Rose City Techies

A gathering designed to help the Portland startup community start 2025 off on the right foot — with the connections people need. This event is in collaboration with PIE and many more! Event description courtesy of PIE + Portland Startup community.

When it comes to community, we're only as strong as our weakest connection. That's why we want to start the year off by getting you connected to the Portland startup community or by strengthening those connections you already have.

We're hoping you can join us for a casual gathering of people and organizations from across the startup community.

Meet the folks who are collaborating to pull this whole thing off:

• AI Portland (https://www.aipdx.info/) We are a gathering of enthusiasts, professionals, and the AI-curious from all walks of life, committed to fostering an inclusive environment where everyone is welcome to explore, learn, and innovate. Whether you're taking your first steps into the world of AI or you're a seasoned professional looking to push the boundaries of what's possible, AI Portland offers a space to collaborate, share knowledge, and drive positive change. Join us in our journey to unlock the potential of AI and discover its impact on our lives, our communities, and the world.
• Better Portland (https://wearebetterportland.com/) Our network gets you a foot in the door and then some. We connect businesses, non-profits, and organizations into a like-spirited collective with events, content, and a business-meets-social networking kind of culture. Best of all, everyone’s influence and expertise is a shared commodity. Welcome to business done better.
• Built Oregon (https://builtoregon.com) looks to leverage Oregon’s deep legacy of product craftsmanship and innovation to create broad-based and equitable opportunities for entrepreneurs in consumer products. Ultimately, our vision is a thriving, world-leading consumer products ecosystem across Oregon - One in which we help founders redefine success by placing the highest value on the people in their company and the communities where they reside.
• Latino Founders (https://www.latinofounder.com/) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to fostering the growth and success of underserved businesses in the State of Oregon. Our mission is to provide support, resources, and opportunities to empower underrepresented entrepreneurs and contribute to the overall economic development of the State of Oregon.
• Metro Region Innovation Hub (https://www.portlandmetrohub.org/) Our mission is to foster and grow innovative businesses by providing regional entrepreneurs from all sectors, backgrounds, and business stages with accessible paths to regional resources in networking, coaching, education, and capital access. We open up this accessibility through one-to-one guided navigation of existing regional resources and supporting programs that fill gaps in existing regional resources.
• PIE (https://piepdx.com/) With its origins in a conversation between Wieden+Kennedy, the largest privately held creative advertising agency in the world, and the Portland, Oregon, startup community, the Portland Incubator Experiment — known more commonly as PIE — has become an ongoing experiment designed to enable established organizations — corporations, government, and educational institutions, among others — to more effectively collaborate with startup communities in mutually beneficial ways.
• Prosper Portland (https://prosperportland.us/) We are the economic and urban development agency for the city of Portland. We focus on building an equitable economy by carrying out a comprehensive range of economic development programs that support small business, improve access to workforce training, and create jobs for Portland residents.
• Rose City Techies (https://www.meetup.com/rose-city-techies/) is founded on non-traditional and creative perspectives, offering a fresh approach to the tech and startup scene. We welcome all tech centric perspectives - UX designers, developers, founders, digital marketers, product managers, graphic designers, students, career switchers, or whatever tech role you’re in! Come join—you can sit with us.
• Silicon Florist (https://siliconflorist.com/) For more than 17 years, Rick Turoczy been writing Silicon Florist, a blog designed to capture and document the stories coming out of the Portland, Oregon, startup community. And sometimes, elsewhere — if those stories could have interest to the community.
• Vanport Studio (https://www.vanportstudio.com/) We are dedicated to empowering entrepreneurs with innovative resources and a supportive community to build and scale impactful businesses. We champion innovation, inclusivity, and integrity, ensuring each venture we support embodies excellence and impactful collaboration. Our commitment to these principles fosters lasting relationships and drives meaningful change in the communities we serve.

Interested in joining this collaboration? Just let us know! The more the merrier.

Join us for a captivating one-hour online discussion on Improv for Design Innovation with expert Frank Spillers. Based in London, Frank is a seasoned Sr. Service Designer and Inclusive Designer with over 20 years of industry experience and worked 7 years as a UX & Service Design Instructor with the Interaction Design Foundation. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain valuable insights from a true industry expert—all for free!

Event Description, courtesy of innercircle.com:
Improv teaches adaptability. In design, unexpected challenges are constant. Improv’s “yes, and” mindset pushes teams to embrace ideas, iterate, and build on one another’s contributions. This collaborative energy is critical for generating innovative solutions that go beyond the obvious. It shifts focus from critiquing to creating, encouraging bold experimentation.

Agenda for Improv for Design Innovation:

• Improv building blocks
• How improvisation ways of thinking and communicating break down barriers to ideation, opening dialogue, influencing stakeholders
• How to create richer, more empathetic personas through improvisational role-playing.
• Getting playful with and outsmarting generative AI ‘prompts’

Why I consider improve a critical UX soft skill?
Improv strengthens context probing, critical activating empathy.
Yes, but: For all the skepticism in the design community, social neuroscience (using MRI scans) has shown that empathy actually is not only a thing in your brain, it’s a skill that requires you activate it. Improv is a tool for doing this. Improv can open up one of the necessary channels required to activating empathy, or at least a discussion of context of use. Building this in teams leads to context intelligence.

How improv does this: Improv exercises place participants in new roles and perspectives, improving their ability to see through others’ eyes. This triggers the emotional intelligence needed for human-centered design.
Finally, improv breaks down silos. By fostering open communication, it reduces fear of failure and promotes trust within teams. Designers feel safe taking creative risks, which accelerates idea development. Through playful collaboration, improv inspires the kind of disruptive thinking that drives transformative design.