I’m definitely in the second group, and I think I also need to answer your questions for myself, on a personal level. Thanks for the nudge!

But here’s the thing: making money is going to be very tough for the next 12 to 24 months – at _least_. We need to to be collaborating on surviving this downturn (this I think is the focus of ThrivePDX as I understand it) because it’s going to be at least as bad as the tech wreck which for those who were here in Portland at that time was a very grim time. Still, though, eventually this recession or depression or whatever it is will end and in the meantime we can start working on the basis for that recovery here. I would suggest more free training sessions where people offer to swap their expertise. You may know Rails, I may know Haskell. I’ll teach you Haskell in return for you teaching me Rails, for example. We need to focus on keeping our skillsets up to date as well as expanding our skills during the downturn in which many of us will go through long bouts of un- or underemployment. This may extend to other non-tech skills like veggie gardening or raising chickens.

Yes, we’re looking at some really tough times ahead, but if you listen to stories of people who lived through the Great Depression of the 1930′s they will generally always emphasize that it was the tough times that brought people closer together and built community.

The subject of how small, grassroots initiatives like us can impact how our industry and city’s prosperity and growth is one that I’ve been thinking and working with for the past two or so months! I like how you point out factors that will encourage this.

But for it to happen, I believe that there must be buy in from the city level: there are policies that can be written to encourage rooms for new ideas incubation to grow. We’re also, then, doing our part in taking the initiative to plan and build the community itself.

Thanks for writing an excellent article!

This sticks out for me because some techs like to consider themselves an island – the old “if I can’t build it/find it/get it myself, then it’s less valuable…” perception.

Or maybe that’s part of the evolutionary shift we’ve been seeing lately – more communal/collaborative (am thinking of Calagator code sprints as my example here.)