Seriously though, some good comments but maybe overanalyzing it just a little. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. Let’s just get more people @beerandblog (though it was already uber-packed last week) and call it good!

What we are trying to accomplish with Thrive is to further unify the Portland tech community. We want to get people who don’t usually come together at events to come to ThrivePDX. Ultimately, we want companies in Portland working together, hiring each other, and making the Portland economy stronger. I’d like to see Portland companies working together with local independents and freelancers.

Too many people are facing tough times, the economy sucks, and some cool local companies have cut jobs. We’re trying to make the community stronger in any way we can. Please try to keep this in mind when considering future ThrivePDX events.

Also, between Lunch 2.0, Tweetup breakfasts, Beer and Blog, Ignite, etc, the calendar is pretty frickin’ packed as regards the “more meetings” that were called for a couple times in the “shout your ideas out randomly” phase of that… whatever that was.

Aaron, I think your point about SAO showing up at “existing community” events AND allowing the “existing community” access to SAO events (if any) is a good one. But it would really have to go both ways in order to bridge the two groups.

Finally, I agree that additional centralized leadership is probably not needed. However, people who are coming from the corporate mindset may have hard time seeing that. I worked with a volunteer team in the Girl Scout organization that honestly didn’t have a single leader or even a leadership team. When we started talking to the council executives, they totally couldn’t understand that. It was beyond their comprehension. The funny thing is that it was the Girl Scout program (which most of us had grown up in) that had taught us to ALL be leaders, and to work together!

I kid, I kid.

I didn’t attend, partly because when I read the initial description of the event I didn’t see what the point was.

It was billed as a way to bring together the old, traditional technology companies with the young, independent, 2.0-ish community.

Do these communities want/need to be brought together?

I don’t know the answer, honestly…I’m just say’n.

As much noise as we try to make about what we’re doing, some folks have absolutely no idea how vibrant the non-SAO tech community is.

So when they say “Why don’t we do this?” we say, “You mean like we’re already doing?”

So yes, not more events but rather more diverse participation at existing events. I think that’s something in which we all have an interest.

That’s part of my inspiration for trying to bridge this gap. I think all of the pieces are already here. (And obviously I’m biased to the work that the non-SAO community has already done.)

I didn’t expect the more formal “speech and testify” portion of the event to occur, but I think they just went with the vibe. I can’t fault them for that. At that point, I just had to shrug and get all utilitarian. Not my cup of tea, but it was clearly working for a large part of the group.

Someday, I hope “ThrivePDX: The Lost Chapters” surfaces so we can see what you had composed.