Chris Williams

Part of an ongoing series highlighting the amazing people in the Portland creative community.

Stephen Green is a husband, a father, and a very busy man. Between his work with local businesses at the Portland Development Commission, his role on the board of Oregon Public House, and the countless other duties he takes upon himself, he’s making Portland a better place for you and me. He’s been a member of the CreativeMornings/Portland community for the past year, and we chose to profile him after his tweet at the Intisar Abioto event, which summed up that amazing morning quite nicely.

See Ashley Forrette's photos in all their glory on Flickr and check the interview below.

Part of an ongoing series highlighting the amazing people in the Portland creative community.

Matthew Oliphant is a seasoned UX pro, a community organizer, and a long-time presence at CreativeMornings/Portland events. Also? A fan of Korean dramas. We’ve been noticing his thoughtful contributions to the dialogue within our community for quite some time, but he wins for knowing about Hay Net before Mara even mentioned it in her talk.

See Ashley Forrette's photos in all their glory on Flickr and check the interview below.

What did you have to do to earn the title of “Cleaner” at nGen Works? I mean, Jean Reno. Those are big shoes to fill.

While I did lift that from La Femme Nikita, I promise that’s not how I clean things up!

nGen Works is a pretty non-traditional company in how we run things, and one aspect of that is we all get to pick our own titles. We’ve got Chief Code Thrasher, Super Glue, and Simplify Man to name a few.

If I still worked in a corporate setting, I’d probably have a title like Director of User Experience or some such nonsense. Titles are just a way for companies to make you think you’re furthering your career. I’d rather focus on doing interesting work.

So when I joined nGen a couple of years ago, and I thought about what I really do, The Cleaner made the most sense. Oftentimes, I tend to be the one to come in to clean things up. Whether it’s a broken workflow, an unusable form, or a project that’s spinning out of control. And the more often I do it, the more often I get pulled in to things clean up. And it’s been that way my entire professional career.

You’ve seen the whole sausage making process behind software, from front to back. What would surprise the lay person about how an app gets made?

If we were speaking in GIFs, there’d be a cat, playing a toy piano, saying “I have no idea what I’m doing.” Kind of like this.

Okay, that isn’t exactly true, but most software projects are set up like this: A small group of people come together for a goal that is partially defined. They have varying skillsets and capabilities. They all try to run forward together toward a common destination. And they all pretty much make it up as they go along.

Even those of us who’ve been on scores of projects make it up as we go. Software development has a roughly repeatable process, but I don’t think it can be truly commoditized. There’s often too many unknowns, goals shift and you have to adjust, new tools come on the scene, you don’t always have the best team in place, and releasing software with a usable and complete feature-set with no known bugs just takes a lot of work.

You organize Refresh ‘round these parts. What is it about this particular moment that makes events so important to the creative community?

I do. And I get help from Susan Robertson, too!

Here’s how I see Refresh: While a lot of what we invite presenters to talk about is web-related, we’ve tried to expand it more to be about the process of making things. We’ll have technical talks (next month is a talk about Sass right along side talks the focus on the soft-skills like Mara’s in January.

But one of the things we really try to do is highlight new voices. Susan, prior to joining me in organizing Refresh, did her first presentation ever in September 2013. It was a great, well-attended talk and now she’s been invited to speak at SmashingConf in December.

I really want Refresh to be a welcoming environment for new and professional presenters alike. For the first-timers, we let everyone know from the start that it’s their first talk and when the talk ends, we do a short, constructive feedback session to help the presenter get better. If the audience knows they’ll be called upon at the end of the talk to give feedback, they pay more attention. And then the presenter gets good feedback on the talk they literally (classic definition) just finished giving.

You’ve been to a whole lot of CreativeMornings talks here in Portland. Which were your favorites?

I’m going to take the opportunity here to cast a vote for turning CreativeMornings into CreativeMidMorningsPotentiallyLunchLet’sCallItAnEarlyDayAndAllGoGrabABeer. I say this because I don’t go to as many CreativeMornings as I’d like. :)

As to faves … I have two. Wait. Three. Wait, this is the one I like. I had to look back at all the ones on that page because it’s kind of difficult to choose…

Mara’s talk was great. Love her style and her message. G Cody QJ Goldberg and his drive. And Julie Sabatier’s talk was really interesting, too.

So, no, I can’t choose.

Okay, what I really want to know: how did you get into Korean dramas and what it is about them that appeals?

Two words: Coffee Prince. That’s how it all started. Hulu began putting up Korean dramas a few years ago and I got hooked. Coffee Prince is basically a Shakespeare comedy (who doesn’t love mistaken identities!) with a bunch of coffee and a lot of good Korean food. And Korean food is one of my Spirit Animals.

Basically, I love silly, serious, romance, drama, food, sci-fi, historical shows and a lot of Korean dramas try to shove all of that in, and usually to good effect. It’s really enjoyable brain candy that feels somewhat refined because there’s reading of subtitles involved.

“My goal within the project will be to photograph and illustrate the diverse presence of black people in Oregon, both urban and rural,” remarks Abioto. “What does black Oregon look like? Who are black Oregonians? Where are we?”

Over the next several months, our June ‘14 CreativeMornings/Portland speaker Intisar Abioto will be partnering with the Urban League of Portland as Photographic Director to produce photo accompaniments and conduct interviews for the next edition of the State of Black Oregon.The 2014 report will follow the one conducted in 2009 and will share an interest with “narrative and lived experience to illustrate the social and economic reality of black Oregonians.”

Intisar and her team are slated to visit Ashland, Eugene, Bend, and Coos Bay. A traveler at heart, she has expressed an eagerness to travel anywhere in Oregon to find stories. Please email her (theblackportlanders@gmail.com) with your suggestions!

At first glance, The Black Portlanders might appear to be a style blog showcasing local urbanites traipsing around town, similar to sites like Portland’s Pretty and Urban Weeds. But the photographs featured on The Black Portlanders, created by recent transplant Intisar Abioto, also shine a light on the social, cultural and economic aspects of the African-American experience in Portland.

In December ‘13, our June ‘14 CreativeMornings/Portland speaker Intisar Abioto was featured by Portland’s NPR affiliate, Oregon Public Broadcasting.In working on an idea stemming from a long-term project since her undergraduate studies at Spelman College and Wesleyan University, Intisar explains, “I’d kind of constructed an exploratory project utilizing the Myth of the Flying African to document the stories of young people — the dreams of young people in the African diaspora.”

Hi there, Mara here from Switchboard. There are six days left to apply to PIE. I’m going to tell you why you should. So before we get started I want you to go and visit another three incubators’ we…

Back in April on the Portland Incubator Experiment blog, our June ‘14 CreativeMornings/Portland speaker Mara Zepeda explains why she feels PIE to be the “most creative incubator in the most creative company in the most creative building in the most creative city in the world” after her 2013 experience at PIE. Having co-founded Switchboard, she lists 20 parts of her ecosystem and the profound impact they had on the technology her team built while at PIE.One line, as an example: “In this building there is a drawer of glitter and a letterpress in the basement. They emit a sonar of inspiration.”

In June, CreativeMornings’ global theme was “Minimal”. The theme was chosen by our organizer Rene Sørensen and the CreativeMornings/Aarhus team, while the Illustration is by Andrew Neyer. You can also read more about the theme on CreativeMornings’ blog post.The CreativeMornings/Portland speaker was Mara Zepeda, the co-founder of Switchboard, a community-building marketplace used by Portland startups, the women’s cycling network, the Portland Meat Collective (whose Founder, Camas Davis, gave a talk last August), and Willamette University, in addition to many other groups that want to help each other out and solve problems. Switchboard was part of Wieden+Kennedy’s Portland Incubator Experiment and was profoundly influenced by Portland’s artists, makers, and culture.

You’ll find Mara’s talk on our chapter page!

"We aren’t waiting around for the Medicis to fund us. This stuff is coming out of our pores." -Mark Lakeman, #cmpdx

— Mara Zepeda (@marazepeda)

May 16, 2014

"Neighborhood intersections are for birthdays and weddings, not cars," says #cmpdx's Mark Lakeman. (In the ’70s, Portland called him crazy.)

— Sean Danaher (@seandanaher)

May 16, 2014

Mark Lakeman speaking on urban placemaking to a captivated crowd in our auditorium this morning. #cmpdx pic.twitter.com/FYTudF2ajC

— Ziba Design (@zibapdx)

May 16, 2014

Hahaha, Monopoly is a study in gentrification. And there is no public space besides a parking lot and a jail! :( @Portland_CM

— Connie (@connie_pdx)

May 16, 2014

#PDX is the one U.S. city where citizen participation in increasing. It’s going down everywhere else. @Portland_CM

— Darsey Landoe (@DarseyLand)

May 16, 2014

Only at #cmpdx do you get to see the holy napkin of world peace… pic.twitter.com/2honzJlvDa

— Lindsay W Logsdon (@WolffLogsdon)

May 16, 2014

"we keep seeking permission for things only we can do" - Mark Lakeman, #cmpdx

— MeaghanS (@buytoiletpaper)

May 16, 2014

“Form follows function didn’t mean we should build buildings like vending machines!” Mark Lakeman #cmpdx http://t.co/kh1H1ceTsY

— Needmore Designs (@needmore)

May 16, 2014

Portland likes naked people on bikes. #itswhoweare @Portland_CM #pdx

— Connie (@connie_pdx)

May 16, 2014

Don’t forget to see Mark’s talk on our chapter page!

Back in May as part of the global CreativeMornings theme, “Freedom" Portland urban designer Mark Lakeman spoke about the City Repair Project's reclaiming of public spaces for the public as Portland’s new urban piazza..

Submit your favorite quote from Mark’s talk on our chapter page! And shout out to Jason de Parrie-Turner for shooting the video.

Over the last 15 years, the City Repair Project and the Village Building Convergence (VBC) has built community throughout the Portland metro area by facilitating over 350 projects – like sculpted benches, cobb ovens; community gardens, mini-libraries, kiosks, and incredible intersection repairs and paintings. These projects have been accomplished by a strictly volunteer staff and thousands of neighborhood members. As a result of our work we have seen tremendous results within Portland - including lower crime rates, increased property values, and more neighborhood involvement.

We need your help maintaining VBC’s existing structure and expanding into new, worthwhile communities. 

We are at risk of losing our hard-won knowledge and experience as our operation expands and our unpaid volunteers are being asked to commit to ever more complicated and time intensive projects without proper financial resources or compensation.

Between this past April 15 and June 14, Mark Lakeman and his non-profit, the Village Building Convergence (VBC), helped crowdsource $5,995 through Indiegogo to contribute towards pictures, stories and documentation; grant writing seed fund and seed funding; core leadership compensation; and central location for evening events.

A batch of frames from our May ‘14 “Freedom” talk with Portland urban designer Mark Lakeman. High five to our photographer Scott Larsen for his work and Ziba for opening their doors to their beautiful auditorium!You can look through the rest of the photos on our Facebook and Flickr.