Funny story about the Portland Podcasting group
From left: Tom Parker, Tim Garrett, Luke Lefler
So, remember how I blogged, yesterday, about the 98-person waiting list for a podcast meetup group in Portland, Oregon?
Funny story.
I thought it was odd that everyone on the waiting list had joined on the same day, September 24, 2008; the day before I became aware of the list. Odd? Yes. Though not odd enough for me to investigate further.
It turns out that there had been a Portland podcasting meetup group on meetup.com. As I learned last night, it was run for a short time by some folks at a local college. It had about 98 members. The group sat dormant on meetup.com for some time, possibly as much as two years. Actually, the Portland Podcasting blog site has been dormant since October 1, 2006 (something I was aware of and had also not questioned).
Apparently meetup.com shuts down groups for which the service fee has lapsed and then automatically orphans the group’s members to a waiting list.
Imagine the odds. I become aware of a 98-person waiting list for a podcasting group in Portland the day after the group of which they were all members shuts down. Even more funny is imagining the people on that list getting a notice one day that their group has folded and then the next that some crazy Canadian has swooped in and is going to bring them all together. I love how embarrassing that is for me.
All stories have a happy endind, though. I had a great time at the Lucky Labrador brew pub last night with Tim Garrett, Tom Parker and Luke Lefler. Besides discussing our own projects which include Tom’s video podcast about motorcycle racing (motobrief.tv), Luke’s podcasts of open mics and for a local art gallery (couldn’t find links) and Tim’s work at real, I learned a lot about video equipment and video editing.
September 26th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Very impressive, given how tough it is to embarrass you.
September 27th, 2008 at 2:37 am
I was one of the three organizers of the original Portland Podcasting group (the other two being Tim Germer and Jason Ruby). We also did portlandsocialmedia.com. None of us were in college. ;-)
There are tons of great blogging/podcasting social groups in Portland - Beer and Blog, BarCamp, various Legion of Tech events, etc. The people in the community are still here and as active as ever (most of us are on Twitter - check out pulseofpdx.com). We just decided, collectively, to abandon meetup.com, because, well, they kind of sucked. :-) I saw you pick up the group after it finally lapsed (boy, does that take a long time!), and found your blog via search feeds I have that watch the web for when people mention any of my sites (like portlandpodcasting.org).
Welcome to Portland! Hope you’re able to do something interesting with meetup.com, and feel free to dive right in. The geek culture in Portland has never been better! Hit one of us up on email or Twitter or whatever, and we’ll be happy to show you around. :-)
September 27th, 2008 at 7:05 am
Thanks for the note, Josh. I’m sorry we haven’t had a chance to connect while I’m in Portland. Admittedly, I checked the usual suspects for community event planning (meetup.com, upcoming.org) and not community sites like Facebook and Ning, or micro-blogging sites such as Twitter, etc… You get the idea. In fact, the 98-person waiting list came up prominently in a Google search so I just ran with it since it suggested a significant need.
If you ever make it to Ottawa, let me know. I’d be happy to show you around. Oh… and I’ll be looking you up on twitter.
September 29th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Several of the prominent search results for Portland podcasting are either stale or out of service. Someone should update those sites or remove them.
October 11th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
It was really cool to meet you, Mark (and Tim and Tom). As is customary, I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch sooner. Thanks for getting us together.
Actually, our “funny” Portland Podcasting meetup had begun to fade from memory as the world economic crisis and my attendant personal desperation rose to the fore. But today I brazenly Googled my name and turned up this blog post.
I probably would have commented anyway but, because you mentioned you couldn’t find them, I wanted to make sure you had the links to my current podcasts for the Three Friends and Show And Tell Gallery events:
http://www.brokenhours.net/podcasts.html
Despite my tendency to isolate I’m doing a fair amount of networking and I am looking for peops who are coffee-social rather than beer-social (it’s not just me, I’m sure).
Thank you Josh Bancroft for directing me to portlandpodcasting.org - I subscribed to the feed and signed up for the forums - and thanks for the pulseofpdx.com twitter suggestion and others.
Regards,
Luke Lefler
@brokenhours