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Oregon Software Community Moving on Up

Ryan Buchanan — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:14:48 +0000

Last night, I gave a speech at the Annual Member Dinner of the Software Association of Oregon (SAO) and I must say how good it feels to be part of an organization that has such positive momentum – the feeling in the air was palpable and is really encouraging given the challenging economy. Portland has always prided itself on a collaborative business community, but often at a surface level. At this event, there were software companies from across the state, top government leaders, and some clear innovators in clean technology. The keynote speaker was Google’s Green Energy Czar, Bill Weihl, and the crowd of 300 people was overflowing. Here was my SAO Board address to the audience (in semi-shortened format):

“For some of you, this might be the first SAO event you’ve been to in a while. For many of the rest of you who have been to a recent event, you have likely felt the buzz – that positive momentum – that SAO is fueling in the software community in Oregon. There are some awesome new opportunities for you to get involved:

With SAO’s goal of drawing more CTOs and CIOs from tech and non-tech organizations into the mix, we are especially pleased to be attracting great speakers like tonight’s Bill Weihl, Czar of Google.
We’ve also rolled out a Leadership Exchange program where leaders and managers across each department of your software organization are gaining insights and perspective that are simply not possible within the walls of your own company. I know it’s had a game-changing effect on my company saving me from some pretty huge mistakes that our execs or I would have made or we would have missed some major opportunities that I would have never known about had it not been for these monthly roundtable discussions and follow-on discussions.
Police Chief Sizer has already touched on the value of SAO and the tech community reaching out to the public sector through our Fireside chats. Other gatherings have included also included Portland’s Mayor.
Finally, the social gatherings and networking opportunities have gained critical mass. The last SAO Blazer game I attended was double the size from a year ago.

One thing that hasn’t been talked about tonight, but it’s been bugging me for the past 6 months. In conversations with some software folks about how to grow the software community in Oregon, I often hear complaints that Portland and Oregon as a whole does NOT have 2 things: CAPITAL and TALENT. It’s been the same complaint for the past 20 years and I’m getting tired of it. I think we do have the talent – a lot of it is right here in this room. IT’S UP TO US to grow our own companies here, start new ones, and invest and mentor promising Oregon start ups. No one is going to save us. WE ARE THE ANSWER. SAO is part of that answer. If we’re making the same excuses and complaints 20 years from now, we’ve failed. Together, we can create a stronger, growing tech community in Oregon. I firmly believe this!

I really encourage you to get involved – it will likely be the most valuable and even selfish thing you do this year – to help your career and your company. Thank you.”

First Software CEO Leadership Exchange meetup at eROI, Sep 9

Ryan Buchanan — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:43:01 +0000

The Software Association of Oregon (SAO) is launching a platform for peer discussion groups called the Leadership Exchange. Through an extensive survey of 300 tech professionals in the community, we heard loud and clear that people were looking for ways to grow professionally in their roles by connecting with peers.

With this in mind, I’m leading the Steering Committee for the CEO Leadership Exchange so if you are interested in joining the group which will meet once a month at different software/tech CEOs / GMs company conference rooms (or hopefully more creative places at some point) from around the Portland Metro area, please sign up online on SAO’s site or email me or DM me on Twitter (@ryanbuch). The point of these peer discussion groups is to gather in a relaxed atmosphere and share tough issues / challenges / burning questions with your peers knowing that it is fully confidential and info stays in the room only.

This model has been unbelievably successful for groups like Starve Ups (co-founded 9 years ago), EO, and SAO’s Startup Exchange has gained a lot of traction over the past year. Many of my peers through Starve Ups have become very close personal friends as well as business partners in other ventures. It took months and years to develop these close ties, but I’m optimistic that the CEO Leadership Exchange (for CEOs/GMs of Portland companies that have or expect to have $5m in annual revenue) will have that kind of valuable connecting power and peer learning over the upcoming months and years.

Read more below to find out about the other Leadership Exchange Groups that are all launching the week of Labor Day in less than 2 weeks!

Leadership Exchange Groups

For Professionals at TECHNOLOGY companies only:

CEO – Growth Company Executives; CEO, President or top local staff member
Finance – Executive Financial staff; CFO or Director of Finance
Sales and Marketing – Executive Sales and Marketing Professionals; VP / Manager / Director of Marketing, Sales or Business Development
StartUp – Technology Entrepreneurs and StartUp Executives (meets 3^rd Tuesday of the Month)

For industry Professionals at ANY company:

IT – Top IT Leaders; IT Director or Manager
Support and Services – Those leading Support or Technical Services
Technology – Company’s top technology leader; CTO, VP / Manager / Director of Research and Development or related role

Eagles Visit the Software Association of Oregon (SAO) Golf Tourney

Ryan Buchanan — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 23:35:04 +0000

Over the past couple years, I’ve gotten more and more involved in the Software Association of Oregon (SAO), but never have I had as much fun on the golf course with my foursome sponsored and led by the local accounting powerhouse firm, Perkins & Company. With over 100 software professionals and 30+ SAO volunteers at The Reserve golf course on the outskirts of Aloha, Oregon.

The Tourney was a scramble and I had to contend with incessant smack-talking from the uber-outgoing, affable Dave Sullivan in my foursome. Somehow, thru all that smack-talking, I raised my game (not hard to do when one is as bad of a golfer as I am). Four holes into the match, Sullivan drilled a 75 yarder into the cup for an eagle. The foursome of Sullivan, David Uslan, John Hayden, and I celebrated on the green with a few chest bumps (yes, old men try to act younger with a few beers in them).

A few holes before the end of our play, the golf gods were kind to me. A perennial wicked slicer, I actually hit my drive 270 yards straight down the fairway to about 15 feet on the fringe of the green. As luck would have it, I chose my putter instead of the predictable Pitching Wedge and nailed a 45 foot putt for eagle (first in my life). Ridiculous.

What does this blog post have to do with anything relevant to eROI or the interactive communty? Nothing, other than to say that the Portland software community and SAO in particular is not only alive but thriving. SAO President Matt Nees starts in his role this Monday and we’re back in the saddle again.

The Oregon Software Community ’09

Ryan Buchanan — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 21:34:06 +0000

We just had our Software Association of Oregon (SAO) Membership Committee meeting on Friday (full disclosure: I am on the Board of SAO so I’m a bit biased in favor of the organization). I have to admit, I’m pretty fired up about an important cause we are undertaking. With the help of staffer Bryce Yonker, Vidoop’s Scott Kveton, and ViaWest’s Jim Linkous, we have some serious firepower to get out into the software community in many places where SAO is not (and we know that there are a lot of those places).

Our cause is to engage with software freelancers, engineers, tech entrepreneurs, interactive freelancers, bloggers, mobile app enthusiasts, anyone related to the tech industry in Oregon and let them know that SAO finally has something pretty valuable besides great networking and events – SAO is one of the only associations that now offers Healthcare coverage to single employee companies or organizations – yes, freelancers can finally get affordable medical coverage thru SAO (thanks to Regence Bluecross Blueshield for getting flexible with us to make this happen). When SAO President Harvey Matthews mentioned a year ago that SAO was looking into having this unique health coverage come to fruition at a Bar Camp, he got a standing ovation. Let’s hope that kind of goodwill is still there in the software community in today’s economy. To learn more about the healthcare plan, go to SAO’s site >>.

Here are a few of the events we’ll see you (thanks Scott Kveton for heading the charge on this) – source for these events and more is http://calagator.org:
** Lunch 2.0 – AboutUs
** Ignite Portland 5 – 2/19
* RecentChangesCamp – 2/20 – 2/22
** Lunch 2.0 – OpenSourcery
** Innotech – 4/22 – 4/23
** BarCamp Portland – 5/1 – 5/3
* Webvisions – 5/21 – 5/22
** Open Source Bridge (the OSCON replacement) – 6/17 – 6/19

Also: we will try to make some of the Beer & Blog events that happen every Friday, 4-6pm, at the Green Dragon.

Greenlight Greater Portland – I’m Inspired

Ryan Buchanan — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:43:34 +0000

Yesterday, I joined the Board of Greenlight Greater Portland, an economic development group represented by Portland’s private-sector business community. Greenlight’s goal is to recruit and retain growing companies in the Greater Portland region. I was inspired by Greenlight’s mission and the approachability and competence of the Board – titans of industry in this town – I was inspired to write a thank you email to them last night. It went something like this:

From: Ryan Buchanan
To: Tim Priest ; Mark Ganz ; Malia Wasson ; Eric Parsons ; Pat Reiten ; Peggy Fowler ; Steve Stadum ; Roger Hinshaw ; Bill Stoller ; Bob Jesenik ; Wes Lawrence ; Jim Mark ; Dennis Rawlinson ; Keith Leavitt ; Lindsay Desrochers ; Wally Van Valkenburg ; Don Krahmer ; Alan Johnson ; Randy L. Miller ; Scott Campbell ; John Bradley ; Jay Platt
Sent: Tue Sep 09 23:51:47 2008
Subject: RE: September 9 Greenlight Board Meeting: thank you

I wanted to thank each of you for welcoming me onto the Greenlight Board today. Truly, I’m honored. I knew a few of you before today’s Board meeting, but was really encouraged to meet and connect with many of the rest of you. It goes without saying that it is an incredibly prestigious group of individuals and I’m the young guy in the room – willing to listen, learn, and be mentored. I think my initial role will primarily be the voice of the scrappy entrepreneur who I think is Greenlight’s likely target audience from a company recruitment standpoint. And also, I can be a liason to key partners in the community whether it is SAO, OEN, PAF, PDC or other groups.

But, most importantly, I’m in love with this city, the people, the business community here, its proximity to the awe-inspiring outdoors. We, as Portlanders, define ourselves by what we enjoy doing, not solely by our occupation. It is this powerful emotional connection to the region we represent that differentiates us most from other business communities and I am a huge advocate of bringing that passion, positive energy, and relationship-building to the table so that we collectively can be the magnet that draws and retains “A” talent, innovative entrepreneurs, companies, and entire divisions of companies to and in Portland.

Again, thank you. We all get wrapped up into the hundreds of things happening in our companies, community involvement, and families, but you should all take at least 30 seconds of time to be proud of creating a new organization that has gained significant early traction and will, with its partners in the region, be the driving force behind taking the Portland business community to the next level over the next 10 years.

I almost forgot, I know many of you are inundated with emails, so this will be my only “reply to all” email unless requested.

Thx,

Ryan

Ryan Buchanan | CEO
www.eROI.com | Inc. 500 Company
505 NW Couch, Suite 300, Portland, OR 97209
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