This is my final comment in this thread – in reference to a comment that we should to create a mega event like SXSW… (I have more to say about this idea, actually, because a large group of us discussed the possibility in detail, and why we thought it wouldn’t work.)

I don’t know much about how SXSW is structured inside, but I do know that they are providing a a unified vision for the conference. That has attracted not just more organizing power, but a huge, devoted attendee and presenter pool.

Stepping out on a limb – perhaps the issue here is more that a vision has not been offered which attracts the groups that you want to collaborate with. Collaboration is not the same thing as aggregation.

Portland tech groups collaborate with each other all the time, but they are loose affiliations and focused on what provides the most value for the limited resources we have. I’ll also say that they are joyful connections – based on mutual benefit, friendship and an outcome whose goal is not just a product, but also having fun.

We often have conversations with each other about how we can make things less expensive, smaller and more fun, rather than how we can grow larger.

It’s possible to have this mindset exist within a larger framework that might encompass it all. It just takes time, trust building, and work to find connections that truly benefit the community. The direct, local benefit should be considered first, and maybe involve promotion outside of our community second. Maybe third.

The tech community has regular, free-form events on Thursday nights at the Lucky Lab, and periodic meetings on Saturdays around OS Bridge. I won’t be here this week, but definitely will be next week. 🙂

I’d be happy to talk with you or anyone else how we might create a larger framework.

Whatever it is needs to be something which can be incrementally built up, and I don’t know that a mega event is what we really need.

I had really hoped to be able to share the entire conversation with you, and fortunately I have gotten permission to do so!

And here is Mark’s original post:

Portland High Tech Groups Are Portland Software’s Own Worst Enemies
By Mark Lawler

Portland has a very vibrant software community. It is one that is quite diverse and covers the entire technology spectrum and represents nearly every business model imaginable. With this diversity comes the desire for each of us to associate with various groups and communities that better represent our interests and sometimes our own ways of thinking. That said, Portland also has a cancer, and that illness manifests itself in how these groups just cannot seem to work together for the common good. The cause? Perhaps it is the strong desire for each of these groups to maintain its own individuality, autonomy, brand identity. Perhaps it is the entrepreneurial pull to forge one’s own ground and to be different from what is already out there. However, it is this bifurcation and standoffishness between the various high tech groups in Portland that is holding us back as we watch the Silicon Forest as a whole slowly decay.

I was just in a meeting last Thursday with Skip Newberry, the Economic Development Policy Advisor for the Office of the Mayor of Portland. With me were key members of some local high tech groups that put on local events to benefit their individual segments of the Portland high-tech community. Our pitch to the Mayor’s Office was simple: It is through all of us working together as a unified front that Portland will be able to combat some of its more silly, yet detrimental stereotypes regarding its software community and industry. That together we could combat the incorrect notions that developers in Portland suffer from “Portland Lazy” disease or that Portland doesn’t have a very rich pool of high-tech talent for companies to leverage. In a unified front four groups were working together to have a mega event in May where they were pooling interests and resources to help Portland in its quest to get itself and the Silicon Forest back on the national radar. We were asking the Mayor’s office if they would be willing to attend the event and use one of the sessions to highlight Portland’s Economic Development plan for the local software industry to the attendees that were interested in learning more about it and sharing their own thoughts while at the same time highlight how we are all working together. During this discussion we talked about Portland’s historic past of having various technical communities and groups working against each other and fighting various technical and business model “religious” wars and how this one event in May was very significant in showing that we could all work together.

You can only imagine my surprise when I learned the very next day that the board of directors for the one of the groups had met Thursday night, that same night that one of their board members had attended this meeting with the Mayor’s office with the rest of us, and decided to pull out of the event.

Now I’m not going to speculate as to why they decided to do it. We all have our reasons for changing our minds. However, I am going to comment on is how this action, just in the very nature of its timing and its impact, is exactly what is wrong with the Portland software community. I love Portland and Portland software. With the time that I spend as a volunteer I work every day to help promote and grow this industry. I pine over the return to the heyday of the Silicon Forest and work hard through the success of the companies I work for and the great products I deliver along with these volunteer efforts to claw our way back.

I have just two questions… Why can’t we all just get along? Why can’t we all drop the inane focus on our individual charters, beliefs and the stubborn demands of individuality to try to work together for the common good of Portland Software and the growth of the industry in Oregon? I ask everybody in high tech sweep away the individual chips on our shoulders and to come together to rally for this common good. If we don’t work together we will go the way of the tanners, textile, shipbuilding, and forestry workers before us. I find that result both uninteresting and unacceptable…

You can contact Mark at: @mark_lawler; http://www.linkedin.com/in/marklawler)