Viking Pavilion, attached to the Peter W. Stott Center, is a 3,094-seat multi-purpose arena located on the Portland State University campus in downtown Portland, Oregon. Viking Pavilion is home to the Portland State men's basketball, women's basketball, and volleyball teams. In addition to hosting sports events, the facility houses the Portland State Vikings Athletics Department and physical education classes. It features student locker rooms, a basketball/volleyball court, racquetball courts, an eighth-mile track, wrestling room, and a small gym. Viking Pavilion was fully renovated for 2018, but originally opened in 1966.
South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas, United States. It began in 1987 and has continued to grow in both scope and size every year. In 2017, the conference lasted for 10 days with the interactive track lasting for five days, music for seven days, and film for nine days. There was no in-person event in 2020 and 2021 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in Austin, Texas; both years, there was a smaller online event instead.
Techfest is the annual science and technology festival of Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, consisting of social initiatives and outreach programs throughout the year.
Robert Kevin Rose is an American Internet entrepreneur who co-founded Revision3, Digg, Pownce, and Milk. He also served as production assistant and co-host at TechTV's The Screen Savers. From 2012 to 2015, he was a venture partner at GV.
Mark Zusman is the editor and publisher of Willamette Week, an alternative newspaper and media company based in Portland, Oregon. He has been the paper's editor since 1983, and became its publisher in 2015, when Richard Meeker stepped down from that position.
MusicfestNW (MFNW) was a multi-venue music festival that took place every fall in Portland, Oregon from 2001 to 2018. In 2014 the format of the festival changed to a two-day waterfront music festival. The festival was organized by the alternative weekly Willamette Week. Its sister festival, TechfestNW (TFNW), was founded in 2012.
Willamette Writers is a 501-c-3 nonprofit writing group based in the U.S. state of Oregon, with nearly 1,600 members, and chapters in Portland, Eugene, Salem, Corvallis, Central Point, and Newport. The group has a house in West Linn that serves as an office, and a place for meetings, critique groups and workshops. Additionally it has rooms that members can rent to write in.
Alexa von Tobel is the founder and CEO of LearnVest.com, a personal finance website, and the founder and Managing Partner of Inspired Capital. Von Tobel is the author of the New York Times bestseller Financially Fearless, which debuted on December 31, 2013, and the author of Financially Forward, which debuted on May 14, 2019. In April 2014, von Tobel was selected as an inaugural member of the Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship, alongside Steve Case, Reid Hoffman, Tory Burch and others. Von Tobel is the host of Inc.'s The Founders Project with Alexa von Tobel podcast.
XOXO is an annual festival and conference held in Portland, Oregon, that describes itself as "an experimental festival for independent artists who live and work online". XOXO was founded in 2012 by Andy Baio and Andy McMillan with funding from prepaid tickets and other contributions via Kickstarter. In 2016, technology website The Verge called it "the internet's best festival".
The Portland Incubator Experiment, often abbreviated as PIE or PIE PDX or stylized as Pie, is a business incubator based in Portland, Oregon that provides mentorship and resources to select startup companies. Co-founded by Renny Gleeson and Rick Turoczy, PIE is run by the Portland-based advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy (W+K). The program was informally launched in 2009 before converting to a formal structure in 2011. PIE participants are chosen by a selection committee, following an application process. Startups receive seed money and spend three months developing their businesses with support from W+K and participating mentors. Companies that have provided financial assistance and mentorship include The Coca-Cola Company, Google, Intel, Nike, Inc. and Target Corporation.
Web Summit is an annual technology conference held in Lisbon, Portugal. Founded in 2009 by Paddy Cosgrave, David Kelly, and Daire Hickey, Web Summit was originally held in Dublin, Ireland until 2016, when it moved permanently to Lisbon. Web Summit has been described as the most important tech event in the world and has been noted for its aggressive marketing.
Silicon Beach Fest is the name for a conference featuring both startup and Hollywood entertainment companies, based in Los Angeles, California, United States. Silicon Beach Fest was the "first time that local incubators, accelerators, digital media shops, and investors city-wide have gathered together to examine the burgeoning tech scene in L.A."
Oregon Venture Fund makes venture investments in the Portland, Oregon area and throughout Oregon and SW Washington. The fund consists of 180 institutional and angel investors, of whom 85% have run or founded a business. The fund evaluates up to 300 business plans per year, selecting five to seven to invest in annually. In 2018, the fund changed its name from Oregon Angel Fund to Oregon Venture Fund and launched a new $30M fund. Since its inception, Oregon Venture Fund has generated an average annual rate of return of 34% and a return on investment exceeding $3.50 for each dollar invested.
StartupBus is an annual technological startup competition and entrepreneurship boot camp, described as a Hackathon, created by Elias Bizannes in February 2010. The competition is held across a 3-day bus ride where contestants or "buspreneurs" compete to conceive the best technology startup. The competition seeks to attract young top talents to compete, to search for the most innovative startup conceived by the groups, where the winners are determined by a panel of judges. Starting from February 2011, it has gone through many iterations in various continents from 2011 to the present day, with the first in Austin, Texas and subsequently in North America, Europe and Africa.
Tech Open Air is an annual interdisciplinary technology festival that takes place in Berlin, Germany. It started in 2012 as the very first tech festival organised through crowdfunding. The festival has developed into a well-known tech conference in and out of Europe. The main concept behind Tech Open Air is to bring together the areas of technology, music, art, and science by providing a platform for multi-disciplinary knowledge exchange, collaboration, and development. Tech Open Air is organised every year in June or July and gathers a number of influential speakers, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists, start-ups, and attendees from Germany and 55+ other countries.
Doreen Lorenzo is an American thought leader on design and innovation. She has previously served as president of the companies Frog Design Inc. and Quirky and was the marketing director for Power Computing, manufacturer of "Mac Clones" based in Round Rock, Texas.
Cooper Harris is an American entrepreneur and actress. She is currently the CEO & founder of Klickly, a payments platform, based in Venice, California. Harris had a career as an actress on such TV shows like Young and the Restless and As the World Turns, among others.
Michael Nixon is a high school student, young entrepreneur, and an advocate for STEM education. He is the founder and proprietor of EduKits International, an edutech business which aims to make learning about technology fun for kids and teenagers.
The Candlelight Cafe & Bar, also known as the Candlelight Room, was a blues bar and restaurant located at Southwest 5th and Lincoln in downtown Portland, Oregon, United States.
Holocene is a music venue and nightclub in the Buckman neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, in the United States. The venue, which opened in June 2003, is a former auto-parts warehouse with an industrial, modern interior. Holocene hosts a variety of events, and was named the city's "Best Place to Dance" by Willamette Week readers in 2017.
