Greetings from a Cyborg Anthropologist

November 08, 2008

Hello! My name is Amber Case and I am from Portland, Oregon. For the next period of time, I'll be introducing you all to the magical mysteries of the Portland Tech community (Portland also goes by PDX, so don't be confused if I refer to it in that manner). It's one of the most amazing and connected communities I've ever experienced.  I'll also be introducing you to what it is like to work, live, and study the online space.

Be forewarned, though. I might get off-topic along the way and show you crazy pieces of new technology that I've found online. Stuff like robots and interfaces and books about information architecture.

There's also Twitter, which I'm having a lot of fun with right now. It provides an interesting place for the rapid exchange of links and ideas. So what does Portland have? It has Marshall Kirkpatrick of Read Write Web, one of the most linked-to blogs in the cybersphere. There's Ward Cunningham, inventor of the Wiki (which is how sites like Wikipedia work), and Dawn Foster, online community manager extraordinaire. There's also Andy Baio, creator of Upcoming.org, Yahoo's! truly excellent place to check out events, and Rick Turoczy of Silicon Florist and Read Write Web.

Events

There are a lot of events happening in the next two months. I'll give you a brief overview here so that you know what to expect.

Recurring Events

Dorkbot PDX

A group of people who meet to tear apart and rebuild electronics. Meets twice a month at the Lucky Lab Pub in NW Portland. DorkBot PDX Website

Makerlab

Meets every Tuesday in NE Portland or at the Igloo Gallery The Makerlab is a New Media Prototyping Lab and an Incubator whose core goals speak to group ownership, avoiding silo pathologies, focusing on aggregating value-driven content, encouraging point source emitters, and fostering a supportive ecosystem. You can read more about Makerlab's Philosophy here.

Beer and Blog

Bloggers helping bloggers over Beer. Beer and Blog is a meet up that takes place every Friday from 4pm until at least 6pm at the Green Dragon in Portland, OR. Bloggers from the local scene show up and we help each other with our blogs. Sometimes we’ll arrange for a special guest to be there to help us on topics that are beyond the group’s skillset. Beer and Blog is like a networking event based around a group work session. Not only does it bring together talented folks that each bring a unique offering to the group, but it’s also a set social event that prompts us to do the updates we say we’re going to do. Beer and Blog Website

Special Events

Ignite Portland 4

November 13 - Portland, Or. If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers. I'll be presenting "A Short Introduction to Cyborg Anthropology" in five minutes and 20 slides. I'm nervous and excited and really overwhelmed at the same time. Check out more Portland Ignite Presentations. I hope to have a bunch of video footage from Ignite so that you can check it out. There are a bunch of amazing speakers, and you won't want to miss them.

MIT's Futures of Entertainment 3

November 21 and 22nd - Boston, Mass. I'll be flying out to Boston, Ma on November 20th-22nd to speak at this conference. I'll be bringing some friends with me to cover and record the event. Futures of Entertainment is organized around a "talk-show" style model, with panelists participating in a moderated discussion. Over the last two years this produced great, thorough treatments of the subject matter, getting industry and academic speakers together but avoiding product pitches. This year's conference will work to bring together the themes from last year - media spreadability, audiences and value, social media, distribution - with the Consortium's new projects as we move towards an increasingly global understanding of media convergence and content flows. MIT's Futures of Entertainment Website. For a sense of what to expect, you can check out the site from last year's event. Full list of speakers.

Robots & Beyond: Exploring Artificial Intelligence at MIT

This exhibit on robots will be occuring at the MIT Museum Main Gallery during the Futures of Entertainment Conference. I'm really excited to be able to see it. More about Robots & Beyond.

CyborgCamp

December 6 - Portland, Or. CyborgCamp is a conversation about the future of technology, and how humans fit in. It is an unconference about the future of the relationship between humans and technology. We'll discuss topics such as social media, design, code, inventions, web 2.0, twitter, the future of communication, cyborg technology, anthropology, psychology, and philosophy. CyborgCamp's aim is to have many communication channels, such as Twitter, Flickr, UstreamTV, Video and Audio recordings and live chats displayed on the screen. CyborgCamp Planning Wiki. Official CyborgCamp Blog. If you're in the Portland area on December 6th, you can RSVP on Yahoo's! Upcoming. CyborgCamp on Twitter.

What Else?

I look forward to getting to know more about all of you. If you'd like to keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter @caseorganic or simply leave a comment on this post. If you'd like to guest post about an event in the Portland area, or would like me to cover some aspect of the Portland Tech scene (or the tech scene in general) please don't hesitate to let me know.

Comments

[Rick Turoczy]

It's always great to see Portland getting wider exposure. I'm looking forward to reading your insights here, Amber.

And as always, thank you for the mention. ;)

[Amber Case]

Thanks Rick. You've been an integral and inspiring individual since I first met you at the Legion of Tech meetup at Plan B. :)