Win a SXSW Badge Upgrade at the PDX Pre-SXSW Party

Good news for those of you coming to the PDX Pre-SXSW Party Part Two: The Unofficial Version!

I talked to Hugh Forrest at sxsw, and he has offered a free upgrade from an Interactive badge to a Gold badge for one lucky winner! Basically, this means that you get to attend the film tracks and screenings in addition to the interactive program.

Here’s how you can win:

  • You must have already purchased a sxsw interactive badge.
  • You must attend the PDX Pre-SXSW Party Part Two: The Unofficial Version this Friday (details below).
  • You must put your business card or piece of paper into the hat (or bucket or whatever container I can find).
  • You must be there when we draw the random name at 6pm.
  • There can be only one (winner).
  • I’ll put the winner in touch with Hugh Forrest to receive the upgrade.

If you missed my earlier post about the party, here’s what you need to know:

Since this is a community organized event, you’ll be buying your own drinks, but it will be just as fun! We’ll be pairing up with Portland Beer and Blog for this event, and it will be a great opportunity to chat with others about sxsw. We can find out who else is going and talk about ways to stay in touch at the event. If you are new to sxsw, you can get some tips from the experienced attendees.

Quite a few of us are planning to use Shizzow to keep in touch at the event to find the best sessions and the best parties. We even have a few things specific to sxsw that we plan to roll out prior to the event. If you want an invite to Shizzow, you can ping the community evangelist for Shizzow (me) by emailing me at the email address right there in the sidebar of this blog.

The Details:
Friday March 6, 2009 from 4:00pm – 7:00pm
Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub
928 SE 9th Ave, Portland, Oregon 97214
RSVP on Upcoming

Blogging Elsewhere

Here is this week’s summary of links to my posts appearing on other blogs:

GigaOM’s WebWorkerDaily

Shizzow

Business Leader NW

If you want a feed of all of my blog posts across multiple sites, you can also subscribe to my über feed.

Recent Links

Here are a few interesting things from this week that I wanted to share …

Future of White Boys’ Clubs Redux #fowaspeak | FactoryCity

Conference and hotel registration is now open! – Open Source Bridge

Knowing the Economic Environment of Your Business and Customers at Business of Business – byBarrett

JumpBox Official Blog » Introducing SnapLogic for Data Integration

Baron Landscape’s Broken Hours » Online Community Management Roundtable at the BLNW ‘09 Blog Pavilion, with Dawn Foster and Marshall Kirkpatrick

RSS: Boost Your RSS Efficiency

You can find my links on Delicious.

Online Community Podcast: Dawn Foster, Marshall Kirkpatrick and Alex Williams

If you missed the discussion that Marshall Kirkpatrick, Alex H. Williams, and I had in the Blogger Pavilion at the Business Leader NW conference yesterday, you can still listen to the conversation thanks to Luke Lefner of Broken Hours. You can visit his blog post about the discussion to learn more.

Podcast: Download

Related Fast Wonder Blog posts:

PDX Pre-SXSW Party Part Two: The Unofficial Version

We had a great pre-sxsw party here in Portland on January 19 organized by the official staff of the sxsw interactive event. We had such a great time, that we decided to do a community organized, unofficial party exactly one week before the big event in Austin. Since this is a community organized event, you’ll be buying your own drinks, but it will be just as fun! We’ll be pairing up with Portland Beer and Blog for this event, and it will be a great opportunity to chat with others about sxsw. We can find out who else is going and talk about ways to stay in touch at the event. If you are new to sxsw, you can get some tips from the experienced attendees.

Quite a few of us are planning to use Shizzow to keep in touch at the event to find the best sessions and the best parties. We even have a few things specific to sxsw that we plan to roll out prior to the event. If you want an invite to Shizzow, you can ping the community evangelist for Shizzow (me) by emailing me at the email address right there in the sidebar of this blog.

The Details:
Friday March 6, 2009 from 4:00pm – 7:00pm
Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub
928 SE 9th Ave, Portland, Oregon 97214
RSVP on Upcoming

Accepting Google Docs Input: 2 Minute Yahoo Pipes Demo

This video shows how to use data from Google Docs as an input into Yahoo Pipes. In a previous video, I showed how to use a list of items in a CSV file. If you haven’t already watched the CSV input demo, you should start with it, since this pipe builds on the previous one. A CSV file is a great choice when you want to fetch a bunch of feeds and change them frequently without having to update your pipe, but a Google Doc is a great choice for when you want to easily update inputs to the pipe without needing to update a file on a webserver.

More Details

  • The Demo Pipe. A copy of the Using Google Docs Inputs in Yahoo Pipes Demo click “View Source” to see the modules.
  • Fetch CSV Module. Enter the URL of a Google Spreadsheet that has already been published as a web page and append &output=csv to the end of the URL. Here is the example we used in the video.
  • Loop module with Fetch Feed. Loops through each element in the CSV file and fetches the feed associated with the item.
  • Filter Module. Filter by a couple of keywords.
  • Sort Module. Sort by date in descending order to make sure things are sorted in a logical manner.
  • Pipe Output. The final module in every Yahoo Pipe.

I’ve created many Yahoo Pipes, and most of them have been published on my Yahoo Pipes and RSS Hacks page where you can also learn more about my Yahoo Pipes Training courses.

Related Fast Wonder Blog posts

Blogging Elsewhere

Here is this week’s summary of links to my posts appearing on other blogs:

GigaOM’s WebWorkerDaily

Portland Data Plumbing User Group (pdpug)

Legion of Tech

Ignite Portland

Business Leader NW

If you want a feed of all of my blog posts across multiple sites, you can also subscribe to my über feed.

Business Leader NW Supporting Non-Profits

Are you on the fence about attending Business Leader NW here at the Oregon Convention Center on February 25th & 26th?

Here are a few things that might entice you.

$25 of your entry fee goes to a non-profit (if you use a discount code below):

  • SHS199: School House Supplies. A Portland nonprofit that provides free school supplies for teachers.
  • OFB199: Oregon Food Bank. Distributes food to regional food banks across Oregon and SW Washington.
  • CFF199: Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Provides funding for research to fight cystic fibrosis.

More details and links to registration on the BLNW blog.

Ask us questions in the BLNW Blogger Pavilion

From the BLNW blog:

The organizers are providing a 400 square foot space for a “Business Blogger Pavilion,” on the exhibit floor at the Oregon Convention Center. The pavilion will serve as a workshop for business people to meet with bloggers, web developers, technologists and a host of digital media and enterprise 2.0 experts. The goal is to connect the business community with bloggers and web experts. Bloggers will be featured in discussions at the pavilion on topics such as starting a business blog, marketing a business video and customer service 2.0.

I will be in the blogger pavilion, so please feel free to stop by and visit or ask us questions! I hope to see you there.

Related Fast Wonder Blog posts:

Recent Links

I’m still figuring out how to deal with the Magnolia aftermath, but there were a few interesting things from this week that I wanted to share …

Ignite Portland 5 – Lots of fun… « Startup Geek in Portland Oregon

Meeting Space Available for Portland Tech groups announced at Ignite Portland « WebTrends

Light It Up

Ignite Show: Jason Grigsby on Cup Noodle – O’Reilly Radar

Online Community Expert Interview: Dawn Foster, Fast Wonder Consulting – Online Community Report

Social Media for Small Business « Nova Newcomer

Facebook to Launch Redesigned Pages for Businesses – Tour & First Impressions

What really happened at Ma.gnolia and lessons learned | FactoryCity

Open source, research, and other stuff I'm interested in posting.