Tonight’s e-mail brought a reminder from Gaurav about the Seattle Tech Startups meeting next Wednesday, March 10th, at the Douglas Forum at the Executive Education Center at the UW Business School.

Michael Miller from Cloundant (YC S08) will be on hand to discuss CouchDB and their commercial offering. We’ll also have Eric Peters from Frugal Mechanic (Founders Co-op) to talk about Cassandra. We’re going to have one more speaker and would ideally like it to be someone who can discuss MongoDB. The sponsor behind MongoDB, 10Gen, is helping us find a speaker in Seattle in time for the meeting, but if you know someone who could fit the bill, please drop us a note.

The topic is relevant, timely, and should be of interest to a lot of geeky Seattleites.  I’ve played around in the last year with non-relational cloud offerings from Microsoft and Amazon and also had a geek crush for a long time on Google’s BigTable technology.  While I’m not convinced of the universal applicability of non-relational databases, I think that they definitely have a place in the massively-scalable technology environment.  And the tooling and support infrastructure has grown leaps and bounds in the last year or two, to the point where working with them is no longer a huge pain.

Hope to see you there!

Marc Nager of Startup Weekend just sent me this today – I thought I’d repost (most of it, anyway) and get the word out about the next Portland Startup Weekend.

Hey there!

We wanted to let you know that Startup Weekend is coming back to Portland!

Check out the amazing lineup on the website. We have Matt Compton (venture partner at Madrona and ex vp at Yahoo), Rob Wiltbank (venture partner at Montlake Capital and professor at Willamette U), Eric Doebele (Founder/CEO Reliable.remodeler.com), Nitin Khanna (Founder/CEO of MergerTech), Doug Fieldhouse (CEO of Vesta) and of course the guys from Mugasha Akshay and Justin will be there!

When: March 5-7
Where: NedSpace Old Town
More info: http://portland.startupweekend.org
Looking forward to seeing you down there!

I’ve been to three Startup Weekend events in Seattle, but have not made it down to Portland yet.  If you’re in the area that weekend, and are a startup junkie, you should consider attending!

First rule of Twitter etiquette: there is no such thing.  In my opinion, if you don’t like something that someone is doing, you can unfollow them anytime you want.

Having said that, what are some of the new themes in Twitter etiquette that are worth commenting on?  Let’s take a tour.

#hashtags: Hashtags are those words prefixed by the pound sign (“#”, also known a hash sign) that you see in tweetstreams.  They supposedly provide context and metadata to tweets, but in practice, I see them used mostly for emphasis, and that’s how I use them.  It’s slightly painful to see well-meaning twitterati try to coordinate hashtags for an event when everyone has already started using different ones.

Blog posts: Normally people are pretty good about noting that they are linking to one of their own posts by prefixing their tweet with [blog] or [post] or something similar.  Bloggers who repeatedly spam their own posts get blocked, period.  Twitter in my mind is a lifestreaming app, not a one-way push mechanism.

Retweets: Twitter recently fucked up the retweet function on their website, and not only don’t allow you to edit tweets for length, or add your own prefix comment.  Luckily most other tools still allow you retweet and  keep your sanity.  A couple tricky issues with retweets:

• How much editing is too much?
• If an item has been retweeted before it got to you, do you have to keep the whole chain of retweeters?

I have no hard-and-fast expectation for either.  If you want to edit the retweet, go for it.  If you want to chop out multiple retweeters, go for it.  Try your best to keep original attribution, but don’t go all haywire applying severe rules to a fluid medium.

Grammar: A lot of twitter grammarians have already checked themselves in to inpatient psych wards, so this problem is less of an issue than it used to be.  Twitter grammar sucks.  People type quickly, they type while driving, they type while roller skating backwards and locking lips with their significant others.  Bad grammar happens.  Even if bad grammar chafes (as it does me), you can learn to deal with it.  People are messy. So is Twitter.

Rickrolling:  Rickrolling is like heavy drinking; every now and then it can be a fun break.  Do it every day and people start to shun you.

Protected Updates: My favorite phrase on this question is “protected updates make baby Jesus cry.”  Don’t protect your updates and still pretend that you’re “doing” Twitter.  Get over your fear of the Wayback Machine, live your life authentically, and don’t worry what some future boss/friend/spouse might think about something you tweeted back in 2008.

Inanity: Sometimes tweets make no sense.  In my opinion, that’s part of the fun of Twitter; you get to see people as they really are, without a lot of filtering and polishing and pre-planning and run-this-by-my-publicist checking.  Tweeps who are too polished are boring, IMHO.  On the other hand, if you like the  corporate flavors, feel free to unfollow someone who tweets about the junk that their cat just threw up.

Anything to add?  Things you love or hate about Twitter?  Write it in the comments!

Hot from my inbox —

The 15th annual Washington Technology Industry Association Industry Achievement Awards will be held March 4th, 2010 at Showbox SODO.  Organizer Katie Douglas writes that it will be a “casual affair” and there will be lounges that feature some of the tech behind the lifestyle characteristics (such as coffee, wine, and chocolate) that makes Washington such a great place to live.

I involuntarily laughed at the tagline/theme: “Washington Breeds Innovation”.  I’ve been doing a lot of connotative / denotative linguistic research as part of my work on Crowdify, and that phrase brings to mind the State of Washington furiously copulating with a passive, bespectacled, softly moaning Innovation.  I don’t know, maybe it’s a guy thing.  Maybe it’s just me.

Curious who the finalists in the various categories are?  I was too.  I’m most interested in the “Breakthrough Startup of the Year” category, in which Gist is nominated.  As I’ve written elsewhere in these pages, my hindbrain has a sort of unhealthy obsession with the algorithms behind Gist’s service and they all seem to be great people to boot.

I’ve seen the VholdR tech in person, and to my mind, it’s neat, but not as neat as Gist.  Plus they get demerits for funky spelling.  The Google correctly points you to their site if you type “vholder” in the search box, but still….

I don’t know a thing about DreamBox Learning, which is funny considering how many projects I’ve done in the online education space over the years.

I’m rooting for Gist in this category.

Register here: http://www.washingtontechnology.org/IAA

See you there?

Having just spent most of part of the last couple days at the 2010 Agile Open Northwest Conference in Seattle, I can say for sure that (a) our team does Agile in a very mature way and (b) there are some smart, smart motherfuckers out there.  Yes, I dropped the F-bomb in polite conversation, but whenever I go to a tech conference or any sort of event where bright people can shine, I’m constantly pleasantly surprised at how brilliant some people are.

When I was young, I thought I was the smartest.  And, in the little pond I swam in, I probably had a good shot at the title.  When I went to college, that attitude got dented, but not discarded; when I went to Microsoft, it got dented a little more; but it hasn’t been until I’ve gotten into my 30’s that I think I can accurately rank my intelligence in relation to others.  And the data is trending downward.    I think part of it is that I don’t really care that much anymore.  Also, I now define myself a lot of different ways; there’s a lot more diversity in the components of my self-perception.

I’d name names and tell you who I thought fit in that brilliant category at #AONW but if you’re at all an observer of the Agile community you probably already know who they are.

So, you’re thinking, how was the conference?  I was only able to attend half the sessions, due to work scheduling commitments, but the sessions I attended – save for one – were enlightening and contained nuggets of wisdom and/or practice that I can take with me to my projects.  I personally presented two sessions, one last night and one this morning, and although the attendance was underwhelming, the discussions were really informative and thought-provoking.

The organization at this year’s #AONW seemed to be a little more on the ball than last year’s event held in Portland.  Not sure if that’s due to the local organizers, the maturing of the conference, or what.

The Seattle Center was a good choice for a venue; it’s centrally located, and the Northwest Rooms are all easy to find and self-contained enough that we didn’t have to wander around too much.

I’ve already put notes up from my sessions and tomorrow I’ll put up notes from the sessions that I attended but did not personally host.

n.b. I’m sort of amazed I didn’t blog about my experience last year at the 2009 AONW in Portland.  It was in many was one of the seminal events of 2009 for me, for a lot of reasons.

It’s been far, FAR too long since that known slacker Nathan Kaiser has done anything for the Seattle community.  To make up for WEEKS and WEEKS of inattention and neglect, he’s grudgingly agreed to organize another world-famous nPost Pub Crawl on February 9th, kicking off from Collins Pub near Pioneer Square.

Of course I jest.  Nathan does more for, and is more involved with, the Seattle startup community than just about anyone else I can think of.   But the part about the nPost Pub Crawls being world-famous is only slight hyperbole.  I think a Canadian citizen might have shown up once.

If you’re free that night, and in the mood for some great company and conversation, head on over to Collins Pub at 5 PM!

RSVP (optionally) at http://www.wiki.npost.com/index.php/NPostWiki:Happyhour.

Last night I attended a planning session for the next Seattle Startup Weekend event, and yes, I can report that Startup Weekend is coming back to Seattle. 

This is great news for the Seattle startup community, as the first two Seattle Startup Weekend events – plus the one in Redmond last August – were great community-building exercises and brought together people who still maintain close connections in the local tech community.

The tentative date is March 19-21 2010, and the tentative host is Amazon (described as “99% certain” by one of the organizers – Clint, I think).  Last night at Cyclops about 15 people showed up, and although the agenda was more of an informal “drink beer and chat” style event than I had originally envisioned, it was still nice to meet others who are as jazzed about Startup Weekend as I am. Among other things, it was great to make the acquaintance of Franck Nouyrigat (@peignoir), a local organizer of Paris Startup Weekend, who is a prolific world traveler among other things – check out his Picasa albums.

On a personal note, it was really nice to see @aviel and @geekcoach again, whom I met for the first time in January 2008 at the first Seattle Startup Weekend.   Relationships I developed at that event two years ago still continue strong.

Seattle Startup Drinks is back – of course thanks to @firewallender (Cassie Wallender), who is the driving organizer of the event since it first kicked off almost two years ago.

It’s happening this Friday, the 29th, at 7 PM at the Two Bells Tavern in Belltown, Seattle.  I haven’t been to the Two Bells in like ten years so it will be fun to go back and geek out and catch up with some other like-minded startup folks over a pint or three.

See you there?

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/event.php?eid=268378466093

http://seattle.startupdrinks.com/2010/01/24/january-startup-drinks-this-friday/

I found this interesting: America’s 75 Worst Commutes, according to The Daily Beast.  I-5 in Seattle came in at #7, which is surprising to me – not because we don’t have hellish commutes around here, but in my opinion 520 is a much worse commute.  I’d much rather go north-south on I-5 than east-west on 520, at least during the worst commute times.  I guess that the  INRIX data that they use marks I-5 worse than 520.  So be it.  That 21.3 MPH speed when congested is obviously wrong, though – there’s NO WAY that you average 20+ MPH during the worst commute times.

Check it out and see what you think: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-01-19/americas-75-worst-commutes/full/

SEOmoz is holding a celebration of their 2009 successes next week at the Elysian Brewery on Capitol Hill.  Unlike most people, who release their top ten lists at the beginning of December, Rand and crew are patient enough to wait until the year is over to reflect and celebrate.  You never know what might happen on December 31st, right?

Check out the invite for a compilation of some of their best pictures from the past year.  You’ll see the fun, excitement, and enthusiasm that radiates from the team.  I don’t know Rand, but I think it’s a safe guess that he initiates and generates that kind of attitude and leads his team that way.  It’s fun to witness.

Not doing anything on Wednesday?  Come on down! (RSVP though!)

SEOmoz Seattle Meetup
Elysian Brewery (map)
1221 East Pike
Seattle, WA 98122
5 PM to 7 PM