere Man

Tags: #ux #social #design #travel

Now that you’ve met Gary, why not introduce yourself to Portland?

Sam Pardue is a serial entrepreneur who left the Intel mothership to form start-up ventures in the Portland, Oregon metro region. Upon graduating from Carnegie Mellon’s MBA program in 1998, Sam first worked at Intel Corporation as a marketing manager. After several years he left Intel to co-found Lensbaby (www.lensbaby.com), a globally celebrated Portland-based manufacturer of award-winning special effects SLR camera.

In August of 2010 Sam stepped down as Lensbaby’s CEO to found Indow Windows (www.indowwindows.com), a company that manufactures and markets Pardue’s invention, a thermal window insert that presses into place on the inside of a window frame without any nails, screws or adhesives to deliver double pane window performance at a fraction of the cost.

At the 2011 CleanTech Open, the nation’s largest clean tech business competition, Indow Windows won the National Energy Efficiency category award, the National Sustainability Award, and came in second place for the Grand Prize. Indow Windows won a bronze medal in the 2012 Edison Awards, was recognized by Sustainable Industries Magazine as a Top Ten Green Building Product of 2011, and was awarded the Innovation in Sustainable Product Award by Sustainable Business Magazine.

What are you up to?

Indow Windows manufactures a thermal window insert that presses into place on the inside of a window frame to give home owners double pane window performance at a fraction of the price. An Indow Window is composed of a sheet of acrylic glazing edged with our patented Compression Tube. We use a laser measuring and customer IT system to make the Indow Windows the exact same shape as the inside of the window frame, but slightly larger, so that when you press the Indow Window into the frame the tubing compresses creating a spring force that holds the glazing in place. It’s a remarkably simple yet effective mechanical design.

We are just beginning our national expansion, so it’s a very exciting time for us. We launched in beta mode in November of 2010, but we needed to complete a custom IT system which we call MODI, so that dealers all over the country could use our laser measuring and order submission system before we could begin expanding. Recently we have been adding a dealer a week in places like San Francisco, Detroit, Milwaukee, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York and in other locales.

We are also very happy to have recently become a Silver Certified for our sustainable business practices in the City of Portland’s Sustainability at Work program. We are wholeheartedly committed to reaching the Gold level and expect to by early next year. We are very focused on our sustainable business practices and have built them into our company’s fabric.

It’s an exciting but daunting time to be selling a product that directly addresses climate change. Buildings are the number one consumers of energy in the United States and windows are the number one source of energy loss from buildings. 42% of the housing stock in the United States still have single pane windows. We can build LEED platinum buildings until the end of time but if we do not address the huge existing building stock we will not move the needle.

The chaotic weather patterns seem to be gradually refocusing American’s attention back on climate change as a very serious issue we need to address, as inconvenient as it is. Indow Windows approach is to produce an affordable green product that allows people to cut dramatically the energy lost through their windows while making them more comfortable. And over time they can save enough money to pay for their Indow Windows!

Why Portland?

Portland has been a wonderful cradle for Indow Windows though the greatest opportunities for us lie outside of the state. There are so many environmentally minded people here, and our city is major hub of energy efficiency expertise. What I also love are all the creative people who live here who are helping us communicate with our audience. We have several notable artists on staff here at Indow Windows and they give us a creative jolt. My wife Eugenia Pardue is a fantastic artist too. Creativity infuses our culture.

Portland’s creativity manifests itself in our entrepreneurial scene. There is a lot happening here. We were fortunate to participate in the Portland Seed Fund which invests in and mentors startups in the area. That has been very helpful.

Portland has a nice concentration of the older homes that have lovely but leaky single pane windows which has helped us get going. We also have the pleasure of having Neil Kelly as a key dealer here in the Northwest. Neil Kelly is one of the country’s leading remodeling companies and has one of the largest Home Performance operations around. They have helped introduce us to other leading dealers around the country.

At the end of the day, I love living in Portland and don’t seem myself moving anywhere else in this country. It’s a special place that has formed me into the passionate climate change fighter that I am. I can’t imagine Indow Windows forming anywhere else.

Connect

• Vizify
• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Indow Windows

Tags: #energyefficiency #indowwindows #climatechange #sustainability #creativity

Now that we’ve had a chance to meet Sam, we’d love to get the chance to meet you.

Enjoys being the first business person @newco, growing a company

Robin Jones has broad experience in the mobile and semiconductor industries, including founding and serving as an executive at startups, mergers and acquisitions, venture capital investment, strategic planning and project management.

She most recently was Chief Operating Officer of Geoloqi, which was acquired in September 2012 by Esri, and she has just been tapped to head a new business unit at the company focused on bringing the power of Esri’s GIS tools to the application developer market.

Previously, Robin ran the wireless streaming audio business for Avnera, a Beaverton-based venture-backed fabless semiconductor company. As co-founder and VP of Business Development at FonJax, she led all the company’s financing and early sales and partnership activities, eventually selling the company to Keynote Systems and returning ~2.5X capital to its investors. Prior to her own startups, she directed business development for top companies such as Freescale Semiconductor’s Wireless and Mobile Systems Group and led Motorola Ventures out of Silicon Valley. Her first job out of school was with Motorola Lexicus Division, where she was project manager for several advanced wireless communications devices for international markets, including the first smartphone for Greater China.

Robin earned her MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and a BS from Stanford University.

What are you up to?

I am currently hard at work creating a new business within Esri that harnesses the power of their GIS software platform into a set of products and related business model that is easily consumed by web and mobile app developers. The plan of record is to establish Esri as the web and mobile app developer’s defacto go-to for all thing geo.

I also juggle life as a mom of two kids (4 & 7 years old), trying to stay relatively fit, running the largest annual fundraising event for my son’s elementary school, and occasionally seeing my husband at a time other than when we are both trying to cram kids into jammies at bedtime…

Why Portland?

Originally, we moved here for quality-of-life related issues. Living in San Francisco with one kid and another on the way, we were staring down the barrel of $50K/year in tuition fees, whereas living in Portland’s Ladd’s Addition puts us into a gem of a local public school. Plus, my inlaws are here, which means free babysitting!

Now that we’re here, I have grown to love the way Portland starts up. The community of entrepreneurs is creative in a way that booksmart Silicon Valley-types just aren’t. The local DIY culture really permeates Portland startups, as evidenced by the resourcefulness and creativity of the people, products and business models that we see here. It’s a heck of a lot more fun, and the beer is so much better here too!

Connect

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Geoloqi

Tags: #mobile #bizdev #strategy #bizmodel #momwife

Now that you’ve met Robin, why not introduce yourself to Portland?

Writer, educator, mother, wife, WordPress blogger, Girl Scout

Kathleen leads a full life, working as a computer lab/technology support specialist in an elementary school, writing for various online and print publications, blogging at TechnoEarthMama, coordinating the Portland WordPress User Group, and leading a Girl Scout troop. She is also a member of the Girl Scouts’ Camp Arrowhead Resident Camp Committee, and was a member of the Camp Arrowhead Task Force, which prevented the sale of the camp in 2007-2008.

Kathleen previously worked for the Girl Scouts Columbia River Council (now part of Girl Scouts of Oregon and Southwest Washington) as a camp counselor and resident camp director, and for Girl Scouts Tierra del Oro Council (now Girl Scouts Heart of Central California) as an assistant camp director and community organizer.

Kathleen grew up in Portland from age 8 to 18, but has lived in both Oregon and California. She attended Mills College in Oakland, California, graduating with a degree in Anthropology. While in California, she was a member of Indecent Exposure, the performing cast for the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the U.C. Theater in Berkeley. Later, she was also a member of the Clinton Street Cabaret in Portland.

Kathleen currently lives with her three daughters, husband and cat in the Parkrose Heights neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. She owns and edits ParkroseGateway.com, a hyperlocal blog/news site for this neighborhood.

What are you up to?

As you might expect after reading my bio, I’m always searching for balance in my life! Mainly, I’m trying to balance my full-time paycheck job and family time with writing. I enjoyed spending more time this past summer working on my hyperlocal blog, ParkroseGateway.com. Since I wasn’t working my regular job, I had time to go to meetings, make phone calls, and even cover a little breaking news. I definitely plan to continue working on this, but need to find a good workflow for it.

I’m also looking for more freelance writing opportunities with magazines, although traditional magazines are having a difficult time right now! I’ve worked with Portland Family, Calgary’s Child and the Upper Room in the past year.

What are you into?

Bicycling, but not in a spandex kind of way. I bike to work every day on an Xtracycle, and use it for many errands too, including taking kids to day care and grocery shopping. I’m passionate about sharing my cycling experience with others, because I think it’s important environmentally that we move from a car-centered society to a more human-powered society. I’m also interested in other pieces of sustainable living, like food (growing, cooking, preserving), non-consumer economies, affordable health care for all, and walkable/livable communities. I write about these things mainly on my personal blog, TechnoEarthMama.

I’m also a passionate follower of Christ, who doesn’t attend a traditional church any more, and who’s working out what it means to be the church in the world instead. I blog about this at What’s the Mission.

Oh, and I love to READ! I read a wide variety of books, as well as magazines and blogs. I especially enjoy young adult novels and science fiction. I occasionally contribute to my sister’s book blog, Six Boxes of Books.

What do you like most about Portland?

I don’t feel like a weirdo here! Most of the time, anyway. I can actually find people who are like me, and not just on the internet. I love that people will facilitate gatherings around almost anything. People aren’t content to just communicate on the internet; they also want to form in-person communities.

I’ve also always loved the proximity to nature here. We’ve got Mt. Hood, the Gorge, and the coast nearby, but even within the city, it’s easy to find a quiet place with evergreen trees and walking trails.

Finally, I really appreciate the bike infrastructure, and I appreciate city leaders for being ahead of the game in developing more bicycle infrastructure.

So why aren’t you selling more of your writing?

I need to query more (write letters to editors proposing articles I want to write). Selling myself as a writer is the hardest part, and the easiest to put off.

What’s your favorite kind of Whiffies pie?

Chicken pot pie!

Connect

TechnoEarthMama
ParkroseGateway.com
Twitter
LinkedIn

Pioneer of Business Anthropology, Veteran consultant, teacher, facilitator & coach.

Marsha Shenk is a pioneer in Business Anthropology. Three decades ago, reflecting on commerce as an inescapable dimension of human life, she also began to view it as an unnecessary source of suffering. People are made to exchange, society is built on that. But the timeless patterns of those exchanges are invisible to most people – including veteran business leaders. Armed with that insight, she began her consulting practice.

Working with professionals and service providers as well as Fortune 10 executives, she forged a unique and far-reaching approach to the questions that every enterprise faces. Her Master Moves™ reveal how to structure valuable trading relationships, no matter what may be happening in the marketplace. Her models have powered profitable strategies, boosting productivity and loyalty and creating new markets, products and services. She’s known for using Game Theory to enable enterprises to win a game that only they can see, in which others must compete.

Marsha founded The BestWork® People in 1980, introducing a new way of catalyzing peoples’ best work. Over three decades, her work has guided leaders from many industries to deepen competitive gaps and sustain market leadership.

Sustaining inquiry into biology, anthropology, business, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, the martial arts, and somatics, she partners with colleagues from multiple disciplines. Her work has included 15 years of teaching leadership through courses, and 29 of consulting, coaching, and facilitating.

Marsha’s education began at Reed College, and includes doctoral study at UCLA and UC Berkeley.

What are you up to?

I’m committed to revealing how individuals and enterprises can be Fit to Thrive in Any Economy. Have recently forged a new synthesis of Neuroscience, Business Anthropology and the Martial Arts; I’m offering short courses on the key moves. Have also recently launched a website, Good Little Biz, providing 7 free worksheets as well as guidelines for avoiding costly mistakes common among solopreneurs and micro businesses.

What are you into?

The adventure of life appears in many ways for me. Welcoming a constantly arising world is always an interesting challenge. Finding ways to be fit emotionally, physically, intellectually and spiritually is a fascinating inquiry, not to mention how to be a loving friend, mother, wife, sister…I love good literature, and it’s great to find playmates who can sustain curiosity and learning.

What do you like most about Portland?

The mood. People are friendly, polite, and unpretentious. It’s a pleasure to live that way. And I very much enjoy the physical beauty: lush vegetation and good architecture. Portland is a fun food town, too.

How do you bring out the best in people: their best thinking, their best work, their passions and generosity, their desire to learn and step up to new challenges – even in a recession?

Fully invite them to participate in addressing the most important questions and challenges we can think of at Best Work People.

Keep them focused on the people they care most about, and what they want for them at Good Little Biz.

How can I sustain curiosity and keep learning, being the best I can be, while being gentle, generous, and patient with others?

I began this journey in an iron lung at age 10, during a polio epidemic, surrounded by ‘caregivers’ who I believed were incompetent. I was one of two children to walk out of that hospital that year; others died or remained in iron lungs, wheelchairs, or braces and crutches.

I continue to be humbled by the privileges of my life, and continue to look for how I can contribute to others what I have been fortunate to learn.

Connect

Best Work People
Good Little Biz
Twitter

Creative Strategist, Commenting Ninja, Blogger, Youth Pastor

Jim Gray was inspired in Jr. High when he was given an award for creative writing. He was a multi-sport athlete in high school and also was active in the drama dept. He received a drama scholarship to a Junior college where he learned to manage the stage. He decided that wasn’t for him and ran Cross-Country his 2nd yr.

It was during this time that he became interested in youth ministry work. He served as an intern at a church before moving to Los Angeles to study at a liberal arts college. After college he worked for Enterprise Rent-A-Car for a decade. He then went into Outside Sales and Marketing for several firms before moving to the northwest in 2006. During this time he worked a 2nd career in marketing/PR/Online Strategy for a non-profit. Last year he was part of a large lay-off due to the economy.

In January, he formed Beaconhill NW Consulting offer creative strategies, viral marketing, online community management/PR for a wide range of clients. Jim hopes to never go back to the cubicle farm.

What are you up to?

I’m working for several companies and non-profits in Marketing/PR/Strategy Development/Social Media Management. I’ve been shooting videos, building blogs, writing, recruiting, managing social media profiles, viral marketing campaigns, fund-raising. Event/Conference Development/Coordination.

What are you into?

I recently became Online Community Manager for Young Life of Lower Columbia. It’s a great non-profit that works with jr.high-college students. They had huge impact on me as a kid and it’s great to give back.

Another project that I’m excited about is Deadly Viper where I function as the Online Community Manager as well as overseeing viral campaigns, social media strategy and integration advocate.

I’m also the tech-lead/community manager for The Idea Camp which will be in Portland November 20,21 …The Idea Camp is a collaborative movement of idea-makers who facilitate free hybrid conferences and develop resources for people who desire to move ideas toward implementation. Facilitated by a growing collective of innovative thinkers and practitioners from numerous disciplines, participants gather around topics of interest to encourage and inspire one another, share practical wisdom from the field, and develop intentional networks for idea-making.

What do you like most about Portland?

I really love the natural development of community in Portland. People are serious about networking and building relationships. I’ve had more collaboration here than anywhere else. I’ve love the opportunity to meet people through WordPress Group, WebVisions and Beer and Blogs.

How do you explain to a layperson what you do?

I am the person who connects your content with your community. I put it this way ” I find fuel for digital fires” To illustrate this I developed a brand called “Commenting Ninja” The idea is that I go to your blog and observe, speak, and share. I look to find ways to nurture and develop community strategies that help you reach your users.

Tell us about yourself?

I am happily married to my wife of 16 years. We have 3 kids who are are homeschoolers, soccer players, musicians and comedians. I also serve as Youth Pastor at our church in Kelso, WA.

Connect

Jim Gray online
Beaconhill NW
Commenting Ninja
Twitter

Where art and science meet in one person

Martin Vavra, owner of Galaxy Sailor Productions, has been working in the film business since 2004 with the realization for his love of making film.

Ever since he was a small boy, Martin has loved movies and films but never took it to be something that would be a passion to pursue as a career. After fourteen years of fighting fires and three years in science education, Galaxy Sailor Productions was born from a love of film making. Ever since, Martin has driven to make Galaxy Sailor Productions a premiere company whose focus is to make entertaining, enriching, and fulfilling filmo projects.

Since GSP was started, Martin has worked on numerous weddings as well as edited for The Sportsman Channel and WildTV, self produced a full length DVD performance of the Vagina Monologues, and create online video content for Lithia Motors, The Special Olympics, Milepost 5, Showcase PDX, and is currently finishing work on a documentary short for Basic Rights Oregon.

Martin’s first self produced, directed, and written narrative is currently filming and can be see online as zombie web series, The Last Stand.

What are you up to?

Frantically filming The Last Stand, making zombies, getting permits to have fake weapons in Portland, and working in some of the most awesome places with the best folks. I am very fortunate.

What are you into?

I am into film making, making things green and sustainable, and keeping on my vegetarian lifestyle. I am a recent convert and couldn’t be happier.

What do you like most about Portland?

I moved here to take the next step in my film career. I have been coming to Portland for a long time, and loved the people, the food, the culture, and the fact that I can do all the “city” and “nature” things I could want to do in one place.

Why Portland and not Hollywood?

Portland is a place of evolution right now. It’s not Hollywood, and won’t be, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t part of an art culture when it comes to film. Portland has more “real” to it, as far as heart goes. I think if someone remembers the roots of being here and goes on, they could bring something to Hollywood that it truly needs: originality.

You said you were recently a vegetarian convert, so how is that going?

It is going really great. It is something that I had to do from the heart and not the stomach. I was raised in Eastern Oregon, where we hunted and had cattle, so meat is just part of the culture. It is amazing how many things have either meat or corn in them today, and both are almost totally non-nutritious due to our standards in the world. Eat a vegetable just makes the soul feel better. The stomach follows much easier.

Connect

Martin Vavra
Twitter
Facebook
Vimeo
The Last Stand

Imagination is the Tool

Cory Huff has been acting since he was a little kid. That experience informs everything he does. When he approaches new projects he has the attitude that any problem can be solved with a little bit of hard work, solid technique, and a whole lot of imagination.

Cory is first, a good husband. Just check out AgoodHusband.net, the blog he started to explore what marriage means to men. Growing up as the child of a single mother, Cory decided that it was important to learn from the wisdom of other men and he maintains the site as a way to contribute to the general marriage discussion.

Cory started TheAbundantArtist.com as a place for artists to come to learn about Internet marketing. He firmly believes that the starving artist is a myth that must be dispelled. Cory hopes to break down the silos of creativity that people erect within their own lives that force them to compartmentalize their skills and interests. In other words, Cory believes that following your passion will lead you to a fulfilled life, no matter what it is. Cory moved to Portland from Utah in 2007.

Cory also works as a social media consultant for a local search engine marketing firm. He enjoys the social media world immensely and is constantly amazed at the level of talent, creativity, and skill that people bring to the social media realm.

Cory loves his wife, acting, dancing, his XBOX 360, PDX, Order of the Stick comics, and is a die hard University of Utah alumnus. Currently he’s most interested in working on projects that bring artists, technology, and business together in new and creative ways.

What are you up to?

I am working on bringing artists together with technology. There’s never been a bigger opportunity for us to leave the starving artist mentality behind.

What are you into?

I am into theater, dance, singing, being ridiculous, Twitter, and the Internet.

What do you like most about Portland?

The creative industries in Portland thrive without being cutthroat. There is a collaborative atmosphere here that is unmatched in other places I’ve lived.

How can an artist use the Internet to further their career?

By using it to make connections. Be engaged on a one-to-one level with your fans and they will love you for it.

Who’s the most important person in your life?

My beautiful wife, Lissie.

Connect

Cory Huff
TheAbundantArtist.com
AgoodHusband.net
Twitter

Artist, Explorer, Photographer, Raw Vegan, Multidimensional Nondenominational Hedonist

Mark Colman is an artist who works photographically. A professional photographer for over twenty years, Colman has worked in Milan, Italy, Madrid, Spain, San Francisco and spent sixteen years in Los Angeles doing fine art, fashion and advertising work.

In the early 1990′s, feeling creatively limited after ten years in fashion photography, Colman began developing a unique style of image manipulation. Combining lush images from nature with the female nude, his work was often thought of as digitally manipulated but was created using solely film based techniques.

Zoom magazines’ Franz Bee writes; “His style hearkens back to the highly original approach of the ‘Four Seasons’ by Archimboldo, the 16th century painter who created anthropomorphic compositions by magically assembling the produce typical of each season to create facial profiles.”

Works: http://markcolman.com

Not content to limit himself creatively, Colman works in many different genres of photography, including non-manipulated, intensely colored abstract work inspired by music.

Colman has spent over three years on a book project exploring cemeteries via classic, straight black and white photography, shot with vintage medium format film cameras.

Today, Colman continues to explore new visual worlds often combining his original film based techniques with digital manipulation.

He has worked with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Adrian Belew, EMI, Warner Bros. His art work has been exhibited internationally. Colman has been profiled in ZOOM Magazine, Eyemazing Magazine and others. Resume with selected exhibition history.

Colman is available for fashion, advertising, editorial and portrait work: http://markcolemanphoto.com

What are you up to?

I am preparing for my first one man art exhibit in Portland. It will be at Wieden Kennedy’s PIE (Portland Incubator Experiment) space on October 1st, First Thursday: http://markcolman.tv

I will be showing several large cibachrome color prints as well as a selection of work dating from 1991 until now. The opening will be from 6-9 PM. See link above for details.

What are you into?

I am into exploring, visually and in all ways. I like to go to new places.

I’m into raw vegan food and have been 100% raw for nine months and a vegetarian/vegan for twenty years.

I love to bike. Have been bike only for a year.

Into all sorts of music, mainly progressive (new King Crimson, Adrian Belew, Trey Gunn, Porcupine Tree), contemporary (Philip Glass, Steve Reich and others).

What do you like most about Portland?

It’s the people. They are so real and nice. They care about the environment (mostly!). I’ve made more friends in my first two years in Portland than I made in sixteen years in Los Angeles. I also love the weather! Let’s just not tell people that it ever stops raining!

After living in so many big cities, I see Portland as my true home. It’s the best. I feel like I belong here.

Do you photograph regular people or just models?

I do photograph real people. I actually specialize in making people look good. The skills I honed in Italy, making models look great, work for “real” people too. I am also available to do fine art portraits. I can make you into a unique work of art by combining the things you are all about and love with your image.

Why would you do such an extreme thing as to eat only a raw food diet?

I do it because it makes me feel great physically, it’s great for the environment and it pisses people off! Just kidding about the last part.

Connect

Mark Colman
Mark Colman TV
Mark Coleman Photo
Black-and-White
Twitter

Positive, Motivated, Grateful, Inquisitive, Speaker

Danea was born into an incredible healing journey. Her life started with a diagnosis of VATER Association, a complex of birth disorders affecting 6 vital systems in the body. Over the first two years of her life, she endured 10 operations to put things back in working order. Since then, she has been in and out of the medical system to monitor and correct the lasting affects of VATER. Danea knows how to overcome challenge and for that she is grateful.

Her parents blessed her with a positive outlook that gave her experiences purpose. She chose to embrace her health and out of that she has opened herself up to her true passion: inspiring others to see their life experiences as conscious choices.

In 2008, she started www.creativeaffirmations.com, a resource for making positive change through affirmations. Danea knows how vitally important self talk is. She sees life form around the stories people tell themselves all day long. By shifting the tone and message to a more optimistic, conscious viewpoint, life becomes miraculous.

Danea has a degree in Mathematics and Economics from the University of Redlands. She is blissfully married, affirmation manifested, and lives in the forest of SW Portland with her two terrier mutts: Abbey and Emma.

What are you up to?

I am taking my website, www.creativeaffimations.com, out into the community through personal presentations. I think that it is our experiences that connect us and lend insight into how to live a more fulfilled life. I am also making a valiant effort to learn how to meditate, a desire that I have has for quite a while now.

What are you into?

I am into personal development. The human mind is fascinating. I have just finished reading the The Intention Experiment by Lynne McTaggart and was enthralled by all of the scientific experiments that have been performed around the world to discover the ability of conscious thought to impact reality.

I also love to cook. I have been vegetarian for 2 years and have had a great time recreating my favorite meat based dishes. My latest was an imitation tuna sandwich using tofu, celery, onion and kelp powder, delicious, craving satisfied.

What do you like most about Portland?

I am grateful all of the time. I love driving around and soaking in all of the gorgeousness that is Portland. It is thrilling that nature is such a big aspect of every day life. You don’t have to drive far, or drive at all, to be surrounded by beauty. I also cherish the change of the seasons. As I write this, it is mid-September, just on the edge of fall. The morning has a crispness to it and the day finishes with a warm glow. We went berry picking a few times this summer and played in the snow last winter, awesome, just awesome.

What is the focus of your motivational presentations?

Choice. Each moment we have a choice. We can choose how we see life. We can choose the stories we tell ourselves. We can choose the reality we find ourselves in. We are not at the mercy of life. Through becoming conscious and decisive about the choices we make, we shape our future. This does not mean that the choice is always easy. When I found out that I would not be able to carry a pregnancy as a result of VATER, it was a difficult choice to embrace that as my reality. However, by doing so, I opened up a passion within my marriage for adoption. A passion we did not even know was there and probably would have not discovered on our own. Through my passion for adoption, I began serving on the Board of the Kinship House, www.kinshiphouse.org, a local non-profit organization committed to the mental health of children in all stages of foster care and adoption. The key was consciously choosing the reality I found myself in. I think that is a message worth sharing.

What do you do when no one is watching?

Dance. I love my current home because it has three mirrored closets forming a quasi dance studio in my bathroom. I like to put on revival performances there from my days as dancer in high school. I also put on a mini production of the Nutcracker each December for my own personal enjoyment and the laughter of my husband, when he catches me.

Connect

Creative Affirmations
danea at creativeaffirmations dot com

Software entrepreneur & executive

Mark Lawler is the VP of Engineering of Sabrix where he oversees product engineering, including software development, quality assurance, and technical communication. Mark joined Sabrix in 2007, and has over 20 years of experience delivering enterprise software and SaaS solutions for companies ranging from start-ups to large international corporations.

Prior to Sabrix, Mark served as Chief Technical Officer and Senior Vice President of Engineering at Compli, a provider of a SaaS compliance solution for mitigating regulatory, legal, and operational risk through managing employee policy, procedures, and regulatory compliance.

Mark was also one of the U.S. founders of ProSight and served as the Chief Technical Officer and Vice President of Product Management. While at ProSight, he helped grow the company to over $25M in revenue and to profitability before its acquisition by Primavera Systems in 2006, where he became a VP of Product Strategy.

Prior to ProSight, Mark was a Director of Research and Development, managing a globally distributed development team for the PVCS business unit of Intersolv. He re-built the R&D organization and recast the entire product line to leverage a Java technology stack and the Internet, growing revenue from $60M to over $120M.

In addition, Mark held several management and technical positions at Symantec Corporation. He was one of the lead developers on Norton Desktop for Windows (winner of PC Computing Most Valuable Product of the Year in 1991) and was one of the early development managers for Norton AntiVirus. He went on to become the Director of Development and Architect for Symantec’s Security Business Unit.

He relocated to Oregon when Symantec acquired Central Point Software more than a decade ago with his first wife Susan, who passed away after an eight year battle with breast cancer. Remarried now, Mark enjoys the Pacific Northwest with his wife Kim and her children Ahnjene, Annelise, Angelina, and Anton. His hobbies include photography and N-Scale model trains, including the layout he is building in his basement.

Mark is either on the board, an advisor, or a volunteer for several local companies and non-profits including the Software Association of Oregon, TechStart Education Foundation, Business Education Compact, Fedarra, and EthicsPoint.

Mark holds a B.S. in computer science from the University of California, Riverside and is a named inventor on seven U.S. and international software patents.

What are you up to?

I am working hard and enjoying life. I reached a point in my life a while back where I realized that “not caring” about the little things is quite liberating and like a new lease on life.

What are you into?

Today’s music, N-Scale Model Trains, woodworking, and home repairs. In the area of being helpful around the house and do it yourself projects I guess I learned a couple of things from the ol’ man as I was growing up. I also enjoy first person shooters (i.e. Left 4 Dead, Ghost Recon, etc.) and movies where things blow up.

What do you like most about Portland?

Portland has everything I like and nothing that I hate. As an “Air Force Brat” and through work I have traveled to just about every locale and major city in the US. One day I was here on a business trip and said “Wow! Somebody bottled up the best of everything.” I do find it funny though how weather obsessed Portlanders are though; trust me when I say that the drizzle, rain, wind, snow, and heat extremes we have here are nothing when compared to other places–we have it very lucky.

What are you doing professionally?

I am trying to live up to my motto of “Ship high quality products on time that delight customers, win reviews, and bankrupt competitors while having fun, being ethical, and making money.” A little driven? Perhaps. I like to play to win while enjoying the journey and the rewards at the end of the day.

Who are you?

I don’t know, but I’m happy so that’s all that matters I suppose.

Connect

LinkedIn
Twitter
Mark Lawler
Google profile
SAO

Accomplished writer, artist, and Web developer

For eight years, he was an editor at the Hearst Corporation’s 1.6 million-circulation Country Living Magazine, where he wrote about topics ranging from home-building, architecture, and historic preservation to food, travel, and current events. His freelance work has included a great deal of science writing, making the research of Ph.D.’s accessible to a lay audience.

Matt is also a professional children’s book illustrator, and is active in the children’s literature and reading education communities. He and his sister, Jennifer, are the co-creators of the award-winning, critically acclaimed Babymouse graphic novels (published by Random House), of which there are more than a million copies currently in print. The latest volume in the series (the eleventh) is Babymouse: Dragonslayer. Matt and Jenni are also hard at work on a second graphic novel series for the elementary-age set, called Squish (due out in Spring 2011).

Matt also spends time working in the online world, as the Consulting Creative Director for Hot Knife Design, Inc., of Boston, Mass. At Hot Knife, Matt works as a business consultant and helps develop user interfaces. He also builds Web sites with CMS software such as ExpressionEngine. Matt acts as a copy writer and an information architect as needed, using his writing and editing skills to organize the structure and content of clients\’ Web sites in the most clear, logical, and approachable manner possible, and employing his considerable talents as an illustrator to craft wireframes and paper prototypes to aid in the design, testing, and building of Web sites.

For the past two years, Matt has been the Vice Chair of the Computer-Human Interaction Forum of Oregon (CHIFOO, the Oregon chapter of the Association of Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction), and a participant in and volunteer for both the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) and the User Experience Network (UXnet).

Matt moved to Portland from New York’s Hudson Valley in early 2007. He currently lives in Northeast Portland, with his wife and dog.

What are you up to?

I am currently working on three graphic novels simultaneously: Books 13 and 14 of the BABYMOUSE series, and Book 1 of the SQUISH series. BABYMOUSE has been an interesting challenge lately, because we are trying to redesign our work flow to eliminate redundancy and integrate new talent into some of the production steps. With SQUISH, we’re starting the series from ground zero, so there are an enormous amount of design details (character design, color, illustration style, page elements) that have to be worked out and spelled out. We’re also creating final art in Adobe Illustrator for the first time (versus Photoshop, which we use for Babymouse), so I’m contending with that application’s idiosyncrasies, too.

I also continue to expand the CHIFOO.org Web site, which has been my main initiative since joining CHIFOO’s Executive Council two years ago. We plan to include more guest contributors and hope to open up the site to comments and perhaps enable more social networking among our members in the near future.

What are you into?

When I’m not drawing mice or talking to educators or schoolchildren, I’m usually thinking about food. My wife (she runs the lab at Rex Hill Vineyards / A to Z Wineworks) and I are big foodies. A good Saturday would include a morning bike ride down to the Portland Farmers Market at PSU to get ingredients, followed by an afternoon of cooking. We also like the local restaurant scene. Current hit list: Belly, Biwa, Sel Gris, and Culinary Artistry’s “Commercial” dinners.

What do you like most about Portland?

I like that I can bike and walk anywhere, without getting hit by a truck. (Having lived in farm country, this advantage cannot be overrated.) I like the wide variety of good, affordable restaurants. And I like having vital, engaged local communities of colleagues in both the UX and Children’s Lit worlds.

Shouldn’t kids spend time reading “real books” instead of comic books and graphic novels?

No. The idea that some book formats and genres are “real literature” and some books are “junk” is and always has been nonsense. Graphic novels actually provide a great stepping-stone between picture books and chapter books, and can be incredibly complex works of art and literature.

Next time you hear someone tell a kids that they Must Read an Important Novel, remember what Thomas Jefferson said:

“A great obstacle to good education is the inordinate passion prevalent for NOVELS, and the time lost in that reading which should be instructively employed. When this poison infects the mind, it destroys its tone and revolts it against wholesome reading.”

It was not long ago that novels, which are now held up as the pinnacle of Good Literature, were considered trash. This past century, it’s been comics and graphic novels. Next, maybe it will be Twitter novels or something.

What do you dislike about the Portland food scene?

The farmers bring fantastic produce to market, but they need to work on getting more (and better) grass-fed beef. I still haven’t had anything to rival the grass-fed beef we used to get from our local farmers in the Hudson Valley.

Second, why are there no McIntosh apples in Oregon? It’s one of the most popular varieties in the country.

Finally, Portland baristas need to learn that it should take 30 seconds to serve a cup of coffee (or a latte, or whatever), not 12 minutes. Trust me. Spend a week working in New York City. There is no better teaching tool than a line of more than fifty angry, undercaffeinated Manhattanites.

Connect

Matthew Holm
Twitter
LinkedIn
Hot Knife Design
Babymouse

A Technical Outlier, just trying to fit in.

Bruce Christensen spends his days managing equipment manufacturing in McMinnville and his nights dreaming up internet parties for Facebook.

Bruce is an ordinary guy, with an extraordinary family who use parties to stay connected and support each other with gifts. This passion for parties lead the Christensen family to develop, test and launch the online white elephant gift exchange, called AlbinoPhant.

Bruce and his wife Sarah, a professional recreationalist, lead a team of developers from Portland to Silicon Valley to Pakistan who are building a network of online party activities that support life-events, like birthdays, weddings, births and holidays.

Bruce is a bit old-school when it comes to social media and feels that any application should find something of value to sell and then provide an entertaining way to share what is purchased. Bruce’s PartyWeDo network monetizes each party activity through gift sales and fun.

Bruce’s family includes five grown children and their spouses, who are scattered all across the US; along with 7 grand children.

What are you up to?

Besides the AlbinoPhant launch and developing the other PartyWeDo applications, I spend my time doing home improvements with Sarah, working on my custom cars and finding excuses to travel to see our grandchildren.

I spend most of the weekdays at the plant, encouraging our manufacturing employees to stay motivated even though construction equipment is not selling much in this economy.

I am active in our church, directing our young men programs, including the Scouting, Varsity and Venturing groups.

What are you into?

I love to think creatively and solve problems, so I have always leaned entrepreneurial. In addition to the launch of the party network, I am also assisting my oldest daughter to build her photography business. My youngest son is starting a heating and air conditioning business with my support. My youngest daughter has a fashion accessory business in New Hampshire, which she is doing all on her own (she was always independent!)

What do you like most about Portland?

The business pace is perfect; fast but not light-speed. The living is family-friendly for when the grand kids come to visit. There is plenty of helpful business support for the entrepreneurs in the crowd, and the weather is cooperative; most of the time.

How would you monetize a social network so that it can be sustainable?

We rely too much on advertisers to pay our way in this space. Instead, we should find items that people are willing to purchase, and then make a sale for a profit or a commission. There are so many great tools on the web that are valuable, and yet we are afraid to ask for a payment for many of them. The systems that will sustain must find things to sell, and then use the great tools of the net to enhance the buying experience. With sustainable revenues from selling something in hand, then the advertising revenues become the icing on the cake.

You are 55, why start now in the internet industry?

Last year I took a cement mixing trailer to BlogWorld in Vegas as a publicity stunt. It got some great exposure, so the promotion worked. However, I came away from the experience with such a respect and interest in social media and its people that I became hooked.

We had played our family gift exchange on the internet for the past 3-years, so I decided that I would join the social networking scene, and develop this product for others to enjoy on Facebook. There have been so many helpful people along the way that I can’t help but stay involved and give back, as I can. I am really a technical Outlier. But I am learning and I am getting up to speed in this space. I feel younger when my mind is wrapped around a good challenge.

Connect

My AlbinoPhant introductory blog
Linkedin
Friendfeed
Twitter
Facebook

Thought Follower, Sit-Down Comic, Mathematician and Linux Geek

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky is, in order of appearance, a boy genius, computer programmer, applied mathematician, folk singer, actor, professional graduate student, armchair astronaut, algorithmic composer, supercomputer programmer, performance engineer, Linux geek, solution in search of a problem and Social Media Analytics Researcher. His hobby is collecting hobbies.

Ed is a Thought Follower, Social Media Analytics Researcher, Sit-Down Comic, Former Boy Genius, Linux Capacity Planner, R Hacker, openSUSE Ambassador and Mathematician.

The origins of his handle, “znmeb”, are lost in the mists of time. Legend has it that the “meb” part is his initials, and the “z” and “n” are the initials of his two boyhood heroes, Zorro and Captain Nemo. However, this seems unlikely, since Captain Nemo was in fact the villain.

What are you up to?

I am up to no good in general. More specifically, though, I am working on two main projects. The first is research into performance metrics on open source operating systems, especially Linux, Xen, VirtualBox and KVM. The second is a social media analytics research toolkit called “SMART@znmeb”. SMART@znmeb is an appliance that features a complete Linux desktop, a database and a statistical and data visualization framework.

What are you into?

I’m into music of all kinds, especially classical, jazz and folk. I’m not exactly the rugged outdoors type, but I do enjoy hiking in Tryon Creek State Park. And of course I’m into applied mathematics, computers and open source software.

What do you like most about Portland?

Portland is my adopted home. What I like most about Portland is the confluence of reasonable weather, outstanding cultural activities and an open source software development environment. The people here are friendlier than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. And the food’s pretty good too, especially seafood, cheese, beer and wine.

What do you want to do next?

In addition to my current research in operating system performance metrics and social media analytics, I’m planning to get back into algorithmic composition. I’ve experimented with it on and off over the years, but never really sat down and created some of the music that I’ve wanted to create. A word of warning, though — the kind of music I create is unusual in many ways.

First of all, it’s entirely composed and performed by computers. There’s a certain amount of human guidance that goes into the algorithms, but most of the “creativity” comes from algorithms. There are no “conventional” musical instruments involved.

Second, the tonal systems used in my music are unconventional. They are microtonal — more than twelve tones in an octave — and xentonal — musical timbres that don’t exist in physical instruments. My main musical inspirations are Iannis Xenakis, David Cope, Harry Partch and William Sethares.

What’s your spiritual center?

A long time ago, someone asked me, “What do you stand in awe of?” My answer is, “The great works of Man, and the men and women who created them and continue to create them.” Beethoven, Rubens, Shostakovich, John Huston, Hildegarde von Bingen, Ella Fitzgerald, Emily Dickinson … the list is probably infinite, because I’m discovering new ones every day.

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SMART@znmeb
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Borasky Research

Nerd. Mother. Wife. Bibliophile.

Caitlin is first and foremost a mother. For that reason, she is always trying to improve herself and be the best for her daughter. Due to making her college cluster Family studies, Caitlin is interested in how society constructs gender and is trying to find ways to teach her daughter to not let society define how she should act by her sex.

Caitlin loves personality tests, she is an ISFJ according to Myers-Briggs, Type 2: The Giver on the enneagram, and fully lives up to be a Cancer.

She finds it impossible to not be constantly reading something and loves to research the most random things. Her bedroom is filled with books and she has been banned several times from buying anymore, but the existence of Powell’s has made that impossible.

What are you up to?

I am currently working on finding a career and settling into my mid-20′s lifestyle of being a mom and wife.

What are you into?

As already stated, I love to read anything I can get my hands on (you can always find at least one book in my purse). I am addicted to watching TV series on DVD marathon style, especially if the show is made by Joss Whedon. Also I am into my family. I can’t get enough of my daughter and my husband is the best friend I could ask for. Plus we make regular visits to the grandparents.

What do you like most about Portland?

I love how it smells after the rain and how many places you can curl up with a good book. Powell’s makes me incredibly happy. But mostly, I find the city itself comforting because it has been my home my whole life.

Will you ever find a job field that you will actually stick with?

That is what I am trying to do right now!

What is your stance on religion?

I describe myself as an apatheist because I really don’t care how we came to be, where I go when I die, or if there is a higher power out there. I wasn’t raised in a religious/anti-religious household so when bad things happened I turned to my family and friends.

I believe (and this isn’t a one size fits all belief) that religion is there to help people deal with their fears, whether it be of death, the unknown, or whatever. I don’t fear death, and the unknown doesn’t bother me. All I need to get through the day knowing I would do anything for my friends and family and that would do the same for me. I have no control of what happens when I die and what does it matter to me how we came to be since we are here now, but I can make sure I live my life to the fullest.

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Wrestler of ideas

Dave Kresta loves to grab ideas, wrestle them to the ground, mix them with other ideas, and command them to submit, be fruitful, and multiply.

He has been doing this in the Portland software scene for over 20 years now.

Way back in 1988, Dave packed up the wagon at his parent’s mid-West home and moved to Or-e-gone. With a fresh B.S in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan he started writing code for Logic Automation. The primary language was C, and some new fangled language called C++ , along with object oriented programming. Dave remarks: “When I talk to tech guys today, I was using stone and chisel compared to software development today. Anyways, it was fun. I got to buy a new stereo and eat out lots.”

Dave decided to attend PSU in 1990 in the evenings and 4 years later got an MBA. (In the meantime, he got married to his lovely wife, Elaine, and had two kids). Why the insanity of an MBA? Says Dave: “I figured I didn’t want to stare at a computer screen all day for 30 years and write code, so I decided to learn something about business. So now I can stare at a computer screen all day and NOT write code.”

Since 1994 Dave has been involved in product management, product marketing, business planning, strategy development and just about everything required to make a software company successful (except write code). He has been fortunate to work for a number of great Portland companies including Synopsys (acquired Logic Automation), RadiSys, Mentor Graphics, BetterManagement.com (internet group within ABC Technologies, later acquired by SAS Institute), Clinicient, and Ontier. He dabbles in consulting with an entity called CollaborativEye.

What are you up to?

As of 9/1/2009, I am considering new opportunities. I’ve just come off a great stint at a very early stage local startup. But as we all know, funding in this economy is a real bear. I am doing some pro-bono work for The Natural Step, a great Portland-based non-profit active in the sustainability area. I am helping them establish and leverage Twitter and other Social Media avenues. The first step was a social media survey to identify objectives and tie social media to real business needs. I think there are a lot of small companies that need similar help. There are just too many “10 Ten Best ways to use Twitter for your business” articles out there – somebody starting or running a small or medium sized business or non-profit just doesn’t have time to separate fact from fiction. I think I can help.

What are you into?

1. Develop/clarify vision and strategy.
2. Create strategic alliances.
3. Develop and manage product roadmaps.
4. Develop clear, concise positioning documents.
5. Customer/market research and analysis (focus groups, interviews, persona development).
6. Define market requirements.
7. Bring focus and clarity to complex situations (e.g, complex market landscapes, product strategies, customer situations, etc).
8. Define and implement new processes.
9. Facilitate and focus virtual teams (draw out good ideas, guide teams, etc).
10. Provide guidance, mentoring to team members.
11. Identify strengths in others and help them figure out how to best use those strengths.
12. Write.
13. Develop clear, engaging presentations (with as few PowerPoint slides as possible!)

What do you like most about Portland?

Portland is the perfect sized city – not too big (like Seattle), and not too small (like Antelope). So you can get great food like Jake’s and pig out at VooDoo, and go to Powell’s, all without spending hours getting around. I also love the fact that I can get to the mountains and total isolation on a wilderness trail within 1 to 3 hours.

What have you learned after 20 years in the Portland software scene?

Good ideas are a dime a dozen. I’ve come up with lots, and so have people I’ve worked with. The key to success is to generate the ideas at the appropriate time, churn them, improve them, and then make something happen. Deliver something real. Your great idea probably won’t survive the grind of reality anyways. Some people are afraid to deliver a product to customers because it isn’t quite yet ready. This can paralyze a company and cause it to miss out on some very valuable real world feedback, or worse, totally miss out on a market window. Some people call this “Agile”, I just call it “Smart.”

But this isn’t an excuse for sloppy requirements. You still need to spend time understanding what your customers pains are and what they need to accomplish with your product. Most people don’t spend enough time on this – they go right to the solution, confusing specifications for requirements (BIG difference!) Also, this process should never end – your customers’ needs are always changing, and so should your offerings.

What do you like to do when you are not starting at a computer not writing code?

One of my passions is backpacking. We have a lot of great wilderness areas within several hours of Portland. One of my favorites is the Goat Rocks Wilderness in Washington. If you’ve never heard of it, that’s why I like it. Another of my favorites is Mt. Adams. Of course Mt. Hood is beautiful, but it can be a bit more crowded (definition: if you see somebody else on your hike, it is crowded.)

Connect

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Twitter: @davekresta
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Hacker of random things

Steven Osborn is a seasoned engineer with a passion for software development. He tends to program at work, in his spare time and sometimes in his sleep. Steven has a number of years of experience developing web and mobile applications.

What are you up to?

I just recently joined Sourceforge after my three years at Vidoop. I also hack on various open source projects and attend random user’s group meetings.

What are you into?

Programming languages, gadgets, technology. Most recently I’m especially passionate about Python, Django and iPhone development.

What do you like most about Portland?

I love the strong technical community and Open Source roots in Portland. Being from the mid-west also I appreciate the mild weather.

What do you regret most?

Not taking enough chances earlier in life. Failure is part of life and a necessary growing process. In fact you tend to learn more from your failures than your successes. So the only true failure is not chasing opportunities.

Who is your hero?

My wife. She makes everything happen and she always knows where everything is. She is very patient and very understanding.

Some people say that having a family can be a big hindrance on your professional career, but I really feel my wife’s encouragement and unwavering support has been an amazing catalyst in my life.

Connect

Twitter: @steve918
Steven Osborn on LinkedIn

Actress

Audrey Walker was born on June 23rd 1975 in Forest Grove, Oregon. She grew up in the neighborhood of Aloha, Oregon with one younger brother. She attended St. Cecilia Elementary School where she developed her love of acting through her 8th grade teacher. She later went on to graduate from Central Catholic High School in Portland,Oregon.

It wasn’t until the year 2004 that she took her first acting class. She went on her first audition a month into class and landed the role. Since then she has been steadily working as an actress in numerous films as well as television commercials.

She has trained with casting director turned acting coach Laurel Smith, a former student of Sanford Meisner. This is where Audrey developed her Meisner training.

She has also trained with Seth Yanklewitz of Juel Bestrop Casting.

What are you up to?

I just completed shooting a commercial spot for Nintendo.

Currently I am in preproduction on a film titled “Crackin’ the Code” written by local filmmaker Steve Coker.  You check out the website.

What are you into?

In general I’m into being the best person I can to the world. I’m also into sunshine.  Something we don’t see enough of here. I’m into quality time with the family and working on film sets.  I’m into smiling and helping people enjoy life and realize they really can do anything if they want it bad enough.  

I’m also into VooDoo doughnuts.  Mmmm.

What do you like most about Portland?

I really love how green it is.  I love how Portland is about an hour from the beach, about an hour from the mountains, and about an hour…okay maybe a bit more from the dessert.  Incredible.  

There is just so much to see and do here from Pittock Mansion, the OHSU Tram, Trolleys, the Gardens, the Zoo, MAX….

I also love the architecture downtown.  Especially by Skidmore Fountain.  I really think that is a highly underrated area.  The architectural detail is amazing in that area.

Oh…and I love how the majority of the people are nice and down to earth.

I do believe we have the BEST film crew around.

Wow an actress?  That must be really glamorous.

Actually it’s not.  It’s really hard work.  It’s hard to put yourself out there and let people see the many sides to you and not feel embarrassed by it.  It’s pulling out part of your private world and making it public.  Not a lot of people are comfortable with that.  Especially when you have 20-30 people standing around staring at you.  Bright lights shining on you and a camera stuck in front of your face.  It’s quite intimidating.  Yet for me, it’s perfect, I never feel more at home than I do on set.  I love helping bring a story to life and giving people a character they can connect to.  I love taking the audience on a journey.

Is it true that you’re clumsy?

It took me a while but I embrace my clumsiness.  Not a lot of people are brave enough to just embrace it, but there comes a time when you just have to let go and realize it is what it is.  If you know me….you know my intentions are always good and you can enjoy a good laugh with me.

If something is in front of me I will inevitably knock it over.  Doesn’t matter if it’s a person or an object.  If I’m carrying something I will inevitably drop it at one point or another.  If it is a person I will bump you or elbow you…just ask Diane Lane, I bumped her in the eye.  Yup.  That couldn’t have been more “me”.  We did enjoy a good hearted laugh over it though.

What can I say…I dare you to find someone who is clumsier.

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Marketer, tech teacher, suit-wearing treehugger

Nick Bostic is the Director of Marketing and Technology for Chicago Title Insurance Company of Oregon. During the day, he helps area REALTORS® and mortgage professionals to expand their knowledge of computer usage, blogging, social networking and other online marketing techniques. Nick is also known to help troubleshoot a technical problem on a moment’s notice for an extensive list of software applications. He has recently begun to tap into the local tech industry in an effort to bring local software solutions to real estate professionals. Between teaching frequent classes, one-on-one coaching sessions and helping with real estate technology problems, Nick is constantly researching new products and services to help REALTORS® market themselves and their listings while emphasizing “green” options.

Outside of his day job, Nick plays the tenor saxophone, keeps in contact with his national real estate colleagues via Twitter (@nbostic), is learning to stilt walk and is nothing like the suit and tie he wears all day. He went to college at the University of Oregon and studied finance, marketing, management and computer information technology. He was a very active SCUBA instructor, but is now a less than active diver. Much of his free time is spent in Eugene where most of his friends still currently reside.

Nick lives in Beaverton, very close to where he has lived his entire life. After reading countless books on the topic, Nick has realized his is the stereotype of Generation Y despite fighting stereotypes all his life.

Nick is always on the lookout for new ideas and ways to use them. He is always looking to make difficult technology concepts easy for the general public.

What are you up to?

I’m just trying to cram my brain with as much information as possible on a daily basis so I can figure out what it is I’m supposed to be doing. I’m really focusing on achieving a work/life balance lately. It’s been difficult, but I’m realizing early on that it’s important to my sanity.

What are you into?

I’m really diving head first into all of the social networking and blogging that is slowly creeping into the real estate industry. I’m spending way too much time on my computer, but have set reasonably strict rules about when it gets turned off so I can focus on the fun things like home improvement projects, watching movies and getting started on my new stiltwalking hobby.

What do you like most about Portland?

The biggest thing about Portland for me is my familiarity with it. I grew up here, I’ve spent almost all of my life here. Even growing up in the suburbs, my parents took me into downtown all the time so I’m familiar with most of the neighborhoods, restaurants and shops. Something new is always sprouting up though, so it’s fun to see what’s new. My favorite part though is Forest Park. It’s the largest natural urban forest in the US and I love driving through it on my way back from downtown. Being able to drive through a beautiful forest after a stressful day keeps me here.

Where do you see your career in 10 years?

I would like to see my career take more of an educational role. I would like to help people across a wide variety of industries, including real estate, to take advantage of the growing online social tools available to them. I enjoy public speaking and the questions that come out of my classes. I try to focus on making topics understandable to everyone and make myself available to those who need more help afterwards.

I would also like to help older HR and marketing professionals to better understand how to acquire and retain Generation Y employees. I am amazed at the adversarial mentality of many people I come in contact on both sides of the generation gap. I think people should try to learn as much as possible from one another and I hope to facilitate that learning process.

Something of a Social Networking Consultant/Generation Y translator/Corporate Technology Trainer.

You said you are working on adjusting your work/life balance. How do you see
that balance changing?

I see my focus being on a way to make my work part of my life. Due to a recent family illness I am having one of those re-evaluate my life periods and I’m realizing that the time spent with friends and family is what truly defines us as people, not the careers we hold.  I hope to someday figure out a way to do something I enjoy that helps other peoples and still allows me to live the lifestyle I want – being able to pay bills, travel to do some SCUBA diving, go camping with friends and spend lots of time with close friends and family.  A great friend of mine has it right when he says on his voicemail “Have a grateful day”.

Connect

Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook

Photographer, programmer, reluctant extrovert and messer-up of things

Inger Klekacz was raised by two race car drivers who are also a poet (in the case of her mother) and a restaurateur/snow plow driver/logger (in the case of her father).

That statement, while it initially reads like the treatment for a Wes Anderson movie, is absolutely the truth. And it speaks volumes about the philosophy by which she lives – whatever it is, if it interests you, try it. Said philosophy has resulted in an accidental career in web programming, a vocation in photography, and a long list of hobbies and passions – chiefly: music, massage therapy, chicken husbandry, stained glass work, emergency response, and, yeah, sometimes even racing.

Inger has lived most of her life in Portland.  After taking an 8-year hiatus from photography in her early 20s, she became one of the founding volunteers at Portland’s Newspace Center for Photography, and later joined the team at Blue Moon Camera & Machine to bring photography back to the Everyman. She currently writes web applications for a market research company in southwest Portland by day; at night, you can usually find her out photographing live acts at various bars.

Inger is 32 and three quarters years old. She owns a 1914 money pit in North Portland – the money pit in which she, in fact, grew up.

What are you up to?

By day, I’m a mild-mannered web programmer. I write web applications with ColdFusion, PHP, various SQL flavors and some CSS/Javascript/AJAX stuff. That was a complete accident. I was a photography/film major with a minor in journalism before I dropped out. I randomly took a tech support job at Teleport, where I taught myself HTML to keep myself awake on the graveyard shift. Somehow I ended up learning Perl and PHP, then database stuff. It’s all a blur. I’m an English nerd. I don’t know what I’m doing in programming. But it’s a good job with a lot of creative potential, and I love the people I work with. That goes a long way.

By night, I’m a rock photographer. That was kind of an accident, too. I’m a portraitist by nature, because while I am essentially shy, I just love people so much, and I love celebrating the good that I see in them. And then I saw this band play a few months ago, and they put on a helluva show, and I was like, “I have GOT to shoot these guys doing their thing!” I had a good time shooting them, kept doing it, started shooting other bands that I like to listen to…yadda yadda yadda, before you know it, I’m shooting four nights a week and spending the rest of my nights processing images and catching up on my quite unglamorous home repair.

What are you into?

Just about everything I can get my hands on. My life in general is the result of me saying, “I wonder if I could do that…” where “that” is, you know, something random and different from the stuff I’m already doing. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time planning some events for the Neighborhood Emergency Team (NET) in close-in North Portland. NET is a group of roughly 2000 volunteers across Portland who are trained in search and rescue, first aid, triage, and fire suppression, in addition to other emergency response stuff. The idea is that when a catastrophe (e.g., an earthquake) hits Portland and overwhelms our paid responders, citizens will naturally want to help each other. The training, and the team coordination, helps ensure that we don’t injure ourselves in the process of being good people.

I’ve also taken music up again. I played a lot of instruments as a youngster, and quit when I went to a high school that had a really crappy band program. I just recently have started to learn bass guitar – my first stringed instrument – and my friend has insisted that I bombard his band with my bad bass sound. Yes, that’s “bad bass,” not “bad ass.” Again, this is a result of “I wonder if I could do that….” As it turns out, I can. Despite my tiny hobbit hands. I don’t know where it’s going, and I’m really not any good yet, but it gives me joy, and that’s enough for me.

What do you like most about Portland?

That’s like asking me what my favorite ice cream flavor is. I don’t even know where to start on this. Okay, here: I love our civic pride. A friend of a friend, who lives in Seattle, remarked recently that he always marveled at how many of us down here are flag-waving Portlanders – you know, people who get all teary-eyed and gushy about how pretty our city is, how nice people are, etc.

I think that when you are grateful to live in a place, you take care of it, and this place becomes more than a geographical location where we eat, sleep, work, and merely exist – it becomes a nurtured, sacred spot, and a community blossoms out of our shared grace and love for a space. That’s not common, and it is something that we should hold up high to the world and say, “look at us, we actively love our town, and here is the result, and here is how you can love your town.”

Portlander is an incubator for a lot of talent. I love its receptivity. You’re like, “Hey, I want to do this thing,” and all of a sudden, there are 20 people who say, “wow, that’s cool, let’s do it Thursday nights, I know a guy who’ll host it for us.” That’s not to say that every fledgling project always works out – but I’ve found that there’s a feeling of exploration here, a willingness to Give It A Shot that you wouldn’t get in a city like San Francisco or Chicago. People here are still soft. In general, they choose not to pull that “Um, that’s not cool enough for me” crap that you find in harder places.

Your MySpace profile lists your occupation as “seer.” What’s that about?

I make portraits. The art of a good portrait is that you have to see something in a person that they thought nobody else could see in them. I love distilling the essence of a person via a photograph. So I guess that’s why I chose “seer” as an occupation. I can hold a camera up and shoot a thousand frames on the street randomly, and that makes me a photographer. But to make a portrait of another living being, you have to really be able to look into them and acknowledge and celebrate what it is that distinguishes them from the dude next to them. You see the person for who they are, and you don’t look away, for better or for worse. It can be very intimate. I am at my most vulnerable when I make a portrait, and often, so is my subject.

That freaks out some of my subjects. Sometimes they’re not ready to be looked at that intently. Maybe because they think I’m not going to find something good. Or they’re afraid of what I’m going to show them. But I photograph with loving intent, and it shows.

“Messer-up of things?”

Yes. Unabashedly. I was out shooting a show the other night and a friend asked me a question that I get asked a lot – “How do you…do…so much?” And I gave the answer I always give – I give myself permission to mess up. I know a lot of folks who are tethered to this idea of perfection out of the gate, this myopic fantasy of savant talent. For example, how many people say they love photography but hardly ever make photographs? At least 80% of those folks are suffering from Final Cut-itis – they are inundated with these images of perfection, with the perfect lighting and the ring-light reflection in a model’s eyes and the Fisheye Lens Puppy Nose Shot (TM), and they think to themselves, “I could never do that.” But if you’re ever going to do anything with your life, you have to remember that we’re only seeing people’s final cuts. I’ve seen some of Robert Frank‘s contact sheets, and he shot some clunkers in addition to the works of genius.  They’re not all “The Americans.” And I bet the Beatles wrote some really terrible, unpublished songs when they weren’t writing “Blackbird.”

You have to be gentle enough with yourself to acknowledge that nobody  bats a thousand, and that you won’t either. But you gotta at least swing. Stop taking yourself so seriously. Life is messy, and so are you. And so am I. Get out there. Make some Crap. And then get better and make some Not Crap.

Connect

Website, Flickr, MySpace

Flute/Whistle/Shakuhachi player/singer of Celtic and Japanese music

Irish flute player Hanz Araki is the quintessential world music musician. He has performed around the world with the Juno Award-winning Paperboys, The Bridies, Casey Neill and an all-star tribute to The Pogues called “K.M.R.I.A.” He has played with the Seattle Symphony, the University of Washington Wind Ensemble and is featured on more than a dozen recordings and soundtracks, from feature films and documentaries to popular video games.

While his love is Irish music, his deep roots are in the shakuhachi, the traditional bamboo “Zen flute” of Japan. Hanz (short for Hanzaburo) is the world’s only sixth generation shakuhachi player, following in the footsteps of his father, Kinko Ryu Grand Master Kodo Araki V. With no prior musical training, Hanz took up the shakuhachi at age 17. Under his father’s tutelage, four months later he made his concert debut in Shimoneski, Japan.He went on to teach shakuhachi at Keio University for two years before moving back to his hometown of Seattle in 1991.

There, his American mother’s Gaelic roots came into play, and he began teaching himself Irish and Scottish tunes on the flute and whistle, inspired by the many excellent pipers and fiddlers in Seattle. His ability on the flute and his uncanny command of traditional songs with his voice quickly made him a fixture of the Irish music scene in America.

In 2004, Hanz released a solo album of traditional Scottish and Irish music with a fresh new slant, “Six of One, Five of the Other.” It has been favorably received by fans and Irish music aficionados and earned him liveireland.com’s Best Newcomer of the Year and KLCC’s “Best Music of 2004″ list. His newest release, “Little Fires” is a bold mix of traditional Celtic and modern music.

Hanz now lives in SW Portland.

What are you up to?

Playing and recording music, traveling and doing all the miserable, horrid, soul-destroying grunt-work that goes along with making those things happen.

What are you into?

Music (mostly playing/learning — I tend to like quiet in my home life), movies (watching — although lately I’ve been scoring for documentary films and really enjoying it), and eating delicious sandwiches.

What do you like most about Portland?

The music scene here is incredible. But what do I like most? People actually do things here (like you say, “Let’s go grab lunch sometime,” and they say, “Sure!” And then it actually happens). Also, the aforementioned delicious sandwiches. Well, the food in general. And the slightly more progressive politics.

Six generations of classical Japanese shakuhachi music lead to…traditional Irish music?

It’s not as far a leap as you might think. Traditional songs and tunes all share some commonality which is what I love about them. It just so happened I was wired to those two regions. It may just as easily been India and Peru, as Ireland and Japan.

You mention sandwiches prominently. What are your top-5 Portland sandwiches?

1) Side Door — The Stark Dip
2) Russell St. Barbecue — Pulled Pork Sandwich
3) Bar Carlo — The Fried Egg Sandwich
4) The Original Hotcake and Steakhouse — BLT (with a fried egg)
5) Hoda’s — Beef Shawarma

Connect

Website, MySpace, Facebook

Writer, founder of parenthacks.com, well-intentioned but ill-equipped homemaker

Asha Dornfest is the mother of two remarkable kids, the wife of an extremely smart man, the founder of what has become an amazing online parenting community, the author of several books about various tech topics, and a woman who’s always asking questions.

Professionally, the main event is Parent Hacks, a web site that started as a curious musing (“Wouldn’t it be cool to collect parents’ best bits of hard-earned wisdom and clever tricks and put them all together for everyone to share?”) and has turned into a business. Sort of MacGyver-meets-childrearing. Asha has always loved the role of community guide, and Parent Hacks lets her participate in an ongoing conversation about parenting with thousands of smart, imaginative people around the world.

But family life is the actual main event — the ongoing adventure of raising kids is continually throwing surprise twists in the road. It’s an amazing journey.

What are you up to?

Right now I’m trying to get a handle on the juggle. Work-family balance may be a cliche, but it’s a real trick to pull off with grace, especially because it’s REALLY work-family-home-friends-spouse-community-self balance. I find myself reading a lot of “life hacks,” personal organization stuff looking for the secret of simplifying my life. Time to stop reading and start doing.

What are you into?

I’m into being outside. The emergence of Spring in Portland never fails to thrill me. I was up on Mt. Hood skiing not long ago and was literally breathless from the beauty. I’m into reconnecting with the things I’ve let fall by the wayside while I’ve been too busy with busy-ness: the outdoors, time with friends and extended family, time having fun with my husband and my kids, time alone.

What do you like most about Portland?

The friendliness, the accessibility, the green.

Are you ever going to have a real job?

I left the traditional workplace in 1995 when I wrote my first book, and I’ve never been back. In large part that has to do with having children, but it also has to do with the Internet, and how one can now make a living from writing that’s independent of the publishing industry.

I miss the camaraderie of the workplace (have for years) but as my kids get older I am hoping to build more “face time” into my online life. That generally involves travel (I think? Maybe not if Raven’s work in the Portland community is any indication!)…which is tricky right now while my kids are young.

Work-family balance, huh? So have you learned ANYTHING?

Um. Perhaps you can ask me again in a few months.

I’m approaching 40, so maybe my life is coming into greater focus now, who knows. But I am beginning to see that frittering one’s days away with busywork is a huge waste of one’s essence. I think it’s reasonable (and not too new-age-y) to say that we all need to take some time to figure out what gives our life meaning and to DO those things…not just PLAN to do those things.

So first, identify the shiny, lovely goal — what you want to do/accomplish/be in all the free space you’re about to create.

Next, get rid of the clutter in one’s life (mental clutter especially). The trick is to not get mired in the backlog — spend a limited amount of time there per week.

Automate the stuff that shouldn’t require much brainwork (bills, laundry, housekeeping, etc.).

Finally, live your life (the one you imagined in Step 1). Reality will be a lot messier than your shiny fantasy, but that’s what it’s all about. There’s no way to find those hidden paths unless you stumble upon them by accident (or get pushed there).

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Parent Hacks

Code smashing, retro-gaming, Internet loving dude

Matt was born and raised here in Portland. His geeky side came out in early childhood, being hooked on not only the NES, but also his TI 99/4A computer and eventually getting addicted to local BBS’s. After graduating high school in 1996, he started in the tech industry building computers for small businesses. He taught himself just about everything, starting at computer hardware, then to networking, then finally to Internet technologies. Matt has had stints starting an ISP, working as a developer at Darkhorse Comics, and even running his own Web Development shop with Justin Kistner for a few years. He currently works for Instrument Marketing as lead Interactive Developer for projects with clients like W+K, Burton, Nike and Starbucks.

What are you up to?

My latest obsession has been building web sites that are location-centric. I’ve built both Unthirsty.com and Knitmap.com, which allow you to search for Happy Hours and Yarn Shops using Google Maps, and also have a couple more similar sites in the works. I’ve also created TwitterWhere, a Twitter aggregator that allows users to generate feeds based on location, and the iPhone Trimet Tracker, which allows you to check when your bus is going to arrive at your stop. I’m also working on a non-location-centric project with Instrument that I’m very excited about, but can’t talk about quite yet. All I can say is I think a lot of other people will be excited as well.

What are you into?

Of course the Internet comes first. I love creating web sites and web-based tools. I like figuring out how to stretch the limits of what we can do with the technology we have available. I’m also a big Retro-gaming fan. I love the NES, and even have a site dedicated to it. Retro arcade games are awesome too.

What do you like most about Portland?

It’s a fairly big city but still feels small. The craft and art scene. Cheap movie theatres that serve beer and pizza. Last Thursday. Coffee shops. Tons of happy hours. Almost anywhere has wifi. The fact that our mass-transit system has an API. Portland is a geek’s paradise.

What motivates you to keep working in this industry?

We are living during the most amazing time in human history. The technology we are using and creating is nothing short of a miracle, and I feel privileged to be a part of it. While I do like working on fun projects, I do have aspirations to use technology to help make life better for everyone, not just the people who can afford to buy a computer.

What’s with this bacon thing?

Somewhere along the way I picked up an obsession with bacon. You may hear me mention bacon several times just in one conversation. Just nod and smile.

Connect

Website, Unthirsty, Knitmap, TwitterWhere, iPhone Trimet Tracker