OpenSourcery

OpenSourcery CEO and open source advocate extraordinaire Brian Jamison has been elected to the SAO's board, and will be welcomed along with the rest of the new crop on Thursday, January 15th.

OpenSourcery has been an active member of the SAO, especially over the last year. In addition to Brian's serving on the board, Thomas King is chair of the SAO's Marketing and Sales Special Interest Group, OpenSourcery sponsored a recent CleanTech event, and we pretty much show up for anything related to the SAO (including my losing and Will winning poker tourneys).

Congratulations, Brian!

January's Drupal Meetup promises to be so interesting and useful it hardly needs introduction. So I'll try to keep it short.

First, please remember that OpenSourcery's office has moved to 1636 NW Lovejoy, between 16th and 17th Streets. Drupal Meetups are free and open to the public: everyone from Drupal power users to newbies is invited. And while we generally focus on one topic, every Meetup has its fair share of question-and-answer and free-flowing discussion.

January's Topic and Presenter

We're fortunate to welcome Todd Tomlinson, a managing partner with Aha Consulting, to speak with us about Panels. Todd will go through the process of creating a project management workbench using Drupal 6, Panels 2.0 and Views. He will demonstrate the concepts in a workshop format - with lots of hands on activities. If you have a laptop please bring it to the meeting.

As Todd states in his introduction: "Panels 2.0 is a powerful and feature-rich toolset that every Drupal developer should have in their tool belt. Panels provides the ability to significantly enhance your ability to render content on your site through a simple point/click/drag and drop interface."

Todd has 30+ years in the IT industry and also serves as the Senior Professor and Area Chair for the School of Information Technology at the University of Phoenix - where he teaches web design and development. Todd has been involved in developing web CMS solutions since the mid-90's - focusing his efforts on Drupal for the past 3 years.

Please mark your calendar and be sure to join us Wednesday, January 14 from 6pm until 8pm. For more information contact thomas@opensourcery.com and visit the Portland Drupal Users Group page here.

We look forward to seeing you there.

What better way to invite our friends and cohorts in the Portland tech community to see the new offices than to throw a Lunch 2.0 bash? No way, is what.

So we're doing it. And just to get the obligatory construction out of the way: Lunch 2.0 at OpenSourcery is free (as in lunch) and free (and in freedom). Done.

We're so happy with the new digs that we feel sort of selfish being the only ones to enjoy it. We want to share our two-piece arcade, comprised of Spy Hunter and the Theatre of Magic (and since we never actually get to /play/ the things during the day, it'll be a welcome change to see them brought to life). We want to nosh. And of course we'll be quite happy to talk about what we've been up to.

So let us know in advance that you're coming by visiting Upcoming to register and apprise us of your food preferences. You can also read a similar version of this same information (largely because I stole the details) at SiliconFlorist.

Our offices are located at 1636 NW Lovejoy, cuddled up to the Radio Cab company and under the broad shoulders of venerable I-405. It's easy to reach us by Streetcar, bike, foot, and, er, cab; it's not easy to find parking, however. We encourage public/self-transport.

Please email thomas@opensourcery.com if you'd like more details. Otherwise, we'll just see you here.

Lest the energy that helped organize and populate the first ThrivePDX wane, the same volunteer organizers are helping to promote ThrivePDX II. The purpose remains to create an open dialogue between all members of the tech community -- corporate & indie, young & old, geek & nerd -- to help figure out how we build a community that will survive & thrive during this economic downturn.

We encourage attendance by anyone in the Portland area tech community, especially those who see value in bridging gaps between groups that might otherwise consider themselves at odds. Much of ThrivePDX I's value derived from the mix of individuals in the room: Beer & Blog folks mingling with Intel developers.

The event takes place Wednesday, December 10th from 5pm until, well, until it ends. Find us at:

Blitz Bar
110 NW 10th Ave
Portland, Oregon 97209

Which is HERE.

OpenSourcery has long respected how our friends at NTEN -- the Nonprofit Technology Network -- help good organizations improve their understanding and use of technology, so you can understand why we're ecstatic to collaborate with them. Our first collective effort will help managers, CEOs, and community organizers get the most from Drupal. In what we hope becomes a long-standing effort, our developers will work with NTEN members to unwrap the many joys of open source applications.

Instead of repeating the webinar details here, I encourage readers to visit the event page on NTEN's website and let us know what you think. You can also learn the benefits of becoming a member of NTEN here.

OpenSourcery thanks Anna, Holly, and the rest of the NTEN team for making this webinar a reality. We look forward to working together.

Thank you for reading.

POSSE* (Portland Open Source Software Entrepreneurs) welcomes Deborah Bryant of the Open Source Lab (and wearer of a thousand amazing hats) to speak at the monthly meeting. She will talk about the recent success of GOSCON (the Government Open Source Conference), which took place October 20-23 in Portland. The conference has been going strong for four years, but 2008 was, by all measures, the most successful yet. Deborah introduced an International Summit to kick things off, and the quality of speakers during was exemplary for the entire conference.

Come hear about the changing role of open source software in government, and learn some of the overall lessons of GOSCON 08.

The meeting will take place Wednesday, November 19 from 5:00-7:00pm at Jax Bar. Jax is located at 826 SW 2nd Ave in Portland. Which is right here.

*POSSE is dedicated to helping businesses in the Portland area and beyond reduce costs, mitigate risk, and make software choice easy by utilizing open source software. Monthly meetings are open to all POSSE members and individuals interested in learning more about the group.

It's time again for Portland Drupal developers to gather at OpenSourcery and count the ways Drupal makes their lives better (and to get help on what still stumps them).

The gatherings have been growing and becoming more informative every month, and we expect November's Meetup to continue that trend. We have another great session in the offing - Steve Edwards' presentation on using Übercart to build e-commerce sites - so we anticipate lively discussion on a range of issues.

It's now clear that Portland has an extremely active Drupal community, which means perhaps it's time to consider two gatherings per month: one that focuses on sophisticated users who need in-depth, technically rich discussion, and another that's geared toward beginners. We'll broach that subject at the Meetup.

As always, join us Wednesday evening from 6pm-8pm, followed by a beer at the Green Dragon. We're located at 711 SE Ankeny, one block south of East Burnside.

Show your support

OpenSourcery has been looking forward to the world premiere of Fuel for months, and now the time has come for Portlanders to learn about the film and show the country that we're at the vanguard of sustainable living. We should be proud to host the world premier, but we also need to support the film in numbers. Distributors and filmmakers around the country will be watching to see how well Fuel is attended.

What is Fuel?

Fuel is about America's addiction to oil, but the film is about solutions rather than dire predictions. The energy behind the creation and distribution of this film will serve as a breath of fresh air to those of us who have felt overwhelmed by a seemingly hopeless series of warnings. Among Fuel's most exciting goals is the creation of active communities that will fight to improve how we create and use energy.

The documentary runs from this Friday, November 14th until November 20th at the downtown Portland Fox Tower. Their website makes it easy to purchase tickets for a showtime that works for you. Group ticket sales and private screenings are available by calling 1-800-792-8244. We'll be there in force, with a group purchase of seats for OpenSourcery.

We encourage you to learn about more by checking out the Fuel website and watching the trailer.

Purchase tickets here.

OpenSourcery - believer in, contributor to, supporter of, and advocate for Drupal in more ways than we can recount here - is officially an Organizational Member of the Drupal Association. We're still having difficulty transferring "ownership" from the individual who opened the account (yours truly, Thomas King) to the organization, so I'll just post a little screen shot here for good measure. We applaud Drupal.org for being such an incredible resource for everyone from independent developers to interested site owners to professional development shops.