8-13-2013 Social networking breakfast and a band

There was a 7:15 social networking meetup to kick the day off.  This was in a panel format and the panelists were:

1. Donna is the head of social networking from the portland port authority which runs the airport and more
2. Scott Trepanier Sr. Manager, Public Relations, Promotions, Social Media at Columbia Sportswear
3. Tiffany is with mambo and works social networking for burgerville amongst other things.

They all use advanced techniques for social media.  My takeaway is that there is x amount of time in the day and you have to make a plan and follow that plan and then monitor the results and improve from there.  It is a judgement call exactly how allocate your time and energy to social networking.  My other takeaway is that the way you use social networking is very specific to your industry and those needs.

There was a full house at the social media breakfast

After the social media breakfast I met with Justin and we talked about how to market the portland restaurants.  I talked to the guy in the hot dog food truck and got a card from him.  He didnt know anything about the Internet or social media.  

After that I came back to the office and had a lunch meeting with Andrew Voss.  This guy is a real idea guy and really loves to debate.  We had a good lunch that made me think about several things.  I am also an idea guy that likes to debate so things were interesting at the meeting.

Then we found on Yelp that there was a free concert that was really good.

8-11-2013 Saturday Market, Bite of Oregon, and Sellwood

We started our Sunday by hopping the bus over to the Saturday Market downtown.  We bought a few more handmade items as gifts, then walked down the street to Bite of Oregon again.  We enjoyed free samples, beer, and cider (Cara loves 2 Towns Ciderhouse's cider with marionberry).  We thought about buying something at one of food trucks at Bite, but we ended up hopping the bus over to Sellwood-Moreland, an area we had only been to once before.  We walked around, then sat outside and had dinner at Stickers Asian Cafe.  Eric had Korean BBQ Beef (Bulgogi), while Cara had a small Thai Salad and vegetarian Jiaozi.  We both agreed that the place deserved 5 stars!  (That's Cara's first ever 5 star rating.)  The salad was light and refreshing, and the vegetarian Jiaozi (described as lighter dumplings than potstickers) were also light and delicious.  Eric had been wanting Bulgogi, and he loved it, especially in combination with the rice.

small Thai Salad from Stickers Asian Cafe

vegetarian Jiaozi from Stickers Asian Cafe

Korean BBQ Beef (Bulgogi) from Stickers Asian Cafe

8-10-2013 Alberta Street Festival and Bite of Oregon

We live only a few blocks from Alberta Street.  Alberta street has a bunch of interesting little restaurants, bars, and shops.  The last Thursday of each month they have a street fair and they also hold this street festival.  It is HUGE and spans about 20 blocks.  There were tons of vendors selling handmade art, jewelry, food, etc.  There are also plenty of corporate outreach like the power company, car companies, home energy auditors, etc.  There is a real green focus here in Portland and a lot of the booths were about energy saving, electric car sharing, renewable energy opt ins, etc.

After that we caught the bus and headed downtown to the Bite of Oregon. It was a pretty big event, but honestly it was mostly fair food and food trucks.  They did have a chefs table but that food wasn't vegetarian and the portions were small and it didnt look all that great.  The trouble with the Bite event is that Portland is an outstanding food town and it is hard to compete with the restaurants when you are operating out of a carnival atmosphere.  The band didnt really resonate with us so we headed over to get some dinner.

We went to Luc Lac.  This is a very popular, inexpensive Vietnamese place....it is so popular that they have a very particular way to operate.  They have it in 3 rigid steps that are written down.

1. order your food at the register
2.  get your number and step aside
3. At the appropriate time the "guy" will tell you where you can sit.  You get your own silverware and water and everything.

This place can get very crowded and has a great happy hour from 4-7

crispy vege eggrolls

Peanut tofu with rice (replace pic)

Anyway, you can order the main dish with either noodles, rice, or on a sandwich....your choice.

After that it was getting late so we played a couple of games of pinball and cara shopped at a resale shop and then we headed home.

8-9-2013 Meetup at the slide in

We worked hard all day and then at 6:30 we went to The Slide Inn to a meeting with a meetup group called "new and not so new to Portland".  Last time we met with this group it was a lot of fun and we made some good business contacts there.  They bill themselves as Germanic and American food with a mid century modern decor.

We met a few people there, and coincedentially there was another meetup happening there and it was a 20's and 30's group.  The groups politely mixed together although the reason they came was probably different.  The food is pretty good there and it is cheap during happy hour.

Sweet potato gnouchi ($4.50 happy hour) 3 stars

After that broke up we went out and walked up Burnside avenue and then we whipped out this new YELP HEATMAP FOR SEARCH WORDS.  So you can type in cheap, or hipster, or other certain words and it will show you where these words show up in reviews and descriptions.  It led us to a couple of divey places which were pretty cool.  I will add details soon.

8-8-2013 meetings and pinball

Eric had a morning meeting and an afternoon meeting with a computer programmer and an ad agency executive.  The programmer did a few websites and was happy to talk about how to promote his brother's pizza place.  In the afternoon it was very interesting to talk to the ad executive who has been very successful in the world of radio, television, and print, but really doesn't know how to jump into the digital age.  It is all so complicated with smartphones and tablets and all of that stuff.

After that we went to the Mississippi art exhibits that are on the second Thursday of each month.  Only 5 places participated and it wasn't much.

We had a happy hour app at Sidecar 11  We had the a really really good tapanede plate.  It was the best I have had and was more of a sampler.  The star of the show was the roasted garlic cloves.  All in all I tasted this app in my mouth for over an hour.  It stood up well agains the IPA.

Tapanade app $4.50 for happy hour

After that we scooted off for a game of pinball and called it a night.

8-7-2013 using CRM (customer relationsip managers for non profits)

Today was a Wed.  Eric met with Aaron who works at www.nedspace.com and works for NING.  We run a NING network and have tried and failed on some other NING networks.

We went over to the food carts and I had seen on Yelp that one food cart in particular called nongs khao man gai got a lot of raves.  Ironically that very cart was on my bookmarked list on YELP and Aaron decided to go there independantly.  I ordered the main dish they serve, chicken and rice.  When I got it it was all wrapped up in butchers paper.  We walked over to a place to sit down and talk tech.  Aaron does tech support for NING and specializes in helping the new customers do well with their NING networks.  I showed him what we do and he liked it and then we talked about the new 3.0 NING release.

small chicken and rice with soup

broth soup that comes with the chicken and rice

During the day we finalized a handout to explain in one sheet why a restaurant needs to concern itself with Internet marketing and how we can handle it all for them.  I was heading for a meeting and I stopped in for a happy hour burger from mamamiatrattoria.com.  This place always has a crowd and has good yelp ratings.  I noticed a very nicely priced happy hour cheeseburger for 3 bucks.  Right before my meeting was the perfect time.  I ended up sitting at the bar and the owner was sitting next to me.  He was really on the ball and said he had owned restaurants in all the major cities and their family had been in the restaurant business since 1908 and they had never had a failure.  His name was Barry and his son's name is Jerod.  He had retired and his son was running the place.  You could tell that the Barry was like any of the guys on the restaurant turnaround shows but he was quizzing his staff about the wine pours, the seasoning on the calamari, and lots of fine points.  I could see why they do well at restaurants.  I whipped out my brand new sheet and handed it to him and he said  he was on top of it, but is always interested in learning more.  He told me about all they do for marketing and had me sign up for his e-mail program.  I persisted and ended up passing the sheet to a hostess who was supposed to give it to Justin.  My takeaway lesson is that they are on the ball, but a lot of other restaurants need our services because they are not as sophisticated.

Happy hour cheeseburger 3 bucks

That evening I went to a CRM panel discussion.  Storing, manipulating, and using your customer data is very important.  It is not at all easy to do.  It can also be very expensive to do.  There is a whole branch of computing that is devoted to this and it is called CRM.  I am trying to figure out how to start using a CRM system and for this reason I went to a meetup that was a round-table of CRM solutions for non profits.  Many of the CRM systems have moved to a cloud based system that you pay a monthly fee for.  Many of these offer cheaper versions of their products to non profits.

All in all the whole meeting was pretty remedial and I expected it to be a lot more technical and in depth.

After the meeting I went around town and looked for restaurants that were totally dead at 7:00 and went in and introduced myself and gave them our new flyer on Restaurant marketing.  I hit 2 restaurants and one of them was prehispanica restaurant.  This place was totally dead, but had a couple of decent reviews.  The guy I gave the sheet to was going to pass it on.

After that it started getting late and I noticed another place on my bookmark list of great cheap Portland restaurants.  It is called Luc Lac.  It is authenticate vietmanese food although I cant vouch for that since I have never been to vietnam.  I did find out that they have a great happy hour deal from 4-6.

Pork Skewers with noodles (7 bucks)

It was more than I could eat so I took half of it home and I hopped the bus and called it a night.

7-27-2013 Division street fair

I should have called it the division street fair that wasn't.  The poster said that the street fair was from 12th to 50th street on division street in Portland Oregon.  The reality was that there were a few things on some side streets and the whole event was really a huge disappointment.  That is not to say that we had some fun and learned a few things.

We started on 12th and division and were looking for the fair. While we were walking we saw the pic below.

this is in somebody's front yard...a little free library on the honor system

This kind of thing is all over the place in Portland.  People also put out boxes labeled free all over the place.  The culture in Portland is to recycle and conserve and share.

This architecture firm had edibles and rain gardens at their office

We really didn't see much that was exciting at the Street Fair and in all other cases a street fair.  We got to the end and swung over to our friend Justin's.  After that we got a bite to eat, caught the tail end of a band at The Landmark Saloon.  If you like bands and a nice outdoor patio then the Landmark is for you.