Burnin’

image courtesy of Flickr user, Brian Solis

Sarah Lacy is a successful tech journalist. So successful in fact, Sarah Lacy is more than a journalist, she’s a brand. Yet, she’s not convinced that being a brand is all that great.

I’ve written before that one of the advantages of the Internet– the relatively low barrier to click on something– is an advantage for building brands and gaining distribution online, but it’s also a disadvantage. People flock to you as a side-show, but don’t actually want to invest real dollars to support whatever you are doing. Honestly, how many of Tila Tequila’s million MySpace friends buy her CDs? There’s a currency in mild watching-a-train-wreck-fascination and even hate online, that doesn’t exist in the offline world in the same way. And, to date, it hasn’t translated.

I’ve got an inkling that this multi-year trend towards brand-this and brand-that in the business world may be in for a rude awakening. After all, there are far more high-profile examples. Think about Howard Stern: He used to be one of the most talked about, most hated, most beloved people in popular culture.

Valleywag asks, “What is wrong with you internet people? Sarah Lacy is working hard so you can fully appreciate her and you’re not FULLY APPRECIATING HER IN ALL MEDIA CONSTANTLY.”

Lacy writes a biweekly column for BusinessWeek.com called “Valley Girl” and is co-host of Yahoo! Finance’s Tech Ticker. She also has a new book out: Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0.

On a personal note, my brand is not here at this scrapbook site. It’s at AdPulp. My intention from the beginning was to create something bigger than just me. I suppose that’s the difference in being a writer versus a writer, editor and publisher.

Kathleen Parker, a columnist for The Washington Post is working to understand what the rise of new media means for print journalists like herself.

Thankfully, she does so in a funny manner:

It’s over. Done. The old media are no more. We are all new media now. All journalists, we are also the news. We are essentially a nation of news-mongering newsies making news as we do the news. At some point, the news will simply consume the news consumer-slash-provider in a big-bangish event that will go unreported.

Parker also offers this bit of insight in to the news business:

If you want friends or money, my first editor told me, get another line of work.

What are we to make of all this journalistic self-loathing? I know what I make of it. Clearly, this is the perfect time to create a new kind of media company. One that holds tight to certain basics—like an informed citizenry being the key to a healthy democracy—while finding new means of production, distribution and monetization. Paid advertising and paid subscribers can’t be the only two methods of making money in this business. Let’s invent some new ones!

In 2006 I started keeping a list of cities where I spent at least one night during the year.

Turns out 2008 was a big year in travel, made even bigger by a nine-day trip across country to our new home in the Pacific Northwest.

Places visited in ‘08:

• Boulder, CO
• Omaha, NE*
• New York City, NY
• Daytona Beach, FL
• Winston-Salem, NC*
• Austin, TX
• Orlando, FL*
• Marco Island, FL*
• Miami Beach, FL
• Moravian Falls, NC
• Red Top State Park, GA
• Serenbe, GA
• Asheville, NC
• Franklin, NC
• Lexington, KY
• Cincinnati, OH
• Chicago, IL
• Scottsbluff, NE
• Salt Lake City, UT
• Winnemucca, NV
• Eugene, OR
• Atlanta, GA
• Coralville, IA
• Yachats, OR
• Spring, TX
• Depoe Bay, OR

*indicates more than one visit

We went to Newport Seafood Grill for lunch today—day 10 of a massive winter storm. The staff was incredibly happy to see us.

According to The Oregonian, Portland restaurants are reeling.

Portland’s formerly bustling scene is squeezed as never before. Soaring ingredient costs, escalating gas prices, vanishing credit lines, a looming increase in the minimum wage and consumers who closed their wallets back in October all contribute.

David Machado, owner of the popular Lauro Kitchen and Vindalho says, “This weather is ripping the guts out of restaurants and wiping out one of our busiest times — this micro climate thing is going to tip the balance against a lot of businesses because restaurant margins are as thin as they get.”

“I’ve heard some people say their business has dropped by as much as 40 percent in the last month or so,” says Bill Perry of the Oregon Restaurant Association. “Things weren’t too bad until October — sales were off just 4 percent or so over the year — but then, two or three weeks before the election, things just froze. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Oregon lost 1,900 restaurant jobs in September and October, and suppliers are left with unpaid bills and dwindling orders.

“These are hard times for everybody because we’re all in the same boat,” says Ben Savery of wholesaler Provista Specialty Foods Inc. Savery has been in the business for years and says he’s never seen the likes of 2008. “The economy has been not great for a year or so, but in the last three months it’s become something much worse.”

I read the book Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach many years ago. In the book, the Pacific Northwest secedes from the nation. I’ve been a bioregionalist ever since.

Now I see in “Sunday Styles” that the book—which sold over 400,000 copies in the 1970s—has caught on with new audiences in churches and classrooms around the nation. A fact which has led Bantam to reissue the title this month.

Scott Slovic, a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, said, “You hear people talking about the idea of Ecotopia, or about the Northwest as Ecotopia. But a lot of them don’t know where the term came from.”

The green movement’s focus on local foods and products, and its emphasis on energy reduction also have roots in “Ecotopia,” he said. In fact, much of Portland, Ore., with its public transport, slow-growth planning and eat-local restaurants, can seem like Ecotopia made reality.

Which must be why the copy editor of this section titled the article, “The Novel That Predicted Portland.”

Laura Oppenheimer of The Oregonian put together a feature article on the efforts being made by Portland’s various creative communities to unite and successfully promote themselves.

salon owner, Kahala Orian, sporting a knitty

Here, Oppenheimer shows the two ends of the local spectrum:

If you picture the creative economy as a continuum from corporate giants to part-time artists, Nike inhabits one end. Oregon’s largest company employs more than 6,000 people at its headquarters, on a college-size campus near Beaverton.

A notch away from Nike is the advertising firm that branded it: Wieden+Kennedy. Columbia Sportswear Co. and Adidas USA round out the huge names. A slew of midsize companies design clothing, sports equipment and buildings, make movies and computer games, and promote it all to the world.

To explore the other end of the continuum, you could’ve walked down Southeast Belmont Street last weekend, past coffee shops and neighborhood bars, across from a retro arcade and a vegetarian diner, into KOiPOD salon. The owner, Kahala Orian, hosted a craft show called Handmade for the Holidays.

More than 20 entrepreneurs covered card tables with knit hats, soy candles and hand-stitched pillows, while a DJ wearing giant silver headphones spun tunes.

The article also explores how Steve Gehlen and Tad Lukasik are launching Oregon Creative Industries “to connect people online and in person, lobby for resources to help business grow, and to make creativity the state’s economic signature.”

OCI is a startup in the non-profit sector. They’re looking for volunteers to help grow the business, if you’re interested.

Yesterday was a dramatic weather day in Portland. Given the unique conditions, photographers throughout the city took to the frozen streets to document what they saw.

PDX Pipeline has a great recap of the day in pictures and Tweets. Additionally, Flickr groups sprung up to capture the day in images.

Geoff Kleinman, writing on OurPDX.net looks back at the Web 1.0 tech boom that took place a decade ago and sees similarities to today.

He also looks forward and wonders if an insular community can step up and out for their own benefit.

The brutal truth is that 2009 is going to be an extremely rough year for many people in the community. Local companies have just started layoffs and a lot more are on the horizon. Great adversity can create great opportunities for a community to come together, support each other and find ways to use that community strength to grow. But for the Portland Tech Community to be relevant it takes more than just coming together. If the goal is to ‘put Oregon tech on the map’ then it’s going to take crossing the lines and reaching out to local businesses, involving people from outside the tight knit community and working together to create relevant national stories about Portland and tech.

As I attend various tech events in Portland, people invariably ask me, “How are you connected to all this?” It’s an innocent question for the most part.

The other day, I told one developer that I’m not connected. That I moved to Portland in August and I come to town with a history in, and interest in, marketing technology. Of course, that bit of information makes me something other than an engineer—a person who makes things! So, as I reflect on Kleinman’s call to action, I think yes, the engineers might want to warm up to people from my profession. Not all ad men are exploiters. Some of us are, in fact, as idealistic as the hackers who’ve made it their business to change the world.

Cross the Burnside Bridge into downtown Portland and you will be greeted by one of the most iconic neon signs in existence. It says, “Made in Oregon” and features a leaping stag whose nose cheerfully turns red during the holiday season.

The sign was first constructed by the White Satin Sugar Company in 1940. It was changed in 1957 to read “White Stag” by White Stag Sportswear. The Naito family, owners of the Made in Oregon chain, again rebranded the sign in 1995.

This is where it gets interesting. Made in Oregon is a brand name and prominent retail business in Oregon. But the phrase “Made in Oregon” is a mantra that all Oregonians can relate to and embrace. So, it’s a particularly positive piece of branding that has transcended commerce and become a civic landmark.

Now, University of Oregon, a tenant in the White Stag Building where the neon sign is perched wants to modify the text of the sign to read “University of Oregon.” See WWire for a sketch of the proposed changes.

According to Portland Business Journal, there’s resistance to the change from residents of Portland and city officials, some of whom attended Portland State University (presumably Oregon State grads would have a say in this, as well).

It’s hard to fault O of U for pursuing the change. It’s a bold move, but one that would clearly help build their brand after the dust up washes out to sea. At the same time, it’s hard to support U of O in this, since the existing sign works for everyone, not just Ducks.

Local rivers and the magnificent fish in them have been top of mind recently. On Monday night we attended a World Affairs Council-sponsored series of talks by professional river savers at the EcoTrust Building in the Pearl District.

We enjoyed hearing from Jeremy Five Crows of the Nez Pierce tribe and the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission. He educated us on the Columbia Basin Fish Accords, an historic collaboration between the four tribes in the Columbia River basin and the federal government. At the heart of the Accords is a 10-year, $900 million agreement to restore salmon habitat. Five Crows mentioned that the tribes can’t advocate for dam removal during this 10-year term, which I found interesting. He didn’t say anything about the rest of us pursuing that particular goal.

Today, while doing my internet rounds, I happened upon Rivers in Demand a project from media advocacy group, Epicocity. Here’s a sample of their mission-driven work:

As you can see in the video above, the Rogue’s 40 anniversary of protection under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act was greeted by a proposal to log in its basin. Thankfully, a coalition of concerned groups, called Save The Wild Rogue, is working to extend Wild and Scenic protection to the Rogues tributaries, which would stymie the logging plan.

Kavita Heyn of American Rivers (where I once worked!) and Stephanie Tidwell of Klamath-Siskiyou Wild are helping to lead the charge for the Rogue.

“I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe.” - R. Buckminster Fuller

I feel fortunate that we were able to see Portland Center Stage’s production, R. Buckminster Fuller: THE HISTORY (and Mystery) OF THE UNIVERSE last night. Going in, I didn’t know much about this man. The fact that I did not seems incredible to me now. Be that as it may, I certainly care to know more.

There was so much density in last night’s finely honed delivery of Fuller’s vision, that I hardly know where to begin. But I can point to a few things that jumped out at me. Fuller’s sense of “design responsibility” grabbed me. So did his admonition to do more with less. I was also impressed with his playful, but serious, use of the English language. For instance, Fuller coined lots of terms in his day. One that stands out for me is “livingry.” Livingry is the opposite of weaponry and killingry, and means that which is in support of all human, plant, and Earth life. It’s an idea that brings to mind Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s call for a Department of Peace. I wonder where Obama is on that idea.

While I ponder that, take a look at this video on Fuller, clearly one of the more enigmatic American thinkers (and doers) in the 20th century:

At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Friday, Al Gore said Web 2.0 can be utilized to serve a common, but higher, purpose.

“The purpose, I would urge all of you — as many of you as are willing to take it up — is to bring about a higher level of consciousness about our planet and the imminent danger and opportunity we face because of the radical transformation in the relationship between human beings and the Earth,” Mr. Gore said.

According to the Times’ Bits blog, Gore also said, the nation needs to build “an electronet,” a unified national smart grid, with high-voltage, low-loss underground wires that deliver renewable energy from the places that produce it — like the sunny Arizona deserts or the windy Dakota plains — to the cities where the majority of it is used. Such a grid would require a $400 billion investment upfront, but would pay off in just over three years, he said.

The task, to summarize, is to use cloud computing, open source technology and viral networks to share mission critical information that directly leads to environmental upgrades in the nation’s infrastructure.

Reuben and Cherise

The Lorax speaks for all trees
I speak for two, Reuben and Cherise.

These towering firs caught the scent of Lewis and Clark
On an updraft from the mighty Columbia.
It was the first whiff of progress,
And it took some getting used to.

The neighborhood was thick then.
Eagles fished from Reuben’s limbs
Bears clawed Cherise’s bark
And many long-needled creatures
With deep Cascadian roots
Stood tall in every direction.

Bye and bye, legions of white men
With sharpened axes came
To thin the forest boreal.
By luck of the draw,
Reuben and Cherise survived.

Today the grind of industry
Contiues to churn
Making the squirels run faster
And the ‘coons climb higher.

Ch-chug, ch-chug
Train whistles blow in the night.
Rueben and Cherise prefer the
Hoot of the owl.