Scott Kveton

Dear Portland: Twitter is cool and I love following all of you. There is something fascinating here and I’d love to work with some (all?!) of you to take it a step further.

I was reading Rick’s post from Friday about Twitter and Portland as well as getting added to Planet PDX (thanks Audrey!) and it got me thinking. These tools are just fantastic for a city like Portland. We’ve got a diverse group of people here, plenty of geeks but also technically savvy people from all walks of life. That diversity is what gets me so excited when I walk down the street, head out to the amazing restaurants or drink that fantastic coffee. When I’m in the Bay Area I only hear “blah blah blah dot com blah blah blah” and honestly, its tiresome. Now, I love the conversation and I’m addicted to it. How could we facilitate this conversation across an even broader group of people in Portland? Why even do this?

Example: today I mentioned something about bacon on Twitter. No biggie. I mentioned wanting to open a restaurant called “Wrapped in Bacon” where you’d be able to get anything on the menu, wrapped in bacon. Now, this was something I’d heard Dave Hersh mention before and today just seemed like a good day to mention it (when isn’t bacon on the brain?!).

Out of it came no less than 12 Tweets from fellow Portlanders curious or with things to share. Some of the highlights include (starting with the most recent):

	davidcosand : @kveton: “Wrapped In Bacon” is a hit in my school’s staff room today. We were going on it for 20 minutes. Thanks! << (2008-01-10 14:57:12)
	rebeckylee : @kveton You’ve probably seen this video then? http://tinyurl.com/23efq7 << (2008-01-10 14:13:34)
	fiveforefun : hmmm… i wonder if cafe yumm has any dishes that include bacon? (thanks A LOT @kveton and @Seeger!) << (2008-01-10 14:10:32)
	stadler : @kveton http://blog.cockahoop.com/e… — My experience with bacon chocolate chip cookies. << (2008-01-10 14:08:42)
	mattg : @kveton Thanks. Now I’m hungry. << (2008-01-10 14:07:10)
	samnagle : @kveton “Wrapped in Bacon” best idea I’ve heard so far in 2008 << (2008-01-10 13:52:54)
	cshields : @kveton nom nom nom http://tinyurl.com/3y8mjx << (2008-01-10 13:38:58)
	huslage : @kveton AMEN! << (2008-01-10 13:37:04)

Okay, so big deal, right? A bunch of people just talking random things about bacon. I think this is a big deal. What’s fascinating to me is that I currently follow 637 people most of whom are right here in river city. I also have 379 followers. Now, it was interesting that because of the wide number of people I follow, I was able to see a number of responses that didn’t over lap for other people. I was able to help unify the conversation by sharing and republishing interesting comments (like the ones above) back out to the people that follow me.

I’ve taken it upon myself (for no real reason really) to start following as many folks in Portland as I can find. I’m using Matt King’s TwitterWhere application to make it happen. Now, I’m wondering, can we take this a step further? I want to follow everybody in Portland and also give the tools for others to do the same. Maybe a web page with a feed of all of the latest updates within 50 miles of Portland as well as a button that allows me to “Follow Portland” that adds everybody in Portland to my “Following” list (note: I’m not sure Twitter is too keen on this). Could we just have this be a part of a really, really noise Planet PDX?!

Well, I’m going to ante up the domain pulseofpdx.com as a place to host something like this. I have no idea if folks would be interested in doing something like this but I’d love the help to make something really, really unique … heck, as unique as Portland itself. You know where to find me if you’re interested!