Category Archives: events

Rally for Net Neutral Municipal Internet!

Advocacy, events

Inspired by the recent retrograde action at the FCC and the continued inaction at the City of Portland, numerous spontaneous eruptions of outrage have broken the surface in and around the area. One of the more public will occur this Sunday afternoon, January 14, 2018 in downtown Portland.

Rally for Net Neutral Municipal Internet! https://www.facebook.com/events/1775718709399941/

To be sure, building infrastructure isn’t inexpensive. It is just way more expensive to still be alive and *not* build infrastructure.

Lunch 2.0 with Portland Broadband Strategic Plan June 29

events

A public meeting to discuss the draft of Portland Broadband Strategic Plan has been scheduled for June 29 from noon to 3pm at the Portland Building. Here is a calagator link to the event.
http://calagator.org/events/1250460630
If you can, please attend and let the City know what you think. Your persistent input is ESSENTIAL to getting a plan that moves us forward rather than slips us backward!

Hopworks Gigabit IPA Announcement

events, fun

Please read on for complete details on the release of Hopworks’ Gigabit IPA.

Portland Brews Up “Gigabit IPA” To Attract Google’s Fast Gigabit Fiber Network To Portland

Google-inspired IPA will be introduced to the public from 4pm to 6pm, Friday, April 2, 2010, at Portland’s Green Dragon, where the city’s geeks and creatives meet for “Beer and Blog’’ every week Portland’s geek, creative and beer communities have joined forces to brew up Gigabit IPA, special microbrew to help the City of Portland convince Internet giant Google to build an innovative gigabit fiber network here. Friday afternoon from 4 to 6pm, the new “broadband beer” will be introduced to beer enthusiasts at “Beer and Blog” at the Green Dragon brewpub (928 SE 9th Avenue, Portland, Oregon 503-517-0660) where techies and creatives gather to blog every week.

Justin Kistner, host of Friday’s event, says, “You don’t have to be a blogger to come. Everyone’s welcome to come and ‘embrace the bandwidth’ with a growler of Portland’s newest microbrew.” A senior executive at Webtrends, Kistner founded Beer and Blog in Portland two years ago. Today Beer and Blog chapters meet every Friday afternoon in 18 cities as far away as Tokyo, and Kistner is inviting all of them to join in serving Portland’s Gigabit IPA.

The idea of brewing a special beer in honor of Google’s superfast broadband began at a potluck with local geeks and creatives meeting with the City of Portland team to come up with a strategy to get Google’s attention. Over 1,100 U.S. cities have applied to be testbeds for Google’s innovative network, but Portland offers something extra that geeks at Google are reputed to love: awesome craftbeers.

Portland beer maven Kerry Finsand (whose title at start-up Taplister.com is “Chief Beer Officer”) was enlisted to find a local brewmaster who could produce a world class beer for the Google initiative and do it at Internet speed. He suggested Christian Ettinger of Hopworks, whose organic IPA won gold at the World Beer Cup. Ettinger spent years designing and building the world’s first carbon-neutral brewery in Portland, a city where green and sustainable living is the goal. (Google is also known for its many green initiatives. Google’s innovative gigabit network will utilize fiber-to-the-home to save many millions of dollars in energy costs.)

The new Google-inspired beer is, of course, organic. The best description of Hopworks Organic Gigabit IPA is the words on every bottle:

“This fresh & edgy IPA honors Portland’s new gigabit network project to pioneer a connected future with Google fiber-to-the-home. Embrace the bandwidth with a massive NW hop aroma, with rich citrus and pine accents aggressively balanced with clear malt caramel flavor, and a deep, clean, satisfying finish. From Hopworks, the world’s first carbon-neutral artisanal brewery.”

The cheerful logo for Gigabit IPA, with colors that evoke the Google brand, was designed by Bram Pitoyo, a typographer popular with the PDX geek community. The Gigabit IPA story and logo are featured on www.portlandheartsgoogle.com, the City of Portland’s new website, where visitors will find links to many communities and organizations supporting the new network initiative.

Portland has worked for 15 years to bring fast broadband and rich connectivity to this international hub for open source technology. And by coincidence, 15 years is exactly how long Christian Ettinger has been brewing innovative craftbrews. Plans are to make Gigabit IPA, his newest, available on tap, in kegs and in 22 ounce bottles in Portland.

Celebrate the Birth of the Portland Community Fiber Movement

events

Teresa Boze writes:

An invitation to the Beer and Blog and the Creative Community to celebrate wiki’s 15th Birthday, and PDXfiber’s 1Gb 1st.

“We changed the way the way software code was done world wide because I could”- Ward Cunningham, Wiki inventor.

The small miracle under Ward Cunningham’s desk that became wiki began 15 years ago. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPNJuHje4w4 @BeerandBlog and the creative community are invited to help celebrate WikiBirthday 15 at AboutUs, and meet their very special guest, Mark Ivanov, co-founder of DavisWiki, “the world’s best civic wiki.”

In the spirit of open access, AboutUs invites the creative community and Beer and Blog to come on up and celebrate the #PDXFiber advent of 1GbFiber’s beginnings. Let’s be the city with the platform for the Killer App! “Everything wants to be connected.”- Sheldon Renan, Ubiquitous Netness

Where:
AboutUs
107 Southeast Washington Street
Portland, OR 97214

When:
Friday, March 26th
After 6:15pm
entry after 6:15 if no one at the door, call:

For entry call:
503-488-5763 enter 5

Portland Attempts World Record to get Google’s attention

events

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 3/17/2010

Portland Attempts World Record to get Google’s attention.
World’s longest “Telephone Game” needs only 700 people.

A group of citizens are organizing the world’s longest “Telephone Game” as an attempt to get the attention of Google.

The Technology giant has put out a Request For Information (RFI) to municipalities who may be interested in partnering with Google to install a 1 gigabyte fiber optic network that will serve 50,000 to 500,000 homes.

The RFI has already caused quite a stir among cities large and small across America. In an attempt to gain the favor of the company, one city, Topeka, Kansas decided to change its name to Google for a day.

The City of Portland is taking the proposal seriously and will be adopting a resolution Wednesday, March 17th to provide a proposal to the search engine colossus. The project would be a significant undertaking for Google. Estimates are that they would need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to lay a fiber optic network in most cities, whereas in Portland, City efforts to facilitate it have already tilled the fields for high-speed broadband.

The significance of the project is that it would provide speeds of one hundred times greater than is available today in the United States, potentially spurring innovative, revenue generating businesses and jobs in the city that is awarded the prize.

A group of citizens in the technology and creative industries clusters have joined in the effort to “Woo the Goog”, since the RFI states that citizen involvement will be a deciding factor in awarding the fiber network.

The Game will stretch from Pioneer Courthouse Square, and attempt to cross the Steel Bridge to the steps of the Rose Garden arena. The event will begin at 9am Saturday March 20th, and the record-breaking Telephone game attempt will start at the east side of the Steel Bridge at 9:30, reaching Mayor Sam Adams in Pioneer Courthouse Square at approximately 10:30. All who are interested are encouraged to meet at the corner of NW Couch and Naito Parkway.

World’s Longest Telephone Game
Saturday, March 20th 2010
Rose Garden across the Steel Bridge

Contact: Donna Hougland
donna@flowspoon.com
503-313-9152

City Council Resolution on Google Fiber

events

Mary Beth Henry, Deputy Director of the Office of Cable Communications and Franchise Management, sent us this message about tomorrow’s city council meeting:

Just a reminder about the Google Resolution at the upcoming Portland City Council meeting on Wednesday March 17 at 10:30 am. It would be great if testimony reflected the wide variety of creative’s in Portland.

Testimony is up to three minutes and you can sign up just outside the Council Chambers beginning at 9:30. The Council meetings are streamed live and on cable channel 30. This is your opportunity to talk, sing, dance etc. in your own way about why Google should select Portland. Thanks!

Because this is a “time certain” resolution, you won’t have to hang out for hours if you want to comment, or just watch the discussion. Having a packed chambers for resolutions like this helps solidify the resolve of council members, so please make a point of coming, and remember to be green for fiber.

If you’d like to read the resolution ahead of time, it’s available here.