My father and I, circa 1983. That's Mr. Bear in the background.

This Spring marks a decade since I last saw my father. We didn’t speak and he didn’t actually acknowledge my presence, but I know he saw me in the courtroom because his public defender requested that the judge have me removed as a potential witness. The judge denied this request, and I stayed to watch the rest of my father’s arraignment. If you’re curious why my father was in court, watch this video, or read this article.

I don’t actually recall when my father and I last spoke. To the best of my recollection, it was sometime in 2000. We had on-again off-again communication while I was in college, but at some point I decided that a continued relationship with him was just not a healthy thing for me and distanced myself quite a bit.

Last night one of my brothers called and told me he’d just found out that our father had a heart attack the week prior, had been in the hospital for a few days and was now released. My brother didn’t have any specific information about our father’s condition other than that he had collapse while running errands and had woken up in the hospital.

It’s very difficult for me to imagine my father collapsing and being in the hospital. Logically and factually, it’s not surprising that had had a heart attack. We’re talking about a man who has seen a doctor a handful of times in his life (that I know about), smoked for decades, ate a very unhealthful diet and did amphetamines. In many ways, I’m surprised he hasn’t had more significant health issues. However, my mental and emotional memory of him is dominated by a single image: lean, mean, angry and muscular, albeit with a slight lilt from a bad back. It’s just weird to think of him as being old and frail and in ill health. But that seems to be where we are headed.

Aging is a normal process, of course, but it’s unsettling when it’s happening to a parent and even more strange when it happens to a parent with whom you’re estranged. I find myself wondering if I’m going to get to say my final goodbyes, or if I will simply hear about his passing sometime after it happens. Should I attempt to make a kind of peace with him, or with myself about him, sooner rather than later? The answers to these questions seem unknowable.

Since moving to Portland 4 years ago, I have only traveled back to California once to spend Thanksgiving with my family. There are many factors that go in to my decision to stay in Portland for the holiday: the hassle and expense of travel, the possibility that weather negatively impact travel, having to be away from my community here, the typical stress that comes with the holidays and family, and my desire to participate in an all-vegan Thanksgiving.

Every year, Sherri and I thoughtfully consider what we will do for Thanksgiving: stay in Portland, or go see my family in Sacramento. I don’t see my family a lot, so each year this is a tough decision. Mostly due to some other family circumstances, we briefly decided to spend this year’s holiday with my family. We discussed the negative feelings that would arise from participating in a non-vegan Thanksgiving. We decided that we’d bring enough vegan items from Portland (rolls and pies from Sweetpea), and would cook some of our favorite dishes so that we had plenty to eat. This seemed like a reasonable coping strategy.

However, as we got closer to Thanksgiving week, I realized I was not looking forward to our trip at all and that it had everything to do with our having to celebrate with a dead turkey and dead pig at the family table, amongst other non-vegan items. I realized it was just not possible for me to celebrate, or even to feel fully connected and present under those circumstances. I talked with Sherri about this and she agreed. I called my mother shortly afterwards and told her we’d be staying in Portland to celebrate a vegan Thanksgiving with friends. At the time, she seemed to understand.

Up until now, I had always assumed that my family understood and respected why I was vegan, even if they are not themselves vegan. When I visit, my mother makes sure to buy things I can eat and makes vegan meals. If we go out as a family, we go to a restaurant where there will be plenty I can eat. Between this and never having been interrogated about my veganism, I assumed that my family understood where I was coming from.

But conversations I’ve had with family members since telling them I couldn’t enjoy or, in good conscience, participate in a non-vegan Thanksgiving have left me feeling like they don’t understand at all, and really don’t respect or value my veganism as I would like.

As I’ve mention before on this blog, being vegan is an essential part of my moral, ethical and spiritual life. It is a necessary part of my commitment to the five precepts of not harming, lying, stealing, misusing sexuality or intoxicants. Being vegan is part of what makes me a whole, integral person. It is not a lifestyle choice any more than choosing not to murder or be violent towards humans is a lifestyle choice. It is not something I choose to turn off when it is inconvenient.

Being vegan, in and of itself, has been very easy for me. I am fortunate enough to live in a Western, industrialized and highly affluent society where whole grains, legumes, nuts, as well as fresh fruits and vegetables are abundant. I can easily find shoes and other clothing items that do not use animal-derived materials. There are times when I am directed by my doctors to take a medicine that is probably not purely vegan (as this is impossible given how pharmaceutical r&d works). I make exceptions here, when alternatives aren’t available and when my health is at risk. Luckily, these circumstances do not arise that often.

In talking with my family this week, a few things came up that really bothered me. I want to address those issues here, because they have come up in my conversations with other people as well, and I think they are representative of common misunderstandings between vegans and omnivores.

Misunderstanding #1: Vegans are judgmental of omnivores’ decisions. They feel morally superior to omnivores.

I have no doubt that some vegans feel this way about omnivores (and non-smokers about smokers, and non-drinkers about drinkers, etc.). But, by and large, the vegans I know, including myself, do not. The process of how to behave in our world is a highly complex, intimate and individual thing. I don’t ever pretend to understand all the issues that a single person has to contend with in navigating their own life. The decision to be vegan, like any other fundamental belief, has to be made from within. I don’t expect anyone to become vegan because I am, or because of something I say.

That being said, I do not believe veganism is a matter of opinion and I do believe it to be a moral issue. Do I believe it’s wrong to treat animals as property, raising and killing them for food? Yes, I do. Do I believe the world would be better off if more people were vegan? Absolutely. There really isn’t a question about that. It would be better for human health, for our environment, and certainly for the animals themselves.

Having beliefs and being consistent in my actions around them does not automatically constitute me judging those who do not share those beliefs. I also feel the world would be better off if no one misused tobacco, or alcohol, or heroin, or cocaine. But it doesn’t mean that I find users of any of those substances to be bad people.

The goodness of a person is the sum total of their life experiences and decisions and it isn’t something I can ever know or judge and I don’t even try.

Misunderstanding #2: We’re not forcing you to eat non-vegan food, so why should it bother you to be part of a meal where other people are eating non-vegan food?

There are a couple of parts to this.

The first is logistical. It’s annoying to be at a party where you can’t eat everything. Not sure what this is like? Next time you’re at a party or potluck, pick one or two dishes at random and limit yourself to eating only those. Most of the time, that’s what it’s like for vegans, if we’re lucky. And if we’re really lucky, both dishes are something we actually would like to eat. It gets annoying very quickly to have extremely limited food options and to always have to vet every dish before you eat it. When it comes to Thanksgiving, I want to be able to fully partake in the feast and enjoy a bit of *every* dish.

The second has to do with feeling like an outsider. When I sit down to a meal that includes non-vegan items I immediately feel like the odd man out. I am the weird one with the weird diet rules and I can’t fully participate. This can be compounded by how often the other guests will talk about how delicious the non-vegan food is, or otherwise draw attention to it. I cannot possibly share in this experience and I can’t possibly ignore it either. If you are someone who has had other experiences where you feel like an outsider (e.g., you’re part of another minority group, you feel like the black sheep in your family, etc.) these feelings of otherness and exclusion can be further compounded.

The third has to do with the physical and emotional discomfort that arises during shared non-vegan meals. The odor of cooked flesh and of dairy milk and cheese is unpleasant to me. The sight of cooked flesh is upsetting. Whereas an omnivore might see cooked flesh and think “yum, delicious,” I can only think about a life that’s been unwillingly sacrificed. For reasons I am still trying to figure out, the magnitude of this discomfort is proportional to the significance of the shared meal.

Misunderstanding #3: You’re letting your veganism get in the way of connecting with family and friends.

This one really baffles me.

First off, why is it never phrased as “you’re letting your omnivorism get in the way of connecting with family and friends”? Because of their minority status, vegans are assigned all of the responsibility for any disconnect that is created between themselves and their non-vegan relatives and friends. I don’t think this is fair and I would like to see more omnivores examine what they can do to make the vegans in their life more comfortable. If you have a vegan relative in your life and you’ve never considered having an all-vegan Thanksgiving for them, I think you should.

Secondly, I have plenty of both vegan and non-vegan friends with whom I related very well. The omnivore friends that I get along with well understand and respect my veganism. They do this by never asking us to compromise on having non-vegan items in our home (even when we host). They understand when we don’t accept invitations to events where non-vegan items will be celebrated. Most of all, they are confident enough in their decision to remain omnivores that they don’t feel threaten or judged by my being unequivocally vegan.

Misunderstanding #4: Other vegans I know are not so stringent, why are you?

This is an impossible question to answer since I can’t know the minds and hearts of other vegans as if they were my own. But I can take some guesses as to what’s going on.

For the purposes of this exploration, I will assume that the vegans of which you speak are truly committed vegans (e.g. not just when it’s convenient), that they are vegan in more than just diet and that they are vegan because of their desire to recognize that animals are deserving of rights. This is the kind of vegan I am, so it’s really the only situation to which I can speak.

The first thing that comes to mind is that these vegans are not yet confident in their understanding and their ability to talk about the moral foundations of veganism. It is a complex topic, and a minority view at that. It is not easy to talk about to a mainstream audience, one which is often to be hostile towards the idea of veganism from the start.

The second thing that comes to mind is that the person may not want to make themselves a target for ridicule, ostracism or interrogation. Vegans are often asked all manner of questions about their diet, what they do and don’t eat and how they get proper nutrition. These questions can be invasive, and even when they are not, it gets tedious to field the same questions over and over again, often from those who are largely ignorant about nutrition. The questions frequently feel judgmental rather than exploratory. Moreover, we live in a culture where vegans are regularly made fun of in the media and pop culture and this is often in our minds when we make the decision whether or not to identify ourselves as vegan and committed ones at that.

The third, and more serious issue that comes to mind is that people act in ways that are contrary to their personal beliefs all of the time. History is rife with examples of this. I don’t quite understand why this is, but it happens enough that it’s clearly a part of human nature. I recently read something in Slate about the Penn State sex abuse scandal that shed some light on this particular issue, so I’ll share it here:

“[non-action/non-reporting is] a reflection of a universal human tendency to look out for oneself, and to preserve hierarchical institutions about which one cares and upon which one is dependent. It’s also a reflection of the nearly boundless capacity to ignore inconvenient facts and to make excuses for those within our own circle.”

It takes a whole lot of energy and moral courage to be vegan in the first place and even more so to disrupt the institutions upon which we rely. I can understand why many vegans are not yet ready to go this far and may appear to be okay with living in a non-vegan world.

Conclusions and Further Reading

I feel a bit better getting that off my shoulders. I hope that my family (and others) will read what I’ve written and understand a bit better where I’m coming from.

One last thing I want to say is that while more and more omnivores are thinking critically about where their food comes from, I don’t think many have bothered to read up on animal rights in order to understand what motivates the vegans in their life. I certainly hadn’t done this before I was vegan. Consider reading up on the issues if you really want to understand what makes your vegan tick. Here are some good starting points:

• Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?
• Abolitionist Approach FAQs (excerpted from Intro to Animal rights)
• Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World (Tofu Hound Press)
• The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food

P.S. I’d also love to hear from other vegans who have gone through similar situations with your family and friends. How do you cope with shared non-vegan meals. Do it bother you? Why? If it doesn’t bother you, why not? How did you communicate to your loved ones about your veganism and it’s importance in your life?

I picked up a Logitech Wireless Touchpadat Fry’s last weekend. I’ve been research alternatives to a regular mouse and the Touchpad seemed like an interesting option. The other item I was considering was the updated M570 Trackball, since I’ve used one of those before and liked it quite a bit.

My biggest concern about the Touchpad was whether or not it would work under Ubuntu and if I could pair it with my existing Unifying Receiver. And it does! A number of the gestures work as well, which was a nice surprise. I was able to use the Touchpad right out of the box with Ubuntu 11.10 using the receiver that came with it.

Unfortunately, Logitech doesn’t provide the unifying software for Linux, so in order to pair the Touchpad with my existing receiver (the one that came with my wireless keyboard), I had to use my old Macbook Pro. If you have a Windows machine lying around, that will work too. I have no idea of you can configure the paring with either of those operating systems running under a virtual machine under Linux.

I’ve been using the Touchpad full time now for a bit less than I week and like it quite a bit. I recommend it to anyone who wants a trackpad-like device and can’t or won’t get Apple’s version.

I’m currently reading Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Crossing Press Feminist Series), by Audre Lorde. There are a number of good quotes in the collection, but this one struck me in particular last night:

As a Black woman, I find it necessary to withdraw into all-Black groups at times for exactly the same reasons — differences in stages of development and differences in levels of interaction. Frequently, when speaking with men and white women, I am reminded of how difficult and time-consuming it is to have to reinvent the pencil every time you want to send a message.

I run a group for women who work in technology. The group isn’t a women-only space, but we ask that men come as the guest of a woman attendee. This ensures that the gender balance is always in favor of the women. We get occasional flak for this rule and I find it difficult to explain while women’s spaces are important.

I think the idea of not wanting to reinvent the pencil everytime you want to send a message applies as equally to women’s spaces as it does to those of other opressed groups.

So, now I have a more useful metaphor when someone asks me why we but restrictions on the gender attendance of our group.

Today is my last working day at ShopIgniter. After a two week break, I will join the Web Development team at Mozilla as a Web Product Engineer.

I’m thrilled to be joining Mozilla and to be help to contribute to its mission to “promote openness, innovation and opportunity on the web.” I will continue to be based in Portland (where Mozilla already has several remote employees) but will travel to Mt. View, where Mozilla is headquartered, as needed. My involvement in the Portland tech community will continue.

To understand a bit more why I’m so excited to be joining Mozilla, check out Pragmatic growth: from 2 to 40 in 4 years, and then watch the video What do you want the web to be?

Thank you to all my co-workers at ShopIgniter. I’ve enjoyed working with you all over the last year and a half. I look forward to hearing about ShopIgniter’s continued success and hope to see you around Portland.

Over the past several months I’ve been thinking a lot about anti-harassment policies, codes of conduct, when censorship is harmful and when it is appropriate. During this time I’ve seen a number of comments about how codes of conduct simply aren’t necessary, how they will be used as instruments of unnecessary censorship, and how some people have been bullied into adopting them.

You know what? I’m rather tired of seeing these comments over and over again and of having to argue that it’s necessary for communities to adopt a code of conduct.

Being open, welcoming and safe to all, including gender, sexual and racial minorities, is not the default state of our technical communities (particularly in open source). This is a sad truth, but a truth nonetheless. And, it’s one that people continue to dispute despite overwhelming evidence. All one has to do is to look at the dearth of members from minority populations who participate in open source. Or head over to Geek Feminism and read through the list of incidents.

If communities want to change the status quo they need to be proactive. One way of doing that is to adopt a policy outlining expected conduct.

We decided to adopt such a policy for this year’s Open Source Bridge. It’s something we put considerable effort towards. We created a draft, revised it several times, shared it with a range of community members and revised it again. We made sure to publish it prior to our CFP close so all prospective speakers would know what we expected of all participants.

In the process of writing the code of conduct we realized the following was important to us:

• emphasize the positive as well as negative behavior, focusing on the idea of open source citizenship
• give organizers the flexibility to deal with situations according to their best judgement
• emphasize the grassroots nature of open source bridge by having the same policy apply to everyone involved (speakers, attendees, etc.)
• give participants a sense of agency around their experience at the conference

Focus on Citizenship

As we discussed what sort of policy to adopt it became clear to us the we wanted something more than an anti-harassment policy. Having zero-tolerance for harassing behavior at conferences is of course important, but we realized that we wanted more than just an explicit catalog of prohibited actions. We wanted a document that emphasized the idea of open source citizenship. We wanted to focus on recognizing positive as well as negative behavior.

Give Organizers Flexibility

We also wanted the document to be flexible enough to allow organizers to utilize their best judgement in dealing with situations. We didn’t want to create a situation where we had to deal with behavior that is clearly problematic but that we failed to identify and elucidate ahead of time in our code of conduct. We knew we couldn’t list everything that could potentially go wrong. Along those same lines, we didn’t want to be in the position of having to kick someone out of the conference for less problematic or correctable behavior or for violating our code of conduct simply because we were unskillful in our wording.

Highlight our Grassroots Effort

Open Source Bridge is a grassroots event, organized entirely with volunteers. It’s important to me that those who are involved with our event: the speakers, the attendees, the participants and volunteers know how important they are in making OSBridge a successful event. Each of those roles is just as important as the other and we wanted this equality to be clear in our code of conduct. This is why we have one code of conduct that it applies to everyone. Each person has the same set of responsibilities to make OSBridge a positive event for all involved, including themselves.

Empower our Participants

We wanted participants to feel that our code of conduct gave them a sense of agency and empowerment about their experience. Don’t like something you see? You have a right and a responsibility to say something about it. Don’t like how your colleague is being treated? Let us know. We wanted to encourage folks to come talk to us about any issues that arose and included very clear way to contact us to do so.

The Result

The end result is something I’m very proud of and I think time will demonstrate it is has made our entire community better for everyone (not just previously marginalized groups). We even created a generic version, the Citizen Code of Conduct that we’ve made available for others communities to adopt and adapt as needed to meet their specific needs.

Is it perfect? No, it’s not. We’ve already identified somethings we want to make better. We want to want to clarify what we mean about participating actively and authentically. We also want to add something about contacting organizers to resolve any questions participants may have about their content/behavior being objectionable.

The code of conduct is a work in progress and we’ll keep iterating on it as we get feedback from our community.

On Censorship and Freedom of Expression

So now that we’ve adopted a code of conduct, does that mean that we’re going to use it to arbitrarily censor ideas and people we don’t like from the community? No, it doesn’t. I think if we started to engage in this sort of abuse people we would be called to task about it by our community.

Having a code of conduct does, however, mean that we’re going to take seriously and investigate any reports we receive of content and/or behavior that violates it. And, yes, since we don’t have a list of explicit rules, we’ll use our best judgement to determine how to handles any incidents that arise. This is no different than every other decision you already trust us with when you decide to participate in the conference.

Not everyone will agree with the calls that we make, and I’m okay with that. I’m also okay with using our power as conference organizers to potentially censor content or behavior that is harmful to a subset of our community.

I’ll say it again in another way: I don’t believe that censorship is in and of itself a bad thing because freedom of expression is not an unlimited right. From Wikipedia: “the right to freedom of speech is not absolute in any country and the right is commonly subject to limitations, such as on libel, slander, obscenity, incitement to commit a crime, etc.”

Yes, censorship has been using by those in power for hundreds of years as tools of oppression and tyranny. But censorship also prevents harm from being done to vulnerable populations.

We censor children’s access to pornography so that they have less of a chance to witness sexual material before they are ready for it. We censor hate speech. We censor certain incitements to violence and crime. We (hopefully) self-censor too, for a lot of good reasons: so that we don’t hit our kids or tell our co-workers to go fuck themselves when we’re having a bad day.

Part of being a mature and responsible adult is knowing when freedom of expression should be limited and censorship is appropriate, and when it is an abuse of power wielded for selfish means or ulterior motives.

As conference organizers we hold that our participant’s right of expression carries with it certain responsibilities. We therefore we ask everyone to abide by a code of conduct and reserve the right to enforce certain restrictions on speech and expression if it becomes necessary.

Moreover, there is a huge difference between government censoring disagreements, which is what protections around free speech are really about, and a community deciding standards are required for participation. The latter is what we’re doing with our code of conduct.

Will some feel disenfranchised?

I recognize that some feel disenfranchised when communities adopt a code of conducts.

They are unwilling to accept that codes of conduct are unnecessary. They take it personally and resent being told how to act like a grown up. They think themselves feminists and above scrutiny. They think there’s nothing wrong with including overtly sexualized material in a technical presentation. They think it’s perfectly okay to name a software package “upskirt” or “pantyshot.” They say we’ve taken political correctness too far and by doing so have removed all fun out of going to conferences. They claim we engage in witch hunts against perfectly respectable members of our community.

And everyone is entitled to their thoughts and opinions.

And we are entitled as a community to exclude a few in order to welcome the many that have been marginalized time and time again.

So, if you feel excluded by our code of conduct, I encourage you to examine your own privilege and behavior and see if you can’t open your heart to what we’re trying to do.

It’s been quiet around here because I’ve been busy running BarCamp Portland and planning for Open Source Bridge, among other things. And it’s not going to slow down any time soon. Here’s my Summer conference schedule and an update on some of the projects that will be keeping me busy for the next several months.

21-24 June — Open Source Bridge

The conference for open source citizens, now in it’s third edition. I’m co-chairing the event this year, so while I won’t be giving any talks, I’ll be kicking off the conference and hanging around to make sure things run smoothly. Registration is still open, so come check it out if you’re able and be sure to find me and say hi.

23-34 July — Community Leadership Summit

The CLS is a free unconference for community organizers. I attended last year and found it worthwhile to connect with other community leaders who are in town from all over the US and beyond to attend OSCON.

25-29 July — OSCON

I’m giving two talks at OSCON this year: Tools for Spelunking a New-to-You Codebase and Event Planning for Geeks with Sherri Montgomery and Audrey Eschright.

Other Projects

WhereCampPDX (7-9 October)

WhereCampPDX is a free, volunteer-created unconference for anyone interested in geography and technology and this will be it’s 4th year. I’m helping to organize and if you want to help out, you can join our mailinglist.

Tech Workshops for Beginners

We want to run a series of recurring intro technology workshops. The workshops will be peer-driven, have a low instructor-to-student ratio and serve as the base for on-going mentor relationships. We’re not looking to teach a specific language, but rather offer a handful and let students choose what they connect with most. To make this a success, we’re going to need a lot of help from the community. Want to get involved? We have a mailinglist for that.

Stumptown Syndicate

The Syndicate is a non-profit that Audrey, Reid and I started late last year. Its purpose is to support technology education and professional development through fundraising, space and resource coordination, and other activities. It’s the organization we used to run Open Source Bridge, and we’ll be using it to run WhereCamp and possibly some other events this year. We want to earn 501(c)(3) status so that we can accept tax-deductible donations and we’ll be working on our application over the summer. Want to help? Email us at board@stumptownsyndicate.org. Want to keep track of our progress? We have a newsletter for that.

BarCamp Planning

Yes, yes, I know, we just had BarCamp Portland 5. But there’s a lot we want to accomplish for next year’s event and so we’re going to start early. We want to totally revamp our branding and our website and do a lot better at marketing the event. Want to help? Yup, you guessed it, we have a mailinglist for that too.

Holy sleep deprivation, Batman, I have been busy! My last life-update-type blog entry was a month ago and it feels like three.

A few weeks ago I made weekend trip to the Bay Area to visit and catch up with some dear friends, including my brother Will. I got to see the house that my friends purchased last year (their first), was treated to some awesome homemade vegan chili, and also got to visit many fine felines. Oh, and the weather was fantastic, as in mid-70s. So nice to have a break from Portland’s grey chill, even if I did come back with half a dozen mosquito bites.

Armstrong the Royal Cat

Thanksgiving was really nice. Sherri and I spent it here in Portland and hosted for the first time as a married couple. About a dozen people participated, including ourselves. Sherri and I prepared an entire Thanksgiving spread ourselves, and then each of the guests brought something as well, so there was plenty of food and many leftovers. Having a long weekend to do not much of anything was really nice. As is our new tradition, Sherri and I went to the Red Cross on Black Friday to donate blood. My donation and recovery went much better this time. I delivered my pint a bit slower this time, which might have had something to do with it (5.5 minutes instead of 4.5). We also managed, somehow, to watch the first six Harry Potter movies. This was done in preparation of seeing the seventh, which we plan to catch in the theater soon.

I’ve been very focused at work developing a new feature set that we’re releasing next month. The office is getting more and more crowded as we continue to hire. I’ve been trying to go in earlier to get some work in before the din really gets going. Pretty soon I’m going to need to upgrade my headphones to some noise-cancelling ones. All in all, I’m finding life at this startup to be manageable, which I’m thankful for. Though I still can’t decide if introducing the office to nerf gun warfare was a good idea or not.

Our ShopIgniter business cards arrived from the printer last month

Another bit of news this week is that Legion of Tech announced a resolution to last year’s embezellment. I’ve put in a considerable amount of time over the last couple of months working toward closure on the situation, so it feels good to have it finally wrapped up.

The Stumptown Syndicate is now up and running. We’ve filed articles of incorporation, have a PO Box and a bank account. This allowed us to open registration for Open Source Bridge, months earlier than we ever have been able to before. We still have a lot of work to do on the Syndicate (bylaws, strategic planning, fundraising, etc.), but just getting the organization up and running in a bare-bones sense feels really good.

Work on the house continues. The contractors wrapped up just before Thanksgiving (yay!). We’ve picked out paint, in lots of colors, all no-VOC paint from Yolo Colorhouse that we purchased from Ecohaus. We have all the painting supplies (sand paper, brushes, rollers, tarps). Now all we need to do is paint! Oh, and we’ve managed to pull up the carpet from two rooms (my office and living room).

In between other projects, I’ve started scanning old photographs. This is one of my favorites:

Christie with Mom, circa 1983

I think I’m around 3 years old in that photo. My mom looks so, so young. I’m older now (by more than a few years) than she was in this photograph.

Portland has a pretty amazing tech scene, but it is often overlooked in favor or our big sisters to the north and south (Seattle and the SF Bay Area). Don’t worry, this isn’t another post about how Portland is the best city in which to base your start up. I don’t know if Portland is the best city to base your start-up in, or to move your company to, or to try and make a life in. Those decisions are highly dependent on a lot of factors that are personally unique.

What I do want to talk about is all that Portland tech does have going for it, what we’re lacking, and how we could do better. Portland tech folk do some pretty amazing things, but we could be doing even more.

What we do well

One thing Portland has going for it is a robust support structure for the software community in the form of a grassroots network of user groups and events. Our community-driven network provides mentoring, skill and job development, not to mention camaraderie. Dozens of technologies, languages and platforms are represented across several user groups that meet monthly. We also get a whole lot done. We put on events ranging from weekend unconferences like BarCamp, WhereCamp and CodeCamp to week-long professional conferences like Open Source Bridge. We launch and maintain projects like Calagator and CivicApps. We gather to work on projects together at regular, twice-weekly hackathons.

We’re an open source and open data hub. Oregon State’s Open Source Lab has a presence in Portland. Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux lives in Portland, along with many, many other prominent open source contributors. Portland is home to projects such as Calagator, Open Conference Ware, AutomateIT, PDXAPI, Puppet and Concrete5. For several years the biggest conference about open source technology, OSCON, has been hosted by Portland. We’ve also hosted RubyConf and PyCon and will be hosting Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing next year. Open Source philosophy is embraced deeply here, even in how we interact with our local government as evidenced by the CivicApps initiative.

We have a lot of software companies and they create significant economic impact. Notable software companies in the Portland metro area include: Jive Software, Webtrends, Survey Monkey, Tripwire, Inc., OpenSourcery, Sage Software, eRoi, AboutUs, Coaxis, Textronics, Oracle, Intel, Mentor Graphics, Google (via Instantiations), Microsoft, Galois. I could go on and on.

And, yes, I realize I’ve included companies that are not headquartered here in Oregon. I’ve done this intentionally because these companies still have a tremendous impact in terms of the folks they employ and the events in which they are involved.

In 2006, high tech employed 60 out of 1,000 Oregonians in the private sector and offered wages that were 101% higher compare to other private sector jobs. And 31% of these jobs are based in Portland. In 2005 software companies created $9.20 billion in economic impact across the state. These numbers are a few years old, but you get the idea: the software sector is a large slice of Oregon’s economic pie (source).

We have a rich start-up culture that includes: Puppet Labs, Urban Airship, ShopIgniter, Elemental Technologies, Second Porch, JanRain, Active Trak, Small Society and more. Portland start-ups have received roughly $130 million in Venture Capital in the last year (source). Additionally, we have support organizations for start-ups such as: Portland Ten, the Oregon Entrepreneur Network, the Oregon Technology and Business Center, and now the Portland Seed Fund.

What we need to do better

We need better public relations. We have a compelling story and we need to start telling it on a national level. Portland is a viable competitor on the national tech scene and people should know this.

One of the reasons to tell our story better and to more people is to attract business as well as engineering talent to Portland. We need to get folks who have experience creating successful exits for start-ups. We need folks that have experience nurturing small- and medium-size businesses. We also need more of the executive- and director-level expertise that companies need in order to grow. I have heard more than one start-up CEO lament about struggling to find qualified people locally and instead having to import it.

However, importing folks is not the only way to solve a talent shortage. We also need to grow executives and directors locally.

We can do this by better supporting the grassroots knowledge network that I mention above and by creating a way for individuals become experienced at running companies. The business incubators we have already are a good start, but we can do better.

How You can Help

Software Town Hall

Start by coming to the Software Town Hall discussion next Thursday, 11/18, 4:30pm at City Hall. You should RSVP here.

A bit of background on this event: Earlier this year, the Portland Development Commission identified four sectors for economic growth. Software was one of them. Over the last six months, the PDC has conducted three surveys, each building on the previous, in order to find out how the software sector could best be supported for economic growth. Three target areas were identified:

• supporting Portland’s knowledge network
• creating a business mentor network
• fostering a financial network

“Conveners” have committed to shepherd each of these three targets:

• PSU, via Warren Harrison, will take the lead on supporting Portland’s knowledge base.
• The SAO, via Matt Nees, will take the lead on creating a business mentor-ship program.
• The PDC, via Gerald Baugh, will take lead on the financial network.

Next week is the beginning of the conversation about how we grow and improve the three targets above. It’s your opportunity to weigh in with your issues, ideas and concerns, and to say how you will contribute.

If you are concerned about the future of software in Portland, you should be there and lend your voice to the discussion.

Join the Stumptown Syndicate

Reid, Audrey and I are starting a project that will help support Portland’s knowledge network: the Stumptown Syndicate.

Briefly, our mission is to support education and career development for technology professionals through fundraising, space and resource coordination, and other activities.

We have two immediate goals:

1. to maintain and provide a central meeting and event space for individuals and groups.
2. to provide financial support to such individuals and groups in the form of fiscal infrastructure and/or grants.

But first we need to incorporate as a non-profit and that’s where you come in. If you help with these start-up costs, let us know.

We’re still working on pushing content to our website, so if you have any questions about the Syndicate, want to know when we get up and running, or want to help in other ways, contact me (or Reid, or Audrey) directly.

Run for the Legion of Tech Board

Legion of Tech is the organization that brings you BarCamp, Ignite and other events. We’re the welcoming committee to Portland’s tech scene, and we’re recruiting board members. Read more about how to apply and then get your application in! (The deadline is coming up quick: 11/17).

Participate!

Go to a user group. Start a user group. Run an unconference. Write about your experiences with Portland tech. Seek out and welcome new members of the community. Got questions about how to do any of these things? Just ask! I’m happy to answer your questions and I know others leaders in the community are as well.

Enough about what I think, what do you think?

What can we do to make Portland’s tech scene strong? How can your business and/or career be supported better? Have I neglected to a person, company or project above? Let me know in the comments.

I keep thinking I should write here and then realized I don’t really have the energy to do so. The last month has been incredibly business, with lots of community activities, some pretty heavy deadlines at work and major home improvements.

Perhaps the most time consuming community activity was running BarCamp Portland 4, which took place at the end of October. Despite being exhausted, I had a really good time and the event went really well. I got to try out a few new facilitation techniques that I learned at the “Art of Presentations” class I took in early October at Portland Center Stage. Attendance wasn’t as great as at previous BarCamps, but I think most people had a good time. I only went to one session and it was one that I lead, a Q&A about Legion of Tech. The rest of the time I spent running around answering volunteer’s questions and just hanging out with good people.

BarCamp Organizers at the end of the day (photo courtesy @akfarrell)

Planning for Open Source Bridge is now in full swing. I’m co-chairing this year, along with Reid Beels. I’m really excited about this year’s core team, which I think has a great combination of skills and is going to work really well together.

There’s another project Reid, Audrey and I are working on that isn’t quite ready for prime-time, but which I hope to announce soon (hopefully this week).

I’ve also been spending a fair bit of time on Legion of Tech business, including wrapping up some unresolved business from last year and managing board elections.

All this is going on while I’m working at a startup, which has been intense, but manageable. Oh, and I got a small raise in the form of coffee subsidy: we got a fantastic espresso maker for the office. Seriously, it’s fantastic. I wish I had a photo of it to include in this post.

On the home-front, things have been a bit chaotic as well. During the summer, we applied for EcoTrust’s Clean Energy Works program. Our house qualified and work began last week. We have a storage pod in our driveway, and our living/dining rooms as well as my office are nearly empty. The insulation team has been drilling giant holes in our walls and filling the space with cellulose insulation. Once they finish up, the plaster team will remove the old wallpaper and paint and then repair the holes. Sherri has been amazing through this process and has really been doing the most of the work coordinating with the contractors and doing the majority of the packing. That’s really nice for me since these things really stress me out. I did manage to pack most of the office, however, which you can see below.

Prep for Home Insulation

November is VeganMoFo, the Vegan Month of Food. Sherri has been writing a vegan food blog for sometime now and we’d talked several times about moving it, along with her other blog, from blogger to a WordPress installation on my server. Vegan MoFo gave us the incentive to get it done for the start of November. We bought a copy of the Thesis WordPress theme framework and Sherri and I have been working together to skin the re-named food blog Vegan Nosh. I think it turned out really well. This weekend I updated my personal homepage from an outdated WordPress installation to a single, static page. Since I have no plans to start freelancing again any time soon, I took down the now defunct CK Web Development blog and put up a static page there directing people to my homepage.

Vegan Nosh

Phew! I’m getting exhausted just talking about it all.

But, it hasn’t been all work. Sherri and I have managed to spend some quality downtime together amid the madness and enjoy the beautiful Autumn we’re having.

Crisp Autumn Morning

And we’ve even managed to catch a few rainbows.

Amazingly Bright Rainbow