Recently the city of Eugene put together a little video about the revitalization of Downtown. This video pretty much tells you why Downtown Eugene is a cool place to work and do business.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I asked the current members what technologies they were using and the names of their clients.  Then I made some tag clouds using  http://www.wordle.net

We are hosting an after work mixer at 5:30 PM Thursday May 24th. Here is the Flyer.

Mark is attending Portland Start-up Weekend where he had teamed up with Fat Cat GameWorks to Build to new apps for the Windows Phone platform. Look for a new sister site CodeChops.net that will showcase the mobile apps.

Simply amazing little oscilloscope JavaScript library: http://smoothiecharts.org/tutorial.html

i missed a lot of the sessions but it turns out there were 2 that surprised me w/ their content:

geddyJS – frameworks. in the young stage of js/node that we’re at we’re finally seeing frameworks. but this presenter thinks the next logical step is code organisation. some of the web frameworks suggest a little code organization but when projects get large it still turns to spaghetti. this guy is obviously a rails fan and he’s built a framework similar to rails. i’m on the fence with rails but i’m psyched where this is going. it builds routes for you and creates resource models like users, etc.. via command line calls. it’s part code generator and structure.

http://geddyjs.org/

real time collaboration – though the premise was missing from this talk, the tech was intriguing. Kav (he was the “lead” on the team mark and i were on at our first startup weekend) is developing a framework for building real-time collaborative apps (think Turntable.fm) where you have to keep multiple browsers in sync.
this is where the beauty of using js on the client and server starts really paying dividends. using a combination of socket.io/backbone.js and some other shit(tm). syncing models over socket.io seems like a great idea. his company is like Liffft or something. Backbone is a bit heavy-handed, but it would help if you didn’t have too many models. if you were building a game you might roll your own model but still use socket.io for syncing. i’m getting the feeling that socket.io (and/or other node socket stuff) is the next Ajax.

here’s some other stuff i dug up on this:

http://andyet.net/blog/2011/feb/15/re-using-backbonejs-models-on-the-server-with-node/

http://developer.teradata.com/blog/jasonstrimpel/2011/11/backbone-js-and-socket-io

miscellaneous:

cool js tools for building and continuous integration.

jake and concrete

https://github.com/isaacs/node-jake

https://github.com/ryankee/concrete

A few months ago a friend sent me a link to a Kevin Rose interview with Philip Rosedale who is trying an experiment called “Coffee and Power” in San Francisco. The part I found interesting was the coffee-shop atmosphere/group workspace concept that would be conducive to attracting tech workers. I’m interested in doing something similar in the Eugene area. The rules would be simple: if you are there then you should be working on something and we get to know you, put your face up on the board.  Pay rent if you like or help make the place better.  We’ll figure out the details as we go.

Downtown Eugene is a perfect place to build a similar space.  There is some retail space available, and new construction is going on in what has been a pretty dead zone these last few years.  I’m giving up my current office and looking for a space.  I’ll add some couches and tables and cover the walls with white-boards.

I’m going to talk to the tech folks I know in town and see who else might be interested in trying this experiment.  I’ll be looking for solo techies who would like a place to work downtown from time to time as well as local businesses who could be sponsors.

Here is the list of things we need so far:

1. A semi-retail space around 700 square feet.
2. A coffee machine.
3. More power strips.

http://www.webbyawards.com/

http://gigaom.com/2011/05/03/here-come-the-cloud-and-gaming-funds-and-other-vc-trends/

Lifestyle. The Portland vs. Bay Area differentiator. It’s what keeps us here and makes us believe we can successfully participate in the current boom without leaving our beloved city. It just keeps getting more media attention:

http://siliconflorist.com/2011/05/02/big-lifestyle-startups-jason-glaspey/.

Trust it. The skills are here.