May 15, 2008

Portland's Jive Software Takes Aim at Microsoft

Alright, so I'm incredibly biased towards local success stories in the Portland software community. I think it's relevant to share an amazing story / article in Forbes on Jive Software's meteoric growth in the web 2.0 collaboration space taking on behomeths Microsoft and Lotus.

Higher Office
by Claire Cain Miller

Upstart Jive Software aims to change the way people work by bringing social networking to the office. It's up against some firm called Microsoft.

Jive Software chief executive David Hersh has a lofty goal: a world where office work is so fulfilling, inspiring and free of trivialities that parodies like Dilbert and The Office cease to exist.

There are loftier goals--ending genocide, famine, cancer--but Hersh's is a good fight, and you can make a lot of money helping companies get themselves out of those endless e-mail chains and pointless meetings of office work. Jive's software uses the Web to do that.

"People live in e-mail and documents no one else can see. We're changing the way companies work," says Hersh.

Read the full article on Forbes.com >>

Comments (0) | Posted by ryan at 9:41 AM | Permalink

May 14, 2008

db Clay launches new Wallet site

db Clay, known to many of us at Portland's Saturday Market as the groovy collection of wallets made out of duct tape has come a long way with their sophisticated new e-commerce website built primarily using Ruby on Rails technology.

www.dbclay.com

To kickoff the site and 10 year anniversary (founder Garett Stenson started at 19 years old in college - sickeningly talented young entrepreneur) of the company, db Clay is throwing an insane party on Thurs, May 29 at Lizard Lounge and a 2-day sale on May 30-31. Check out the invite and the goods here >>

Comments (0) | Posted by ryan at 3:52 PM | Permalink

April 9, 2008

An Experiment, Can I Blog as Fast as I Twitter

I'm going to try to do 4 blog entries in almost as little time as I'd Tweet 4 times. Let's see how it goes. Alright, beginning now - here goes.

My twitter profile is www.twitter.com/ryanbuch!

Cheers,
Ryan

Comments (0) | Posted by ryan at 9:37 PM | Permalink

March 21, 2008

Greenlight Greater Portland: Software is in Top 3 Focus Industries in Portland

Greenlight CEO Tim Priest shared this really insightful report of Greater Portland's economy and which areas are most ripe to recruit for. Here is just a small sampling of the Recommendations from that report:

"Considering the data as a whole, Greenlight has selected these clusters for its first RECRUITMENT initiatives:

1 - ALTERNATIVE/RENEWABLE ENERGY combined with ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES AND RECYCLING TECHNOLOGY

Rationale:
• Our region has a significant electronic services workforce that can easily transition into renewable energy.
• Significant venture capital is flowing into alternative/renewable energy.
• Our region has momentum in this cluster, with recent announcements from Solar World and other companies, and other regional economic development groups are embracing it.
• The Oregon Legislature recently increased incentives for renewable energy companies.

2- COMPUTER SOFTWARE and IT SERVICES

Rationale:
• The greater Portland region has significant human capital, 20% greater than the national average, in the cluster.
• Software is the number one cluster for venture capital.
• Of the region's specializations, the cluster provides the highest-paying jobs.
• The region has a strong software community and reputation for both open source and software that interfaces with hardware.
• Portland is strategically positioned to capitalize on the Bay Area and Seattle's software strengths.

3- DESIGN

Rationale:
• The region boasts big consumer brand names -- Nike, Columbia Sportswear, Adidas.
• The cluster is consistent with and feeds the region's green, sustainable brand image.
• We have a 40% higher concentration of talent in these fields than the national average."

Comments (0) | Posted by ryan at 3:32 PM | Permalink

March 17, 2008

I'm a Twitter Virgin

One trend of online marketing and the tech world as a whole is that there is an acceleration of distraction and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). And, I'm sitting next to the King of ADD, Dylan Boyd. We are listening to the first keynote at MediaPost's OMMA show in Hollywood, but Dylan has been showing me how Twitter works and it's quite addictive. Yes, it's unusual (from my Twitter Virgin perspective) that respected CEO of ReturnPath just Twittered details of the birth of his child and it's also weird to learn when some of my business associates have a bowel movement.

But, there are some newsworthy uses of Twitter, as the ADD King showed me. The Oregonian is feeding its news into Twitter, Tri-Met has its traffic updates posted real-time to Twitter.

Lessons learned from a guy who started an email marketing company - many people WANT to communicate all the time - don't fight this human need / addiction - fuel it. Why not?

Comments (1) | Posted by ryan at 9:04 AM | Permalink