How Portland, Oregon "Movers and Shakers" Connect

By Lori Richardson

Northwest Bureau Chief
(Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Alaska)

The Portland region is getting known nationally as quite an emerging area for technology, design, and the arts, with several awards and recognition over the last few years.

This issue we spotlight TWO great organizations that help business professionals connect: pdxMIndShare and LadiesWhoLaunch (Portland Incubator).

pdxMindShare was founded in 1999 by Kent Lewis, President of Anvil Media, Inc, as a means of exploring the web and its' capabilities to the thinkers in the Portland community. In January of 2002, regular, in-person meetings were opened up to all professionals looking for a job or to expand their network. Kent was put off by overly gregarious "networkers" at various events so he created his own group with the philosophy of providing helpful information and adding value to others while building a trust-based relationship.

Kent's philosophy is this:

"Networking is all about karma. The more you put into networking, the more you get out of it. At the same time, keep your expectations conservative to ensure you're not disappointed with the time commitment".

Six companies sponsor the group which has 1300 opt-in email subscribers.

I review a lot of association and event websites for this column, and a good way to get a sense of their energy and involvement is to see how many upcoming events are posted. On pdxMindShare as of this report, there are five events posted just for this week (which is a holiday, 4-day week no less)

There is an on-line forum, hosted by Jive Software and a job listing service.

Ladies Who Launch - Portland Incubator, is a group of positive, dynamic women entrepreneurs from the Portland area. Leader Rebecca Shapiro is an artist and gallery founder. Since Rebecca took the helm of LWL, the membership has grown 120%. This is a local group of a nationally-based organization founded by Victoria Colligan. Its mission is to provide a social network for entrepreneurial and creative women.

Ladies Who Launch, Portland currently has several September events happening. There are some great resources on this site, with a whole host of forms courtesy of DocStoc - all sorts of professional documents and forms to review.