I have been thinking lately about the phenomenal Ignite Portland event held a few weeks back at the beautiful Bagdad Theatre in SE Portland. It generated good local coverage (most comical was local TV station KGW calling it a ‘hipster event’) and for a while even dominated Twitter traffic (#ip4). But here I sit, two weeks later, still smiling as I think of all the friends I saw there and the Twitter friends I met in person for the first time.
It makes me think… What is going on in Portland, anyway? We are no stranger to high tech. Tektronix started here in the 40s and Intel moved here in force in the late 70s. But something pretty powerful is happening in Portland right now. I struggle with explaining it to friends who are not in the tech industry. We’re different than the Valley and different than Seattle. As I contemplate why this is, it occurs to me…
We have no stars here in Portland.
High tech is an industry ripe with fame and fortune. The individuals who achieve success gain a degree of notoriety and become Stars. Yes more Stars in our Star-struck culture. Unless you’ve lived under a rock for the last 20 years, you can probably name a dozen high tech Stars without pausing to breath. But Portland lacks these ‘names’. I can’t recall seeing a list of ‘the top 10 most blah, blah, blah in Portland high tech‘ published anywhere.
Totally distraught, I ask myself, ‘How can we thrive without Stars?’ What are we going to do without these brilliant individuals with their uncanny ability to know what will happen next? Who will pull our backward high tech scene together? Who will be there to lead us through this morass, if not a Star? Oh the hopelessness!
Just wait a minute. I was at Ignite Portland. The mix of intellectual horsepower and wit inside that old theatre was awesome and second to none. But how can that be? We are little old Portland and we have no Stars…
Maybe that’s it. Maybe Stars and Starchasing is not such a good thing. Maybe we make up for our lack of Star power by our collective energy, enthusiasm and intelligence. Maybe it’s our Oregon culture, our ‘Keep Portland Weird’ mindset. Could it be our respect for the ideas and rights of others that makes us such a force? Does the way we question everything… EVERYTHING… make us such a formidable movement?
That’s it. The Portland high tech community has come together in a big way. You can feel just feel it in the air. We don’t have Stars because we don’t want Stars. We don’t need Stars. We want people to contribute what they can, where they can, and help the overall movement grow. We steer each other unselfishly believing in our own value system that ‘your success is my success’. We are small. But we’re doing great things.
It’s our sense of community. We are the Portland High Tech Community. We don’t have any use for Stars.
