Fresh

The folks who work at eROI are known to be people who work hard, and play even harder. We like to have fun, express ourselves creatively, and act a little goofy from time to time.

This year, at the annual eROI party, our theme was “Release Your Alter Ego”.  The idea behind this theme was to push our creativity — how did we want to express ourselves to each other? Are you a sinner, or a saint? A beauty queen, or a goth chick? Trust me, it’s not as easy as you might think to identify your own alter ego.

Check our our stellar party invitation:

eROI Alter Ego Party Invitation Email

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We love our neighborhood here at eROI.

Nestled in between downtown Southwest Portland, and the ever-classy Pearl District, Old Town / Chinatown remains one of West Portland’s neighborhoods that has held on to some of its history and gritty peripheral personality while it has changed over the years. It’s one of the last few neighborhoods where you might see a screaming crazy person, a crowd of folks eating at a fancy restaurant, and a DIY art gallery opening all within a few blocks of each other, and its residents take pride in this edgy diversity.  It’s a happening sort of place, and a lot of creativity and progression take place right under our noses, even if we might not be aware of it every day.

Image courtesy of Portland Ground

It is in this light that a committee of people who work in Old Town banded together in 2009 to create the Old Town Block Party. The concept was simple: to get businesses, restaurants, and all of their patrons and employees out in the open, share their work and culture with everyone else, have a few beers, and enjoy some good music – all for a charitable cause.  2009’s inaugural Block Party was a big success boasting over 3,000 attendees throughout the day and donating money to resurrect the historic Hung Far Low Cocktails sign, and this year’s party promises to up the ante. Killer food, drinks, and bands are only part of the reason that this free (What?! Free?!) event is going to rule this year.

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Frank Chimero is a phenomenal designer and illustrator who recently moved to Portland and is teaching in PSU’s design department. He’s also speaking at The Cleaners this Thursday from 7-9pm. The event is brought to you by 52 Ltd. and AIGA Portland. This should be incredibly inspiring and awesome!

Pricing, and details here

It’s been over a week now since the final day of SXSW Interactive, and of course we are just now getting over the post-South By “hangover” period (readjusting to everyday life and work, and trying to remember what day it is). We’ll be unleashing several SXSW recap posts over the next couple weeks, reviewing some of our favorite panels and some of the ideas that really “stuck”. There were only four people from eROI who went to the conference this year (fewer than in previous years) but I think we’ve got plenty of thoughts to share amongst the four of us.

But before we share our deep thoughts, I just wanted to give a quick overview of my experience this year and share some notes I compiled on the plane ride back to PDX.

Unlike last year, I came to Austin armed with a smart phone so I got to tweet to my heart’s content (from my barf account) and check in often with Gowalla. Lots of my friends were using Gowalla this year and it really did come in handy trying to figure out which panels they were sitting in or at which bar they were responsibly partaking.  Plus there was the excitement of possibly finding a virtual VIP wristband to get into the Gowalla Tiki Room party, where Diplo was slated to perform, or one of the many real life prizes that Gowalla was giving away. I didn’t pick up any prizes or the VIP pass, but a friend did win one of the Lomography cameras (and we did make it into the outdoor Gowalla party, albeit after Diplo had left the stage and during a rainstorm).

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SXSW Interactive is almost here, so those months of giddy nerd anticipation are almost over! Hooray! But wait, have you studied the schedule yet? Picked your top panels? Perused the party lists? Researched the must-try restaurants and food carts? No?  Well don’t panic yet, you still have a little time. And to help sort through all the madness I’ve compiled a list of tools and sites that are helping me do some pre-planning this year. As a mere SXSW Sophomore I’m far from an expert on the conference or on Austin, but hopefully this post will help you get organized a little bit.

Finding Promising Panels

Sometimes a panel or session that looks amazing based on its short description in the official SXSW handbook turns out to be, ehhhh, not so great.  And of course the one you decided NOT to go to was the must-see panel of the day.  Although you’re not going to pick winners every time, you can help yourself by doing a little research beforehand.

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I think you should go to this!  (Maybe I have a painting in this show.)

Outlook features 25 artists that graduated from Portland State University’s art department between 2005 and 2009. The show is being guest curated by Chicago art critic and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago James Yood.

Yood is also giving a free lecture (open to the public) “The Persistence of Place” Monday,  November 16, at 7:30 p.m. Learn more here.

Opening Reception:
Saturday, November 7th, 2009 6-9pm

Exhibition:
Thursday November 5, 2009-Friday, November 27th, 2009
Monday-Saturday 10-5

Where:
Autzen Gallery, Portland State University
2nd Floor, Neuberger Hall Room 205
724 SW Harrison ST, Portland, OR 97201

If you didn’t get a chance to check out Zach Johnsen’s Acid In The Ice Cream show, which was held at Backspace last December, he’s at it again but this time in his own studio!

Date:
October 24th, 09′

Time:
6pm-11pm

Where:
North Coast Seed Building
2127 N. Albina Ave.
Portland, OR 97227

I’ll let the visual aids do the rest…

He will also be celebrating the launch of his two new websites www.zenvironments.com & zachjohnsen.com so make sure to check it out!

To start, I must say that the people I am about to write about are very close friends and loved ones, and this may give me a biased journalistic angle. I am confident, however, that you will agree with me that they are noteworthy creative people, doing progressive and cool things.  I hope that this insight into their world inspires readers to subscribe to their blog, buy some of their wares, attend their event, go make something themselves, or better yet, all of the above.  I give you How We Develop and Content 09.

How We Develop is a collective of creatives based in Portland centered around their passion for fashion, Art, Design and creative exploration as a whole.  Clothing designer and seamstress Gretchen Jones, Jewelry designer Anna Korte, and graphic designer and illustrator Ada Mayer met through mutual friends, and began working together immediately in 2008.  Gretchen and Anna both enlisted Ada’s help with their respective identities, marketing efforts and web presence, and the alignment of their tastes and creative aspirations led to the birth of their blog, How We Develop in the summer of 2009.

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WEB Visions, a conference in Portland about everything web starts tomorrow. As part of the conference are the 2nd annual  Webvisionary awards and celebrates fantastic work from categories from motion graphics to blogs. This year two projects from the eROI team have been nominated and have made it to the finals. Our team of web ninjas will be in attendance with cameras in hand hoping for yet another reason to continue drinking.

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There’s a lot of information out there on the interweb – information about you, your business, your competitors, your favorite products, your friends, your cat, your cat’s friends, etc. etc. RSS feeds allow us to subscribe to streams of information from certain sources or on certain topics, but oftentimes our feed readers fill up with irrelevant information that we have to parse through to get to the good stuff.

Using Yahoo Pipes you can get practically any kind of information on the web, strip out the stuff you don’t want, reformat it in a way that’s easier for you to digest, and spit it out in a shiny new RSS feed suitable for your reader or maybe even your info aggregation website!  Sounds super awesome and easy right?

AHH! What the hell is all THAT?  Save me! Take me back to my regular feeds and never show me that mess of blue boxes and squiggly lines again!

OK, yea, I know it looks intimidating and confusing, but really, it’s not that bad.  If you start fresh and take things one step at a time you’ll be Piping up a storm in no time.

Meet Dawn Foster (fastwonderblog.com, Twitter: @geekygirldawn), RSS wrangler extraordinaire (among other things).  She has a full library of example Pipes and tutorial videos to get you started.  And if that’s not enough, she has just announced her first Introduction to Yahoo Pipes training course.  Here’s all the info you need:

What: Introduction to Yahoo Pipes

When: Thursday, May 7th, 3PM – 5PM

Where: Webtrends Classroom (851 SW 6th Ave, Suite 1600 | Portland, OR 97204)

How Much: Students/Freelancers/Unemployed: $100.  Early bird (before April 23): $150.  Late registration (after April 23): $250.

Prerequisites: You just need to set up your Yahoo Pipes account prior to the class (don’t worry, it’s free!).  If you have a Yahoo account already (and you do if you use Flickr), just go to pipes.yahoo.com and log in using your Yahoo credentials.  If you don’t already have a Yahoo account, go ahead and get one here.

Even if you already know a bit of Pipes, I have a feeling this would be a great class to get to know some of the more advanced features.  I know that I could personally use some tips and tricks from a power user.