Advertisers, Marketers, and the Portland “Tech” Scene

Via the Silicon Florist, I see the latest iteration of Portland’s Lunch 2.0 events will be held at the end of the month at Wieden+Kennedy. Unlike previous Lunch 2.0 events, which have been fairly informal and open events, this one sounds quite structured, with attendees being required to pick up a “ticket package” in person during a three-hour period two weeks prior to the event. Huh? Even Ticketmaster has more flexibility, and I see that at least one commenter over on the Silicon Florist post is noting things seem amiss.

Have we strayed from this being an open, informal tech event? I have no stake in Lunch 2.0 other than as an observer and participant, but as I noted last month, it seems there’s a huge influx of marketers, advertisers, PR personnel, and other non-tech types into the Portland “tech” scene lately. It’s not inherently a bad thing… but with the influx of non-tech folks into the formerly-technical events, is the tech community going to be restricted to language-specific user groups?

Heck, even Ignite Portland 3, organized by the Legion of Tech, is almost entirely devoid of technical content. It’s great there’s a creative scene… but what happened to the tech scene?


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