Welcome new Portland Is Awesome blog, brought to you by @geekygirldawn!

They need more authors to help explain the obvious to the disbelieving.

The Portvangelistas are honored to team with metafluence to further work on !nxnw via a Google Group.

While we like Michael's original idea of centering !nxnw around OSCON 2008 and the OR Brewfest during the week of 21-27 July, 2008, there's (at least) one other possible schedule that makes sense.

In keeping with our tradition of arbitrarily starting the ball rolling, the Portvangelistas team with metafluence to formally inaugurate the project to create the next "not-NXNW" (!nxnw) event called for in Michael's post as well as in other places.

While the original Portvangelists sleep, a newcomer, Portvangelists.org hits the scene and there are reports of their twitterbot stalking IRC!

Let a thousand Portvangels bloom!

The Portvangelistas strongly support Michael's idea of a distributed SXSW-style, neo-NXNW summer festival in Portland, maybe around OSCON.

The Portvangelistas proudly present a new, wiki-style mindmap of the people in the Portland tech scene, based on the excellent work by metafluence, but now open for all to edit. Note that you will have to log in to edit with the username "portvangelista" and the password "portland rocks!".

This is the best-landscaped power transformer station in Portland, at SE Stark and 60th.

I still wonder if it's giving everyone nearby cancer.

One little known fact to non-pdxers is that we have an amazing tech scene here in Portland. Most evenings we have at least one if not several meetups, user group meetings, or other tech-related events.

Here are just a few that I regularly attend:

• BarCampPortland
• BarCampPortland Monthly Meetups
• Portland Web Innovators
• Startupalooza

There's no better place to admire the beauty of Portland sitting on the banks of the Willamette River than from the west side of Mt. Tabor Park. The breeze blowing through the massive fir trees, the sparkling water of the reservoirs, and the scenic skyline of one of the fairest cities on the planet.

Many a day has been spent watching Portland be Portland. But alas, the Summer nights from the top of Tabor are magical.