Category Archives: O’Reilly

community, conference, ignite, ignite portland, O'Reilly, portland

Ignite Portland Recap

We had a fantastic time at Ignite Portland, and the event exceeded all of our expectations. What we initially thought would be an event with 150 people became an event of nearly 300. We were concerned that we would hit the 297 person fire code limit and need to turn people away at the door, but in the end everyone was admitted to the event, and we hit the fire code limit nearly exactly (277 people registered in our system + ~20 people from Wieden+Kennedy = 297)

The presentations were amazing; it wasn’t too crowded; and I got to meet a bunch of new people!

Key learnings for the next event:

  • Less white wine, more beer and water
  • More time for networking (maybe 14 presentations, instead of 18 to free up some time)
  • Need a larger space (something holding closer to 500) to minimize the risk of turning people away

I think these are all fairly minor issues for our first Ignite Portland event. A huge thanks to co-organizers Todd Kenefsky, Raven Zachary, and Josh Bancroft, and thanks to all of the many volunteers and sponsors for the event. We look forward to doing another one in Jan / Feb! We will be posting more information about future events on the Ignite Portland site along with video and presentations from this event.

There are nearly 200 pictures posted to Flickr already under the igniteportland tag. For complete coverage of the event with links to many other blogs discussing the event, visit Silicon Florist. Rick has done an amazing job of aggregating the event news!

Related Fast Wonder posts:

alliance of technology and women, dawn foster, O'Reilly, technology, women, women in technology

Women in Technology (The Book)

All of the articles written for O’Reilly’s Women in Technology series, including my article about careers in technology, will be included in a book scheduled for publication in October.

All of the proceeds from Women in Technology will be donated to the Alliance of Technology & Women (ATW), a non-profit organization providing scholarships and other encouragement for women and girls preparing for careers in technology. I also just learned that we have a chapter of ATW right here in Portland!

You should pre-order now and buy a copy (or two). 🙂 It’s a great book supporting a great cause.

career, O'Reilly, technology, women

Advice on Careers in Technology for Geeky (and not so Geeky) Women

My article in the O’Reilly Women in Technology series was published today. In this article, I admit to always being a little geeky (big surprise), and I talk about the evolution of my technology career along with a bit of career advice for other women in technology.

Keep an eye on this series. More articles from some very successful women are still in the queue to be released throughout the month!

dawn foster, O'Reilly, technology, women

O’Reilly Women in Technology

O’Reilly just started a series of articles on Women in Technology with an article every day for the month of September. I will be appearing somewhere in this series along with Anna Martelli, Audrey Eschright, CJ Rayhill, Dru Lavigne, Gabrielle Roth, Jeni Tennison, Jill Dyche, Juliet Kemp, Julia Lerman, Kaliya Hamlin, Kirsten Jones, Lauren Wood, Leslie Hawthorn, Selena Deckelmann, and Shelley Powers.

“This series is comprised of articles written by women on the topic of “Women in Technology,” which will run through September. My hope is that the myriad of experiences you read about here will showcase how valuable it is to hear from different women at all stages of their careers and lives. Whether you believe that there is gender inequality within the tech community that we should all work to improve or if you think that there are no issues at all, one underlying truth is that we should support each other as individuals.”

(Quoted from Tatiana Apandi, the Women in Technology series creator and associate editor at O’Reilly Media Inc., on Women in Technology)

art of community, community, conference, dawn foster, jive software, jivespace, O'Reilly, OSCON, podcast

Art of Community Video

For anyone who missed the Art of Community panel at OSCON, we were able to get the entire session on video. I’ve posted it to the Jivespace Developer Podcasts and Video Blog.

“Danese Cooper and I put together a community panel at OSCON discussing the art of building and maintaining successful communities. The panel included (from left to right): Danese Cooper (Moderating), Jimmy Wales, Dawn Foster, Sulamita Garcia, Whurley, Karl Fogel, and Brian Behlendorf.” (Quoted from: Jivespace Blog)

art of community, community, conference, dawn foster, jive software, O'Reilly, open source, oregon, OSCON, podcast, portland, speaking

OSCON Report

I had a great time at OSCON this year. A few highlights:

As usual, the real value was in the hallway conversations, shared meals, and other informal discussions with really smart people.

I will be posting video of our Art of Community panel (thanks to Drew Scott for wielding the camera!) and some footage from Beeforge on the Jivespace Video Podcast blog over the next week or 2.

art of community, community, conference, dawn foster, jive software, O'Reilly, open source, oregon, OSCON, portland, werewolf

Having Fun at OSCON (Beer, Community, and More!)

I wanted to let people know about a few fun activities during the week of OSCON.

Beer Forge

This is a great after party sponsored by Jive Software (my employer) and POSSE (I’m a member) along with OSL, OpenSourcery, and OTBC.

When: Thursday, July 26, 2007, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

Where: Thirsty Lion Pub, 71 SW 2nd Avenue, Portland, OR 97209 (just a couple stops on the MAX Light Rail from the Oregon Convention Center)

How: Please RSVP to rsvp@jivesoftware.com to receive a copy of the invitation or download the invite. I’ll also try to carry around a little stash of invites during OSCON, so let me know if you need one.

Technology Community Leader Meetup

We had so much fun at the Technology Community Leader Meetup in SF before OSBC that I thought we should have another one around OSCON / Ubuntu Live in PDX on July 24th from 6-7:30pm.

Anyone currently leading, managing, or otherwise involved in technology communities (open source, web 2.0, wikis, etc.) is welcome to attend. Feel free to forward this invite on to others. It should be fun!

Location is TBD until I have an idea of how many people plan to attend. It will be somewhere in or near the Portland Convention center. If you would like to attend, please RSVP on upcoming.

Art of Community Session

Danese Cooper and I put together a community panel at OSCON on Thursday from 4:30 – 5:15 (right before BeerForge). We’ll have a great group of people on the panel including:

Jimmy Wales
Karl Fogel
Geir Magnussen
Sulamita Garcia
Whurley

Werewolf

The Portland Werewolf group plans to organize some werewolf games during OSCON (date /time still TBD).

art of community, collaboration, community, General, O'Reilly, open source

Community Building and Free Documentation

Andy Oram conducted an interesting survey to answer the question, “Why Do People Write Free Documentation?” I was a bit surprised by the top result: community building.

As a community manager, I love to see that people are contributing documentation to projects as a way to help build the community. This also emphasizes a point that I have made several times during speaking engagements when people ask about motivation for contributing to communities or open source projects. My answer is always something like this, “Like any diverse groups of individuals, motivations for contributing will vary widely depending on the individual. Some people use it as a learning experience, some want fame (rockstar mentality) or other reputation building, some do it to help others, …” While community building is at the top of the list, the other motivations follow very closely behind: personal growth, mutual aid, gratitude, support, reputation, and more. Although this survey is focused on documentation, it still helps validate the idea that the motivations of individual community members are diverse.

As a community manager, I almost wish that there was a clear winner in the survey with one motivation standing out high above the others. It would make my job easier. Since no one way of encouraging people to participate within a community will work for every member, we sometimes have to get creative.

The survey is a great read for anyone interested in motivation within communities.

flickr, O'Reilly, portland, tags, Yahoo

World (Portland) Explorer Tag Maps Courtesy of Flickr Data

I read about the new World Explorer from Yahoo today on O’Reilly Radar, and I decided to take a quick look at the map for Portland. A few interesting things turned up when I moused over some of the main tags to see the related tags.

  • The “Zoo” tag was fairly predictable: giraffe, animals, bear, etc.

  • “Edgefield” was related to McMenamins (not surprising since the Edgefield McMenamins is a very popular destination.)

  • OSCON was on the Portland map as a tag.

  • Beaverton, a sleepy and not always very nice suburb of Portland, relates to sunset, clouds, and sky – I can’t even hazard a guess on that one.

  • The most interesting: Mt. Tabor was only associated with cat. Apparently “cat people” gravitate toward Mt. Tabor.

I also noticed that going back to the map after closing my browser yielded slightly different results. I encourage you to have a look. It provided me with a few minutes of amusement anyway.