Podcast appearances and mentions of pearl district

Vince discusses Atrium Health's new Pearl District that is a part of the new Wake Forest Medical School campus. Also, Vince is joined by a guest who gives their view of Pride Month as a gay man.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this spooky and delightfully unhinged episode, we're joined by “extra special” guests Shea & Jody from Rainy Day Rabbit Holes to explore the strange history and haunted happenings of Portland's Crystal Hotel, a pizza-slice-shaped building with a century of stories baked in.Located in the Pearl District, this vibrant, music-themed boutique hotel—now owned by McMenamins—has a rich and colorful past. It's been everything from an auto parts store and a hotspot for underground gambling, to a string of lively nightclubs and a men's-only subterranean bathhouse. Today, thanks to its significance as a safe and social space for Portland's LGBTQ+ community, it can be found on the National Register of Historic Places.Whether you're into true crime, paranormal encounters, or offbeat local history, this episode has something for you. Don't miss this deep dive into one of Portland's most fascinating hotels!Visit our website! Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Patreon, & more! If you have any true crime, paranormal, or witchy stories you'd like to share with us & possibly have them read (out loud) on an episode, email us at pnwhauntsandhomicides@gmail.com or use this link. There are so many ways that you can support the show: BuyMeACoffee, Spreaker, or by leaving a rating & review on Apple Podcasts. Sources

Presented by City Club of Portland, with support from AARP Oregon, Fight Against Sex Trafficking, Neil Kelly, and City Cast Portland.City Club is a member-led and member-supported 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Join or donate to City Club and support the spaces where community and leadership meet.On May 2, 2025, City Club of Portland's Built Environment Issue Committee hosted Rx for Central City Livability: Applying Past Successes at the University Place Hotel and Conference Center. The program explored how Portland's history of visionary public infrastructure—from the Transit Mall to the Pearl District—can inform the city's next chapter of growth and revitalization.The conversation brought together leaders who have helped shape some of Portland's most transformative projects. Together, they reflected on the role of catalytic investments, cross-sector collaboration, and community vision in creating a more livable Central City.Program speakers included: Earl Blumenauer, former U.S. Congressman and Presidential Fellow at the Institute for Portland Metropolitan Studies at Portland State University Michael Alexander, Board Chair for Albina Vision Trust Tiffany Sweitzer, President of Hoyt Street Properties Art Pearce, Deputy Director of Planning, Projects and Program for Portland Bureau of Transportation

Pure Project has been around, and now they have come to the Pacific NW to serve up their recently brewed beers at Function PDX. This week we review the latest at their Pearl District location. JP is back from New Orleans with some interesting things to report about the scene there. Damian goes over the latest the menu and in the Brew News, Bronwyn loves beignets, and John tries a rum raisin beer. Join us for lip smacking good beers at one our favorite places here on this episode of Brew Happy!

Pete Colt is a retired marketing professional who lives in the northwest Portland neighborhood known as Stadiumhood. Stadiumhood is located in the southeast corner of the Alphabet District, the northeast corner of Goose Hollow, and it shares a border with the Pearl District and downtown Portland. Pete talks about how Stadiumhood has been plagued by drugs and crime and how he and his neighbors have banded together to try to make Stadiumhood more safe and livable. https://katu.com/news/local/fentanyl-hotspot-near-providence-park-has-neighbors-calling-for-larger-police-presencehttps://stadiumhood.orghttps://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2024/10/multnomah-county-chair-garners-lowest-approval-rating-for-a-local-elected-official-in-recent-memory.html?outputType=amphttps://www.koin.com/local/multnomah-county/homeless-tent-tarp-distribution-winter-controversy/https://multco.us/info/public-testimony-webformhttps://www.portland.gov/council-clerk/testimony-registrationhttps://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/homeless/outreach-team-safe-smoking-supplies-southwest-portland-public-drug-use/283-2b73436f-79a6-4020-8439-25a2c0b8f6a6

Willamette University’s Pacific Northwest College of Art will feature student artists at the Holiday Makers Market. The event runs from Thursday through Saturday and will feature original artwork and crafts made by students. The college will also project animations and art created by students, staff and faculty during First Thursday in Portland’s Pearl District. Meghann Gilligan is the assistant director of public programming for the school and Dylan Mead is a student organizer of the market. We’ll hear more from them about how the events teach students through experiential learning.

In 2022, Portland residents voted to overhaul the city’s form of government. That includes using ranked choice voting to expand the number of seats on city council from five to 12. Another major change is the creation of four geographic districts in the city. Voters within each district will now elect three candidates to represent them on the new council. Thirty registered candidates are competing in District 4, which includes all of Portland west of the Willamette River, including Downtown, the Pearl District, Multnomah and Hillsdale neighborhoods. It also contains the inner southeast neighborhoods of Sellwood-Moreland, Eastmoreland, Reed and Ardenwald.  On Oct. 24, “Think Out Loud” convened a D4 candidates forum at John’s Marketplace in Multnomah Village. We invited the 13 candidates with the largest number of individual donors who contributed to their campaigns. They include: Eli Arnold, Olivia Clark, Lisa Freeman, Mitch Green, Chris Henry, Ben Hufford, Chad Lykins, Tony Morse, Stanley Penkin, Moses Ross, Sarah Silkie,  Bob Weinstein and Eric Zimmerman. 

Join us as we embark on a public transit adventure. We navigate San Antonio's multi-tiered bus system, which reveals the importance of buses in a town devoid of a rail network. Alongside insights from the Strong Towns San Antonio chapter, our ride through history and culture takes us to San Antonio's historic Spanish missions, the Pearl District, the Alamo and many more sites. We reflect on the potential of San Antonio's public transport and the local community's efforts toward improvement. More info on Strong TownsSend us a Text Message.Support the Show.

In this episode, we have the honor of sitting one on one with Lyndsay Maderis, Founder and Owner of Thairapy PDX. A Green Circle hair salon and extension boutique with two locations both, in the Pearl District and Vancouver. Lyndsay has been recognized as a Platinum Level Great Lengths Hair Extension Specialist, named Top 100 by Modern Salon 2021 and a 9x Finalist for Best Extensions from Behind the Chair, but she's also so much more than that. A single mom with a passion for caring for our community and uplifting women. In this episode we chat about life transitions, managing your own ego and learning when to walk away from environments that are unhealthy and toxic. To connect with Lyndsay Maderis: @lyndsaymaderis @thairapy To connect with Jen Spooner click ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ To connect with Dr. Olesya Salathe click ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ This episode is brought to you by OZ & Co

Listen in as we journey with our guest host, Journey Joe Mitchell, to unlock the secrets of the vibrant city of San Antonio, Texas. We begin with an exploration of the iconic Alamo, an essential historical site that played a key role in the Texas Revolution. Our journey takes us through the Alamo Shrine, filled with artifacts that tell the story of this significant site. Journey Joe provides invaluable tips to help you plan your visit, maximize your experience, and respect the sanctity of this sacred place. In our trip to the Alamo City, we also give you a taste of the rich and diverse culture of San Antonio, from its traditional Mexican influences to its German heritage. Get ready to immerse yourself in the lively Fiesta San Antonio, a 10-day festival celebrating the city's heritage. Your taste buds are in for a treat as we guide you through some of the city's must-try restaurants, offering everything from traditional Mexican dishes to international cuisine.As we navigate the city's charming neighborhoods, from the heart of downtown to the trendy South Town and Pearl District, you'll get to experience the city's unique character and vibrant art scene. For the outdoor enthusiasts, we'll guide you through the city's plethora of activities, from exploring the Spanish colonial missions in the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park to taking a stroll along Bracken Ridge Park.Join us as we embark on this exciting adventure in San Antonio.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4952649/advertisement

Drivers crossing the Broadway Bridge have surely noticed it in the past few months: Nearly all of the former central post office area next to the bridge ramps has been demolished, wiping the 14-acre site clean and setting the stage for a massive redevelopment project right between downtown Portland's Pearl District and Old Town neighborhoods.The post office site is the centerpiece of the 34-acre Broadway Corridor, which primarily owned by the Portland Housing Bureau and the economic and urban development organization Prosper Portland. The long-imagined redevelopment aims to transform the site to provide high-density employment, mixed-income housing, new park space and signature city attractions and amenities. Prosper Portland Executive Director Kimberly Branam, Portland Housing Bureau Interim Director Molly Rogers and Twauna Hennessee, leader of outreach for the Carpenters Union, were all guests on this week's episode of Straight Talk to discuss the vision the future of the Broadway Corridor and what the project will mean for Portland.

Drivers crossing the Broadway Bridge have surely noticed it in the past few months: Nearly all of the former central post office area next to the bridge ramps has been demolished, wiping the 14-acre site clean and setting the stage for a massive redevelopment project right between downtown Portland's Pearl District and Old Town neighborhoods. The post office site is the centerpiece of the 34-acre Broadway Corridor, which primarily owned by the Portland Housing Bureau and the economic and urban development organization Prosper Portland. The long-imagined redevelopment aims to transform the site to provide high-density employment, mixed-income housing, new park space and signature city attractions and amenities.  Prosper Portland Executive Director Kimberly Branam, Portland Housing Bureau Interim Director Molly Rogers and Twauna Hennessee, leader of outreach for the Carpenters Union, were all guests on this week's episode of Straight Talk to discuss the vision the future of the Broadway Corridor and what the project will mean for Portland.

BloggerAtLarge's Megan Singleton knows the Texas region of San Antonio has more to it than the Alamo. Between the San Antonio River Walk, the shopping and dining at The Pearl District and the Tex-Mex restaurants dotting the area, the region has plenty to offer. Read more about Megan's experience in San Antonio here. LISTEN ABOVE  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EP306 - Apple WWDC announcement, Generative AI, and Holiday First Look  Apple previewed a new mixed reality headset called the Apple Vision Pro at it's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this month. Apple calls the new category spatial computing and we speculate about how it may or may not be a big deal. We also discuss the latest Echo hardware from Amazon, which is mostly disappointing. We discuss the rapidly evolving generative AI space and some of the commerce use-cases. And we take a first look at Holiday 2023. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 306 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, June 8th 2023. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 306 being recorded on Thursday June 8 2023 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners well it's been about a month our weekly pot has become a monthly cut pod because our lives have gotten pretty busy here in this postcode world I know you've been traveling a lot what else is new with you. Jason: [0:57] Yeah yeah it's finally feels like summer which I'm very grateful for, a lot of interesting stuff going on in the world of Commerce that keeps me engaged but I feel like the main reason our podcast is slow down is because you are an entrepreneurial mogul. Scot: [1:15] I don't know about mobile but I'll take the entrepreneur piece yeah the day job is a occupying 100 or 99 point, eight percent of my time and I used to be able to use speed like 97 and I could squeeze in more time so I podcast start button but got a there's a lot of cars out there to take care of and we're doing our best to get to all of them. Jason: [1:35] And we are grateful for it I feel like I'm I'm going back in time about six months because we've been on such a leg but I feel remiss. There was a huge accomplishment like six months ago you were named one of the founding members of the. Marketplace Hall of Fame. Scot: [1:57] I saw that yeah yeah. Jason: [2:01] Here's the thing I'm going to say about that I didn't know that much about it and I don't think anyone would be surprised to hear you're a founding member but like. Don't like five names and it was like Jeff Bezos Mar Quarry. And you and Jack Ma I'm like I'm like man you are going to be the best looking dude on that Mount Rushmore. Scot: [2:24] Yeah usually I'm I'm kind of Groucho Marx not sure I want to be in the club but this is one I was very happy to be being is like me and like three or four other billionaires all I'll take I'll take being included in that group. Jason: [2:39] Yeah yeah you don't want to be the fanciest house on the Block so. Scot: [2:42] Yeah I got a yeah I'm I'm excited I'm punching way above my weight on that list for sure. Jason: [2:48] Yeah well so anyway congratulations on that for sure I know and westerners would appreciate it and then while I'm thrilled for summer I've been a little down about one bit of news. Scot: [3:00] What is it Jason. Jason: [3:01] Disney click closed the Star Wars Hotel before you and I got to go there. Scot: [3:08] Yeah I know we could have done a live stream when this thing was announced I was excited and then I saw the price and then I saw the promo video and then I saw the reviews and you could just tell they had totally the totally whiffed on the whole thing it was. It was it wasn't just kind of a hotel you stayed at you had to just do that thing alone you didn't have to but it was so expensive. You're paying like two or three thousand dollars a night which I don't know this gonna be some. Someone in California makes these decisions I guess I don't understand the the tolls of the everyday American or even the higher in Star Wars hand that's a that's a big ask and you know I'm not in the cosplay so I think they had this if we kind of put on our marketing hats they had death by a Thousand Cuts so you had to be a Star Wars fan number one number two you had to be willing to spend 5K on this fancy hotel experience number three had to be in the cause playing and then number for the experiences that people that try to gave it you know at best a. Jason: [4:11] Yeah mediocre. Scot: [4:12] Yeah it felt very Star Trek e which is definitely a problem for Star Wars fans and you know it had a lot of kind of fun Spacey kind of vibe but like not enough Star Wars so yeah but you know. I'll say kudos to them for trying but it was an expensive mistake and I'm sure they can repurpose the real estate it's not like they're gonna I'm not shedding a tear. Jason: [4:36] Real estate has been depreciated I'm sure. Scot: [4:38] I think they'll be okay but yeah you know it is bummer because I was kind of hoping it would work, I've done some other Star Wars experience you'll stuff that was really fun there was there's this group in the UK and they go create movie scenes and industrial areas it's really weird the way it's described is called like underground movies or something like that they did a Star Wars experience that was like amazing where they had a Cantina I guess galaxies Edge is kind of like yeah. As when I mean I haven't been yet but I'm actually going to go this summer so I'm excited about that all. Jason: [5:11] Yeah it's really good you should. Scot: [5:12] Yeah everyone says it's good so that's on my list. Jason: [5:15] Yeah I'm in the same boat like it I don't feel like I'm disappointed that I missed it because I feel like. It sounds poorly executed in poorly conceived but the high-level concept of a. Experiential Star Wars Hotel experience I was super excited about and I hope the fact that this does didn't work isn't going. Like slow down future future ideas on that space because it could have been cool if they did it really well. Scot: [5:44] Yeah yeah I don't put salt down. Jason: [5:47] Onto something more reliable Apple announcements. Scot: [5:51] Yeah this was exciting so I'd love to get your take on the Apple Vision Pro so first of all the the earlier announcements I was kind of like I was getting a little concerned because they're like you know coming up the biggest new feature in Mac OS is a really cool screen saver and then the phone had a new sleep display mode I'm like, we've kind of jumped the shark if this is the big new OS features there were some other ones and I'm being a little bit facetious but there were there were to say there were minor tweaks which is kind of a Fair assessment I think. [6:24] And then they finally gave us that one more thing that we've been waiting for and I went and our crack staff of interns went into the Jason and Scot show vault and you and I and 2016 gave a talk at an in our F / shop dot-org event where we were asked to talk about the future of retail and in there I remember I pulled up the presentation we talked about drones and 3D printing and then we talk about a rvr and at that point in time Facebook they're used to this company called Facebook now you may know them as meta they they had just acquired Oculus and we were speculating would Apple enter the game and turns out we were right but like many of our predictions we were maybe a little early if I've done the math on this right we were about seven years ahead, but I think the wait has been worth it because they definitely swung for the fences on this one and you know the the feature sets and the user interface no one none of us have experience to have read the reviews of folks that have sounds like it I can't wait to get my hands on one and I'm definitely ordering one so excited to hear what you think. Jason: [7:37] Yeah yeah so maybe half a step back Apple tends to do two big events a year they and they do as software announcement and they do a hardware announcement this is normally the software announcement where they detail all the. New releases of the various operating systems for all the devices and they do sometimes, launch devices at this which they did again they launched a number of new configurations of Max and then in like September they announced. The hardware which is up you know generally includes a new phone for October. So you don't necessarily expect a huge new hardware product at this announcement and I was I was kind of with you most of the OS and announcements were very incremental the new. Computers were all like like very very incremental there is like. [8:35] The new 15-inch the the MacBook Air is now a 15 inch. So that's maybe going to be an appealing laptop for people that want to pretty powerful laptop that's super light. But I will say there's a number of small enhancements in the OS has that I'm looking forward to like they their incremental but they did you know call out a number of sort of pain points where like. The autocorrect on the keyboard can often be very annoying and they're going to use a large language model too. Um what you keep your curse words and proprietary language a lot easier and, a few little bits like that and then yeah to your point like at the end they go and one more thing and as I assume most of our listeners know that's magic language at Apple, that's that's the language Steve Jobs used before he pulled the first iPhone out of his jeans pocket or the first MacBook Air out of the manila envelope and you know that language has been used to introduce a lot of apples game-changing products and it frankly hasn't been used very much. In the in the modern era so the mere fact that they started the innocent reduction with an one more thing tells you that Apple thinks this is a. In extra big deal and. I'm with you like I will I'm embarrassed to say somewhere in some ways I will probably buy one I think there's a bunch of. [10:03] Cool things about it like the the hardware achievement is is pretty impressive so this is a. They would be pissed at me describing it this way they invented a new term they call this spatial Computing but it's a it's an AR VR headset and it kind of looks like ski goggles. And you know a lot of people had predicted this and their renderings that weren't too far off but the hardware is beautiful as you would expect from Apple it has a bunch of Premium finishes it is not an accessory that talks to a computer a phone it's a. Computer that you wear in your face and in fact I think it has to M2 chips in it. And in the specs are really high each eye has more than a 4K screen so very high resolution VR headset and the latency, it has this Mode called pass-through mode which means there's cameras in front of it and it can feel like a transparent visor because. The the cameras see outside and then you know project that onto these two 4K screen so it makes it feel like you're seeing through the visor and it's in full color at 4K with less than 12 millisecond latency which is. [11:20] Other VR headsets have a pass-through mode like the Oculus has a black-and-white pass-through mode but the latency is. As much there's a lot more lag and so that creates like all these like motion artifacts and stuff. That this is all very premium high-end Hardware which seems, pretty cool and so the experiences seem cool everyone I've read you know just got to actually try it thanks though I. On your face experience was vastly better than any other a rvr. They had experienced and then they also you know brought in Bob Iger from Disney and who announced that they were doing a bunch of proprietary content for the platform which is a. Another exciting thing right because the these headsets are only as good as the. The content you have for them so all that to me was super favorable the things that they're rightly getting knocked on is you just talked about the price of the Disney hotel being unrealistic they didn't really even mention the price in this announcement but they released it afterwards and it's the base price is going to be over 3500 bucks and if you're blind like I am you're going to have to then buy some prescriptions Iceland's is that screw into it. And so it's an expensive device. [12:43] It also has kind of mirror battery life like the there's a small battery on the device but in order to get a two-hour battery they make you put a battery pack the size of an iPhone in your pocket and connect it via a cable, to the headset and that gets you two hours which frankly isn't even enough time to watch a lot of movies that are out these days. People have talked a lot about it being really heavy. On your face because of all this like you know metal hardware and premium materials that it feels pretty pretty meaningful on your face and then the biggest weird thing to me. In the announcement they made multiple they took multiple occasions to talk about. [13:28] How important what they called presences right so they talked like there's a lot of new features and all the OSS around FaceTime. And making it a more useful meeting thing and and all of those features were around making you feel like you were. More together with the people you are FaceTiming with and when they first show this, this apple Vision Pro experience the first thing they show is video conferencing with other real people and how their faces are floating right in front of you and it you know it's this great presence experience. Except for anyone wearing. This bloody device because guess what you don't get is a picture of the person wearing the device wait what what you get is a. Uncanny valley like semi-realistic Avatar of the person. [14:18] And it just feels like very incongruity us that they're both saying presents a super important and then they're partitioning, anyone wearing this device sort of away from real people and so I that to me is worrisome I got to be honest when I add up all the pros and the cons it feels like people like you and I will buy it, but I kind of suspect that this is going to be more like an apple Lisa than the first Macintosh. Scot: [14:44] It you know but you gotta start somewhere and this is by setting the goalposts hi it's easier to go down than up so you know I can imagine several iterations and maybe it'll take another seven years but at some point I think they'll solve all those things and they'll get the cost way down but. Jason: [15:00] 100% if you look at this as like the entree into a new form of computing I'm totally with you right and and I get I wish I owned one of the a police's but and it did pave the way for the Macintosh so so I'm all down for it I don't think, if you're a retailer at home and you're going like hey do I have to invent some new Commerce experience for the. For the Apple Vision Pro like the answer is no right like and what like unless maybe your Louis Vuitton and you want to get a good press release about being a first mover you know it's unlikely that there's going to be 100 million people sitting in their house wearing this thing on their face all day and wanting to shop on it. Scot: [15:42] Yeah I saw so to last comments on this one I saw One reviewer who's really into a rvr and it was interesting framing he basically said Facebook is going down this path of VR is a social experience and you're using it for meetings and for meeting people which aligns since their social network right and that's part of their DNA where's apples kind of more saying we're heading into a world where we're more alone and you'll you know your increasingly you'll be working for home alone and remote and your you'll you know you'll be interacting with your family with this mask on it's kind of a I don't buy this framing but it's kind of an interesting you know the way it's set up today is very different view of things and then you know then the conclusion was you know for society I hope it's the Facebook silly should be good or else we're all going to be ready player one like sitting in little tiny you know compartments never interacting with each other at a human level and. Jason: [16:38] Yeah no I agree and then ironically like apples Imaging everyone sitting at home except for Apple employees who will get fired and they said. Scot: [16:46] Yeah. Jason: [16:48] Yeah another framing I heard which makes some sense is like they talked about meta really thinking of their device as a gaming platform and it's kind of priced at parity with gaming platforms and the, Partnerships that are leaning into a really gaming Partnerships and it comes with very sort of gaming friendly controllers and things like that and apple is really thinking of this as a compute platform and I think on an implied in their announcement is they Envision a future when. You know we don't we don't own clamshell devices with keyboards that we used hitter. Get our work done and that we're more likely to sit in a comfortable chair with one of these things on our face and be much more productive. Scot: [17:28] Yeah another thing that was interesting this got obscured by the announcement was I've heard a fair amount of Buzz about this roller coaster experience in Japan and I think it's a Nintendo theme park and what you yes. Jason: [17:39] Super Mario Kart and I think they did they just did it in. Scot: [17:43] Yeah. Jason: [17:44] Universal Studios in Los Angeles I believe may not have it. Scot: [17:48] Okay well Apple acquired the company that built this experience for Nintendo and. Yeah so you know kind of putting that together you see all right you got Bob Iger on stage and that was like content on the device but think about this killer you know imagine you go to your next Generation Galaxy Edge experience in your writing some kind of a ride and now they throw some AR part on top of that experience that that would be pretty cool. Jason: [18:14] Yeah I guess so to other random things I thought were mildly interesting normally apple is pretty good about dropping these announcements and then having like. Pretty quick of the ability thereafter and so one weird thing they're announcing this and June and it's not going to be available in told 2024. Um which I you know that feels a little unusual for me and then not surprising at all but like very noticeable. Three words that were not mentioned ever in this announcement were artificial intelligence VR or the metaverse. So they kind of invented their own terms and I think they very intentionally avoided. A variety of stigmas that are attached to some of those those other terms and then I guess the last thing in my head you know there's this company and I think they still exist and they have raised billions of dollars. On a lot of hype around a really high-end AR headset it's this company called magically. And I think like if there's any loser in this whole Space. [19:26] Like if there was any hope of magically surviving think I think this you know this seems like a better product in every way than what magically was promising and wasn't able to deliver. [19:46] Yeah I'm sure there's some IP that's that's interesting to someone I hope so they spent a fortune. Scot: [19:48] Yeah I think they're done they yeah they missed their window and they had these really cool early demos but. Jason: [19:55] Yeah I actually got one we're like literally the it was kind of like old-school Oculus like there's a you know a refrigerator size computer that was Tethered to the. To the screen but it definitely it was not 4K with 12 second latency. Scot: [20:10] Nothing yep and so this is where Apple wins because they can they built their own silk and they built a chip for that latency it's called the R1 or something and so they basically said alright we need to create Hardware that can have this under eight millisecond latency and they just did it and you know that's not everyone can do that. Jason: [20:28] Not many yeah so I thought that was interesting again like you and I will be able to have our little Avatar meetings after this maybe we'll be able to record the podcast in it. Scot: [20:38] Yeah people can watch us look at each other with goggles. Jason: [20:42] I feel like if there's two people that would whose attractiveness would be improved by the goggles and might be us we have faces for podcasting. Scot: [20:47] Yeah yeah I can yeah I'm kind of wondering can you change your eyes you know so those are all simulated so. Jason: [20:54] You have to be able to write like if I can buy blue contacts why can't I have yeah because that that is true for those that didn't see the announcement it can look like the glasses are clear because you can see the where's eyes through the glasses but it's because, there's cameras inside the glasses and there's always screens on the outside of the glasses and so they're they're renderings of your eyes. Scot: [21:16] Yeah I want to I'm going to do a Terminator ice that's what I'm going for. Jason: [21:20] Yeah I'm extra weary about Terminator references in our current AI climb. Scot: [21:25] That's a good Segway. Jason: [21:28] Nice I like it. Yeah so there's lots of AI news like we could do a month of AI shows it feels like the only thing I talk about it work but there's one particular subset of all this AI That's often called generative Ai and I'm going to even say focusing very specifically on the image generation Ai and there's tons of cool stuff that I think you and I have both been playing with. Scot: [21:58] Yeah I'm big into mid-journey and then everyone's done chat G PT but then the big the big thing that's helped me is once it became where you could do the links I've been able to I do a lot of writing and I've been able to accumulate all my writing in a file and then feed it in and say Here's my style analyze this so that it goes to, then I taught to start writing in my style and then that has been a huge game-changer for me that's the first one gives you like a decent draft and then you're kind of find yourself editing a lot but like having it where you can now upload new information either from the web or in a file or a PDF is a been a big game changer for me it's it gets it more like you know 95% weather. Jason: [22:47] Oh yeah I think I've mentioned this before but like there's a small subset of the writing I do that I get to partner with a copywriter so I'll like, give outlines or dictate things to a copywriter in the draft I get back is almost always will written but not remotely in my voice and so it takes me a long time to edit it and give I give the same raw inputs to chechi BT that that I've trained. To know my writing style what I get back is is way closer to use them. Scot: [23:19] Does your copywriter listen to this podcast. Jason: [23:23] Hopefully she does not. Scot: [23:25] Okay good. Jason: [23:27] Yeah yeah no I you know again there's a whole we again we could do another podcast about whether AI is gonna create or destroy jobs or both but I think like a lot of things there are things that we used to pay people to do that are it's going to be harder to make a living doing, but there's going to be lots of new jobs to write and those copywriters like ought to be the first ones learning how to write good prompts for these for these things, the image ones I've been playing with image generators to I use mid Journey, you know there's an open source one that you can kind of run on your local hardware stable diffusion, that has a lot less constraints it's not quite as high quality of rendering is mid-journey but I'll tell you the new thing that's been fun for me is Adobe announced a generative AI model called Firefly and they already built it in one of their products so the the if you own Photoshop CC you can download a Photoshop beta and it has this feature that they call. [24:28] Excuse me generative Phil and, generative Phil is a legitimate Game Changer there's a bunch of use cases that used to be super time-consuming for designers that that this beta version already like. Makes Child's Play and one of the sort of unfortunate thing mid-journey generates really beautiful images the one thing it doesn't do is, trademark images or copyright images or text right so very often you might generate an image in mid Journey but then you had you'd have to hand it to a good Photoshop artist to put the spiffy logo in it or to put you know and actual image of Scot Wingo in it or something like that. And Adobe Firefly is really good at that use case so like I've actually done a bunch of kind of Blended image where I made an image in mid journey and then, I refined it in the Photoshop beta and it's, it's super fun but man like you know if I'm any kind of designer or graphic artist like I want to get good at this stuff right away because it, I'm not saying is going to eliminate jobs but it's going to change the kind of jobs people need to be good at. Scot: [25:43] Yeah there's been a lot of really cool use cases of the generative AI feature in Photoshop where people would start like with them Nirvana cover you know the little baby swimming naked and then expand it ever bigger than you can like see the rest of the scene what the computer imagines and they're starting to it with memes to it's pretty wild to watch some output of that it's it's like it's a little scary wow it could be, how real it is it feels like it is it's not real obviously because no one knows what's in that rest of that frame. Jason: [26:15] Yeah there's a real world use case where Nike and Tiffany announced a collab product and everyone saw it and thought it was awful. Right like that it just like is just a very like not inspiring combination of Nike shoes with Tiffany branding and a bunch of people then you know went and use these generative AI models to create. Way better looking shit Tiffany Nike shoes and that really happened and then last night I actually watched the Nike are movie which is the movie about the. [26:50] Both of the Air Jordans with them. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in it awesome movie by the way especially if you grew up in the 80s like there was a lot of fun nostalgia. But in this movie The they get a meeting with young Michael Jordan and his family who are going to come to Beaverton to talk about. In doing a Nike endorsement and and Nikes though Dark Horse like Jordans not interested in Nike and so the the the team after they booked this meeting on Friday afternoon they go to the the one Nike designer in the basement and they say Hey by Monday I need a prototype and a rendering of the world's greatest basketball shoe and this, this guy had a weekend to invent the Air Jordan which he did right and and history is made like you know it made 40 billion dollars for Phil Knight and a couple billion dollars for Michael Jordan so great success but you imagine that if that kind of thing were to happen today, um there'd be a team rendering, a hundred different concepts in these generative AI models and that it have like a way wider variation of interesting ideas to consider. Scot: [28:10] Yeah very cool. Jason: [28:12] So I will say we're starting to see some interesting Commerce use cases the I have seen a bunch of clients that are using generative AI to create or refine product images and in some cases they are literally saving millions of man hours now. You know so maybe you've got you know a huge catalog of products and they're all shot as lifestyle imagery or they're all sot on a particular background and then you now need to sell them in the new Marketplace at Sheehan that didn't exist a year ago. And there's a requirement for white backgrounds. Well you know you used to pay like an army of graphic designers to mask out all these images and change the backgrounds and now that these like generative things can do it. [29:02] Trivially and you imagine pretty quickly that all these images are going to be personalized right so instead of, you know seeing that that product around some you know model family like at some you know random persons Thanksgiving table, you're going to see that that that new food product. At your Thanksgiving table with your family sitting around it and all of these sorts of you know personalized cases as as the imagery the ability to generate imagery on the Fly gets really good, and I've actually never seen a couple of demos from Google of a product they first announced. Last year and then they announced that it's going to be released eminently last month, it's called Google seen exploration in this is a cool AR use case specifically for retail so this is walk into a store hold your phone with the camera on in front of an aisle and it recognizes all of the products on the Shelf using computer vision, and then it overlays all the products with Google ratings and reviews. [30:08] So like giving you a lot of this like valuable digital information that didn't used to exist on the shelf right and you you know they talk about all the use cases like you know you need to buy a highly rated nut free vegan chocolate bar and you're standing in the chocolate aisle and there's a you know a thousand chocolate bars there's no way to search by that right and and with this scene exploration you know you can now do that on the fly in a store and to me that seems like a, pretty cool use case and it's it's going to be built in the phones and then area of your in the OS in the very near future. Scot: [30:50] Yeah I saw a Salesforce they've been going at this very hard in within the Commerce Cloud they announced like 10 features they have one where it will auto-generate your pdp's for you they have one where it will it'll generate tags so like it'll search the description and come up with sizes and colors and and you know kind of like a variance and things out of a description to have another one, there was no actually go create product catalog for you so if you've you've this was a huge thing we had a challenge with it Channel visor is if you're selling if you're selling on Amazon and you're just matching to their Easter eysan you don't really have the rights to that product information so then you can't just copy that and then put on eBay or something like that or your own website so they've got this whole way that you can take that data your your properties which aren't, sentences create the description and then move it to other sections to a lot of really interesting things going on in the intersection of AI and e-commerce. Jason: [31:56] Yeah absolutely so exciting about that and there's going to be I have a feeling we're going to be talking about significant new capabilities on an ongoing basis for the foreseeable future. Scot: [32:06] I remember you'd walked internet retailer and there be ten vendors there that would take your product pictures and add a white background yeah. Jason: [32:15] And that win from like you know people in America doing that to people in India doing that and now it's it's an Nvidia chip doing it. Which side note like you know people keep asking who's winning the who's going to be the one to monetize a eyes are going to be open AI or meta all these small companies we also got the answer to that this quarter it's Invidia. Scot: [32:36] Yeah they're gonna win yes. Jason: [32:39] So for those that don't know nvidia's market cap Nvidia has a chip manufacturer famous for, these high-performance graphic chips that were originally used for gaming and still are and their chips have been extremely useful for training and doing refining training for all these these large language models in AI, and their market cap briefly passed a trillion dollars, um this month I think it dipped like just below a trillion dollars at the moment but to put that in perspective Intel's market cap is like 130 billion dollars. Like so Nvidia the game chip company is eight times more valuable than Intel at the. Scot: [33:25] It's crazy yeah who knows no one had that on their bingo card five years. Jason: [33:29] No I wish that was one of my year beginning predictions. Scot: [33:34] Yeah anything else on a iron. Jason: [33:38] No no did you Amazon 10 announcement last month you follow. Scot: [33:44] Yeah yeah well it wouldn't be a Jason Scott show without some. [34:00] That's right time for some Amazon news Amazon has been unexpectedly quiet so we've got a new CEO basis is out romping around wearing crazy shirts at festivals and living the high life with his girlfriend so, some of that out there other engage did not know that congratulations Jeff I know he listens to. Jason: [34:26] If you're playing bingo it was a 2.5 million dollar diamond. Scot: [34:29] Nice the one thing I saw just to highlight is a lot there's kind of a, this bit of an economic downturn has made many of the video providers get more serious about profitability so we saw both Netflix and Disney add an ad-supported tier and increase their prices and just as we're recording this Amazon announced they're going to do the same thing with prime so they're going to have an add to your 44 Prime but I know you follow the devices I totally slept on this because I was so eager for the Vision Pro tell me about the new devices. Jason: [35:07] Yeah yeah. I would characterize it as disappointing they want some new Echo devices at. The in the middle of May for release on May 31st and you know I have it. An embarrassing amount of these devices controlling smart home features throughout my house and they when I first got them like. [35:37] I seem very I felt very satisfied with them like the the accuracy of the speech recognition and stuff seemed adequate like based on my expectations at the time but I've grown to be very annoyed by them like they really struggle to know which room you're talking to and they're inconsistent about how semantically accurate you have to be like in in this world where Chad gbt is writing all my articles for me you know you just go I, man the speech recognition in this Hardware has to be better and so I was kind of eagerly looking for some new Echoes that have like an llm in them it seemed like Amazon was a first mover here, and so they did announce some new devices but they're pretty boring so they announced a new form factor called the echo pop which is. [36:27] I want by my count their fourth or fifth attempt to build a more premium speaker into an echo and this is like. A more affordable premium speaker which seems like a weird Niche so that wasn't that interesting I don't actually use the echoes. As speakers so much and then they launched a new Echo Show 5 which is. The the echo with the screen it's the smallest screen has 5 inch screen and then they announced some new Echo buds the echo built into the the earbuds which you and I both tried and I don't think we're very enamored by. The. The features are like oh the speaker sounds better than the old speaker the microphone is more accurate than the old microphone and it's 20% faster. [37:15] And so like I bought a couple of these new new Echoes to see if I you noticed a difference and it's. Like it's to me it's mostly imperceptible from the old Hardware so pretty disappointing. Um but app that announcement I will say Andy jassy said that hey the large language model for Echo is coming and you know there. It does feel like Amazon's a little behind and I don't know if this announcement was meant to apologize for that that. Status or whether there really is something that's going to be imminently announced but you know like he he doubled down on their effort to make this the, the most useful personal assistant on Earth and you know part of that is we're going to have a robust large language model that's you know on has a, a similar number of parameters to to open a I or bear door or Lama from from meta, that the Amazons going to release to make these these sneakers smarter so I hope he delivers on that promise. Scot: [38:23] Yeah the there if definitely feels like chat gbt started this new gear for Innovation and feels like apple even with their big announcement there was they worked some AI in there but it just feels like. There's a lot of people speculating do you really need a phone if we're going to head to a device where you can talk to it and these plugins at chat gbt now give it action so you can say hey book me a restaurant reservation the things you would do on your phone you're going to be almost able to do totally by voice soon therefore will you need a phone so there's a lot of you know that's a new would expect Amazon who was ahead on voice now feels like they're behind on a lot of this so it's be really interesting this next year to see who can kind of hang with this and you can't the R&D budgets are gonna go through the roof that's for sure. Jason: [39:14] Yeah and the irony is you know you go back in time and you know all the retailers in America where happily you know shipping two weeks after you place an order in Amazon you know disrupted Everybody by saying like hey you should get your stuff in two days and then one day and then same day right and they they raised the expectations for everyone else it feels like open AI is doing that to Apple and Amazon right now on the on the natural language models. Scot: [39:43] The to the pop did not pop. Jason: [39:46] It did it did not I did that in full disclosure I did not buy a pop because again like I don't I don't so much by them for their speaker Fidelity I mostly buy them to control my lights and stuff. But yeah I like I still have to repeat myself multiple times and some rooms to just turn stuff on and it's frustrating. Scot: [40:06] Yeah so this one was one I wanted to bounce off of you I'm a CNBC junkie and I was watching the other day and Target stock had a big Miss and the folks on, Talking Heads were saying that in their earnings release they really called out this shoplifting as a. [40:24] A problem and they took a one right off of something like 500 million dollars so I'm sure everyone has seen the videos where you know this is just new organized crime kind of wave going on especially in big cities where you'll see. 20 people go in a store and just run out with arm full of stuff it's happening to starting to kind of luxury then then you saw a little lemon and it happens in Apple Stores and now you're starting to see it in every day department stores and drug stores, so I thought that was you know as e-commerce person I was thinking huh that's interesting you know I wonder if and kind of hi Pro some high-profile store closures have followed from the so Nordstrom closed a store and like San Francisco and that's kind of thing so I was thinking is e-commerce person I was kinda thinking well this is interesting this is gonna this is going to benefit Amazon pretty immensely because as the stores have to close due to this crime wave it's going to benefit e-commerce and then Amazon like 60% of e-commerce so they'll just get they'll just absorb a lot of that that that so that the crime is going to have this unintended consequence of getting rid of stores which is bad for for the local environment and then it'll yeah I don't, yeah I don't think they really want to benefit Amazon but they will so I wanted to get your hot take on them. Jason: [41:40] Well first of all just to complete your thought the the brick-and-mortar retailers and the national retail Federation would actually say Amazon's double-dipping on that benefit because they're both. Selling stuff when the the stores closed in the big cities but also most of the Retailer's blame the organized crime on Amazon. [41:59] So the The Narrative is basically that like you know people here's who used to steal from stores, people that needed something and couldn't afford it for whatever reason right so they. Stalled food for their family or you know items they could afford to buy that was individual shoplifting and, employees told stuff employee shrink and there now is this much higher occurrence of organized crime for profit where where people are stealing you know every bottle of shampoo in the Walgreens and one of the reasons these big retailers say that this kind of crime is much larger now is it's way easier to monetize that stuff after you steal it, and the reason they say it's easier to monetize it is you can go sell all of this this still the merchandise pretty easily on Amazon and eBay. Um so that's controversial like the marketplace is due a lot to sort of avoid selling, um song Goods but that one of the premises why there's more organized crime is because. It is easier to fence and monetize this stuff. But here's the thing that's super interesting about that like there for sure is this new kind of crime and it's. [43:22] It's much more newsworthy so when someone drives a truck through the front of an Apple store and then steals all the phones that's going to be on the local news when someone shoplifts pound of cheese, that's not going to be on the local news right or when an employed as a fake return to embezzle 60 dollars from a shirt like that's not as often on the local news so all of these organized crimes get put on the news and on YouTube and things like that more and and a huge problem is. Like it's much more violent people are getting hurt employees and in a few cases the perpetrators are are getting hurt or even killed and so like there is a way higher human cost to this kind of crime and so we have heard a bunch of. Retail CEOs, you know raising the alarm bells and they say two things like oh man our losses are going up this is having a material economic effect on our business we're closing stores partly because of this and you know we're having to change how we do do store operations and and you know all these things they're also saying that police forces are underfunded and you know don't have enough resources to retailers with this problem so they're there in many cases you know asking for more more Municipal support here's the thing though. [44:51] People have always stolen stuff from retailers there's always been a line item on every retards p&l for shrink and for most public companies that's that's a publicly disclosed number and usually, for most retailers and it varies by the type of retailer and the the geography but usually it's one to two percent of Revenue is lost in shrink and so. [45:19] Target's announcement was hey we lost we potentially could lose 500 million dollars in profit this year. And their stock partly went down from because of it like I would argue their their stock also went down for some, PR missteps they made and then also because their revenue is just soft compared to some of their competitors, they probably went down for that shrink because 500 million dollars in profit sounds like a big deal but if you gross up 500 million dollars in profit to product costs, that's one point six billion dollars in shrink at Target in 2022 and they're saying it could be as high as two billion dollars in shrink in 2023 that means that shrink is 1.5 to 1.9 percent of targets Revenue which is below industry averages Walgreens, has made all of these same complaints and last year the Walgreen CFO like in the earnings call said hey this is a huge deal like our shrink could potentially be up 52 percent from before the pandemic. Um and then he did his swing 22 year in earnings and Shrink was lower then then the last two years and he literally had to say like maybe we cried too much. [46:40] So I do think there is this new crime it's very serious like it is a problem and you know I have great empathy for retailers in addressing that and they shrink should be zero like a butt. It's a little bit of a fallacy to say hey there's this new material economic impact from this shrink that didn't exist before because the employee shrink is way down because the the surveillance and the the big data and in the business process has evolved eliminated a lot of that and so the net shrink for a lot of retailers, really isn't as significant now it might be more significant in particular stores and so some of the the closing of these stores, seems at least partially legitimate I will say there's even controversy about that like when, Walgreens has hey we're closing a store in San Francisco because there's too much crime, the San Francisco Police Department rides in and goes that's weird because we got way less complaints from from Walgreens last year than we did three years ago or whatever so there's there's. Room for disputes about all this stuff but organized crime, is definitely an increasingly serious thing that retailers have to deal with but don't immediately by all the hype that it's. That it's some you know New Economic strain that retailers have never seen before. Scot: [48:04] I wonder if there's a bit of a narrative around this shrink number like I you know I'm sure they're reporting it correctly but so I wonder if it has the same store sales effect like let's say Walgreens has to closed in ten stores because the shrink is so bad. That comes out of the numbers right because it's probably a seems to work kind of metric so they probably you know now gold number would improve dramatically but. They've shrunk their footprint like it's probably not capturing that you. Jason: [48:33] Yeah no agreed, all as a Wayne huizenga taught me 30 years ago like it any good healthy retailers should be closing and opening stores every year why there's like you can't if you had the perfect realist real estate in one year it would not be perfect the next year right and so in many cases like they're closing stores in economically you know unfriendly climates for them and that improves their same-store sales numbers and improves their cops right and you know whether they did that for purely economic reasons or they did it because there was more organized crime or to put protect employees or whatever like, um it's not wrong for these retailers to curate their, they're fully in an economic downturn that might mean having fewer stores than last year historically the challenge with that is investors always expect you to grow. And so infect investors don't like the story of what of closing underperforming stores and having better comps if you if your overall Revenue goes down so, you know this is yet another kind of excuse for them to reset expectations with investors I think I think that's totally fair. [49:44] In some cases I will tell you retailers are closing iconic stores that just feels kind of sad like the the, Nordstrom flagship store in San Francisco is has always been a big deal that's closing I lived in Portland Oregon and they had a beautiful REI in the Pearl District which was, like a great super friendly place to live and they're closing that store and they said partly because they didn't feel they could protect employees like. That there is something happening that feels like a bummer and there's a lot of big cities that it feels a lot less fun to go shopping. Than it did a few years ago which which is I do think a legitimate concern. Scot: [50:26] Yeah so I know you're the king of all e-commerce and commerce data what are you seeing in the the reports that have come out since our last pot. Jason: [50:36] Yeah well we've slowed down a little bit on the frequency the podcast so kind of just super brief recap US Department of Commerce data comes out every month so we we have the May report which has data through April next week we'll get the, the May data so January through April sales for all of retail are up 2.4% from last year that, that is down a little bit from historical averages pre-pandemic you'd expect retail to be up about 4% a year so 2.4%. [51:11] Is concerning if you look at it from before the pandemic retail sales are up year-to-date, three thirty six percent from 2019 for example so still by historic standards that's very high but this year feels like a meaningful slowdown in sales from last year and of course as soon as you start talking about this people go well what about inflation so if I normalize this data for inflation year-to-date sales this year are down three percent from last year, which historically doesn't happen even with inflation so that, that is a real concern like it it feels very legitimate that we're seeing a Slowdown in in consumer spending and particularly in inflation-adjusted dollars so I mentioned retail sales since the pandemic are up 36% if you adjust that for inflation there up about 14% so less than half of all our sales growth since the pend or more than half of our sales growth since the pandemic, has been a direct result of unusual inflation more than typical inflation and then you know people always ask us in particular about the e-commerce numbers again before the pandemic the. [52:25] Over the last 20 years e-commerce would average around 12 to 15 percent growth a year retail would average three to four percent growth a year there was a weird transposition in the middle of the pandemic when people you know finally went back to stores for the first time and slow down their e-commerce bending so like for the only time in my lifetime, 20:22 size. Retail sales growing faster than e-commerce briefly that trend has reversed e-commerce is back on top of retail but it's not back to Historic standards so e-commerce year-to-date is up about 7.4% verses 2022 still, you know, you remember in the pandemic people are talking about e-commerce spiking and then regressing to the mean just want to remind our listeners that's not true the US Department of Commerce revised some numbers and e-commerce growth. Has ended up being much more robust than like the Wall Street Journal reported in in in a famous article in 2022 so e-commerce is up about 89 percent since, since 2019 and that means. [53:29] Above and beyond the traditional growth that I would have forecasted for e-commerce we've sold an extra six hundred and seventy five billion dollars since the pandemic started so e-commerce still is the biggest winner in this kind of. Pandemic accelerated spending and it's you know we'll get the cue to e-commerce data and about two months it's going to be interesting to see, how it plays out and whether you know the consumer slowdown persist through the end of the year and holiday or whether we start to get a bounce. Scot: [54:01] Yeah and I know it's June and but you get paid to think about this more than I do so what when clients are saying Jason what are you thinking about holiday 23 Woody tongue. Jason: [54:14] I think on the aggregate I'm not expecting it to be an awesome holiday I think there's even if, the the economy listens up there's it's going to take awhile for consumer spending to come back and I think the overall consumer spending is going to be you know modest there will be growth but it'll be low growth and because inflation will still be unusually high like profitability is going to really be, be strain for this holiday that being said we are likely to see some clear winners and losers so like not everyone's going to kind of match the industry average and we've already had a couple bankruptcies Bed Bath & Beyond used to sell a lot of holiday Goods so retailers are going to fight over you know who wins that customer this holiday and so I do think. You can expect to see some retailers have a really good holiday and you know, I hate to say this for all the small retailers out there but like at the moment the the likely narrative is the biggest best retailers in the ecosystem are likely that too. Disproportionately win holiday so like if I had to guess I would guess Amazon and Walmart are going to have a pretty good holiday at the expense of the rest of retailgeek. Scot: [55:32] Got it well you're a Grinch. Jason: [55:37] Yeah I want to be wrong I want to be wrong on that I want to be right on all my year beginning forecast which I can't even remember what they were. Scot: [55:44] Yeah I'm just kidding you get paid to tell the real. Jason: [55:49] I'd rather I would rather be prepared for soft holiday and then be pleasantly surprised. I almost hesitate to even bring this up because it kind of feels like it always happens but there there are now some potential new supply chain challenges. Perking up so there's there's some labor disputes our friends the teamsters the unload all the boats on the west coast of America like are threatening work stoppages and, you know any disruption in there like has a meaningful impact on how much Goods we have available for holiday and then one I've never heard before in my lifetime, the worldwide drought is having a material impact on the supply chain what there is not is enough water in the Panama Canal. [56:39] And so it turns out the way the locks work they have to pour a bunch of water into the canal to lift the boats and there's less water available so the water costs more so it is more expensive to take a heavy boat through the Panama Canal today than it was a month ago. Because of the price of water which. It makes sense when you hear it but it's not something you would I would have thought of and so at the moment the supply-chain wonks are are talking about like you know we might have some unanticipated, supply chain cost as you know people have to pay for the constrain amount of tonnage that they can lift through the Panama Canal. Scot: [57:23] Wow learn something everyday and I can check that off my box in it. Jason: [57:26] Nice well that's probably a perfect place to end it because we have used up our allotted time but even though we've been a little less frequent than usual, I always look forward to catching up with you and it's been great to chat but I look forward to hearing how our listeners are doing. Scot: [57:44] Yeah and you know what listeners could do to help us out leave a review we would always love your feedback let us know how we're doing and if there's any topics you want to cover and we appreciate you giving us a listen. Jason: [57:57] Scot that's a great idea and until next time happy Commercing.

The pending closure of REI's Pearl District store underscores the ongoing struggles for retail businesses in Portland's core, with retail availability stubbornly high three years after the pandemic hit.More than 7% of retail and restaurant spaces in downtown Portland were available for lease in the first quarter of the year, according to the latest data from the commercial real estate firm CoStar. That's nearly triple the rate of availability in 2019.The tally doesn't include owner-occupied spaces so the actual rate of empty storefronts is surely higher – probably in the double digits, according to John Gillem, CoStar's director of market analytics in Portland. But regardless of the precise number, he said the upward trajectory on vacancies and availability has been consistent.“The core, obviously, (is) still trying to get the ball rolling on a recovery,” Gillem said.REI blamed crime and theft when it announced plans to close early next year, along with issues with its landlord. But sales don't appear to have been a problem – REI said it had “outgrown” its Pearl District location and the outdoors cooperative indicated it's looking for a new location in the Portland area, though wouldn't say where.It may find the pickings are slim.Support the showSign Up For Exclusive Episodes At: https://reasonabletv.com/LIKE & SUBSCRIBE for new videos every day. https://www.youtube.com/c/NewsForReasonablePeople

Questions mounted after REI announced plans last week to shut down its flagship Portland store at year's end. The outdoor gear company said negotiations with its landlord had broken down after it sought to make “significant investment” in the space on Northwest Johnson Street in the Pearl District.In an email to customers, it cited increased crime. But an employee later told Oregon Business magazine that the store had been cutting hours and was in the midst of a union drive. Meanwhile, John Hallstrom, the managing member for the property owner, Brolin Co. LLC, said it was negotiating a 10-year lease, but “external factors that we are unable to control caused REI to decide to leave at the end of the current lease term.”It's difficult to say which of these reasons was the primary driver of the announcement—or if REI will really leave. But it is certainly true that REI and other businesses in central Portland have been struggling with shoplifting in recent years. WW reviewed several recent prosecutions to understand why outdoor retailers, like REI, are frequent targets, and why theft has proven so difficult to stop.Support the showSign Up For Exclusive Episodes At: https://reasonabletv.com/LIKE & SUBSCRIBE for new videos every day. https://www.youtube.com/c/NewsForReasonablePeople

When you think about a mall, its success is often measured in the number of stores open and operating. If the mall is doing poorly, they close — and the more closed storefronts, the worse the perception of the "health" and prosperity of the mall.The mall can function as something of an analogy for thinking about downtown Portland, even if the latter is at a much larger scale. The more businesses that thrive downtown, the better for the whole. The more that suffer, the worse.That conjures up the latest downtown business bombshell that broke this week. Outdoor retailer REI wrote in an email to customers that its longtime store in the Pearl District will close when its lease comes up at the end of February next year.It's the only REI store in the Portland city limits, and it's been serving the area for nearly two decades. The company said that last year, even with increased security, they dealt with the highest number of break-ins and thefts since they opened the store.The company also said that it had "outgrown" the current space and could not reach a deal with the landlord to address the issues. So they're moving on out.Support the showSign Up For Exclusive Episodes At: https://reasonabletv.com/LIKE & SUBSCRIBE for new videos every day. https://www.youtube.com/c/NewsForReasonablePeople

KVI's Kirby Wilbur and Lars Larson talk about the schadenfreude that outdoor/camping giant REI is closing its Portland store due to continuing crime/theft/property damage in the city's trendy Pearl District.

Tithe They're from Portland, Oregon. Portland is the home to the largest independently owned bookstore City Of Books. Maybe that's where Women and Women First got their idea from. The real name is called In Other Words. Here's an article; they're not too happy. In Other Words   City Of Books Located in the Pearl District, Powell's City of Books is the headquarters of Powell's Books, a local chain of bookstores dubbed the largest independently owned bookstore in the world. Founded in 1971, the bookstore is a local institution and has been named among the top 10 bookstores in the country. Powell's Books has over four million books between new, used, rare, and out-of-print editions. The bookstore also buys over 3,000 used books every day. Also, if you want some sweet Tithe vinyl, head over here. Profound Lore Records   Planet Mammoth 2023 tickets https://www.simpletix.com/e/planet-mammoth-2023-tickets-121354   http://doomtombpodcast.com *****   ***** Edited by Ian from No Masters Audio: https://www.instagram.com/nomastersaudio/ House band : Stone Witch https://stonewitchband.bandcamp.com https://interstellarsmokerecords.bigcartel.com *****  Cranium Radio(Sundays,6-9 PM EST): https://www.facebook.com/craniumradio The Doom Tomb http://craniumradio.com Listen by way of : https://streema.com https://tunein.com https://live365.com https://liveonlineradio.net/cranium-radio http://radio.garden/listen/cranium-radio/5vlWBp-R ***** Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/doomtombpodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/doomtombpodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@doomtomb?lang=en We go live now and again. https://twitter.com/DoomTombPodcast https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYEaR0imIjYsgw-icbQPyhQ   ***** Planet Mammoth: https://www.facebook.com/planetmammoth https://www.instagram.com/planetmammothentertainment/ ***** Doom Tomb Merch: https://doomtomb.bigcartel.com ***** doomtombpodcast@gmail.com Submissions, interviews, or to say hi. ***** STAY HEAVY !!!!

A car crashed through the glass front doors of REI in Portland's Pearl District on Black Friday, the store's third break-in in a single week and the latest in a string of .The episode is another example of challenges retailers say they face in Portland during what is typically the most lucrative time of year.The number of burglaries, robberies, vehicle thefts and vandalism are at their highest in Portland since 2019 according to Portland Police Bureau data from the first 10 months of the year. Reported burglaries during that time period have jumped from 3,508 in 2019 to 4,868 in 2022. And between January and October 2022, Portlanders have reported 1,181 robberies, 9,212 vehicle thefts and 9,971 incidents of vandalism, compared with 818 robberies, 5,414 vehicle thefts and 5,151 incidents of vandalism during that time period in 2019.Meanwhile, police are  to Multnomah County prosecutors, according to data released this month by District Attorney Mike Schmidt.Inflation, the lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and e-commerce are , as more shoppers restrict spending, avoid crowds and hunt for better deals online.Support the showSign Up For Exclusive Episodes At: https://reasonabletv.com/LIKE & SUBSCRIBE for new videos every day. https://www.youtube.com/c/NewsForReasonablePeople

KXL's Brett Reckamp gets a visit from Lumera Regenerative Medicine's new Pearl District location - just opened up, he hears about the thriving Portland area small business now with 2 locations - in Tualatin and the Pearl from Marco Collette & Kelcey Morris; Multnomah County working on homeless situation; 2 service members - Colonel Scott Grainger - Commander of the University of Portland's Air Force ROTC Detachment and Colonel John Tole on Veteran's Day

Starbucks shop in the heart of the Pearl District will close permanently come Friday, Oct. 21.The closure is posted on the coffee shop's door at the corner of Northwest 11th Avenue and Lovejoy Street. Reached by phone and then in person on Monday, two baristas confirmed the impending closure to WW, saying management told them the closure is due to safety concerns. Starbucks' corporate office did not respond to WW's request for comment.

This is the last, for now, of the shows recorded on location from the Pacific Northwest. It was recorded at Von Ebert Brewing's Glendoveer location, on the far edges of Portland, Oregon and situated on a golf course.  Von Ebert is a brewery that has been crushing it since the start. Making great IPAs and Lagers as well as boasting a terrific blending program – in fact we discuss some of those beers on this show to illustrate ingredients and process.  A brewery with a diverse portfolio that executes on the highest of levels always has something to explore, and prior to the show Jeff Alworth, the writer, author, and podcast host, had been driving me around Oregon and trying to dissect Von Ebert.  Since it was such a conundrum, I invited him to co-host this episode. Happily it goes off the rails at points.  Our guests keep us on track and they are: Sam Pecoraro, the Head Brewer who has been brewing around Portland for 11 years at various breweries, including Burnside Brewing, The Commons Brewery and Breakside Brewery before joining Von Ebert at their inception in 2018.  As Head Brewer, Sam leads the Pearl District and Glendoveer Brewing teams in all quests related to IPA variants, German-inspired lagers and mixed culture beers.   And Jason Hansen, the Lead Brewer and Blender who Started homebrewing right after college, and ended up getting a job at Seven Bridges Organic Homebrew Supply  in Santa Cruz, CA. before moving to  Sante Adairius Rustic Ales where he eventually became head brewer. He was then Lead Fermentationist at Garden Path Fermentation in Burlington, before joining Von Ebert in 2018.   It's a crowded table that grows a bit more when we're joined later in the show by Madeleine McCarthy, who was then a brewer at Von Ebert but has since started working at 10 Barrel Brewing.  There is a lot to unpack on this rollicking show recorded just off the practice green at the course with a an audience putting a dent into the lager taps. -John HollThis episode is sponsored by: Jack's Abby BrewingGuatemala, the land of eternal spring, rich agriculture, and affinity for fantastic food and coffee. Craft beer is a fledgling movement in the country, but it's being led by our friends from El Zapote Brewing. Our conversation with them inspired us to create a unique coffee golden lager with imported beans from Finca Retana family farm in Antigua, Guatemala. We believe this beer will have a true taste of the country and we hope you enjoy this unique lager inspired by culture, colors, and conversation.For more Drink Beer, Think Beer check out All About Beer. Hosts: John Holl and Jeff Alworth Guests: Sam Pecoraro, Jason Hansen, Madeleine McCarthy Sponsors: Jack's Abby, The Craft Brewery Cookbook, All About Beer Tags: Beer, Brewing, Hops, Recipes, Growth, Oregon, IPA, Lager, Mixed Fermentation

We continue wending a caffeinated path through this coffee enclave's most iconic espresso shops. Step out of the city lights and into this bustling refuge in north Portland's famous Pearl, famous for amazing ambience and delectable cherry mochas. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

This audio recording captures Eugene, Maya, and Kris recapping day 4 and day 5 of the Seattle to Portland bike adventure (SEAPOR). We finished with our bodies and bikes unscathed! We biked from Northwoods to Home Valley campsite then from Home Valley to our final destination: Portland. We recapped our last couple days of the bike adventure at a friends apartment in Pearl District of Portland. Happy listening!

We return to Von Ebert's Pearl District location in downtown Portland, to meet a well established member of the beer community and Head Brewer, Sam Pecoraro. Just one of 4 locations, of this award winning local brewery, as we try and discuss some of their best creations, and their plans for the future. Ryan stirs up a possible collab, Damian helps name a new pilsner, and John brings the peat. Secret sky lounges, innovations, and damn good beer on this episode of Brew Happy!

Today on the PDX Pet Connection podcast, I have Julie Houser of Pet Wants Pearl District. Stay tuned to hear about their healthy small-batch food and treat delivery service. They can even help you find the best food for your pet. You can find more information about the Pet Wants Pearl District on their website and by following them on Instagram and Facebook. I hope you enjoy this episode with your furry best friend. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to become part of the PDX Pet Connection community, join our Facebook group and connect with other pet parents, businesses, services, and charities.

Die besten Donuts der Welt essen und den tiefsten See der USA entdecken? Susanne Schmitt erzählt uns in dieser neuen Podcastfolge über die gigantische Vielfalt des Küstenstaates Oregon: von malerischen Küstenorten über zahlreiche Gewässer und regenwaldartige Wälder bis hin zu majestätischen Bergen und weitläufigen Wüstenlandschaften. Sehenswerte Stationen__________________________*Portland - Stadtviertel:          - Northwest/Nob Hill, Mississippi District, Alberta Arts District, Pearl District         - Powell's City of Books, Buchladen         - Stumptown Coffee Roaster, Coffee Shop          - Voodoo Doughnut - Woodburn Premium Outlets in Woodburn *Küste- Newport- Florence, Ort nahe der Sanddünen - Thor's Well, Yachats- Astoria- Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach-  Pelican Brewing Company, Restaurant in Pacific City *Southern Oregon- Crater Lake National Park *Willamette Valley (Weinregion)- Eugene, Studentenstadt- Ponzi Vineyards, Weingut in Sherwood *Columbia River Gorge & Mount Hood- Mount Hood, höchster Berg Oregons- Hood River- Columbia River Gorge- Multnomah Falls *Central Oregon- McKenzie Pass- Three Sisters- Bend - Smith Rock State Park *Eastern Oregon- Painted Hills- Dayville- The Journey Through Time Scenic Byway, Panoramastraße - John Day            - 1188 Brewing, Brauerei in John Day- Sumpter, lebendige Geisterstadt- Baker City          - Latitude 45 Grille, Restaurant in Baker City         - Oregon Trail Interpretive Center in Baker City- Pendleton          - Tamastslict Cultural Institute, Museum nahe PendletonIhr wollt endlich eure eigenen Reiseerlebnisse sammeln? Bei eurer individuellen Reiseplanung helfen unsere erfahrenen Reiseberater von America Unlimited und Feinreisen. Schickt uns eine Email an info@america-unlimited.de oder an info@feinreisen.de.  Telefonisch erreicht ihr unser Büro in Hannover an unter 0511 3744 4750 oder unter 0511 3744 47 77. Auf unserer Webseite https://www.america-unlimited.de findet ihr eine Übersicht an Rundreisen in Nordamerika, die wir ganz nach euren Wünschen umgestalten können. Weltweite Reisevorschläge findet ihr unter https://www.feinreisen.deMietwagen in den USA und Kanada: https://youtu.be/z0LdynborQIMit dem Wohnwagen durch USA und Kanada: https://youtu.be/wHd5xhWEyFU*Ganz wichtig*Abonniert meinen Podcast „Travel&Stars · Experten & Stars im Reise Podcast“, damit ihr keine neue Folge verpasst. Jede Woche veröffentlichen wir hier neue interessante Episoden.Wer auch zuschauen möchte, findet diese und weitere Zielgebiete auf meinem YouTube Kanal "Timo und Leo, die Reiseexperten"https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuCZhI2DDAxLHFNeETsXbTQ?sub_confirmation=1Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3m5Twz5Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3h3SFebGoogle Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3i7ziCwAmerica Unlimited: https://www.america-unlimited.deEmail: info@america-unlimited.deTeil: 0511 3744 4750Feinreisen: https://www.feinreisen.deEmail: info@feinreisen.deTel: 0511 3744 4777

Pearl District，珍珠啤酒厂，Emma酒店

Pearl District，珍珠啤酒厂，Emma酒店

3 wounded in daytime shooting in Pearl District this weekend. Oregon National Guard once again sent to state hospital for reinforcements. Oregon State Police troopers, firefighters sue Gov. Kate Brown over COVID-19 vaccine mandate See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dan Harris is a successful screenwriter and director who now calls Portland his home. He also opened a popular store, Cult., in the Pearl District. It's a challenging time to start a new business in the Rose City. He talks about that and his movie career on today's show.

Saucemongers! Episode 65 of the Spiciest Podcast in the GAME. With the return of the Nashville food wizard Bryan Lee Weaver, businessman behind Red Headed Stranger and Butcher and Bee We also have Brian Brinkman, Executive Producer at Osiris Podcast Network, also former brunch shift tag team partner at Iriving Street Kitchen in the Pearl District of Portland, Oregon Today's sauce: http://www.chungjungone.com/us/newproduct/Newgochujang.jsp Suns Vs Bucks, JR Smith handshakes, Kitchen Drill Sargeants,  culture shock in Korea. Much Love, Stay Saucy

Police arrested 13 protesters after detaining a group of more than 100 in the Pearl District for hours Friday night into early Saturday morning.Officers kettled the protesters, employing a controversial police tactic used to contain people within a perimeter. The practice has been at the center of multiple lawsuits and criticized by civil rights advocates and, to an extent, Mayor Ted Wheeler.The protest was billed as a direct action march with no specified target, though an online poster included a U.S. Department of Homeland Security logo with a red line through it.Join your host Sean Reynolds, owner of Summit Properties NW and Reynolds & Kline Appraisal as he takes a look at this developing topic.Support the show (https://buymeacoff.ee/seattlepodcast)

Intro: (Cue intro music) Hey everyone, welcome back to What a week!, I'm your host, Olivia Lee, here to deliver your weekly dose of the news. Let's get started!In Local News: https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2021/03/13-arrested-after-police-kettle-over-100-protesters-in-portlands-pearl-district.htmlLast Friday night, police arrested 13 protesters after detaining a group of more than 100 in the Pearl District. Officers kettled the protesters, employing a controversial police tactic used to contain people within a perimeter. The practice has been at the center of multiple lawsuits and criticized by  numerous civil rights advocates. The protest was billed as a direct action march with no specified target. Shortly after the march began, police told the protesters they were detaining everyone within the kettle boundary. The police did not immediately provide details about the alleged criminal conduct, but Sergeant Kevin Allen, a police spokesperson, later said there was a quote “reasonable suspicion” that everyone inside the kettle perimeter had  quoted “committed at least one criminal violation.” Police also said demonstrators had smashed windows and blocked traffic by marching in the street.In-state news:https://ktvz.com/news/coronavirus/2021/03/14/oregon-reports-no-new-covid-19-related-deaths-one-year-after-states-first-deathLast Sunday marked one year since Oregon's first COVID-19 death. There were no new COVID-19 related deaths in Oregon on the anniversary and the state's death toll remains at 2,322 as reported by the Oregon Health Authority. OHA also reported on Sunday, 234 new confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19 bringing the state total to 159,617.In National News:https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryancbrooks/coronavirus-vaccine-eligible-bidenLast Thursday, president Joe Biden announced that he's directing all states, tribes, and territories to allow every adult in the U.S. to be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccination by May 1st. This is considered to be a key part of moving the country into the next phase of battling the pandemic. In Biden's national address on the one-year anniversary of the pandemic being declared, he said quote "All adult Americans will be eligible to get a vaccine no later than May 1. That's much earlier than expected. Let me be clear: That doesn't mean everyone's going to have that shot immediately, but it means you'll be able to get in line beginning May 1." The announcement marks a sharp shift toward federal control over the pandemic response. As of recent, individual states have primarily been the ones tasked with leading vaccine rollout and setting eligibility requirements.https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/biden-signs-1-9-trillion-stimulus-bill-making-1400-checks-and-3600-child-tax-credit-official/Last week, President Joe Biden also signed the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package bill into law, which includes a third stimulus check, for up to $1,400, and an expanded child tax credit. The bill signing was just one day after the amended bill passed in the House by a vote of 220-211. The House initially passed the bill on Feb. 26th, and the Senate approved it two weeks ago, after making some changes. The IRS stated last Friday that more rounds of stimulus checks will be deposited into bank accounts over the next few weeks. For this third stimulus check, eligible adults will each qualify for a $1,400 check and their dependents will  add to the family's overall total -- even those left out of the first two rounds of payments. In International News:  https://abcnews.go.com/International/disappearance-sarah-everard-sparks-national-discussion-womens-safety/story?id=76424354 https://www.vice.com/en/article/3angqk/police-criticised-for-unacceptable-shutdown-of-sarah-everard-vigil https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tasneemnashrulla/sarah-everard-vigil-met-police-investigation Last Friday the search for Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old woman who went missing in London officially ended, after remains found earlier in the week were confirmed to be hers. Sarah was last seen on March 3rd according to police. She had been at a friend's house and was walking back to her home in Brixton, a trip that should have taken about 50 minutes.Sarah's kidnapping and death— allegedly at the hands of a police officer, has sparked a national conversation around women's safety. Women from all over the world have spoken out about the all-too-common reality of walking alone in fear. This past Saturday, organizers in London held a peaceful vigil for Sarah. Thousands of people gathered at the memorial for Sarah in London to pay their tributes and raise their voices to end violence against women, before being swarmed by police. Footage shared on social media shows police in London using force against peaceful women protesters and making multiple arrests. The Metropolitan Police have been widely criticized for their part in shutting down the vigil shortly after nightfall and pulling demonstrators away from the scene.Lastly here is the wildcard news for the week: https://apnews.com/article/beyonce-most-grammys-woman-28-alison-krauss-b42f66a40a633a46b38d879c18c6453c https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/14/entertainment/beyonce-grammys-history/index.html The 63rd annual Grammy awards concluded last Sunday night with female artists dominating this awards season. Female performers including Beyoncé and Taylor Swift had a record-making night at the 2021 Grammy Awards. Four women won the top four prizes Sunday, including Taylor Swift, who became the first female performer to win album of the year three times. Beyoncé — with her 28th win — became the most decorated woman in Grammy history. American rapper, Megan Thee Stallion, who won three honors, also made history and became the first female rapper to win best rap song. She's also the fifth rap-based act to win best new artist. The 2021 Grammys also marks the first time four separate and solo women win the top four honors .Closing:  Well that wraps up What a Week! Stay safe and see you guys next week. 

Ahead of tonight's pre-announced #antifa riot in Portland's Pearl District, the neighborhood association has sent out a warning to the community. It tells people to stay indoors after 7 p.m. #PortlandRiotsFox News reporter @ChadPergram needs to ask Nancy Pelosi during her next press conference if these agents are "Stormtroopers," which is what she called them under Trump. Footage of #antifa & BLM rioters being pushed back by federal officers after they tried to storm the Mark O. Hatfield US Courthouse in downtown Portland. They taunt the officers, telling them to shoot. “F— the United States!” Antifa try to break into the federal courthouse in Portland. Federal officials just removed the barricades protecting the building after months of #antifa attacks on the building. Now they're back again. #Antifa and other far-left rioters in Portland tried to break into the @Chase bank. A lone security guard tried holding them back. He pulled out a pistol during the mob attack. Dirt biker rider beats up Asian man in Philadelphia and nearly kills him with gun National Guard member deployed to Capitol dies after medical emergency Biden Admin Overruled National Guard General Who Wanted To Pull Troops Out Of D.C. House Armed Services leaders: Level of security at Capitol "not warranted at this time" The FBI still can't find the "pipe bomber" because they are too busy keeping America safe from Grandmas who illegally toured the Capitol Building @elijahschaffer Did You Know: During the Church Committee hearings the FBI admitted 2,000 members of the KKK were working for them Nationwide - @jackposobiec

An estimated 150 people marched through Portland's Pearl District Saturday night for several hours in a direct action protest in opposition to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).Crowds began gathering around 9 p.m. at The Fields Park at 1099 Northwest Overton Street.Once the march began, some individuals in the group spray-painted the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field office downtown.Windows were smashed out at a handful of businesses as well as Safeway, Chipotle and Umpqua Bank.Independent journalists who were walking with the march said businesses were damaged including the Starbucks downtown at 9:31 p.m.Join your host Sean Reynolds, owner of Summit Properties NW and Reynolds & Kline Appraisal as he takes a look at this developing topic.Support the show (https://buymeacoff.ee/seattlepodcast)

Hey everyone, welcome back to What a week!, I'm your host, Olivia Lee, here to deliver your weekly dose of the news. Let's get started!In Local News:  https://nypost.com/2021/02/28/portland-protesters-smash-businesses-as-locals-scream-go-home/ https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/protests/vandals-smash-windows-in-portlands-pearl-district-during-a-planned-protest/283-3061f782-d068-4b9e-8329-d89e0876bdec https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2021/02/2-arrested-windows-damaged-in-pearl-district-protest-late-sunday.html Last Saturday a planned protest opposing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE,  in the Pearl district got out of hand, leading to the arrest of 2 people.  The two-hour protest began at The Fields Park, near the north end of the neighborhood, and continued through the Pearl District. Photos show an estimated 150 people gathered at the park at around  9 p.m.  Fliers for the protest called for quote “No borders! No nations! Abolish deportation.” While protesters smashed the windows of  several businesses, many fed-up locals screamed at protestors to quote  “go home,” according to reports. The Portland police reported quote “Windows were broken at a grocery store, restaurant, bank, shipping business, and multiple coffee shops,” end quote. In-state news: https://katu.com/news/local/1-year-of-coronavirus-in-oregon-gov-brown-takes-moment-to-say-thank-you https://www.kgw.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-numbers/oregon-reports-0-new-deaths-on-1-year-anniversary-of-first-covid-19-case/283-ba51d4dc-5cfd-4fde-beca-bad943ff9d89 This past Sunday, February 28th,  marked 1 year since the first Coronavirus case was found in the state of Oregon. In a statement Governor Kate Brown released on the anniversary of the first COVID-19 case diagnosis, she said quote “For so many Oregonians, after living through the COVID-19 pandemic, wildfires, flooding, severe winter weather, and a long-overdue reckoning on racism and racial justice, our lives are far different than they were on February 28, one year ago. Through it all, I have been inspired by the way Oregonians have pulled together and helped one another. Because of your smart choices to protect friends and family, Oregon has maintained some of the lowest infection, hospitalization, and death rates in the nation throughout the pandemic. Today, I want to take a moment to say: Thank you, Oregon.”   Governor Brown also thanked frontline workers and noted that this pandemic has disproportionately impacted (bye-poc) BIPOC communities. Brown also pointed to the quote "light at the end of the tunnel," as vaccination efforts continue to ramp up across the state. In its daily report this past Sunday, Oregon Health Authority (OHA) reported 0 new deaths and 292 new confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19 in the state. The OHA also reported that 29,330 new doses of the COVID-19 vaccine had been added to the state immunization registry. Oregon has now administered a total of 973,022 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. To date, there have been 1,194,495 doses delivered to sites across Oregon.In National News: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56226979 https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/johnson-coronavirus-vaccine-authorization Last week, the FDA formally approved the single-shot Johnson & Johnson (J&J) coronavirus vaccine, the third vaccine to be authorized in the country. Johnson & Johnson's vaccine has been shown to be effective at reducing severe cases of COVID-19 with just one shot. Trials found that it prevented serious illness but was 66% effective overall when moderate cases were included. The vaccine is set to be a cost-effective alternative to the (fizer) Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and can be stored in a refrigerator instead of a freezer. President Joe Biden made a statement on the authorization saying quote, "This is exciting news for all Americans, and an encouraging development in our efforts to bring an end to the crisis… Though we celebrate today's news, I urge all Americans to keep washing your hands, stay socially distanced, and keep wearing masks." https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-02-26/militia-official-us-strike-in-syria-kills-1-wounds-several https://www.vox.com/22302970/biden-syria-iran-strike-kaine-sanders-khanna-murphy-legal https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/25/politics/us-iraq-iran/index.html Last week, President Biden took his first known military action as President, targeting Iran-backed Militias in Syria. Last Thursday, the US military struck a site in Syria used by two Iranian-backed militia groups in response to rocket attacks on American forces in the region in the past two weeks. "Up to a handful" of militants were killed in the strikes, a US official told CNN. The strikes, which took place at President Biden's direction, quickly drew criticism from Democratic lawmakers. The site was not specifically tied to the rocket attacks, but Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he was quote "confident" it was used by the same Iranian-backed Shia militias targeting US and coalition forces in Iraq with rocket attacks.In International News:  https://www.npr.org/2021/02/28/972296756/at-least-18-killed-by-myanmar-security-forces-in-deadliest-day-since-coup-began https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/27/asia/myanmar-un-ambassador-fired-intl-hnk/index.html This past Sunday was the bloodiest day in Myanmar since a military (hoonta) junta seized power there one month ago. According to the United Nations Human Rights Office, at least 18 people were killed and more than 30 people were wounded after security forces fired live ammunition into crowds of peaceful demonstrators in several cities across the country. In addition to live rounds, police also used tear gas to disperse thousands of protesters in major cities. In response to the bloodshed, a U.N. Human Rights Office spokesperson said in a statement quote  "The people of Myanmar have the right to assemble peacefully and demand the restoration of democracy… These fundamental rights must be respected by the military and police, not met with violent and bloody repression. Use of lethal force against non-violent demonstrators is never justifiable under international human rights norms, " end quote.Lastly here is the wildcard news for the week: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56202805 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/25/us-house-equality-act-lgbtq-americans-discrimination https://www.them.us/story/house-passes-equality-act-lgbtq-civil-rights-bill-headed-senate Last Thursday afternoon, the House of Representatives passed the Equality Act,  a Landmark LGBTQ+ Civil Rights Bill. The key civil rights bill passed in a vote of 224 to 216, with three Republicans breaking with their party to join all Democrats in supporting the legislation. Despite this, the bill faces an uncertain future in the evenly divided Senate, where Democrats will need 60 votes to break a filibuster on the legislation. This is the second time in its history that the Equality Act has passed the House. The first was in 2019 — after which it stalled in the Senate when then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declined to bring the legislation for a vote. The Equality Act amends the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes in addition to race, religion, sex and national origin.Well that wraps up What a Week! Stay safe and see you guys next week. 

This long-deserted flour mill complex along the Willamette River was once Portland's biggest economic engine, producing enough wheat to make Oregon one of America's biggest producers. For the past 20 years, it has stood empty, even as the Pearl District exploded around it. Can it be preserved, should it be torn down for affordable housing, or could Centennial Mills continue as an industrial ruin and park? This episode features interviews with historian Chet Orloff, who worked at the mills as a young man, and Prosper Portland development director Lisa Abuaf, who is leading the city's effort to transform Centennial Mills equitably.

Kaylin McFarren has received more than fifty national literary awards, in addition to a prestigious RWA Golden Heart Award nomination for Flaherty’s Crossing—a book she and her oldest daughter, New York Times/USA Today best-selling author Kristina McMorris, co-wrote in 2008. Prior to embarking on her writing journey and developing her popular Threads psychological thriller series, she poured her passion for creativity into her work as the director of a fine art gallery in the Pearl District in Portland, Oregon; she also served as a governor-appointed member of the Oregon Arts Commission and currently oversees interior design projects for the Yoshida Group of Companies. Her self-published books are written in multiple genres and include award-winning romantic thrillers, mysteries, a time-travel adventure, and now, a paranormal fantasy. She hopes that her stories are entertaining and that they linger in the minds of readers long after her final twists are revealed. In addition to writing, when she’s not traveling between homes in San Diego and Portland or spoiling her two pups and three grandsons, she enjoys giving back to her community through participation and support of various charitable, medical, and educational organizations, and encourages others to do the same. To learn more about Kaylin McFarren and her work, visit her website.  Topics of Conversation Stepping outside her normal genre – writing about the supernatural world Why she pushes her characters to their limits Bringing relevant social issues into the mix – women’s rights A woman as the ruler of hell? Writing and publishing a book during a pandemic SOUL SEEKER Crighton Daemonium arrives in the peaceful town of Lochton, Illinois, searching for wicked souls to add to his count. Benjamin Poe, a devoted husband, father and firefighter, finds himself in a battle of wills against this evil, manipulating demon, while protecting his only son. Ultimately, Poe is tricked into committing murder and Crighton is rewarded with the soul he was sent to retrieve. Following Poe’s execution, Crighton continues his dark malevolent duties, until he's kidnapped by members of The Sovereign Sector. This group of scientists, notorious for experimenting on supernatural creatures, forces Crighton into a soulmate relationship with the very angel he was sent to capture for the King of Hell, Lucifer. With secrets revealed, darkness rules and loyalties shift. The demonic soul-seeker soon becomes the target of Lucifer's revenge, and his journey to redemption and freedom—or eternal enslavement—begins. CONNECT WITH KAYLIN MCFARREN! Website: http://www.kaylinmcfarren.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorKaylinMcFarren Twitter: https://twitter.com/4kaylin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/4kaylinmcfarren/ WATCH THE BOOK VIDEO READ THE READER VIEWS BOOK REVIEW

Catholic Chris joins us in the historic Pearl District outside of Local Coffee to discuss perspective on differences in Christianity.

Kaylin McFarren has received more than 40 national literary awards, in addition to a prestigious Golden Heart Award nomination for Flaherty’s Crossing – a book she and her oldest daughter, Kristina McMorris, co-authored in 2008. Prior to embarking on her writing journey and developing the popular Threads action/adventure romance series, she poured her passion for creativity into her work as the director of a fine art gallery in the Pearl District in Portland, Oregon; she also served as a governor-appointed member of the Oregon Arts Commission. When she’s not traveling or spoiling her pups and three grandsons, she enjoys giving back to her community through participation and support of various charitable and educational organizations in the Pacific Northwest, and is currently the president of the Soulful Giving Foundation – a non-profit focused on cancer research, care and treatment at hospitals throughout Oregon. For more information about Kaylin McFarren and her work, visit her website at www.kaylinmcfarren.com. Topics of conversation: Writing Across Different Genres Soulful Giving Foundation Annual Family Photo Upcoming Projects Her Unique Writing Process

Amanda Yoshida first dreamt of being a children’s book illustrator when she was a mere toddler, growing up in the suburbs surrounding Portland, Oregon. As a child, she spent countless hours drawing and studying the artwork inside her stacks of colorfully illustrated books. She favored the rhyming words and silly drawings of Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein and claimed one day she would be an artist. Eventually, the pens and pencils that were always in her hand became paint brushes in her exploration of creativity. At the age of fourteen, her original artwork was displayed and sold at her family’s art gallery in Portland’s Pearl District and lead to substantial private commissions. After graduating from the elite Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Los Angeles in 2009, she fell in love with the digital canvas and began working solely in this media. Amanda returned to her beloved hometown of Portland in 2013 and began working as a freelance graphic designer and digital painter. While in the midst of growing her successful business and putting down roots with her husband, the dream of becoming a mother and published author was realized. Two months before the birth of her first child, she received word that her first children’s book, would be published. Amanda now enjoys reading her debut book, “The Greatest Wish” to her son, Morgan. She is currently working on the next installment of the Everchanging Story Book series. For more information on Amanda Yoshida and The Greatest Wish, visit her website. Topics of conversation: Becoming a Mother and an Award Winning Author Growing up with a Family of Authors Her Background as an Artist Loving Life in Portland, Oregon Her Passion for Vinyl Records

San Antonio’s Pearl district has a dark and fascinating history of murder, mental institutions, and redemption. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/texas-slang-for-crazy/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/texas-slang-for-crazy/support

In this week's podcast Joseph Gallivan talks about Adam Arnold, a designer and tailor in the Pearl District who keeps things analog in a digital world, and Stephanie talks about the landscape architecture firm called Place.

In this week's podcast Joseph Gallivan talks about Adam Arnold, a designer and tailor in the Pearl District who keeps things analog in a digital world, and Stephanie talks about the landscape architecture firm called Place.

On today's episode of Gritty Founder, Kreig Kent talks with Winfield Durham about his journey as an entrepreneur and how he built Sisters Coffee Company. Winfield shares fantastic advice on keeping overhead down and the importance of hard work. Winfield is the founder of Sisters Coffee Company, which is a cafe and roastery in Sisters, Oregon, along with a cafe in the Pearl District in Portland. Some Questions Kreig asks Winfield: - How did you get the entrepreneurial bug? (5:08) - How did you get your first customer for Sisters Coffee? (15:16) - What is your vision for the future of Sisters Coffee? (27:53) - If you could give an early stage founder advice on starting their business, what would you tell them? (33:18) - If you could go back in time, what advice would you tell yourself? (35:51) - What is some advice for entrepreneurs who are thinking about starting a coffee business? (56:15) In This Episode, You Will Learn: - About Winfield’s background and how he became an entrepreneur (4:21) - How Winfield started Sisters Coffee Company. (9:33) - Use your off time to education yourself and get better at your craft (36:24) - About the roasting process (44:25) - Advice on managing a team (47:54) - Keep your overhead down, work the hours, and don’t cut corners on quality (56:27) Connect with Winfield Durham: LinkedIn Sisters Coffee Company Also Mentioned on This Show... Winfield’s favorite quote: “Never give up.” ―Winston Churchill Winfield’s book recommendation: Good to Great by Jim Collins

Join WE and ALE for a fun-filled episode alllll about the Pearl District, the Crystal Ballroom and communal baths!! Yup, you read that right!!

In this episode, Jeff sits down with Joe Picorale, owner of Be Love Yoga Studio in the Pearl District to hear about how he got started practicing yoga and about his teaching style.He also shares about his life journey and reflects about how yoga has changed his life and the lives of his students.The conversation concludes as Joe speaks about the connection of of his studio to the surrounding neighborhood and about the upcoming Silent Yoga Downtown Shutdown on September 13th, the Big Om Yoga Festival at Centennial Park on September 14th and 15th, and the Fall Big Om Yoga Retreat on October 11th-13th.For more information, please visitwww.beloveyogastudio.comTo learn more about the Big Om Yoga Festival At Centennial Park, please visithttps://www.bigomyogaretreat.com/big-om-yoga-festivalTo learn more about Big Om Yoga Retreat, please visit www.bigomyogaretreat.com

Arguably Portland’s most acclaimed work of 21st century architecture, in 2000 the Wieden + Kennedy Agency World Headquarters transformed a century-old former cold-storage warehouse in the Pearl District and made its architect, Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works, the city’s most celebrated. Our first interview features Cloepfil reflecting on the building’s design process and his early career. In the second interview, longtime W+K veteran Danny Sheniak discusses the evolution of one of America’s top advertising agencies.

In this episode, Jeff sits down with Joe Picorale, owner of Be Love Yoga Studio in the Pearl District to hear about how he got started practicing yoga and about his teaching style.He also shares about his life journey and reflects about how yoga has changed his life and the lives of his students.The conversation concludes as Joe speaks about the connection of of his studio to the surrounding neighborhood and about the upcoming Silent Yoga Downtown Shutdown on September 13th, the Big Om Yoga Festival at Centennial Park on September 14th and 15th, and the Fall Big Om Yoga Retreat on October 11th-13th.For more information, please visit www.beloveyogastudio.comTo learn more about the Big Om Yoga Festival At Centennial Park, please visit https://www.bigomyogaretreat.com/big-om-yoga-festivalTo learn more about Big Om Yoga Retreat, please visit www.bigomyogaretreat.com

Brian visits with Windermere agent Blake Ellis, who focuses on Portland's expanding Pearl District and points beyond. Blake shares his expertise on the specifics of buying & selling condos and why the Pearl is pushing into nearby neighborhoods. Plus, Blake shares the inside scoop on a few of his favorite new restaurants.

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler joins us to talk about Harbor of Hope, the new 100-bed shelter and services center being built in the Pearl District. The city and county call it a “navigation center,” and are touting it as “the most ambitious public-private partnership on homelessness yet.”

Matt and Julie kick off the holiday season with a non-traditional Thanksgiving feast of epic proportions. We're not just talking turkey; there's cocktails, chile relleno, and yes, Taco Bell.

Judah Newby & Neil Lomax preview the 122nd Civil War on a Black Friday in Oregon between the Oregon Ducks and Oregon State Beavers, Live from The Fields Bar & Grill in The Pearl District, presented by Kuni BMW.

Kathy Fettke, Real Wealth Network, is on air with Abhi to discuss real estate investment opportunities and where to be looking. She talks strategy for cash flow and realistic ways to build your portfolio. Portland’s Pearl District is a trendy area and Kathy has details on her syndication deal in 2010. Not sure what a syndication deal is? Neither did Kathy and she wants to help you understand how it can benefit you during your investment journey. Learn more about Kathy and her team and how they can help you build wealth by visiting RealWealthNetwork.com The Power Play: Listener Andy calls in to the show and has a question for Greg and Abhi. He owns 20 acres of wooded, lakefront property in Georgia and wants to know what he should do with it. Greg and Abhi weigh in on what they think would be the wisest move with his investment.

The OHSU Partnership Project is a collaborative program, from providing access to medical services – to raising awareness – is an important resource for people living with HIV or AIDS, and to people in the transgender community. You can support the program by taking part in AIDS Walk, which takes place on Saturday, September 8, 2018, in Portland’s Pearl District. Guests include: Julia Lager-Mesulam, Director, OHSU Partnership Project

In this week's episode we feature Homer Williams, a real estate developer for more than 40 years. Homer was instrumental in the success of the Pearl District and South Waterfront. He's now focusing his time and energy on his non-profit, Harbor of Hope, and is looking to be an integral part in helping to solve our homeless crisis.

Portland Center Stage is presenting “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill,” from May 26 to July 1 at The Armory in Portland’s Pearl District. Use the discount code “PJCE” for $10 off your ticket to any performance of this incredible production. And, don't miss a special concert featuring Portland-based singer-songwriter Jimmy Herrod with a sextet of PJCE musicians. We’ll be playing a new song by Jimmie, and songs written or made famous by Billie Holiday arranged by Kerry Politzer, Clay Giberson, and Alex Koehler. It’ll be a bit like a live version of this podcast with musical performances, questions and answers with the artists, and more information about one of jazz’s most iconic masters using some of Billie Holiday’s own words from archival audio. Join us to get a deeper experience of “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” and a deeper appreciation of an American original. The concert is Sunday, June 24th at Portland Center Stage. There’s a reception at 6 pm in the atrium, and the concert starts at 7 pm in the Ellen Bye Studio. “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” does not perform that night. More information at pjce.org. And don’t forget to use the code PJCE for $10 off your tickets.

In this episode, the founders of Infinite Red—Jamon Holmgren, Ken Miller, and Todd Werth—are talking about Chain React, Infinite Red’s React Native tech conference this July 11-13th in Portland, OR. Hear the story of how the conference came about, how Infinite Red's remote team worked together to create an in-person event, the value of hiring people with diverse interests and backgrounds, and all of the things that go into making the best conference possible. Show Links Chain React 2018 Derek's Food Report Episode Transcript CHRIS MARTIN: In 2017, Infinite Red started Chain React, a conference devoted to React Native. So the question that I have for the three of you to start is: why start a conference and what was the need that you saw? JAMON HOLMGREN: This is Jamon and I was on Twitter and I was looking for a React Native conference because we had been doing React Native for about a year at that point. And I was thinking, well, it'd be really nice to see if some of our team could attend a conference and potentially maybe share some of the things that we had learned along the way. So I actually put out a tweet saying, "is there a React Native conference around? I'm not seeing one." And got no responses, which partially had to do with my very small Twitter audience at the time and partially just because there wasn't one. Now, it turns out there was one over in Europe, React Native EU, put on by our friends over at Callstack. TODD WERTH: But that was after. JAMON: I believe it was after that. KEN: We didn't learn about that until after. TODD: Not at that time. JAMON: Right. I was just kinda chewing on that. Wow, I didn't get any response to that. I would normally get two or three options if I were to put out something like that. And I woke up one morning, I'm like, you know what, maybe we should do a conference? And what is funny is independently two or three people contacted me after that, that same week saying, "Do you think we should do a React Native conference?" Just independently and it just seemed like that all kind of came together all at once. TODD: And this is Todd, Todd Werth, by the way. Some background here. We've never done a conference at all. We've of course all attended conferences. We're familiar with that. Although Shawni Danner, who ran the conference had never attended a conference, which was funny, but anyways, so Jamon came up with the idea, talked to some other people in our company, they liked the idea and then pretty quickly we decided and then we started building the conference. KEN MILLER: At what point in there did Gant ... Because Gant, who is our social butterfly... TODD: Gant Laborde. KEN: ...so he asked around various people to see whether they would speak. And I don't remember if that was before we decided or after. I feel like that was before. We were kind of mulling the idea around and he was like, "hey, we're thinking about doing this conference. Would you want to speak?" And when a bunch of people were like, yeah, hell yeah. We were like, okay, sounds like the stars are aligning, and it was very much a feeling of the stars aligning to be honest. JAMON: It really was. KEN: This signal is kind of like once we started putting the idea out, it just gathered momentum from a bunch of different places and we're like, okay, and then once you commit, the momentum increases. TODD: And as far as I know, it was the first React Native conference in the world. JAMON: As far as the first one that was held, I think Callstack announced their conference before we announced ours. But yeah it was right in that same time. TODD: Correct, they announced, but theirs came after ours actually. JAMON: Yeah, theirs was in September, ours was in July of 2017. CHRIS: So when you're putting on a new venture, like a conference that you have no experience in and you start seeing the stars align and you start seeing this momentum form: how do you really go from zero to one? KEN: I don't want to say it wasn't hard because a lot of work went into it, but it wasn't super difficult. At the end of the day, the hard part about making a conference is making a good conference. You get a venue, you get speakers, you get food, you get swag. I mean, I don't mean to oversimplify it, but if you've planned a wedding, you can plan a conference, right? It's probably not even as hard as a wedding because it's not quite as emotionally wrought, but where we put the most effort into well how do we make it a good conference? And we sort of came up with a list of things, some of which I think turned out to be true. Like getting good speakers, making sure that there's at least a certain amount of diversity. I think we always want more, but there needs to be at least enough that people can kind of go, look, hey, there's someone like me there. I was big on having good food. I think that wasn't as important as I thought it was. It's important to me, but the things that people cared about it, we're actually different than what we thought. So there was definitely things that we learned from the process, but the process of getting it organized—and a lot of credit goes to Shawni for being an amazing organizer of things—but the process of getting it made, while stressful and hectic at points, went off pretty smoothly overall. TODD: Yeah. So that's all true. One thing we did do though is as a leadership team, is we decided to put a decent amount of resources into it. I think a lot of people are like, this is a little side project and it was a side project for us. But we're 26 people, so we can put a little more wood behind the arrow of a side project like this if we decide to. And we'd probably put a little too much resources in to it, to be honest. And we'll talk about this later, but the results were well worth it. JAMON: Yeah. One of the things you have to remember is back in 2016 when we were first starting to do this, we had been doing React Native for a year. We weren't necessarily quite as well known back then, we were still fairly new player in the space. We had done some things in other technical realms that we were more known for, but React Native we were still a relative newcomer. So for us this was, it was a bigger, maybe bigger deal than just necessarily putting on a conference for the revenue or something along those lines. We wanted to be connected. We want it to be in that space. And so we did put it, as Todd said, we put a lot of resources behind it. We put a lot of thought into it. As a founder team, we put a lot into it. TODD: And it was probably a half of Shawni's main job, which is a significant amount. JAMON: Absolutely. And another person I'll point out here that who was instrumental was Gant Laborde. He's typically the most active in the conference circuit from Infinite Red and he's been to a lot of conferences as both speaker and attendee and he had a really good sense, good instincts about what worked well at those conferences and what didn't. And early on I read an article about how you should really treat your speakers well and I brought it up to Gant and he absolutely agreed with that. The speakers are so key to a great conference and so we spent a lot of time, energy, and money, making sure that the speakers felt comfortable, that they had a good spot, that they were well supported all the way up to the conference and that was definitely time well spent. It was a good investment. All of the speakers that we've talked to felt like they had a fantastic experience. Some said that it was the best conference that they had ever spoke at, which was, a lot of them were very accomplished speakers so for a first time conference, we felt that was very good. TODD: That's a good example of making decisions that produce good quality products, whether they're a conference, software, whatever. A lot of people read those articles. The article says the most important thing is treating your speakers right. They read it, they think about it, they talk about it, they don't actually do it. We accept that we knew nothing about throwing a conference, so we took Everyone-on-the-Internet's advice like that very seriously and we asked our team and then we put resources behind that and we went way out of our way for the speakers. I've spoke at conferences and it is true. Some are very well organized and you feel very comfortable and it makes for a great presentation and some are not. So I definitely think the number one lesson we learned, spoiler alert, was treat your speakers well. CHRIS: Todd, I have a question for you in terms of a follow-up. When you are reading these articles and they say what to do, what is the difference between just reading them and not acting on them and choosing to act on them? Was there just a moment where you're like, okay, we're actually going to do that? TODD: We make make decisions fairly quickly. We do make decisions as a quorum of elders. All the leaders make decisions together. We have no king here at Infinite Red. So we do make decisions pretty quickly, especially if one person doesn't have a passionate opposite position. So when Jamon brought that up and then Gant and some other people, Darin Wilson, for example, other people who spoke at a lot of conferences, agreed with it. We decided almost instantly. Well, I mean there's a lot of things that get in your way. The first one is admitting you don't know anything about something you actually don't know anything about. And so listening is tough for people and especially tough for companies. The second thing is hubris. I've never done a conference. It doesn't stop me from doing the best one I can do and I'm not gonna listen to anyone and you know that happens. And the third one is making the right decision fairly quickly, listening to your team, and then actually putting no one in charge of that, giving no one actual time to work on it, and putting no money into it. This is basically Congress's full time job doing that. (laughter) So we try to avoid that. I mean, I'm not just, it sounds like I'm just cheerleading the leadership team, which is kind of self-serving as I'm on it. But it's not just us, it's just the whole team. When we say we decided, Jamon read this article, a bunch of people have talked to agree with this concept of treating speakers well. We're gonna treat speakers well. The team doesn't roll their eyes and go, "sure." The whole company culturally said we're going to do this and they're going to do it. And truthfully, the leadership, we helped the decision-making but we didn't do much of the actual work for the conference. KEN: I think there's conferences where their idea of treating speakers well is to just throw money at them. And that was not ... I mean, I don't think that's the feedback we got from speakers. I mean everybody likes money. I mean don't get me wrong, but it's about making their experience smooth because no amount of money will stop the nerves or the feeling of not being appreciated. TODD: If you make it easy for people to shine, that's what they remember. People remember the way they feel about things way more than they remember what was said or the logic to it. CHRIS: So when you're doing something that's outside normal business parameters or normal business operations, how does something like putting on a conference cause distractions or disruptions and how have you worked through it as founders and how have you seen the team work through it as well? JAMON: That's a great question and I think one of the early pain points was just in process because ... we're a consultancy and so we have a certain process that's set up for clients. And in this case we didn't have a client. We had an internal project, we had an internal champion, Shawni, but it's still a very different feel. Shawni wasn't handing us all of the requirements and saying go build this thing. We had to do it as a group, so we had to develop processes around that and that was something that was very interesting that took time to develop and in fact, we're still kind of working through some of those things, but I feel like we've learned a lot and there's a lot more shared understanding around how we make those decisions and things like that. So I think process was a pretty big adjustment for us. Another thing that comes to mind with that is allocating actual team time as a consultancy. If anytime that you're spending on that, you're obviously not billing and you're not making revenue for the company. Obviously the hope is that the conference pays for itself by the revenue that comes in for it, but we still had to put a lot of time in on speculation that this was going to work. That's a very different thing than: give us a deposit and we'll start working and we'll send you bills. Again, internal allocation of resources was another adjustment that we had to make and also planning for the future and making sure that we had the revenue, the cash flow to make that happen. And Ken was really good at kind of identifying what we could sustain and what we couldn't as a company. KEN: Part of the initial "should we do this" consideration was like okay, how many people would we need to do to break even? And we were prepared to be happy with break even and that turned out to be a smaller number than we thought. That made it something that we could grapple with and be like okay, if we can get 150 people into a room where, we think we can do that even if we have to go and individually invite 300 people in order to get that hit rate or whatever. And so it ended up being a lot more than that and that was awesome. But it gave us this margin of psychological safety when we went into it. It's kind of like, okay, yeah, we can do this, and we know at what point were losing money, what point where we're making money, at what point we can up the experienced because we've got enough margin to do that. TODD: That's super important. What Ken just mentioned is any time we have an idea we go to Ken and say the main thing is what's our worst case scenario goal to make this viable? That helps us make a decision whether or not it's even a good thing to even try. Because obviously if it was 2000 people we'd be like probably not going to do that. You can tell me Ken, but I don't think it's super accurate. You do it for a couple of hours and come back and tell us what. Is that correct? KEN: I can't predict the future. I don't actually know exactly what's going to happen, but if you can give it enough margin to be like, yeah, I think we'd be safe at this point, then you can usually get to a model like that pretty quickly. TODD: I'm a little confused, to be honest. When we hired Ken, Jamon, he said he could predict the future. JAMON: Yeah, this is a little concerning. TODD: The weird part is Ken was here before Jamon and our companies merged, but doesn't matter. It's time travel. So anything's possible. Just watch Star Trek. Knowing kind of the base goal gets us all a point to reach to. And then going back to Chris's question, how to get from 0 to 1, which is actually a very difficult problem. If you're an engineer, it's very difficult problem, if you're building a company and is just a very difficult problem period. But having a goal and then determining at least the first step direction and then you can see if it's kind of leading towards that goal is very helpful for taking that first step. I do want to mention something else, as well. We did put a lot of resources. We have a tendency sometimes to put too much resources because we're designers and because we're software engineers, we like to build things and so we put a lot of resources into our app that was used for three days. We had beautiful design done and that kind of stuff. Not to skip ahead, but we're re-doing the conference this year. We thought, well, we could just reuse a lot of our designs and stuff and just change it to 2018. We didn't do that. (laughter) We decided to redesign the whole thing again because we just simply can't help ourselves. JAMON: Yeah. And going back to the concept of if it's only 150 people, I think that was our initial number. It rose a little bit later because we had some additional expenses, but if we only had to sell 150 tickets we could literally go and individually pitch people and say, "Hey, come to our conference," and try to sell them tickets. And we kind of actually did that in some ways. We went to our community, our Infinite Red Community Slack team, which is community.infinite.red and if you're listening to this podcast you should definitely join it. And we went through and kind of just said, hey, have you heard about our conference? Is that something you'd want to look at? Individual direct messages, individually crafted. We weren't trying to like spam everybody, but it was just more, let's get the word out there and the response from that because we had built a lot of goodwill with the community up to that point by helping them a lot of times with React Native problems and by releasing open source and doing all the things that we do in that community channel that a lot of people don't realize. We had built a lot of goodwill and so the response was amazing and we were able to, in my opinion, just through the community Slack efforts that we were doing, probably sell that minimum number of tickets. We had obviously sold a lot more than that, but that was more additional beyond that. So it was definitely a factor. Well we at least know that we can go sort of virtually door to door and say, hey we have this conference. Hey, do you want to come? CHRIS: What's interesting is like you're painting this picture that everything worked out perfectly. There were no hiccups in the process at all, and so what popped up as you're going through that was like, oh my gosh, didn't anticipate that one, or was it all just perfect? TODD: Everything's perfect here at Infinite Red, Chris, any other questions? (laughter) KEN: It really was pretty smooth. We were a little surprised by that. Some of the feedback that we got, we definitely overdid it on the food in some ways. That what people want from food is like fast and convenient and not terrible and we went for good but somewhat inconvenient and nobody wanted that, really. I mean they were like the food is good, but this was a pain in the neck and that was a pain in the neck, so that was something that we screwed up. That was partly my biases to be honest. I take responsibility for that one, but in the run up, in the planning, there wasn't a ton that really went wrong. Right? We didn't get major speakers bowing out. The things that we've heard of going wrong at conferences. To some extent we may have just been lucky, but there wasn't a lot of disasters along the way. There were things that we didn't do as well as we could have done, but we didn't get major disasters. JAMON: Yeah. And obviously this is from our perspective, Chris. And Shawni and Gant and some of the others that were more deeply involved in the process may have other perspectives and I think that—no promises, but maybe this isn't the only podcast we do here at Infinite Red and if there is another one, then maybe the team can share some of those more kind of operational things that happen—but certainly from our perspective, it went super smoothly. There was an energy to it and things did kind of align. I do think we probably got lucky. We probably got lucky in a lot of ways and the timing was right and the mood was right. Everything seemed to come along pretty well. KEN: And Shawni worked really hard. I'm really trying not to swear so that Chris doesn't have to edit me as much this time, but Shawni worked really, really hard at the end of it. So a lot of it was that, to be honest. TODD: Yeah. I want to do a quick couple of shout outs. Shawni worked really hard. Gant was our emcee, he's amazing in front of audience. Frank Von Hoven, which is one of our intermediate developers, he has a background in stage, which we had no idea and he ran the stage like a clock and he took care of all the backstage stuff, getting the speakers set up. It was amazing. That was just serendipity. You don't just happen to have that person. So I do want to shout out. There's more people we can shout out later, but yeah. JAMON: And I do want to give a shout out also to the Armory - The Portland Center Stage. It's a great venue and they did an amazing job. They made our lives a lot easier. There were a lot of things where we could just kind of pay them to do it and they did a great job. That was definitely a good find. Actually, Jason Brown who lives in Portland, a developer who I have been connected with for awhile, he was the one that recommended the Armory and it was a great choice. TODD: There were some things that went wrong. The food was good, the situation and how it was served and stuff was a little bit problematic and stuff. And we learned from that. So that was a problem. KEN: That was not our caterer's fault by the way. That was how we set it up and- TODD: It was a little bit our caterer's fault (laughter), but I won't go into that. Another thing is we really tried to take the time to do a proper code of conduct and we are really going to enforce it and we took a lot of time and I think we did a pretty good job. We gave numbers out to text, if there's anything people to approach, if there's any problems. The snafu was we forgot to actually put a link on our website to it. So, that's just a really minor little thing. Another problem of course is resource allocation when you have a bunch of client work. So we had our internal people, who aren't designers or developers working on it and that's just carving off a section of time for them, but we also needed our designers and developers to do work, which means they wouldn't be doing client work. And so sometimes there was resource allocation issues where someone was really busy with a client project and so that's very challenging for a company like ours with the people you have to bring off the field. And then the last thing I would love to talk with everyone is we did have a little debate and issues around do we have our whole team there. We're 26 people. It's basically going to be a week. Do we have our whole team attend? Do we make our whole team attend? Do we ask them, do we have volunteers? What do we do? So that was one of the most challenging things in my opinion. JAMON: Especially since we're a remote team and some people are going to have to fly from Florida or Toronto or all over and so it wasn't just a matter of hey, you're here in Portland, can you make the drive down to Portland? But yeah, that was an interesting thing and I think that it speaks to how much we really cared about the experience of the attendees and the speakers that we did bring most of our team. There were a few that couldn't make it, but most of our team did go and we had roles for them. That's actually something we're going to I think we're going to do better this year where we're going to actually provide some training for our team. Some expectations around how they'll work and stuff, but they wore a specific T-shirt so people could identify them. They weren't just necessarily venue people or volunteers or something. They were actual Infinite Red employees and I actually feel pretty strongly about that representation because this is representing us to the broader technical community in a very strong way. And going back really quickly to the code of conduct. Prior to our conference, there was an incident I think at Facebook's conference, I forget what it's called, and one of our speakers was affected by it and- TODD: Was it F8? JAMON: Yeah, F8 I think. And so I kind of put a stake in the ground on Twitter saying, hey, this is not going to happen at Chain React. We're not gonna allow this sort of thing. It's gonna be a very strong stake in the ground. And so in my opening remarks I said, we have a code of conduct. You need to read it. You need to abide by it. This is not negotiable and I'm six foot four and I will find you. (laughter) TODD: And it's even more challenging because you have to guess the URL. (laughter) JAMON: And by the way, quick shout out to React Native. We were able to deploy a very quick update to our app to get that URL on there and have it working. TODD: Yeah, I think it was the app it wasn't on. Not our website. JAMON: And we're able to get that deployed in a hot fix. That was very cool. So we did stress that we made that very much a centerpiece and we were very, very happy that there were no incidents that were reported or anything like that, which was nice. TODD: I do think assigning roles during the conference for our own team was something we didn't do as well as we could and we're going to work on it this year for sure. Some of our team was much more interested in working it. I mean they've worked it, but they weren't as jazzed about talking to people and that kind of thing. For me personally, it was great because my role was photographer. This project was a project I didn't personally work on internally. Jamon and Ken did, but I didn't. I was working on other projects at that time and so I wasn't really involved. I was the photographer and it was kind of funny because people saw me for the conference as a photographer, you have to constantly get in front of people, look at them with a camera, crawl under the stage to get a good shot and that kind of stuff. I'm just an amateur photographer by the way, but I have good equipment and whatnot. So everyone saw me and sometimes people will talk to me like, Oh you're the photographer for Infinite Red. I'm like, yes, I am. (laughter) JAMON: This is our CEO crawling under the stage to get a photo. TODD: Yes, but what's very cool, I would go, well, what do you think of the conference? And they would tell me the truth because I'm just the photographer. And that was actually kind of cool. CHRIS: That is pretty cool. And now that you've blown your cover, it's not gonna happen this year. TODD: Oh no one's listening to this, Chris. (laughter) CHRIS: Jamon you touched on the fact that Infinite Red is a 100 percent remote company putting on an in-person event. What kind of challenges went into making this event happen as a remote company? JAMON: We cheated a little bit in that we held it in Portland, which is where half our team is. But I will point out that our primary champion of the project lived in ... Did she live in San Diego at the time or was it Reno? KEN: She moved from Reno to San Diego while planning it. JAMON: So this is happening. She wasn't there to look at the venue. We sent some people in-person to the venue from the local area. And then we also flew Derek up. So this was I think it was actually Todd's idea. Did you come up with this idea, Todd? TODD: Did it work out well then? (laughter) Then yes I did. JAMON: I think it actually did. TODD: Then of course it was my idea. JAMON: Talk about Derek's experience there. TODD: This is an example of putting proper resources. Derek Greenberg is one of our senior engineers, which from a business standpoint means one of our most expensive engineers, but he's a super foodie, kind of like Ken. KEN: He's way beyond me. TODD: He is beyond you. And Derek is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful chef. I've been at his house multiple times and him and his lovely family hosted me and served me ridiculously good food. So he was the obvious person to choose what food we had. Now, the question is there's a lot less expensive people. That's horrible to say, but true. And Derek does not live in Portland. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area. So anyways, well we sent him up for, I think a day or two, and he went around and tasted all the food. And then typical Derek-style, he gave us an extremely detailed information about it. And that's how we decided on the food. KEN: Amazing, he had the entire company hanging on his every word as he lovingly described this experience. It was actually pretty amazing. JAMON: I'm going to see if I can dig up the description and we can link to it in the show notes because I kind of want people to see this. TODD: If you listened to our previous podcast, we talked about this a little bit. This is one our core tenants of Infinite Red is find where people shine best and don't judge them for things they do poorly. Judging a dog by how well it climbs a tree is not an appropriate judgment for a dog. KEN: Carve the hole to the fit the peg. TODD: Yes. Now none of us are the dog in this scenario. Well, just to be clear. But anyways, having Derek do that, finding out that Frank has stage experience, of course he's going to be there being the stage manager and that kind of stuff. We have such a cool creative team that have so many different personal hobbies. We really had a grab bag of awesome resources. It's really amazing. JAMON: Even Derek with his incredible attention to detail, one of the things he brought up in one of the meetings was that he was very concerned that we make sure that there isn't garbage around during the conferences, very clean. That we make sure that we keep the garbages emptied and stuff like that. So we made sure, I think with the venue staff, that that was going to happen. So just little touches like that I think go a long way and the team really stepped up to it. They took ownership really of the conference in a way that was maybe a little surprising even. KEN: This is yet another benefit of hiring a team with with what we call nontraditional backgrounds, is that you end up with this much more interesting diversity of life experience and talents and skills, and it enables you to do things that you weren't originally planning your company to do. It's awesome. Honestly, it creates this opportunity for serendipity that is harder if you're full of Stanford CS grads. JAMON: Nothing against Stanford CS grads of course. KEN: Nothing against Stanford CS grads. They're awesome, right? But any monoculture is going to have that issue. JAMON: Like Frank's background, I think Frank was in sort of a corporate America. He has an MBA and his background, he's done a lot of, like Todd mentioned earlier in the podcast, he's done a lot of stage work and performances and things like that. And he actually started coding fairly late. Well he had, he had been coding when he was a teenager and stuff, but he wasn't coding professionally until much later in life. So a lot of times you look at someone who maybe switches careers like that and they're kind of behind in some ways in the technical realm. But what is amazing about that is that they bring all of these other outside experiences and skills to our industry. We kind of need that. KEN: That brings up a really interesting sidebar about career changers, who I think sometimes have a hard time breaking into tech because everybody wanted a cheap person straight out of college or not even college. I think we found that the career changers, the later quote unquote juniors, although it'll take them a little while to ramp up, but once they ramp up, they can accelerate. Once they hit third year, they can pull ahead of a regular junior junior because of all those other experiences that come to play. JAMON: Didn't Robin, one of our software developers, didn't she work for a paper company, like a Dunder Mifflin-style paper company? (laughter) KEN: She had a math degree and she worked as an analyst I think for a paper company for a couple years before taking a coding class and people love to rag on the coding classes. But to be honest, if you're good and you just need to learn to code, they're great. It's a very efficient way of doing that. TODD: This is totally off topic, but we'd look in nontraditional areas and we find sometimes overlooked people who are truly awesome and frankly, I'm glad other companies are blind to this. JAMON: Well, this is a reflection of certainly Todd and my background. Ken came from a little more of a traditional path in that way. TODD: Just a whee bit more? JAMON: I'm Jamon Holmgren and I did not go to Harvard. I worked in construction. I have a thousand hours on heavy equipment like dozers and excavators and stuff. Most people probably don't know that. I spent a lot of my career packing boards in construction sites before I started working in technology and so I was certainly a career changer and I think Todd, you had that experience as well? TODD: Yeah, a little bit different. I started professionally programming at 25, I think. So I did not go to school for it. KEN: Well, it helps that my own father was a career changer. He was physicist, meteorologist, like an academic meteorologist, and just kind of found his way into programming. A, I have some sympathy for that track, but B, honestly my experience with elite institutions also showed me that there's plenty of people at elite institutions who are not that good. It's actually no particular guarantee. It's not, as a gating factor, it's not all that. And when you take into account how much competition there is for those elite people, it just makes sense to look harder. TODD: Just to clarify, we really don't discriminate against elite people. We just don't stack the weight on that side of the scale. CHRIS: Ken, I have a quick question? You said your Dad was an academic meteorologist. Did he have a stage name for like all meteorologists? Like Jackson Hale, or something like that? KEN: He wasn't a weatherman. He just had, he just had a degree in meteorology. TODD: Jackson Hale. That's comedy gold right there. CHRIS: Bringing it back to Chain React a little bit. So was the conference worth it in terms of the investment that you put in and if so, what will you do differently this year? TODD: I don't know financially if the ROI was worth it. Ken can talk to that because we're a consultancy that does a lot of development in React Native, even if we lost money on it and Ken can talk to that, it would still be worth it as long as we didn't lose too much just for the marketing, the goodwill and the branding part of it. I feel we ended up selling out, for example, we never told the end of the story. JAMON: We actually did not sell out. I think we got close though and we certainly almost doubled our prediction, so that was a really good thing. This year we probably will sell out. TODD: We made every speaker wear a bunch of logos. That's how I think we sold out. (laughter) KEN: They all look like NASCAR drivers. JAMON: That's actually a good idea. I'll send that to Shawni. KEN: Financially, it worked out fine. I don't think we ever are going to treat it as a massive profit center. I think the more money we're able to make, most of that we want to pour back in. We do have to account for our own opportunity costs as well as direct outlays, but I think we're fairly confident that we can run it that way. But I would say it was a success, sort of all the way across the board. We're not doing that much different. Like I said, we've tweaked the food. We've dropped a couple of things that no one seemed to care about. So like the social, nobody wants to stick around for the social. They just want to go out and interact socially with the people that they've met or the people that came with or whatever. And so we just gonna let them do that and not waste money on that. But I can't think of anything really big that we're doing differently. Can you guys? TODD: I want to make one quick comment about the social. The cool thing about the Armory in Portland is it's smack dab on a street where you can literally go across the street to good restaurants. You can go down two blocks to good restaurants. So in that scenario, at some conferences I've been to, they're kind of out in the middle of nowhere. So you definitely want some social events. But in this case everyone wants to go out. KEN: Yeah. For those of you who know Portland, it's in Pearl District. For those of you who don't know Portland, it's one of the best sort of visitor friendly walkable neighborhoods in the country, not just in Portland. I mean it's a really, really great neighborhood and that helped. And so our little catered thing probably was not as exciting as the other opportunities out there. TODD: Now we did have a sponsor, Squarespace, who threw a before party. And that was actually a lot of fun. So that's the caveat on that. We're just talking after, I think the first day we had a social immediately after the conference. JAMON: I think bringing it back to the financial side of things, I would actually, from what I looked at, I would actually consider it a financial loss. Maybe if you just look at hard expenditures, we were probably in the black, but we also spent a ton of time and if you look at opportunity cost, we probably lost money on it. That again, like what Todd said, it wasn't necessarily the focus of what we were trying to do as far as making a profit center. And I think there's a little bit of a perception maybe in the tech industry that the conferences make tons of money. I don't think that's the case. If you think so maybe you should make a conference and see what you think. But at the same time, part of that was due to our refusal to kind of let anything be substandard, we kind of overdid it in a lot of ways. I think that this year we will probably sell more tickets. We have some things figured out already. We've sorta refined what we're doing. We might actually do okay on this year, but we're also giving more concessions to the speakers and things like that to try to make it easier for them. So there's a little bit of a mitigating factor there too. TODD: Yeah. Even if it didn't make an actual profit, that's not super relevant to me. I think the return on investment is many fold. CHRIS: Looking into the future, how does Chain React and starting your own tech conference, create a model or framework for maybe future ideas or big ideas that you might want to accomplish? TODD: One thing it did, because we're a consultancy, because we do client work, we have that process down pat. We've redone that process over the years many times and keep on refining it. Internal projects for us is challenging. We don't do that very often, so this is our very first big internal project, so purely as a training or a learning device for our team it was awesome for them. KEN: The first big project that isn't an open source project. JAMON: We actually regularly point to Chain React lessons and experiences when we're talking about other internal projects. It's actually been really good as a reference point. Do you remember this with Chain React? You remember that with Chain React? And it kind of gives a reference point for other internal projects. It exposed certain aspects of our team that we hadn't really considered before. Because it was such a different thing. I know that we as founders had a meeting after Chain React and talked about some of the lessons learned from that and I don't think we'll necessarily go through every last little detail of that, but it was very kind of eye opening to us about the way that we had structured Infinite Red. The title of this podcast is Building Infinite Red and I think that Chain React was a key forcing mechanism within Infinite Red to expose some things that we hadn't been exposed to before. If we just did consulting work, you tend to get some blind spots. So Chain React was amazing for that. It was really, really good for that because it was so different from what we had done otherwise. TODD: Worse case scenario, the team had a lot of fun doing it. JAMON: I think my favorite memory from Chain React was when it was done. (laughter) KEN: I think that's Shawni's favorite memory. JAMON: Thanks a lot, Ken. KEN: Sorry. JAMON: When Chain React was over, I think half the team went to a nearby restaurant and we were all exhausted. We had been up for two days just working from pre-dawn to dusk and there was kind of this feeling of let's just go get some food to eat and let's collapse into bed. We went to a restaurant and we sat in this booth and there were probably, I don't know, nine of us, 10 of us, something like that. And some spontaneous kind of reflective conversations started happening that were just amazing. One of our developers said, this is nothing I expected signing up at Infinite Red. This was an incredible experience to be involved in this. TODD: Was that Kevin? JAMON: Kevin was was certainly on those same vein, but the person who actually pointed this out was Frank and I remember that very clearly. His wife was able to come and help us with the conference. It was really great. TODD: Camille was awesome. JAMON: She was great. And then also my son Cedric, who at the time was 12 years old. He of course was on summer break from school and and he helped out. He had a t-shirt on. He was able to- TODD: Cedric was awesome for a 12 year old. It was amazing. JAMON: Yeah, he's a good kid. And he helped out. He was great. He would talk to people, he would give them directions. If someone needed someone to run and get something. He was very on top of things and he was there at that table as well and kind of just kind of absorbing the vibe. It's one of my favorite moments at Infinite Red. It was kind of a result of all of the work that we had done and what we had accomplished at that point. TODD: Correct. And Robin Heinze's father came and did some volunteering and we had a lot of people come and want to help. It was really, really fun in that regard. One thing I would like to bring up is the Armory is a very cool intimate setting. I'm not using that as a nice way to say small. It's actually not that small and it has a big theater, but it only holds about 500 people, which is about what we sold. So we're redoing in the Armory this year and so we have a cap on how many people can show up because it only holds 500 people. We actually had a big discussion after the first Chain React on whether or not we wanted to get a bigger venue because we could probably sell more tickets. We decided against that because we sent out a survey to all the attendees. We sent a survey to the speakers and we got some feedback. Everyone loved the intimacy of the Armory. And the Armory, just real quick, it has a bottom floor where we had vendor booths set up. It's like an atrium. There's a big hole cutout of the top floor, so the top floor is like a donut. There is a staircase in the middle of the bottom floor that circles around and goes up to the top floor. So we had the whole bottom floor. We had a whole top floor. Up to the top floor, there was chairs, there was the coffee station, an alternative food station when we were serving lunch. And there were some vendors out there as well. Even if you were on the second floor, you're always in this room where all the action's going on. You could look down and see people. So although it's large enough to hold 500 people, which is a fairly large area, you can't put 500 people in a very small area. Fire marshals am I right? Because of the structure of it now and then you left that room and went into the theater, which is more like a traditional theater, like a movie theater, but it was course has the stage and stuff because it's for presentations, but when you weren't in the theater you were always within earshot and always within line of sight to everyone in the conference and so although it was 500 people, it felt like there was 20 people there and I personally got to talk to at least half the people. Anyways, long story short, it was a big decision to say no. We want the feel of the conference to be the same, so we're going to cap on how many people we can attend, which does affect finances and that kind of stuff. Obviously when you scale higher, all of the little expenses get smaller and it's always better financially to be bigger than smaller.

The city wants to develop the 10-block area between the Pearl District and Old Town Chinatown. Leaders are looking for affordable housing, jobs and a space for artists, that won't gentrify the neighborhood. OPB's Amelia Templeton tells us about the development companies that want the job.

Our exercise series continues as we highlight the benefits of Pilates with PDX powerhouse, Abby Parker! Settle in as she shares her story of strength and resiliency, culminating into a love for fitness. Before we jump into the show I want to make sure to remind those of you in the Portland area to come out and see me at Athleta in the Pearl District! I am doing an awesome workshop event there to help you embrace the power of your mind for fitness. It is February 17th at 8:30 AM and you can click this link to RSVP on Eventbrite. Abby is here today helping us continue our exercise series to expose us to the amazing variety of options we all have for moving our bodies every day. It’s all about finding something we LOVE to do, something that feels good and feels right to our bodies. Abby is here to help us understand a little more about pilates and to help us see the true beauty in this exercise. You HAVE TO head over to Abby’s Instagram and check out her photos. They are incredibly inspirational...you can’t help but feel motivated to get moving and find commitment to daily movement when you see her beauty! Abby's Road to Fitness Abby’s fitness journey is truly amazing. She is a New Jersey girl and reflects back on her mother enrolling her in dance lessons at the age of 13. Ballet quickly became all consuming for her. She would stretch and practice daily, head in to New York every weekend to compete and be exposed to other dancers, and at 17, decided she wanted to pursue dance professionally. After many terribly critical dance auditions for professional companies, she was finally accepted to the American Repertory Ballet out of Princeton, New Jersey. Though she loved dancing full time, she quickly learned the harsh realities of the profession when all the female dancers were lined up in front of the mirror and told to pick out everything that was wrong with themselves and to dedicate themselves to “slimming down.” Abby is 5 foot 8 inches tall and only weight 118 pounds but was told to lose 15 or 20. She went to extreme dieting and cut herself down to 108 pounds in 3 months. But her energy levels showed the damage and she ended up in the hospital after collapsing in a rehearsal. She was told she had to begin eating again and as a result, ate excessive amounts of food but would feel extreme guilt and throw it all up. These two years with the company were full of big changes for Abby, but in 2015, at 20 years old, she discovered Moxie Contemporary Ballet whose tagline stated, “We support healthy bodies in dance.” She packed up everything she could fit in a suitcase and flew to Portland, Oregon to practice with this company while staying in a dorm room on the campus of Portland State University for 4 weeks. At the end of that period, it was time for the director to select 7 out of the 100 dancers to stay with the company. Little did the dancers know, the funding fell through and the director chained up the doors to rehearsal and fled the state. So Abby began frantically searching for a job, staying on the couch of a friend, and doing everything she could to make herself marketable. She finally got a job in a call center in downtown Portland and was less than thrilled about the work she was doing. But Abby didn’t give up on her passion. She still worked out every single day, did deep research into dance opportunities in the Northwest, and she wouldn’t let her dream die. She even joined PDX Contemporary Ballet part-time to continue dancing while working. In March of 2016, her mentor and superior at her job was murdered and the call center was shut down and she was out of a job once again. She knew with her dancer mentality to be her best, that she had always loved fitness. So she was faced with a blank page on her computer and typed in, “What are the top 10 fitness gyms in Portland, Oregon.” And she clicked on one of the middle results...Firebrand Sports. She sent them a shot in the dark email letting them know she was great at answering phones, doing clerical duties, and that she really needed a job. She got a response that they didn’t need anyone answering phones...but they did need an instructor for Barre. Abby was completely caught off guard. She wasn’t even sure exactly what Barre was. She met Sarah, the owner of Firebrand Sports and they immediately connected. She auditioned, was hired, and became a certified Barre instructor. As she was doing that, she walked past another room at Firebrand, saw the Megaformers, and desperately wanted to know what that was and how she could do it. After trying a class, she immediately LOVED it and went down to California to become certified in Lagree. Back in Portland, Abby started teaching more and more while supplementing with other jobs and finally, Sarah thought she should become more involved with the runnings of the business. Throughout this process, she met her best friend Katie, who encouraged her to push herself to her full potential. They began working out a 6 AM together and became fast friends. Abby is continuing her career in fitness and is proud to see a bright future ahead of her despite the setbacks in her past. Abby’s story is a fantastic example of what it takes to make a true lifestyle change...support from the 4 cornerstones of fitness: Daily Movement Good Nutrition The Power of the Mind Community Connection Abby’s story is a beautiful example of the amazing change that can happen when these 4 things come together. It shows us the importance of releasing our obsessions with body shape and embracing body appreciation, health, and wellness into our lives. Fitness helped Abby get through some of the most difficult part of her life in a positive light. So what is Pilates exactly and what can a first-timer expect from giving it a try as a new way of moving their body? Abby explains that the Lagree Fitness Method is what Firebrand specializes in, which is a form of Pilates. You are using a total body fitness machine, or Megaformer, to enhance your movements and exercises. Lagree is a high intensity workout with low intensity on the joints. You can move all parts of your body in just 45 minutes. The beautiful thing about using a Megaformer is that you can modify any workout for more or less intensity. So regardless of your ability or experience level, you are able to feel fantastic. For those of us who have never experienced Pilates or Lagree before, Abby gives us a little insight into what the Megaformer machine is actually like. At the basics, it sort of looks like a bed with many springs and many different things to grab on to and adjust. You are always either pushing or pulling at all times and YOU control the springs of resistance on your machine. There are over 500 different moves that you can do on a Megaformer which gives both the instructors and the students loads of creative expression and flexibility in their workouts. “You have the ability to create a whole beautiful symphony of movements in your workout.” The resistance and intensity of the workout helps to target all those tiny little muscles that are difficult or impossible to reach with other workout methods. Abby says it isn’t just fantastic for strengthening your physical body, but also for strengthening your mind. These workouts challenge you in new and innovative ways and leave you feeling fantastic at the end. For both veteran and new Fitlandians, Christa focuses intensely on the power of the mind with Mind Zoning. You can work to create new neural pathways and thought patterns to change what we believe we can do and to build on our health and wellness simply with our subconscious mind. Pilates is great not only for your physical fitness but your mental fitness as well. Still not sure if Pilates of Lagree Fitness is a good fit for you? Abby offers a complementary class called Lunge and Learn to help you learn modifications, get started slowly, and learn more about the exercises in general before you drop in on a full class...so be sure to check that out! Also, if you are in the Portland area, be sure to check out a Lagree Fitness class in person at Firebrand Sports! Abby’s last minute tips for getting started: Just GO for it! (Starting is the hardest part!) Try a workshop to get started and feel comfortable Grab a friend for support and motivation Stay inspired and push your boundaries! Thanks to Abby for sharing her incredibly inspiring story with us and for giving us some insight to the world of Pilates and Lagree Fitness. We are so grateful to you and look forward to seeing you in our Fitlandia community in the future! Subscribe to the show, rate us and leave a review on iTunes or Sticker. We'd love to hear what you got out of the show!   

Hello Fitlandians! Today I am thrilled to be kicking off my series on all the different exercises that are available to us. I’m beginning this series by chatting with a local Portland, Oregon fitness pro, Michael Skogg of Skogg Kettlebells, about one of my all time favorite workouts: kettlebells! Before we get started I just wanted to throw out a few reminders. We are just a couple of days left before the start of our next 30 Days To Thriving program for February. Some of you have heard my awesome podcast show with Leanne from Healthful Pursuits and in order to show my gratitude to listeners of both my podcast and Leanne’s, I am offering some exclusive early bird pricing! Enter discount code Leanne297 to receive $100 off the program! For anybody who is hearing about 30 Days to Thriving for the first time, you’ll get to hang out with me everyday for the next month to reach your greatest vitality! You’ll be getting a food guide, weekly recipes and meal plans, workouts that fit the detox, a group coaching call with me weekly and daily interaction in the secret Facebook group. And the best part is you’ll receive a Mind ZoningⓇ audio bundle with 5 sessions that fit perfectly with the program! We are getting started in just a couple days so be sure to get signed up today! Michael Skogg of Skogg Kettlebells is here with us today. A big thanks to Michael for being on the show. Be sure to show him some love and check out Skogg Kettlebell’s website, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter @skogggym and online program, Virtual Skogg. I want to go ahead and say that I’ve spent a good deal of time at Skogg Gym and his facility is absolutely beautiful and the instructors there are ridiculously knowledgeable. So how did Michael get started with kettlebells? He explains that he was living in Scotland when he was around 18 and his neighbor was a Highland Games competitor and he would see him doing his workouts with everyday items like rocks and telephone poles. Finally, his curiosity got the better of him and he asked his neighbor why he worked out like that and he explained that training is not just about being strong, it’s about being strong in life and finding applicable ways to do so. It really stuck with him and he realized that conventional exercise is something powerful and since the first time his neighbor handed him a kettlebell, he’s been hooked. Back then, kettlebell training was quite underground and he actually had to work with things like milk jugs and dumbells to get the workout in until his friend found an old kettlebell in a crawl space that he could use. They were surprisingly difficult to come by! He finally purchased his own set of kettlebells while furthering his education in the fitness field. Because of this he wanted to share the power of these workouts with the world. He had done a great deal of work rehabbing himself out of hip and knee injuries and wanted to help others do the same. He has opened quite a few gyms in his time but his first specific kettlebell gym opened here in Portland in 2007 when he followed his own workout passion. The gym started out primarily as a strength and conditioning hub for fighters and MMA athletes but Michael wanted to expand his workouts to women as well so he opened up a gym in the Pearl District, Portlands hip and trendy neighborhood bustling with female athletes. Since then, he has moved slightly Northwest of this area to help members find easier parking to get their workouts in. What’s the difference with kettlebells? What’s the big deal? These types of workouts absolutely work you out...but they also empower you! If you are looking for a way to burn calories, you burn 20 calories a minute swinging a kettlebell...which is pretty impressive. Not only that, but you get an element of resistance along with the cardio of the workout. It’s an all in one option...killing two birds with one stone! Here are Michael’s Top Reasons to Try a Kettlebell Workout: Great cardio (gets your heart rate up). Resistance training at the same time. Burns 20 calories per minute. Corrective exercise for posture, joints, and more. Finds your weakness, exploits it, and corrects it. Uses your body in natural ways-radial directions (very primal movement). Mental empowerment post-workout. One thing to remember about kettlebell workouts is the importance of form and safety, which the instructors at Skogg are great at explaining and assisting with. Michael says, “A kettlebell is a wrecking ball if not used correctly.” So what does a correct workout look like? Michael’s Kettlebell Safety Tips: Have an experience teacher who is familiar with safe techniques. Technique is BOSS...the value is limitless. Only swing what you know you can handle...doesn’t matter how much. Pay attention and let the kettlebell lead you as an extension of your arm. Remember the importance of stretching along with your workouts. “Kettlebell is like a dance. The kettlebell is your partner and it leads...you follow.” For those listeners who are still feeling a bit hesitant about giving a kettlebell workout a try, know this: Rest and recover is very important, so do what you can do and rest when you need to rest. Asking questions is GOOD...highly encouraged really. Trust in the coaching offered at the gym and don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and learn. You are not just getting a workout, you are getting full exercise science, whether you understand exactly what is happening or not, your coach does. You will thank yourself (and them) in the long run! Another thanks to Michael for his insight into this amazing workout option and we hope we inspired you to give something new a try in your workouts! Be sure to request to join the Fitlandia Facebook Group to share what workouts you are trying out and get inspiration from others in our amazing community.  LAST CHANCE! We're still celebrating our episode with Leanne Vogel of Healthful Pursuits. If you're ready to join the February 2018 session of 30 Days to Thriving, be sure to enter LEANNE297. Subscribe to the show, rate us and leave a review on iTunes or Sticker. We'd love to hear what you got out of the show!   

Today we speak with Jason Waxberg of Equity Pacific Real Estate in Portland, Oregon. As you can see from this episode Jason is VERY knowledgable about the local market as we discuss the growth that Portland is continuing to experience in the current cycle. If you're looking for a deal in the Pacific Northwest I hope you give Jason a shot. His direct number is (503) 750-7734 and his e-mail is jason@equitypacificrealestate.com. Hope you enjoy the show! Show Notes: 0:58 - Start of show 4:50 - Mill Creek's Savier Street Flats: https://www.millcreekplaces.com/portfolio/savier-street-flats-in-portland 8:25 - Central Eastside Industrial District developments: https://ceic.cc/ 10:05 - Pearl District: http://explorethepearl.com/ 11:15 - City of Portland easing parking restrictions to spur development: https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/405026 21:15 - Josh Lehner report on Oregon Economic Analysis: https://oregoneconomicanalysis.com/2017/06/29/incomes-migration-and-housing-affordability/

This week on "State of Wonder," we discuss the legacy of former mayor and arts booster Vera Katz, the best music of 2017, and get a glimpse into Portland's past through the photos of Minor White.Remembering Beloved Former Mayor, Vera Katz - 1:24This week, Former Portland Mayor and Oregon House speaker Vera Katz died. A trailblazer who steered Portland into an unprecedented period of growth and vitality (see: Pearl District, South Waterfront, East Bank Esplanade, etc), she always had her eye on how arts and creativity could enrich public life.We look back on Katz's legacy and then sit down with two arts leaders who worked during Katz tenure: Eloise Damrosch, the long-time head of the Regional Arts and Culture Council, and Linda K. Johnson, a dancer, choreographer, and teacher who brought many projects to life inside and outside the public sector, including an Artist-in-Residency program in the early days of the South Waterfront.The Year In Jazz With KMHD - 16:35We’re going to take some time to look back at the year that was in music. First up, we talk the ever-widening world of jazz with the mighty triumvirate behind KMHD Jazz Radio: program director Matt Fleeger and hosts/producers Isabel Zacharias and Derek Smith.They talk some of the best albums and best concerts of the year (hey, Solange!) that remind us why jazz continues to be so important — it uplifts, inspires, reflects and makes space for honesty.opbmusic's Favorite Music Of 2017 - 26:35It's been a big year for local pop, rock, and hip-hop artists. opbmusic's Jerad Walker joins us to talk the two biggest songs to come out of Portland maybe ever: Portugal. The Man's "Feel It Still" and Amine's "Caroline" (don't miss Portugal's performance of their whole album live in the OPB studio). Then we move onto some of the year's other breakouts and best live opbmusic sessions, including The Last Artful, Dodgr, Kelli Schaefer, and Wild Ones.Bullseye Glass: The Heavy Metal Saga Continues - 34:46Bullseye Glass came under heavy state and county scrutiny last year after scientists found heavy metals in air and plants near the art glass maker’s southeast Portland headquarters. The company has since spent millions of dollars to comply and now has now sued the state for civil rights violations, claiming Governor Kate Brown’s actions were arbitrary and capricious, and violated the company’s right to due process.City Council Approves Portland Art Museum's Expansion - 37:49Last year, the Portland Art Museum announced plans for a new entrance called the Rothko Pavilion that would connect the museum’s two existing buildings and fix its notoriously inaccessible layout. However, advocates for disability, pedestrian and bicycle rights argued that the expansion would obstruct the current pedestrian passage along Madison Street. This week, the council voted 3-1 in favor of the museum.Minor White's Photographs Of The Portland Before Old Portland - 39:18We talk a lot about how much Portland has changed in the last few decades, but if you want to really blow your mind, look at the city compared not to the 1990s, but to the 1930s. Talk about a whole different town. The artist Minor White spent several years photographing Portland for the Works Progress Administration.Now there’re two exhibitions of his work: "In the Beginning: Minor White’s Oregon Photographs" at the Portland Art Museum and "Parting Shots: Minor White’s Images of Portland, 1938-1942" at the Architectural Heritage Center. Eric Slade dropped by to discuss Oregon Art Beat's recent profile of White.Explode Into Colors Are Back In The Music Game - 43:56The reunion of Explode Into Colors for two epic live shows last fall fall — and an opbmusic studio session — had Portland music fans in ecstasy. They liked playing together so much that they’re back for a two-night stand at Mississippi Studios Dec. 30 and 31.

Andy and Matt are live on location at the Bridgeport Brewery in Portland's famed Pearl District during FDRA's first-ever Brews & Shoes charity event supporting Raphael House and Soles4Souls. This time around, famed FDRA collaborators Quinn O'Rourke from LaCrosse Footwear and Kerry Rasmussen from Farrow join in the Shoe-In fun as they discuss the ins and outs of all things footwear logistics and customs.

Andy and Matt are live on location at the Bridgeport Brewery in Portland's famed Pearl District during FDRA's first-ever Brews & Shoes charity event supporting Raphael House and Soles4Souls. Portlanders Rick Hawley and Sara Bowersox explain what makes Portland such a hotbed of footwear industry talent while updating listeners on the latest trends in footwear packaging, customs, and compliance.

Andy and Matt are live on location at the Bridgeport Brewery in Portland's famed Pearl District during FDRA's first-ever Brews & Shoes charity event supporting Raphael House and Soles4Souls.  Amanda Ives of the Raphael House of Portland and Donna Mattick from Soles4Souls drop by to discuss the important work both organizations are doing to meet vital needs at home and abroad, and ways in which they partner with the footwear industry to get the job done.

Art on the Airwaves with Cammy Davis and guests Wayne Ching and Jennifer Pepin. Jennifer is the owner of the J. Pepin Gallery in the Pearl District in Portland, Oregon, a gallery focused on "the beauty that can come from a mental illness." Very inspiring conversation. www.cammydavis.com

Will Future High-Rises be Made of Wood?Among all the buildings going up in the biggest boom in Portland history, only one of them can be called the first of its kind in the nation. Instead of relying on steel and concrete, the four-story Albina Yard is built entirely of cross-laminated timber, or CLT for short.Randy Gragg, State of Wonder's architecture columnist in residence, stops by to discusses how CLT stands to revolutionize construction, offering a pre-fabricated material that is faster to build, more resistant to earthquakes, and more sustainable than traditional practices, not to mention it stands to jump start rural economies. The technology is used widely in Europe and Japan, and the state of Oregon is positioning itself to be a leader in the US, with the Yard's architect, Lever, planning to break ground soon on an 11-story CLT high-rise in the Pearl District. The Minders Releases First Studio Album in Ten YearsFor fans of the band The Minders, the appearance of a new song by the band on the PDX Pop Now compilation in spring was the equivalent of a Sasquatch sighting. The band hasn’t released a full-length studio album in almost a decade, so anticipation was high for its new album, "Into The River." According to opbmusic, the 11-song record is a masterpiece. Revealing an increasingly expansive sound, the album is both raw and refined, peppered with jagged garage rock songs, campfire singalongs, and oblique pop tunes.How Do You Photograph Gentrification?Struggling to document the changes in her city, Sharita Towne came across stereoscopic photos of World War I that made it real to her in a way that normal photos hadn't. Think of it as an antique Viewmaster: a camera takes two photos that are placed in front of each eye to create a three-dimensional effect. So Towne decided to use the 19th Century technology to document Portland's gentrification. Additionally, Towne held community meetings and conducted interviews with Portland residents, especially people living on the gradually-gentrifying East Portland, to create videos and an audio podcast to accompany the exhibition.Artists and Scientists Collide at the PLAYA Residency ProgramIn 2015, State of Wonder visited PLAYA, a residency for artists and scientists in south central Oregon. PLAYA lies at the edge of a huge alkali lake against a stunning background of mountains and high desert pine forests. We spent several days exploring the artist studios and putting on waders to tromp into the streams with two visiting biologists, all the while discussing how their time in this unique place and the opportunity to work in a mixed art/science environment adds new dimensions to their work.

Bob Sturm and the wonders of San Antonio’s Marriott Rivercenter. For you own Pearl District adventure, book here: http://tinyurl.com/jklol4m

To prep for Design Week Portland, we're listening back to our guest curator show with user experience (UX) designer Elena Moon. She has this fantastic way of explaining what works and why, and she’s going to lead us through her own work and the designed world, from parking meters to space ships.User Experience 101 - 01:08We kick off with a quick primer on UX. Whether you’re talking about everyday objects or brand new apps, solid design is anything but accidental. Elena explains why some brands stand out. Take Uber, for example. Whatever you may think of the company’s business practices, the interface of the Uber app is a gold standard for how to serve up visual information.Portland’s Parking Meters: Design Fail? - 05:04We explore how design is in play in even the simplest of tasks. Elena and April scout out a hub of meter activity in the Pearl District and speak with some of the people who maintain the meters, technicians Anto Bayu Aji and Molly Twoohey.How to Teach Grandmothers to Install Solar Panels - 15:20UX isn’t just for software. Elena talks about working on a project with India’s Barefoot College on a project that trained grandmothers to do their own solar engineering in rural communities in India. How can teachers work across language barriers? How do you keep learning going after everyone heads home to their village? As Elena explains, the conversation gave rise to some unexpected answers.How Do You Improve on the Coolest Hotel in Town? - 20:10We eavesdrop on Elena’s meeting with the Ace Hotel design team for a look inside the design process. The company already has a robust brand and online presence, but it enlisted Elena to help refine the experience of visiting its website. What’s most intuitive to potential customers?Designers' Film Club - 25:55A few years ago, Elena and her partner, Jos Vaught, had the chance to work on some UX projects for NASA and SpaceX. Can a designer who’s seen a real space capsule interface ever look at Ridley Scott the same way again? We reality-check "The Martian,” “Minority Report,” and “Star Trek: Into Darkness.”On the Designers Shelf Life and the Accumulated Wisdom of Fly Fishing - 36:20It’s no secret that, within tech circles, the industry is not kind to workers over 35. Elena contrasts this for us with another discipline in which practitioners don’t get anywhere without decades of hard-won knowledge: fly fishing. We head out to Maupin with seasoned guide Amy Hazel of Deschutes Angler to find out about the beauty and craft to be found on the river.Are Tiny Hobbit Homes the Way of the Future? - 45:58Elena turned us on to the amazing work of Abel Zimmerman Zyl: the totally charming gypsy caravans that look plucked right out of "The Hobbit." Zyl tells us about the nuts and bolts of tiny house construction.

Our columnist in residence, Randy Gragg, directs the John Yeon Center for Architecture and the Landscape. This week he suggested we talk with Gil Kelley about Portland and San Francisco's parallel tracks. Gil is director of citywide planning for the City of San Francisco. He also served for 9 years as Portland Planning director under Mayor Vera Katz, guiding the Pearl District's ascent, setting the stage for OHSU's expansion into South Waterfront, and codifying the planning goal that Portland's neighborhoods should serve basic needs within a 20 minute walk. Here are a few highlights from the conversation:On the magnitude of the planning challenges facing the Bay Area and Portland: "We tracked [the years]1980-2014, a 35-year period. Portland, over that span, grew at a population rate of 2%, whereas for SF it was only 0.8%. So Portland has gained population at twice the rate of its sister cities."On what Portland might expect in coming years, based on San Francisco's experience: "Some of that [population] "churn," is people moving to places in the region that are affordable. But for the most part it's tech workers and higher income individuals moving into San Francisco and moderate and middle income people, especially with families, moving out with this new flush of economic activity. I would ask Portlanders to consider: How do you maintain that economic diversity in a city that will increasingly experience this affordability gap?"On what measures Portland should consider to deal with growth: "I would suggest Portland look at things it hasn't looked at before: inclusionary zoning, linkage fees with new economic development is another thing we do in San Francisco — new office developments pay some amount into a housing fund to build moderate and low income housing. The city here passed a bond measure recently $300 million bond to underwrite a number of 100% affordable housing projects. That sounds like a lot but won't go far."On whether Portland has a leg up, in some respects:"Portland's planning history have really put [the city] in a position that it knows where it wants to go and has policy consensus around some of the basic land use and transport questions. And there is a capacity for Portland to accommodate growth. The closer questions are how does it deal with some of these potential inequities as this growth occurs. On whether the Portland Development Commission is on the right track to shape growth: "The important question is "who are they?" Are they the cities' economic development agency? Des that really belong in the mayor's office? What can PDC do? how does that match with really being the city's real estate development entity? They need to be very engaged not just in attracting business but in helping build the infrastructure for these new companies that will be looking for a home in Portland."On what Portlanders should be looking for in their next mayor:"The new mayor really needs to be a champion for good planning again. We have risen to the occasion at a number of critical moments in our history, including late '60s to mid-'70s, and another period in the '80s when we doubled down on transportation investments. But we can't just live on the fumes of those past efforts. There is no substitute for a mayor as champion of good planning." Listen to the full interview for more on how Portland's form of government influences planning culture, and Kelley's thoughts on central city hot-spots, and strengthening neighborhoods east of 82nd without giving way to gentrification.

The Museum of Contemporary Craft is no stranger to changes in name and location. It was originally founded in 1937 as the Oregon Ceramics Studio on SW Corbett Avenue. It went through several titles before settling on its current name when it moved into the Pearl District in 2007. MOCC now bills itself as the oldest continuously-running craft institution in the United States, and along the way, it developed a national reputation for its thoughtful, innovative exhibitions.Now the museum will undergo perhaps its greatest change yet: dissolving entirely into a new Center for Contemporary Art & Culture within PNCA's main campus building."The collection from MOCC will come into PNCA to be combined with our existing programs at PNCA," says the college's interim president Casey Mills. "So it would span not only craft, but craft, art, design, and show that these are actually all interrelated and that they actually feed off one another."Read the full story: http://www.opb.org/news/article/pnca-to-close-the-museum-of-contemporary-craft-and-sell-its-pearl-space

This week we welcome user experience (UX) designer Elena Moon as our guest curator. She has this fantastic way of explaining what works and why, and she’s going to lead us through her own work and the designed world, from parking meters to space ships.User Experience 101 - 00:00We kick off with a quick primer on UX. Whether you’re talking about everyday objects or brand new apps, solid design is anything but accidental. Elena explains why some brands stand out. Take Uber, for example. Whatever you may think of the company’s business practices, the interface of the Uber app is a gold standard for how to serve up visual information.Portland’s Parking Meters: Design Fail? - 04:13We explore how design is in play in even the simplest of tasks. Elena and April scout out a hub of meter activity in the Pearl District and speak with some of the people who maintain the meters, technicians Anto Bayu Aji and Molly Twoohey.How to Teach Grandmothers to Install Solar Panels - 14:19UX isn’t just for software. Elena talks about working on a project with India’s Barefoot College on a project that trained grandmothers to do their own solar engineering in rural communities in India. How can teachers work across language barriers? How do you keep learning going after everyone heads home to their village? As Elena explains, the conversation gave rise to some unexpected answers.How Do You Improve on the Coolest Hotel in Town? - 19:06We eavesdrop on Elena’s meeting with the Ace Hotel design team for a look inside the design process. The company already has a robust brand and online presence, but it enlisted Elena to help refine the experience of visiting its website. What’s most intuitive to potential customers?Designers' Film Club - 24:52A few years ago, Elena and her partner, Jos Vaught, had the chance to work on some UX projects for NASA and SpaceX. Can a designer who’s seen a real space capsule interface ever look at Ridley Scott the same way again? We reality-check "The Martian,” “Minority Report,” and “Star Trek: Into Darkness.”On the Designers Shelf Life and the Accumulated Wisdom of Fly Fishing - 34:45It’s no secret that, within tech circles, the industry is not kind to workers over 35. Elena contrasts this for us with another discipline in which practitioners don’t get anywhere without decades of hard-won knowledge: fly fishing. We head out to Maupin with seasoned guide Amy Hazel of Deschutes Angler to find out about the beauty and craft to be found on the river. Are Tiny Hobbit Homes the Way of the Future? - 44:27Are Tiny Hobbit Homes the Way of the Future? - 44:27Elena turned us on to the amazing work of Abel Zimmerman Zyl: the totally charming gypsy caravans that look plucked right out of "The Hobbit." Zyl tells us about the nuts and bolts of tiny house construction.

Abadawn's 9 year old daughter Samara joins the crew as they visit Future Dreams for comics & toys, head over to the Imax at the (soon-to-be-condos) Lloyd Center 10, and round out the day with monster burgers and mondo fries & rings at Tilt in the Pearl District. Starting off with an in-depth Jurassic World review, other topics of discussion include PS4 gaming, epic eBay failures, Han Solo's wife?!?!, The Punisher, John Williams, Star Wars Uprising (mobile RPG), Ant Man, Sandman, True Detective and much, much more. Future Dreams: http://www.futuredreamstore.com/ Tilt: http://www.tiltitup.com/

Abadawn's 9 year old daughter Samara joins the crew as they visit Future Dreams for comics & toys, head over to the Imax at the (soon-to-be-condos) Lloyd Center 10, and round out the day with monster burgers and mondo fries & rings at Tilt in the Pearl District. Starting off with an in-depth Jurassic World review, other topics of discussion include PS4 gaming, epic eBay failures, Han Solo's wife?!?!, The Punisher, John Williams, Star Wars Uprising (mobile RPG), Ant Man, Sandman, True Detective and much, much more. Future Dreams: http://www.futuredreamstore.com/ Tilt: http://www.tiltitup.com/

Fancy Pants, Pearl District, Nice Room, Cowboy Spritzers, Forum Talk, Gregs Looks, Flashers, Peepers, Ball Talk, Przybilla, LeBron, Predictions, Baseball Boogie, AUDIBLE, World Of Crazy, Sword, Breast Implants, Plumber Clogs, Metal Underwear, Happy Story

  This is a very delayed release of our podcast. We begin our pondering about Traditional Knitting at the Dublin Bay knitting store in the Pearl District, Portland, Oregon. We adjourned again to our "mobile" recording studio (my car) during the Craft Philosophy segment just because it became a bit boisterous in the shop :).  Thank you again to Dublin Bay for allowing us to record on the premises. Do check out their lovely collection of yarn, fiber, and knitting resources for the knitting Anglophile. Podcast 3 Notes- Dublin Bay Penny Dog Sweater Turn a Square Hat Breakfast at Cafe du Monde fingerless gloves Dr Who Scarf Amelia Sweater Freyja Sweater Selbuvotter mittens Tunisian Crochet Purse Tunisian Crochet Class Gladys Thompson - Patterns for Jerseys, Guernseys, and Aran Sweaters Country Weekend Knits Isager - Japanese Inspired Knits Correction - my bad. The sweater is called Summer in Tokyo. Janet Szabo Knitted Lace of Estonia   Music featured- Bing Crosby & the Andrew Sisters - Accentuate the Positive Barrell House Annie - Ain't Gonna Give It Away   Natalie's Ongoing Grey Pseudo Fair Isle Project (Knit with Kauni) Rachel's Jamieson Pullover  

In this week’s episode, David and Kevin are joined the the venerable John Ross. John is an Associate pastor at Pearl Church, in the Pearl District in Downtown Portland, OR. In this first part of a two part series, John covers some of the basics of the Acoustic guitar. It’s not only insightful for those […]