Thursday, September 11, 2008

Articulating KlatchPDX

This has been percolating for a while, and after attending the inaugural Refresh Portland talk last night (and btw, go give Tyler Sticka all your money - dude is sharp), and some tweets/chats back and forth about the loss of OSCON, I thought I'd write out the manifesto.

What's a klatch?

Specifically, a kaffeeklatsch? It's German for, essentially, sip 'n' bitch. The idea is similar to a salon, with a little less emphasis on a topic. In my case, I just like the sound of the word. Salon sounds somewhat pretentious, and anyway Creative Commons has that particular "geeky gathering" definition space locked up. KlatchPDX could be a periodic uncon or perhaps a Shizzup, with loosely defined topic sets and the expectation that you come ready to pony up a relevant take on a topic or topics included in the evening's roster.

Why do it?

I'm not sure - I feel like we're missing the chance to get people with different backgrounds and experiences into a room for talks about stuff that matters. Even more, I feel strongly that cool chats are at least as useful as cool talks. There's also the potential to record these and provide some additional shoutouts to the PDX tech/creative community.

How often?

Once a month? Yeah? More?

You are an evil genius, what can I do to help?

Obviously, we should meet for coffee and discuss. :P Leave a comment and let's figure out a time.
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3 comments:

Alsymer said...

Count me in ... need more conversations with the cool folks to keep all the neurons firing ...

waj said...

Ditto.

Amber Case said...

Happily. E-mail me at caseorganic@gmail.com and we'll collaborate on evil genius type stuff. :)