After years of not going, I’m going to take the plunge and head down to the world’s largest consumer exposition. So, keep your eyes here at the latter half of this week for my take on all the gadgets and gizmos that will be unveiled at the show.

I have a lot of friends going and I’m looking forward to making lots of new ones too.

If you’re an exhibitor that has some cool stuff to show off or otherwise want to meet – email me or call me – my contact info is on the right hand side of this blog.  My email is jason@techcraver.com and my phone is (503) 334-2574.

See you soon!

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Techcraver is Going to CES!

Ignite Portland has been a huge success and I’ve been very happy to watch the Ignite community really watch their program turn in to a success.

This is why I was so happy to see that Bend, Oregon is going to start their own. That’s right: Announcing Ignite Bend!

According to Hack Bend.com, the Event is schedule to take place on February 12, 2009 from 7:30 to 10:00pm at the The PoetHouse Art in the tbd Loft – entrance through The Wine Shop at 55 Minnesota Avenue, Bend, Oregon.

I’ve been to every Ignite Portland event and I’m very excited to see Bend start their own Ignite event. I’m planning on being there as part of a Central Oregon Roadtrip – who’s with me?!
I can’t wait to meet some other Bend social media types.

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Helping Announce: Ignite Bend is Coming

…… hundreds of the world’s leading bloggers, podcasters, and tech-savvy enthusiasts will once again descend upon the city of Seattle, Washington. The eighth Gnomedex conference is generating buzz in the blogosphere, which underscores our reason to produce it. Indeed, we will once again become the crossroads between producers and observers, between users and developers.

Basically I define Gnomedex as a tech conference where anyone who produces content, consumes content, or just has a tech bone in their body comes together to talk to other geeks about their passions.

This year was no exception as highly passionate people arrived in Seattle ready to meet, greet, and get our geek on.

The Ride to Gnomedex

About two month’s ago, Alex Williams from a local startup called Iterasi asked some Portland folks whether we’d be interested in riding in a converted bus with WiFi, beanbag chairs, and comfy couches to Seattle for the conference. My first reaction was “Of course”! What better way to drive 4 hours than with other blogging buddies and the folks from Iterasi.

The ride was well publicized because everyone I met at Gnomedex that knew I was from Portland asked me if I was on the bus. We had a slow start getting up to Seattle, but the road trip up was great. Iterasi, by sponsoring and arranging the bus ride, sought to build the Portland community up and bring us together. We had an amazing time. Thanks to Alex, Londa, and Pete Grillo who joined us for the ride up to Seattle.

The ride back had the added fun of featuring Sarah Lacy, the Business Week writer. I had a great conversation with one of the leading women of the blogosphere. She’s a smart cookie who I hope continues her success.

The Sessions

Chris and Ponzi Pirillo really took attendee’s feedback to heart after last year’s drama surrounding Calacanis/Winer drama. The theme of this year’s attendee list was “Where Tech Meets Social”. We had some amazing presentations this year including:

• An intro to Mars 3.0, given by the Nasa Engineer who drives the Mars Rover.
• Gnomedexers raised $3000 to send a young Cambodian girl to College, thanks to Beth Katner
• Seeing the next DVR you’ll want from Boxee
• Keeping track of your laptop, the open source way with Adeona
• Wonderful photography tips and techniques from the amazing artist Kris Krug.

Every session at Gnomedex was fabulous and I just don’t have enough time to run through each of them. The videos will be up on the Gnomedex website soon and I urge you to take a look when you get a chance.

The People

The people you meet in the hallways and during meals define Gnomedex. This is a conference where Chris Brogan and Robert Scoble are just other bloggers in the crowd, rather than being the haughty “A-listers” some might expect them to be. Everyone who comes to Gnomedex comes to merely network and exchange ideas.

Last year, I sat with Josh Bancroft at Gnomedex and thought it would be fun to have more Portland people in 2008. This year, there was an awesome Portland group that made the journey up! I had an especially great time networking with Rick Turoczy, Jason Grigsby, Josh Bancroft, Brian Westbrook, Marshall Kirkpatrick, and Amber Case.

Again, it’s the people who make Gnomedex such a draw. I made some amazing buddies and got to meet some very interesting people from all around the social web.

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Gnomedex 2008! Tapping into the Tech Conversation

Now for the news. While at DLS, I was lucky enough to make the front page of digg a few times with some of my posts. Well Friday, I posted a story on GigaOm about the mobile market and how it will be transformed by touch interfaces this year.

I noticed yesterday it made Techmeme! Here’s the link to my story on techmeme.

For those of you who don’t know about Techmeme, it’s an aggregator of all the hot topics and influential conversations happening in the blogosphere. It’s an honor to make it onto Techmeme.

Obligatory screenshot below

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Sweet! I made TechMeme

Gnomedex is an interesting conference because it’s single track, meaning there’s one session per time period and everyone sees the same speaker at the same time. The audience is varied. There are bloggers, videocasters, podcasters, general tech enthusiasts and marketers.

With all that said, the sessions as a whole were very useful. I didn’t enjoy the first session hosted by Robert Steele. As I said on Twitter, I think mixing politics and tech is great, as long as the tech is tied to somehow. Mr. Steele had no focus in his talk and this became very apparent during the question/answer period. He dodged a few questions, in my opinion, because he didn’t have a decent answer.

The Calacanis talk at the end of Friday generated a lot of buzz on the internet and became a meme in the coverage on Gnomedex. It was so entertaining for me to be in the same room while Calacanis is speak, Winer is heckling him, and Scoble’s using twitter to comment on Calacanis subject matter. It was like being in the middle of a tomato fight. Fun stuff.

The following day, Cali Lewis and her husband Neal spoke about the rise of their video podcast. Even though it wasn’t popular, I enjoyed it. I am a fledgling pod/videocaster so it was fascinating for me to hear their story. Thank you to Cali/Neal and Chris for bringing them on stage.

I had some amazing hallway conversations. I met some great people including Andru Edwards and Britt Raybould. Also it was a joy to meet Scoble and Chris.

Also take a look at my flickr photoset.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

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Gnomedex wrapup

Summit to Surf is a fundraiser for the National Diabetes Association to raise funds to fight Diabetes. A person in my family was just diagnosed with Type II diabetes so it’s a personal ride for me.

If you’d like to make a donation, please visit my ride page. Your donation is tax-deductible and every dollar goes to fighting diabetes.

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All registered for Summit to Surf

Here are more photos.

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Gorge Ride 2007

This weekend’s ride is a 40 mile trek from The Dalles to Hood River and back on the Historic Columbia River Highway. I’m doing the ride with my brother so it should be a lot of fun! We’re going to go through the Mosier Tunnels and have a combined ascent of 2900 feet. Yikes!

I wish I had a road bike as this ride is all on-road. Either way it’ll be a lot of fun!

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Riding in the Gorge Ride This Weekend

We left Grand Ronde, Oregon at about 9:45. The beginning of the ride (about 7 miles) is on-road and then you go off-road on logging roads for a uphill-downhill-uphill mountain course. After meandering through the woods, you end up on 101 for the final 10 or so miles into Pacific City. The ride is beautiful as you wander alongside the Nesctucca River through lush and dense forest. The 9 of us has a wonderful time hanging out and experiencing this together.

My wonderful wife met me at the end and we all enjoyed a great meal and beer to cap off

a wonderful day. It was SO much fun and it really meant a lot to be biking for such a great cause with my brother. I can’t wait for Reach the Beach 2008!

Check out my photoset for more photos.

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I Reached the Beach and it was awesome!

This is kind of like in Europe where if you’re waiting for a train, you can txt a code with the Stop ID and find out when the next train is coming. I wish Tri-Met would employ this in the Portland area, rather than they’re little call center that’s only staffed part of the day.

Technorati Tags: sms, realtor, real estate, txt, biking

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Simple and brilliant use of text messaging