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Live Blog from TechFest NW Day 2

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[03:30] Jessica Zollman (ex. Instagram) and Asha Dornfest (Parent Hacks) “Why community matters”.

Jessica Zollman (ex. Instagram) and Asha Dornfest (Parent Hacks)

[02:35] Brendan Mulligan (Cluster) and Joe Stump (Ex. Digg) “Inspired again and again”.

Brendan Mulligan (Cluster) and Joe Stump (Ex. Digg)

[02:05] Mark taking Tyson to task a little, on the good and evils of using analytics in news and the recent hacking of the NYT.

analytic discussion

[1:30] Tyson Evans (New York Times) and Mark Zusman (Willamette Week) discuss “the future of interactive news”.

Tyson: Tyson showed us some of the interesting new ways they are exploring data at the NYT.

tech fest data discussion

tech fest data discussion

tech fest data discussion

tech fest data discussion

[12:30] A little live entertainment during lunch at Bunk Bar, courtesy of MFNW.

tech fest band performing

[11:40] Kelley Roy (ADX) and David Fredrickson (Figure Plant) “Slow manufacturing: integrating digital technology with fabrication”.

Kelley Roy (ADX) and David Fredrickson (Figure Plant)

[10:50] Chris Lindland (Betabrand) and D’Wayne Edwards (Pensole) talking about “Reinventing apparel design”.

Chris Lindland (Betabrand) and D'Wayne Edwards (Pensole)

[10:45] In summary.

tech fest day 2 summary

[10:30] User experience honeycomb.

User experience honeycomb

[10:11] James Keller (WalmartLabs) kicks things off today with “Forget viable. Build your mini mum valuable product.”

Minimum viable product (MVP) is a possess of focus. Stripped down to build, measure, learn. (The lean startup by Erica Ries)

James feels Viable is being misused. If you have minimized your product to the point you have stripped out user experience you have gone too far. Good technology should be an emotional experience. Ever dropped your iPhone?

She would like to rebrand viable with valuable. Make sure your product is useful. Not just usable.

rebranding discussion

[09:19] Only the best mocha in town.

dutch brothers mocha

[8:25] Day 1 of TechFest NW was fun. By far may favorite presentation was the keynote by John Saddington. His presentation was not only entertaining and personal but had clear takeaways.

Day 2 looks to have a good schedule of interesting talks as well. Of course the two I want to see most “the future of interactive news” and “inside a kickstarter campaign” overlap.

Live Blog from TechFest NW

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[5:20] Wrapping up day one of Techfest NW, John Saddington (Just released Pressgram app), the self appointed “cleanup crew”, says entrepreneurship is finding opportunity in the ordinary.

1. Leverage what makes you unique.
2. Capitalize on your long term interests.
3. Bring value to your context
4. Look at waste as opportunity for wealth.
5. Scratch your own itch. You share that itch with more people then you can imagine.

Tech Fest

[4:21] One point Alex just brought up that I found interesting is that he feels startups today have become homogeneous to the point that venture capital is now far less willing to invest in a company if it doesn’t “fit the mold”. Hurting the whole idea of a startup. It’s becoming a “new, old boys club”.

[4:15] Alex just got really deep.

tech fest

[4:00] Alex Payne (Ex. Twitter) talks on reconsidering status. How they were, are and will be.

tech fest

[3:08] US Rep. Suzanne Bonamici making the argument for S.T.E.A.M. from S.T.E.M. That art is an important step to creative thinking and is an essential part of the future of technology development.

suzanne bonamici

[2:48] Jackson Gariety a high school dropout actually taught Java at Grant high school after “pestering” his principal about there not being a coding class. 500 students wanted to sign up but the school only had 11 iMacs. Brilliant kid. You should keep an eye on this one.

high school kid tech fest

[02:07] Scott Kveton CEO of Urban Airship taking about the Portland startup scene.

Scott Kveton CEO of Urban Airship

[1:46] The water bottles they are drinking out of look like milk cartons. It’s kind of funny to see these guys appear to be chugging milk on stage.

boxed water tech fest

[1:30] Alex Baldwin (thoughtbot) and Alex Bilmes (Cloudability) taking about “Scaling design”.

As a company grows the company gains mass and its ability to change direction quickly becomes harder. Having a scaling plan helps and designing in a way that allows you to iterate quickly.

tech fest discussion

[11:39] Stephen Marsh CEO of Smarsh chatting about starting the company with email archiving and how that grew to IM, txt, social media and website archiving as well. Now that that companies have the “bog data” set they can mine it for monitoring trends.

Stephen Marsh CEO of Smarsh

[10:51] Eric Winquist, CEO of Jama chatting with Rick Turoczy on how Jama got its start, recognizing people in unique ways and VC funding.

[10:31] Follow along on twitter with #TFNW

[10:30] Ryan Carson changed his presentation a little to a no management model that he is using in his company, Treehouse.

Eric Winquist, CEO of Jama chatting with Rick Turoczy

[09:59] Filing into the first session. Ryan Carson with Treehouse on “The irrelevance of location”.being in the OMNIMAX theater the setup feels a little sparse but they have one heck of a projector for their slides.

Ryan Carson, Treehouse

[09:39] OMSI is so very fitting.

OMSI

[09:25] How could you start a NW conference on this very northwestern day without a coffee.

dutch brothers

[08:26] TFNW is the little sister to MusicfestNW, the towering music festival, that has taken over the city of Portland for five days each year since 1995. In 2012, three days of tech programming was added to explore the technology, startups, and design culture that make Portland a digital hub.

This year will be my first time attending the event and I’m looking forward to seeing what a tech conference in Portland can offer. I for one, would welcome Portland becoming a new tech mecca.