Observation on Portland’s Social Media Groups

I cross over. @unclenate does, too. I’ve seen @justinkistner at SMC events. @caseorganic, @donpdonp, @brampitiyo, @pdxsays, @johnhartman all makes joint appearances. There are many more.

But is there a gap? Yes. Why? It feels like the stakes are higher. That the market is more competitive. More people are vying for attention, to make their presence known. All in all, it’s a good thing. It makes people want to do more, create new stuff. I’m all for that. I think it also comes down to commonalities. Do the parties feel comfortable with each other? In some cases, yes. But in many cases I think not at all. Developers and marketers do mix but the instances of this interaction are infrequent on a social level.

Is that a bad thing? I don’t necessarily think so. As long as there is some cross over, the groups will be loosely tied.

What is the danger? Misunderstanding and accusations that the geeks do not want to interact with the SMC and creative communities. That kind of attitude creates divisions and retorts that the SMC crowd are a bunch of opportunists who just don’t get it.

Both views are bullshit.

Perhaps most of all we just need to get together more, drink more beer, hang out and eat. That would be the Portland thing to do, right?

Hmm…quite an interesting question you raise. If I didn't know you better, I'd think you were trying to stir up some shit It is a valid question, though.

I would agree with your observation. There does tend to be two distinct crowds there, although they do overlap some. I'm not sure that I can say this with much authority, as I have only attended two Social Media Club events. I only recognized a couple of people and it was certainly a more buttoned-up, businessy (is that a word?) crowd. I attend Beer and Blog more often and recognize most everybody, including organizers of SMC. The different settings and each group's overall goals may not be the same, so maybe it's not a fair comparison. Both are basically trying to do the same thing, I believe. They are just using different routes to do it and that's bound to attract different crowds.

Don't read me wrong, it is what it is, neither good nor bad and I like everybody.

There are more crowds than just those two groups, however, I think what you’re getting at is the tech scene compared to the creative scene. BnB tends to be the tech crowd and SMCPDX tends to be the creative crowd. Alex busted out a good list of folks that cross between tech and creative (myself included), but most people hang with one or the other. There is a gap.

My observation is that the gap used to be a chasm. Until recently, we didn’t see a close enough proximity between the two scenes to question why they don’t overlap more. In a complete over generalization of the Portland scene:

Techies want to talk about code, functionality, process etc. They tend to be geeky and want to work on side projects. Techies tend to like open source and aspire for recognition.

Creatives want to talk about design, writing, strategy etc. They tend to be mainstream and want to work on work. Creatives tend to like copyrights and aspire to make money.

It almost comes down to Type A and B personalities that have a hard time relating to each other. But, as tech and creative become more entangled, so do the scenes. I think there will always be extreme ends of the spectrum that don’t associate, but the middle ground where there is crossover is getting bigger.

As a complete newbie who only recently learned about these groups, I’m looking forward to getting to know both camps.

Of course it matters. There should be crossover. Amazing stuff comes out when you put artists & techies together in a room. Creative = ? Some of the most creative people I know are software engineers. I want to take the geek, creative, and tech-y labels, cut ‘em up and toss them in the air and see where they land. I’m an actor & I work in social media. Creative type, right? I fell in w/ Beer & Blog crowd before I ever knew SMC existed (am I not supposed to admit that?) because they were my style. Laid back, fun, but really, really talented. Oh, and I totally saw @MediaChick becoming a multi-media literary phenomenon. Just saying that I saw it coming.