Scott Kveton

I follow 702 people and its a lot of information to process. Raven Zachary asked me the criteria I use to follow people. Its pretty simple; if you’re interesting and I’ve found you, I let serendipity reign and follow. I’ve also very recently taken to following every person I can find in Portland, OR (more on that in a moment).

Okay great, now I’m following all of these people; how do you sort through it all? The first tool I use is Tweetscan which is a real-time Twitter search engine. Yes, its really real-time. I can search for my name and see who has tried to @message me. I can also look up interesting memes like Heath Ledger and OpenID. My favorite feature is the email alerts for specific search strings delivered to you daily. Again, I do this for my username to make sure I didn’t miss something directed at me and then can reply accordingly.

Now a lot of these features can be done with Twitter’s mobile features but honestly, I don’t use SMS with Twitter (thankfully I’m a faithful m.twitter.com user) and with the new limit on 250 SMS messages, it wouldn’t make sense anyways.

Another application I use to find what’s what in my area is Twitterwhere (the other one). This is a cool application written by Matt King that gives you tweets within a certain mileage of your listed location in Twitter. There are RSS feeds along with a slick Adobe AIR app to go along with it. I’ve used this to stalk … err … find all of the people I’ve been following in Portland. It was also the application that got me thinking about starting pulseofpdx.com.

Go ahead. Just try and describe the great city of Portland in a word. I dare ya. I double dog dare ya.

Here’s the problem; you just can’t do it. Its impossible.

I’ve been working with a few folks on pulseofpdx.com and one of the things I wanted to do was whip up a t-shirt (how can you not have a t-shirt for an as-yet-completed website?!) that would help get people fired up at the next Ignite Portland. I figured a few words on the back, maybe 4 or so, in big, bold letters and then on the front something like “Follow the pulseofpdx.com”. (Bear in mind I’m open to suggestions on this). Where else would I turn for the pulse then to Twitter? Here is what I found (newest first):

	voiceofra : @kveton liberal neohippies are more PDXer terms << (2008-01-15 20:08:02)
	Zolotkey : @kveton Diversity is what PDX in one word could be. :) << (2008-01-15 19:26:56)
	RobHayes : @kveton microbeer, gore tex, quadrant-ed, slow food, self-evangelizing, voodoo doughnuts << (2008-01-15 19:15:49)
	aziari : @kveton my contribution to add to the mix: progressive. eclectic. sustainable. << (2008-01-15 19:09:13)
	JefftheGreat : @kveton: silicon forest, liquid sunshine, non-californians, Idaho’s Portugel, flanel, tree, ducks, subaru, medical mary jane, liberal, etc << (2008-01-15 19:07:26)
	bryce : @kveton webfeet? << (2008-01-15 19:05:17)
	slyness : @kveton keep it simple, ‘local geek culture’ is enough. what if nongeeks in pdx what to be part of the pulse. local tweet culture? << (2008-01-15 18:59:10)
	jabancroft : @kveton Not all Portland geeks are tree hugging greenies. Just be careful with that brush you’re painting with. ;-) << (2008-01-15 18:58:36)
	Seeger : @kveton open source, bike-friendly, fleece-and-gortex fashion, left-leaning, latte-swilling… Looking forward to drinks Thursday! << (2008-01-15 18:55:37)
	sparkwatson : @kveton DIY? Grass Rootsy? << (2008-01-15 18:54:20)
	Zolotkey : @kveton independent << (2008-01-15 17:26:36)
	metafluence : @kveton pioneers << (2008-01-15 17:26:11)
	spinnerin : @kveton I like ‘hippie geek’ to describe Portland, personally. << (2008-01-15 16:59:24)
	sarahgilbert : @kveton: community. definitely not ‘weird,’ because the whole ‘keep pdx weird’ thing originated in austin, which makes it seem like cheating << (2008-01-15 16:38:08)
	cookingupastory : @kveton idk if one word can do it. bliss? pdx has it all. << (2008-01-15 16:35:26)
	windley : @kveton wet << (2008-01-15 16:31:54)
	samnagle : @kveton organic, green, autonomous, natural, Innovative, Original. I guess that wasn’t one word. << (2008-01-15 16:30:29)
	slyness : @kveton “local geek culture” could be Twitter LGC or just the fact that three words are better than four. kick that hippy to the floor. << (2008-01-15 16:12:40)
	JefftheGreat : @kveton drop the word “hippy” << (2008-01-15 16:12:12)
	slyness : @kveton pdx’ers are weird not hippy. << (2008-01-15 16:10:29)
	mtrichardson : @kveton @samnagle or maybe just ‘portland geeks’ – doesn’t portland connate hippie well enough already? << (2008-01-15 16:02:05)
	sarahgilbert : @kveton: ‘local free-range geek culture’? << (2008-01-15 16:01:44)
	slyness : @kveton drop the word hippy << (2008-01-15 16:01:37)
	samnagle : @kveton maybe just “hippy geek” << (2008-01-15 16:01:00)

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Okay, so if you’re still reading … wow … bravo to you. That’s a lot of dialog. Here’s the thing … I can’t figure out 4 words that describe Portland. I can find 4 words that do it for me (if you’re playing a long from home they are “local hippie geek culture”) but what about everybody else?! Not everybody wants ‘ducks’ or ‘hippie’ or even ‘geek’ for their 4 words. Darn it. What then is the Pulse of Portland?! Well, that’s easy. Its something different for everybody. That’s what makes Portland such the independent, free-range, local, hippie, geek, culture, art, eclectic, progressive, sustainable, silicon forest, liquid sunshine, non-californians, Idaho’s Portugel, flanel, tree, ducks, subaru, medical mary jane, liberal, microbeer, gore tex, quadrant-ed, roasted, distilled, brewed, slow food, self-evangelizing, voodoo doughnuts, webfeet, wet, organic, green, autonomous, natural, innovative, original and blissful place that it is.

The solution? Look for a feature on the site in the near future that lets you choose-your-own-adventure when it comes to your Pulse of PDX t-shirt. Your color of shirt. Your 4 words. All of it the Pulse of PDX. As my father-in-law is known for saying: we have the technology.

Man I love this city.

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!

Was reading the Twitter blog today and they had a post about being able to track actual concepts within Twitter. How freakin’ cool!!

What if we started a theme around the three letter codes for airports? In my case, I’d love to be able to track anything with PDX in it … I’d love to know (when I’m in town and free) what folks are up to especially in the evening. Doing something cool? Twitter it with the keyword PDX … then those tracking that will see it. Genius! One love!! All that! :-)

Hope to see you on Twitter everybody and if you haven’t added me yet, I’m kveton on Twitter (filed in the ‘duh’ category).

Came in this morning to discover there was an Earthquake in San Francisco 4 hours earlier … how did I find out? Well Twitter of course … :-)

Clearly it was a largish quake as folks like Tantek, Kristopher and Blaine all live in downtown SFO … we even get the actual size at 4.1. Is it me or are traditional news mediums dead?! Now if only I had enough friends across the globe and an unlimited amount of time to watch their feeds I’d never need to read Google news again … haha … :-)

Update: And of course there is a stinkin’ earthquake user on Twitter too … geez. And of course Scoble breaks a story about Twitter and earthquakes long, long ago.