Techstars Startup Week Portland 2019

Websitehttp://KnowledgeMavens.org
DescriptionSunil Rao will be presenting part II on his research of SNOTEL data using the time series prediction. In this session, Sunil will talk more about his Scala code and visualizations.

Here is the video from his last session. https://youtu.be/eeZAyUtFD1E

Drought is a serious problem in much of the U.S., with the worst conditions across the southern and western parts of the nation. Much of irrigation and recreation facilities depend on proper forecasting of streamflow. The water supply for irrigation largely comes from rivers and creeks, whose streamflow originates from the springtime melting of winter snow. A water supply forecast is a prediction of streamflow volume that will flow past a point on a stream during a specified season, typically in the spring and summer. One of the primary sources for the data is through NRCS SNOTEL( Snow Telemetry) data (available to the public as part of tax dollars at work). In this demo, we showcase one such tool (Timeseries ARIMAX model) to forecast Streamflow volume for Deschutes River Basin, OR and later compare with actual data to see how it performed.

ALL WELCOME
If you cannot join in person, join us online with Zoom at https://zoom.us/j/7891236789.

Do you want to learn and share your passion in a supportive community? Knowledge Mavens is an ethos of sharing, creativity, and inspiration.

Our Meetup provides an opportunity to "Show and Tell" followed by feedback and Q&A. You'll have the opportunity to share with our channels such as Meetup, GitHub, YouTube, and Facebook to connect with more passionate people.

The second half of our session we'll collaborate on new topics. The winner wins the most interesting topic and the opportunity to share in an upcoming session.

A discussion about the current state of Artificial Intelligence

• Current amazing applications
• Where much of the investment capital is being spent
• The potential power of AI beyond super-intelligence
• Some examples of why super-intelligent AI is also one of humanities biggest challenges

Followed by a lively Q&A session.

Contact Jon Down (down@up.edu) for parking pass and other session info.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-susan-crawford-author-of-fiber-about-fiber-optics-in-us-tickets-59127336455

An educational and fun event to learn about fiber optics and America's digital future with a reading and Q&A with Susan Crawford, author of "Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution―and Why America Might Miss It".

Light refreshments from 6-6:30pm, author reading and Q&A from 6:30-7:30pm, and networking and book signing from 7:30-8pm.

This is a family-friendly event and all are welcome.

Personally author signed copies of "Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution―and Why America Might Miss It" book will be for sale for $30.

Hosted by Municipal Broadband PDX, Make + Think + Code and the Digital Commonwealth Alliance.

Join us for the first time ever in Bumped’s new office—it's so new in fact, that it’s still under construction—for drinks, snacks, and conversation about the startups that are building exciting momentum in PDX! No hard hat required.
Our panel of companies who are either new to the scene or fresh off a big round of funding include:

Sce Pike, CEO & Founder, IOTAS — $6.5M raised
Lance Charlish, CEO & Co-Founder, Circle Media Labs — $20M Series B
James McDermott, CEO & Co-Founder, Lytics — $35M Series C
David Nelsen, CEO & Co-Founder, Bumped — Launched in 2018, $19M Series A

Moderator TBD

Don’t miss the chance to hear directly from the folks that are poised to impact the local tech scene in a big way!

When: Tuesday April 2nd, 5:30-7:30pm
Where: Bumped HQ: 111 SW 5th Ave Suite 300
5:30: Event opens
6:00-6:30pm: Panel
6:30-6:45pm: Q&A
6:45-7:30pm: Mix, mingle, and toast to PDX tech!

https://www.meetup.com/Bumped-Tech-Events/events/259481043/

https://www.meetup.com/Portland-HashiCorp-User-Group/events/259533109/

Agenda:

• 6pm-6:30pm Arrive and mingle - Enjoy food and beverages
• 6:30pm-7:00pm "Intelligent decisions about cloud usage with Cloudability’s FinOps platform" presented by Patrick Zumar- Senior SE @ Cloudability
• A new operating model for the cloud, called FinOps, is emerging that enables a shift — a combination of systems, best practices and culture — to increase an organization’s ability to understand cloud costs and make tradeoffs. In the same way that DevOps revolutionized development by breaking down silos and increasing agility, FinOps increases the business value of cloud by bringing together technology, business and finance professionals with a new set of processes.
• FinOps has several fundamental building blocks we’ve seen high performing organizations put in place to gain competitive advantage. Patrick Zumar will share what we’ve learned from guiding hundreds of large and small cloud adopters on their journey to adopt FinOps.
• 7:00pm-7:30pm "Reducing Cost & Risk via Automation with Terraform on AWS" presented by Chris Dunlap- Sr. Solution Engineer @ HashiCorp
• Terraform is a tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently. This talk will focus on how customers can leverage Terraform to eliminate unnecessary cloud spend by 30-40% and reduce risk by baking guardrails and best practices into their automation.
• 7:30pm-8pm Networking

https://www.meetup.com/FlutterPDX/events/259703291/

It's been a few busy months but we are back at it again with some exciting events in April. This time, please join Mikhai Tokarev, Devops engineer at Nevercode for an exciting talk on CI for Flutter.

This talk is brought to you in a join meetup with Google Development Group (GDG) PDX - https://www.meetup.com/Google-Development-Group-GDG-PDX-Meetup/events/259710549.

Mikhail will talk about out of the box CI solutions for your Flutter projects. Codemagic is a free dedicated CI/CD service for Flutter. It was announced during Flutter Live in December 2018 and has been growing and innovating ever since. Mikhail Tokarev will demonstrate how to set up and configure workflows in Codemagic for publishing your Flutter apps to the app store and play store. Tips and custom scripts that showcase how developers have been using Codemagic will also be covered and you will learn how to use different flavors in deployment.

Mikhail has worked as devops engineer for over 5 years. He is passionate about introducing devops practices into the development process in different teams. He joined Nevercode over a year ago and now leads architecture design of both Nevercode and Codemagic. He first saw Flutter in 2018 after Droidcon in Berlin and is excited about helping mobile developers around the world with seamless CI/CD experiences.

Light food and soft drinks will be provided by our generous sponsor: eBay.

Finally, a huge thanks to Jake Hall for making this event happen.

Pizza & beer starting at 6pm!

PRESENTATIONS - 7pm-8:30pm

• Code for PDX ~ Arthur Smid
• Code for PDX is a local chapter of Code for America. Arthur will tell us about the interesting work they are doing for the Portland Clean Energy Fund and other projects for the public good.
• Recyclable Cache Keys in Rails ~ Jared Mooney
• Ruby on Rails has powerful caching features and Jared is going to share some of the insight he learned about managing cache keys on a recent project.
• How Can We Handle Errors? ~ Mike Calhoun

Most of the time, exceptions and errors are the last thing we want to put substantial thought into and are often addressed in that order. We tend to not want to think hard about how things could go wrong. However, from traditional apps to APIs or ArgumentErrors to NameErrors, handling exceptions gracefully is crucial to healthy applications. Let’s take a closer look at the Ruby Exception library and some strategies for catching and handling errors. We will look at what happens when exceptions are handled too well or not well enough. We will also take a closer look at the types of exceptions you can expect and where you can expect them. Lastly we’ll explore some examples for exception handling and testing in common rails application contexts.

https://www.meetup.com/PADNUG/events/jscxtmyzgbdb/

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/finnovation-pdx-tickets-58379978086

Portland Startup Week begins April 1 (no joke!), and Sila will be hosting a conference in the middle of all the events.

Finnovation PDX is a chance for the FinTech community - its leaders, employees, investors, supporters, and customers - to come together, deepen connections, celebrate wins, and share lessons and insights.

The event will be broken up into 4 thought-provoking segments:

• VC & Investment - How are VCs viewing the rise of FinTech startups, especially blockchain and crypto-specific businesses?
• Consumers - With pioneering companies like Simple leading the way, how has the consumer experience around banking, finance, and FinTech evolved?
• Product + Engineering - What kinds of tools and resources are changing how FinTech products get made?
• Founders - The experience of building and scaling a FinTech company is radically different than it was 10 years ago. How are founders changing their approach?

Following the event please join us at the Portland City Grill (30th Floor of the U.S. Bancorp Tower) for Happy Hour, and Sila's Beta Launch!

Agenda:

• 11:30 - Lunch, mingle, grab a seat
• 12:00 - Kick off keynote with Matt Compton
• 12:20 - VC & Investment Panel: The Investor’s Perspective. Featuring moderator Matt Compton & panelists Hope Cochran, Geoff Harris, & Stephen Green
• 1:10 - Consumer Panel: Evolution of the Consumer Experience. Featuring moderator Josh Reich & panelists Randy Fernando, Melissa Geyer, Andy Van Oostrum, & Amy Pearl
• 2:00 - Grab a snack and check out the demo of Sila’s brand spanking new beta!
• 2:15 - Product Panel: FinTech Product Innovation. Featuring moderator Shamir Karkal & panelists Ian Collins, Laura Spiekerman & Angela Angelovska-Wilson
• 3:05 - Founders Panel: Scaling a Fintech Company. Featuring moderator Kasey Jones & panelists David Nelsen, Alexandra Horrigan, & Isaac Hines
• 4:10 - Final Talk with David Nelsen
• 5pm - Finnovation Happy Hour & Sila Beta Launch Party!!!

Meet the Speakers & Panelists:

David Nelsen, Bumped
David Nelsen: Founder & CEO at Bumped, David leads the first ever FinTech company to leverage stock ownership to build one-to-one relationships between brands and their customers. Prior to Bumped, David was CEO and co-founder of Giftango, a digital payments company that brought the digital gift card to market for many of the largest global brands.

Laura Spiekerman, Alloy
Laura Spiekerman: Co-founder & CRO at Alloy, where she builds APIs for financial services to manage identity verification from signup through the life of the customer. Laura also has over 8 years of experience in the financial world, including advanced work with mobile payments at Knox Payments & Kopo Kopo.

Andy Van Oostrum, Cognigy
Andy Van Oostrum: VP of North American Sales at Cognigy, a conversational AI platform, Andy enables the partner ecosystem and drives client engagement in the categories of both voice and text virtual assistants. Andy is also a digital strategist, and largely sits at the intersection of marketing and technology. He worked in the Sitecore ecosystem for 10 years, and has held board positions at the American Marketing Association, Portland Advertising Federation, and SOLVE.

Melissa Geyer, Seed
Melissa Geyer: CXO at Seed, a business banking startup based in Portland, Melissa builds and scales customer experience-driven FinTech support teams. She also worked previously at consumer bank Simple, where she served as Director of Customer Relations for the startup as it launched.

Geoff Harris, Flying Fish
Geoff Harris: Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Flying Fish, a Venture Capital firm based in Seattle. Geoff also serves on the Seattle Angel Board of Directors, a non-profit with a mission of educating both entrepreneurs and potential angel investors, and is heavily involved in promoting angel investing within Seattle in an effort to grow the funding ecosystem for local startups. Prior to his work in investing Geoff spent 15 years at Microsoft in Engineering Leadership and Executive Leadership positions.

Alexandra Horigan, Aspiration
Alexandra Horigan: Founding team member & VP of Strategic Initiatives at Aspiration, a socially conscious financial firm. Prior to Aspiration, Alexandra spent half a decade on Wall Street in sales, and as a broker for Intercontinental Exchange and Cantor Fitzgerald. Alexandra is a graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder, a former competitive skier, and most importantly, a mom to two boys.

Amy Pearl, seedpay
Amy Pearl: Director of Community Develpment at seedpay, a financial services social enterprise that leverages blockchain technology to strengthen communities. Previously Amy was founder and CEO of Hatch Innovation, where she helped launch new local investing laws to promote community capital. She believes in working upstream to develop new tools for positive disruption.

Matt Compton, Oregon Venture Fund
Matt Compton: General Partner at Oregon Venture Fund, Matt's been an active startup investor and advisor in Oregon for the past decade. Previously he held various product, partnership, and marketing leadership roles at Yahoo! during their rapid growth period from 2002 to 2007. In 2008, he began investing with the Oregon Angel Fund, and has also served on the boards of several early and growth stage companies, including Jama and Simple Financial - currently Matt is on the board of REI.

Isaac Hines, Sila
Isaac Hines: Co-founder & COO at Sila, Isaac also has 20 years of experience in the energy sector, where Isaac served as finance director and general manager and oversaw upwards of $200m in projects.

Angela Angelovska-Wilson, Sila
Angela Angelovska-Wilson: Co-founder & CLO at Sila, Angela also plays a major role in the world of blockchain technology regulations as a lawyer at DLx Law in New York City. She has an extensive wealth of experience in law, and serves as a CCO for Digital Asset Holdings LLC.

Shamir Karkal, Sila
Shamir Karkal: Co-founder & CEO at Sila, Shamir was also co-founder of Simple, a Portland-based bank that is digital-only, with no physical branches. He also managed the development of Open APIs at BBVA and was an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Omidyar Network.

Kasey Jones, BetterGrowth
Kasey Jones: Founding partner at BetterGrowth, a growth strategy agency that helps early-stage B2B companies accelerate revenue growth. Kasey also has extensive experience in sales and marketing in Portland, having worked at Keboola, Postano, and Good Data.

Randy Fernando: Managing Director at Acorns
Hope Cochran: Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group
Ian Collins: Senior Product Designer at Acorns
Josh Reich: Co-Founder & former CEO at Simple
Stephen Green: Director of Operations at PENSOLE

Want to grow your business and make connections in the food & beverage industry? We can help. OEN’s Angel Food Conference and Education Series 2019 is a great way to:

• Connect with experts in food and beverage across both vertical and horizontal markets 
• Get deep-dive education on pitching, product development, market strategies, and scaling your business 
• Present to hundreds of investors and business leaders interested in the food & beverage sector There’s a lot that goes into pitching your business to a room full of investors, but the first step is taking the time to put together a thoughtful application.

At our April 3 info session, OEN staff and active investors will provide an overview of OEN’s Angel Food Conference and Education Series 2019, including eligibility requirements and new funding opportunities.

We will also walk you through Gust, the application and evaluation platform we use, and show you how to most effectively make your case to investors.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/advertising-and-pr-tips-tricks-for-female-founders-happy-hour-tickets-59485701334

Are you a startup founder who wants to learn more about when you need an agency or how to properly engage with one?

Join us for this power hour panel focused on advertising and PR basics to get off the ground. Enjoy a happy hour celebrating women entrepreneurship and absorb over 30+ years of experience in the advertising and PR space.

• Happy Hour 5-6PM
• Panel 6-6:45PM

You’ll be hearing from our distinguished panel:

• Jane Crisan, President & COO, R2C Group - Jane Crisan has worked for more than 30 years in technology, digital marketing, and traditional advertising. Jane’s deep experience from her agency leadership positions in Detroit and New York City is a critical addition to the women-led C-suite at R2C Group, where she runs the day-to-day operations of the agency. Her focus at the agency is advancing offerings and products focused on audience targeting, media measurement, and overall campaign effectiveness.
• Sara Moorthy, Chief Strategy Officer, Leavened - Sara is an Integrated Marketing and Marketing Analytics Specialist. Sara leads the strategy group at Leavened with more than 20 years of experience in performance marketing, media, and data analytics. Sara helps her clients develop strategic marketing plans, design marketing infrastructures to support the measurement of marketing, and establish tools for campaign measurement.
• Evie Smith, Founder, Rebellious PR & Consulting - Evie Smith founded Rebellious after almost a decade working for traditional PR agencies on the West Coast. Rebellious was founded with the principles that the client-agency relationship would be a true partnership, the work would be thoughtful, the standards would be high and the overall approach to PR would be BS-free. Evie has a passion for working with underrepresented founders and thinks about ways to overthrow the patriarchy on a daily basis.
• Moderator: Deb Weekley, Connective Energy - Deb has a rich background in positioning, strategic communications, team/leader development and consumer insights with an eye for market potential and inclusion. She believes that positive business results emerge from an engaged, inspired and prepared team. Her leadership and talent acquisition/development experiences in rapid-growth companies like R2C Group, W+K, and Nike resulted in a unique perspective to help clients create positioning and high-performing team environments. She believes that good company communication requires you to understand your own lens and preferences + learn how to respect those different than yours.

R2C Group - R2C Group links strategy, creative and production with state-of-the-art audience targeting, dynamic media buying and advanced analytics to deliver on sales and branding goals simultaneously, without compromise. We believe that all brand behaviors are important and the way a brand sells is key to how it is perceived. That’s why we created Transactional Brand Building.

Rebellious PR & Consulting - Rebellious PR & Consulting was founded in early 2016 by industry vet Evie Smith with the notion and knowledge that there was a better way to do PR. Everything from agency structure to account management has been dissected and turned on its head to create a PR agency that actually works. We are Rebellious because our clients are disruptive to their industries. We love to work with defiant founders who make their own lanes to create revolutionary work. We love working with women-founded, people of color-founded, and LGBTQ+ founded companies because this is who we are.

https://www.meetup.com/CHIFOO-Computer-Human-Interaction-Forum-of-Oregon/events/259302256/

Smart Cities: Design Thinking and New Technologies that Seek to Address the Wicked Problems of Everyday Life with Ann Marcus!

In the early days of technology, humans molded themselves to technology and went where it resided. Now tech is coming to us in nearly everything we own and do. It’s learning how to mold to and around us individually and as part of communities and gather data at every turn. Is that a good thing? Yes. And No. We’ll look at the phenomenon of Smart Cities, how they are defined, why they’re arising and how they serve as a framework for understanding how our daily lives are (overtly and insidiously) being changed in ways we never imagined. As citizens and design thinkers what role do/should we play in how the latest smart cities technologies–sensors, cameras, platforms, aggregation and analytics algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence–transform how we live, work, play, learn, love, see, move, engage and understand our world–and how it understands us? I’ll tell you what I know and then let’s discuss!

About the Speaker

Ann Marcus is an accomplished strategist who has conducted research, content development and communications consulting–for organizations ranging from start-ups to enterprise–on the challenges and opportunities at intersection of people and technology. Ann was with Cisco Systems for the past 11 years, where she was initially recruited to help develop an interactive learning and collaboration site for the Cisco Certification community. She stayed on for 5 years providing information architecture, UX design, content development and community management services. In 2013, Ann joined the Cisco Smart+Connected Communities team–initially having developed a similar interactive site–but later moved into the role of executive communications lead and engagements manager for the organization’s senior VP. She left Cisco at the end of 2018 to explore new opportunities and undertake social/community development and projects in Portland, across the US and overseas. Ann sits on the leadership team for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Global City Team Challenge (GCTC) Education Supercluster and participates in the Transportation Supercluster centered here in Portland. Ann does yoga and Zumba, has annoying cats, loves to travel, speaks Spanish and has been a member of CHIFOO for a really long time!

https://chifoo.org/smart-citiesapril-3-2019/

Meeting Details
5:30 - 6:30: CHIFOOd and Registration: Please join us before the meeting to enjoy dinner and networking. Food and beverages will be available for $5.

6:30 - 8:00: CHIFOO program starts at 6:30pm.
This meeting is free for CHIFOO Members & $5.00 for non-CHIFOO Members. Become a member today at chifoo.org. Raffle Tickets are $1.00 for two (available at door during Registration).

Please note: CHIFOO wants to make sure that each meeting is a great experience for everyone. If you need an accommodation to help you better enjoy CHIFOO meetings and events please let our CHIFOO Programs Chair know how we can help a few days prior to CHIFOO event.

Curated speakers bring their stories to the main stage; workshops bolster their messaging with intimate gatherings; parties draw you together to network and mingle; the demo floor boasts the coolest new gadgets; and PitchfestNW showcases the best and brightest startups from all over the world.

https://www.meetup.com/ProductTank_Portland/events/259938612/

We'll have two 20-minute talks, each followed by 10 minutes of Q&A. We'll have plenty of time at the start and end of the meetup for tasty beverages and networking.

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Using Wireframes to Communicate Product Vision
Amy King, Software Product Manager at Digimarc
Over the past year, I learned how designing, creating, and sharing wireframes greatly facilitate communication both for the overall product vision that impacts multiple teams, and prepping smaller product features for engineers. For product managers that did not have a graphics background like me, "design" is an intimidating skill to tackle, but one that is valuable when working with engineers, designers, and marketing teams. In this presentation, I will share:

1) How I got started
2) A couple examples of how I used wireframes to align multiple teams to work towards the same product vision
3) Recommendations and pros/cons of different wireframing software to help people get started

Amy King is a software product manager. she likes learning about different industries and how people use technology in their jobs, then figure out how her team can build software to help people be more efficient with their work
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Supercharging User Engagement by Supporting Autonomy: Practical Motivation Science for Product Managers
Jahed Momand, Head of Product Management at Conversa Health
The talk of the town in theories of behavior change in technology center on centuries old behaviorism, such as BJ Fogg's Behavior Model or Nir Eyal's Hook Model.

But, what if you're trying to precipitate a user behavior that's complex? That happens over long time domains? That isn't immediately rewardable?

How do you support users in finding the motivation to interact with your product, when push notifications just won't do the trick?

I'll talk about how we applied the science of motivation, Edward Deci's self-determination theory, to product design at Conversa Health, for outsized gains in patient engagement, retention, and NPS.
Jahed heads up the product team at Conversa Health, an automated care management chatbot for health systems, leading them to successful A and B rounds of funding during his tenure.
Before, he led the product growth team at Zoomcare, where he increased revenue and visits 240% over 18 rapid fire months, leading up to their acquisition by Peace Health.
Before that he worked with Dan Ariely of Predictably Irrational fame on applying behavioral economics to projects within Google, and worked in the adtech industry applying behavioral science to ad units (he's not proud of this work).

Way before then, he played poker professionally for a few years after grad school, where he completed an MS in Physics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Curated speakers bring their stories to the main stage; workshops bolster their messaging with intimate gatherings; parties draw you together to network and mingle; the demo floor boasts the coolest new gadgets; and PitchfestNW showcases the best and brightest startups from all over the world.

PLEASE NOTE THE LOCATION CHANGE: We will be at Tilt Eastside.

Built Oregon is currently accepting applications for the Built Accelerator, a nonprofit startup accelerator focused on accelerating consumer product companies. If you have any questions about the accelerator, feel free to join Built and your peers to get those questions answered.

Following the question and answer session, we'll plan to have a casual happy hour in the neighborhood.

Need more info? http://www.builtoregon.com/accelerator/